Vipassana, Goenka style, Blue Mountains

Okay, I know some of you have been waiting for this for a while in eager anticipation, so here it is... what did I think
of Geonka's 10 day Vipassana retreat?

I arrived at Melbourne airport, expecting to take an early morning flight to Sydney... to give me plenty of time to get me there at my leisure. Instead I found that my flight was cancelled and I had to take another one in the afternoon. I ended up spending the morning at the airport with a slight feeling that the universe was telling me something.

After a long train journey from the city centre to the Blue Mountains, taking in the amazing sunset, I arrived at the retreat. I was a little late and missed some of the introduction. No matter, I knew the jist of the rules anyway. I was shown to my shared accomodation, which was a quite okay shared bedroom... just me and one other guy who I didn't get to know since it was already 'Noble Silence'. I'm sure he was a nice chap, but I wasn't really there to socialise so that was fine. The rooms had a bit of a mild spider infestation... a bit annoying (especially because you are not allowed to kill anything during the course) but nothing serious.

Now I would like to point out that this blog is open to the public. However, it is primarily just a diary for me to write down my thoughts on stuff, and for mates and family to chat or comment. I'm open to other points of view and I'm happy for strangers to comment. Note however that if you are a big Goenka fan and you are offended by this, then frankly I don't care. Its my opinion. If you want to comment on it, feel free to do so politely, respectfully and concisely. I don't mind this becoming a (limited) forum for debate but thats not really the purpose so I have no qualms about deleting any comment I see fit. I have to mention this now as I've seen many people being critical of the Goenka method on the internet, who end up receiving a lot of offensive post on this subject. If any of this content annoys you, feel free to observe the sensation and be aware that all things are transient :D.

So, the first day, we all sit down facing the assistant teachers and we are told how this technique is very non-sectarian and scientific. We are then asked to all chant together that we put our trust in the Buddha and his teachings. This, I am thinking, is not really so non-sectarian but I let it slide. Their justification is 'its not the Buddha but the knowledge the Buddha represents', which was a bit of a poor excuse to justify the sectarian nature of the teaching which Goenka learned in a Theravada Buddhist context. Anyway, moving on for the moment.

Then the chanting started. Okay, definitely getting a little sectarian here. I mean, don't tell me this is a non-sectarian technique and chant to me the words of the Buddha in the Buddha's own language. I've got nothing against Buddhism, but lets dispel this myth of non-sectarianism that Goenka is using to sell this technique to the west. Make no mistake, you are learning Buddhism.

For the first 3 days we did Anaparna meditation, which is basically a single point concentration (in this case the area under the nose). All okay I guess, and around day 4 we started doing Vipassana proper. The eating and sleeping regime was a little challenging, but you get used to not eating much for dinner, and the silence was fine for me, but then again I don't really talk much anyway. Doing 10 hours of meditation a day was okay as well, given that we were learning new techniques each day, but I was getting increasing riled by the use of the words 'objective and scientific' that Goenka was again using to sell the technique to western sensibilities. There is nothing objective or scientific about this.

In fact, if you try to identify truth through experience in your own body it is the opposite of objective. As for scientific, well I can't disprove the perception of reality that experienced meditators claim to have realised, so I don't believe it falls in the realm of science either. I'm not saying that all truths can only be found by objective or scientific study and I'm not saying that this itself invalidates the technique, but lets not oversell it.

Around this time, we started getting to the heart of vipassana meditation, and we started to talk about equanimity. It is an interesting notion that if you remain equanimous to both the good and bad things that happen to you in life, you will reach contentment. I'm just not sure that its true. It seems clear that its good to be equanimous to the bad things, but do we really need to be equanimous to the good as well? They claim that the good leads to attachment which is supposedly just as bad, but I really don't think it is. I'm attached to many things and in some cases its great. I'm attached to my wife, and to music, and to a good book. I'm attached to having a drink with my friends or having dinner with family. I don't want to spend my life 'observing the good things, being aware that all things are transient and letting the emotions pass'. Sod that, I want to live my life. Lets not forget that this technique is mainly practiced in Asia by monks, who have abstained from the world. I am not a monk and I don't really want to be one.

Here is the positive - around day 6, when I had been observing with dispassionate equanimity an intense pain in my hip, I was able to use my mind to reduce the pain from something spreading over the entire right side of my body to a single point. Great. A handy trick. Does that mean 'equanimity is happiness'? Nope.

Its okay to teach a philosophy that I don't necessarily agree with. I don't have a problem with that in itself, since I don't believe in many things that people tell me. But here is the tricky part: when you are in the process of meditating, Goenka will repeat this philosophy to you, in his slow, repetitive, deep voice, directly into your subconcious just like a hypnotherapist would do when he his helping you visualise something or focus on a memory (I have done both now and for me the similarities are too blatant to ignore).

To me, this smacks of brainwashing. Also, he claims that people who practice this technique can feel the atomic 'wave packets' in their body. Honesty I'm getting a little sick of people misusing quantum physics to add validity to their spiritual claims. Of course you can't feel the atoms in your body being exchanged with the universe. So, it seems clear to me (given the atmosphere of blatant conditioning at the retreat) that people who feel this are actually feeling tingling sensations in their body, and calling them atoms because that is what they have been conditioned to believe.

On day 7, I realised that I wasn't able to meditate properly anymore. My annoyance with Goenka had reached a point where I could meditate up to the point where he starts chanting, then as soon as I heard his voice, I stopped. My issues with the whole fake 'scientific objective and rational' thing, combined with the disturbing brainwashing element, were too much to ignore. I felt I was really wasting my time at this point.

I explained my thoughts to the teacher, who tried to justify the technique to me, but failed. In the end we mutually agreed that it would be better if I just left. He was quite gracious about it, actually.

After all this, what do I believe? Well, people who do this properly spend their whole lives dedicated to meditation. People who do Goenka's 10 day course and come out of it thinking they have understood some fundamental truth about the world are kidding themselves, and now I think I see why - this course has many elements of hypnotic suggestion. Maybe somewhere in living in the mountains in a cave in India there is a man standing naked on his head for 20 years who really does understand the secrets of the universe. Its possible I guess.

Moving away from Goenka for the moment, I'm not saying that the Vipassana technique itself is necessarily wrong, but if it is a requirement to accept that 'equanimity is happiness' then maybe I'm just not ready to accept that. Perhaps when I'm an old man I'll consider abstaining from the world and becoming a monk, but there are too many earthly pleasures to revel in (and become attached too if necessary) first. Until then, remember that this kind of meditation is really the penultimate stage on the buddhist (or yogic) 8 fold path (just one away from nirvana). If this path is the true ultimate destiny of man, I don't believe man was meant to jump from step 1 to step 7 anyway.

1.yama, ethics, restraint and ahimsa,
2.niyama, cleanliness, ascetism, etc.
3.asana, posture
4.pranayama, breath-control
5.pratyahara, sense-withdrawal
6.dharana, concentration
7.dhyana meditation, and
8.samadhi, oneness with the Pranava of the Ishvara.

(straight from wikipedia btw :))


For now I'm quite happy to stick with 1 and 2, doing 3 and 4 whenever it suits me. As for Vipassana, I'd rather know nothing than know something that is false. Even if it was true, I won't have a true experience of it by being brainwashed into believing it. Maybe I'll learn it the long hard way when I'm an old man, probably not in a 10 day course of introductory Buddhism.

Until then I'll follow the advice of my dad, who speaks the occasional gem of wisdom if you listen closely enough: "Why are you young people worrying about all this religion and philosophy? Just live your life."