back from retreat

I finished my 5th (or 6th?) long retreat. Most of them have been under the guidance of Bhante Ven. Mahinda at the Aloka Meditation Centre.
In these retreats we get a lot of freedom. There is only 2 'mandatory' chanting and 1 dhamma talk.

For me every retreat is different. New challenges come in, and vanish...

Some things stay the same, and these are the things I tell people who ask. For example, the schedule:

5:00 am. Bells - Wake up call.
5:30 Chanting
7:15 Breakfast
11:00 Lunch
3:00 Tea (unless you are doing the 8 precepts, so like the monks you do not it after 12:00 noon)
5:00 Dinner (idem)
6:00 Chanting
8:00 Dhamma talk
10:30 lights off.

The whole week we maintained 'noble silence', that although is difficult for some people is the best way to keep everybody focused on their own mediation practice (The practice we follow is the development of Samadhi). The people of this group were great. Some with a lot of experience. The residents who coordinate the retreat were also great.

I decided to create a new label in the blog 'development'. For the sake of my Dhamma teaching the retreat could be considered 'professional development', although I'm not a 'pro' so I will just call this development.