Experience of a Ten Day Course at Dhamma Giri

This is a long article about an American's first experience on a ten day course in the Goenka tradition.  Of all places to take a first course he went straight to the headquarters in Igatpuri, India.  The first two thirds of the article are your fairly standard stuff of just about any article in the last ten years that has been written about a first-timer taking a ten day meditation silent retreat.  The songs and movie clips stuck in his head, the forgotten innocuous childhood memories, the awareness of breath and sensations for the first time, the first taste of inner peace, the doubt and pain, the guy next to him who burps/snores/farts loudly that he first comes to hate and then learns to love.  They can feel like carbon copies at times.  However, the last 1/3 of this article is actually fairly interesting and is a departure from the set piece.

You can read the Men's Journal article here.