Meditation Retreats

To understand buddhism is not just to understand a set of claims that are made by buddhism, but to get involved in a practice that reveals things. One reason i find value in having gone to meditation retreats is because you do get closer to experiential apprehension of the truths. At the end of a retreat, you kind of see what it's like to be much less in the thrall of the various kinds of cognitive and perceptual biases which natural selection inflicted on the brain. It's actually a nice way to be. And that, i think, helps your daily practice be, in a certain sense, more than just self help.