Books, podcasts and reading on dark retreat
For anyone curious about the practice, getting ready for a retreat, or making sense of one afterwards.
These are other people’s work. They come from several traditions, and some describe retreats much longer or more intense than ours. New to the idea? Start with our own guide, What is a dark retreat?
Books
Total Eclipse of the Mind
Subtitled Unleashing the Power of Darkness for Creativity, Healing, and Transformation. A practical guide to dark retreat from a teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, drawing on some thirty years of his own practice: why darkness helps, how to practice safely, including at home, and how to carry what you find back into daily life.
Hygienic Dark Retreat
A full book, free on the author’s site, that treats dark retreat as an extended rest in a totally dark room. Durham grounds it in natural hygiene rather than in any spiritual or therapeutic method.
Darkness Retreat: An Exciting Journey to the Source of Being
An introduction to darkness retreats that includes thirty personal accounts from participants over five years.
Learning to Walk in the Dark
Not about dark retreat as such: a reflective book, from a Christian perspective, on what darkness, literal and spiritual, has to teach.
Darkness Technology: Darkness Techniques for Enlightenment
A 60-page booklet on darkness practice from the Taoist teacher who founded the Universal Healing Tao.
Naked Seeing
A scholarly study of Tibetan visionary practice in the Great Perfection (Dzogchen) and Kalachakra traditions, including yogas done during long periods in dark rooms. For readers who want the history in depth.
Podcasts and film
Reginald A. Ray: Dark Retreat
Tami Simon talks with Reggie Ray, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher and founder of Dharma Ocean, about his own experience of dark retreat. A transcript is also available.
A Beginner’s Guide to Dark Retreat, with Andrew Holecek
James Shaheen, editor of Tricycle, talks with Holecek about what extended darkness does to the mind and how to begin gently, starting with an eye mask and short sessions.
Talking about Dark Retreat, with Andrew Holecek
Michael W. Taft and Holecek on the risks and benefits of the practice, and ways in for beginners.
Darkness Therapy: Return to Simplicity
A short film from Sky Cave Retreats, a darkness retreat in southern Oregon. It is also on our home page.
Articles and first-hand accounts
Embracing the Darkness
Lama Justin von Bujdoss on traditional dark retreat in Tibetan Buddhism: seven to forty-nine days in darkness, and what the practice is for.
“You’re Going to Lose Your Mind”: My Three-Day Retreat in Total Darkness
Chris Colin’s first-person account of three days in a sealed cabin, including the vivid imagery that can arise in the dark.
Reflections on a 40-Day Dark Retreat
Kali Aney’s account of forty days alone in darkness at a hermitage in Guatemala, far longer than our retreats, and the phases she passed through.
Darkness Has Its Own Joy
A short talk on the beauty of darkness, and on loving it rather than resisting it. Osho’s commentary on the darkness meditation is in chapter 51 of The Book of Secrets.
Guides, and where we practice
What is a dark retreat?
Our own introduction: where the practice comes from, what it is like, safety, and who it suits.
What Is a Darkness Retreat? A complete guide
A long guide from a directory of darkness retreats: benefits and risks, who should not go, how to prepare, and how to choose a center.
Dark retreat
An encyclopedia overview of the practice in Tibetan Buddhism and Bön, with sources.
Chamma Ling Colorado
The retreat center near Crestone founded by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a teacher in the Bön tradition, as a place for solitary retreat. Its cabins are built for dark retreats as well as silent ones.
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