Kaveesh Rathnayake
Overall the Dhamma retreat was a very mind-cleansing thing. That's not to say there weren’t a
lot of problems. The first day I had trouble sleeping because the lights in the room we were
sleeping were on and kept changing colors. Not to mention I was hungry because I was used to
eating dinner before I went to sleep. I went to bed and tried to go to sleep but I could not go to
sleep as there were RGB lights on in the room the entire time. I got up the next day with 0 sleep.
Luckily they had coffee during morning break and I drank the entire cup. I still found it hard to
focus during the meditation classes but by the time Breakfast had started, I was usually already
wide awake. Our schedule was mostly full of breaks, meditation, and a reading period. Luckily
the 2nd day they gave us smoothies in the afternoon so by the time it was time to sleep my
stomach was still full and I was able to get some sleep. The 3rd day was followed by the exact
same thing. I noticed that I started to get lots of cramps as I wasn’t used to sitting down in one
place for so long. After I drank the smoothie and went to sleep that day my stomach was
surprisingly full considering the fact that I drank the smoothie about 3 hours ago. That night I fell
asleep instantly and woke up refreshed in the morning. On the final day we did our usual
proceeding then it was time to go. We bowed down to our parents and chanted to conclude the
Dhamma Retreat. Something I noticed about the Retreat was that I found it much easier to
concentrate on things and my mind was surprisingly peaceful. Overall I think that the Dhamma
Retreat was a good life experience even with some of its cons.