First, that wasn’t a retreat. It was a Buddhist monk boot camp! The word retreat signals comfort. This was anything but comfortable. It had all the classic attributes of a boot camp: hardship, excruciating self-inflicted pain, extreme restrictions, irrational submissions, perennial failures, imaginary successes, why-the-fuck-am-i-doing-this, I-am-quitting, I-suck, and ultimately self-fulfilling sense of reward. I figure…