Vipassana Reflections
Vipassana is a Theravada buddhist meditation technique that focuses the mind into a sharp awareness of the body. One of the ways of learning the technique is by going to a 10-day course in “Dhamma centres” around the world, where the words of the now-deceased S. N. Goenka are used via audio and video recordings from 1991. Rather than thinking of it as a ‘retreat’, I think these centres are better thought of as work-camps, as the process is intense and includes 13 hours-a-day of scheduled meditation time, with eight sittings ranging from thirty minutes to two hours. For most of the course you are expected to be silent, avoid eye contact, and aren’t allowed to read, write, listen to music, or pretty much do anything beyond walk slowly. You do get fed fantastic food though.
Spoiler alert: the text below contains information about the progression in the course. Some consider it beneficial to not know what’s coming. However, people who do the course repeatedly and are generally able to “go deeper” each time, so I personally don’t think it matters too much. If you’re preparing to do the course in the next few weeks, you may wish to think twice before reading on.
I went to the Vipassana course in Herefordshire from 10–21st January 2017. Before this course I’d only meditated (very infrequently) for 10–20 minutes at a time, always with guided audio recordings that left me in silence for no more than a few minutes at a time. I knew even those sittings had sometimes dragged on, but I was stilled shocked by the time expansion I experienced at Vipassana, where the passing of five minutes would feel like thirty! Meditating for 10–13 hrs/day for ten days with strong, intentional awareness of each moment has the effect of expanding psychological time immensely. (See the appendix for more info regarding our experience of time.)
The 10 days felt equivalent to several months, and I was repeatedly shocked when I realized that for my friends on the outside less than a couple of weeks of normal life would have zipped by. Relating this experience to them wouldn’t be easy. Yet I expect that when I look back, these 10 days will merge into a tiny, solid block in my memory with few discernable moments, and perhaps will mainly serve to make the memory of times before this seem even more distant. New experiences and changed perspectives bend the mind. Time truly is a trickster!
By the end of day two (~18 hours of meditation in) I managed to focus on my breath for a full 50 minute session, dismissing other thoughts (“mind-chatter”, or the “monkey mind”) before a complete in-out breath had passed. At the end of day four I sat for an hour without moving, and the morning of day five I did it in lotus pose — a pose which is ordinarily extremely uncomfortable and painful for me. Indeed, this caused so much excruciating pain in my thighs, knees, calves and ankles that I only continued it for two more days before I decided my body doesn’t agree with lotus.
On the morning of day seven I experienced my first “sweep” of sensations throughout the body, feeling the sensations from head to toe within seconds, and I experienced this sensation before we were taught about it in the course (it had been mentioned in passing a few days before). This “sweep” of sensations is not a sensation that can really be understood without experiencing it. It feels like shivers or electricity vibrating through the body, a little like a pleasant version of pins-and-needles (without any numbness).
However, the sweep of these sensations amounted to something else when it flowed through my whole body at that time. I felt deeply connected to myself and to my body, more engaged with myself than ever before, and incredible excited to be alive. There was an intenseness to the experience that made me excited to exist — to be able to engage with the world around me in such an aware, fulfilling way. I know I can sometimes be experienced as intense, but this made me feel intense to myself — why wouldn’t I want to live a massively engaged life, present in each moment, enthusiastically creating (my) reality and connecting with the world around me through my sensations and thoughts from instant to instant! For the first time, meditation became not only enjoyable, but exciting!
When I mentioned this experience to the course manager and assistant teacher I was quickly warned not to get attached to the experience. “Yeah,” I said, knowing that Goenka had been repeatedly stressing the importance of a balanced mind that neither avoided pain, nor sort pleasure. But I wondered to myself “why the fuck not? Why wouldn’t I want to be excited about being deeply connected and engaged in my existence, and so why wouldn’t I seek this experience again?”
I think the answer quickly came. By seeking (or in the parlance of Goenka, “craving”) this experience, and by becoming annoyed by blocking sensations (which manifested as either pain of “blind spots” where I couldn’t feel the sensations of my body), I found myself moving away from the “sweep” sensations. Pain became more intense, blind spots increased in size. By the end of day eight I didn’t want to focus my awareness on my legs due to the pain, and didn’t want to focus on my upper body because it was almost totally blind to me — I’d become unable to feel the sensations. I realized I was in a negative spiral, creating and reinforcing “sankara’s of aversion” (aka unhelpful neural pathways).
By day nine I’d lost faith in the assistant teacher, who had only answered my previous questions by repeating the words of Goenka, and so I knew I was alone. In case I decided to do another vipassana course in the future, I realized it was not in my interest to persevere with vipassana meditation if I was only going to reinforce neural pathways that would make it harder for me, so I just about gave up. I mostly went back to “anapana” meditation (focusing awareness on the breath), which is taught in the first three days as the prerequisite to vipassana meditation (focusing on the bodily sensations). Whenever I could I hid in my room, and most of this reflection piece was written on paper towels stolen from the bathroom — writing is forbidden during the course, though fortunately I’d smuggled in a pen.
My heart was no longer in it, partly because of the negative spiral reinforcement, and partly for other reasons that had put me off the course (which I’ll come to). In one of the sittings I couldn’t even be bothered to do anapana, so I opened my eyes and for 30 minutes I watched the other 100+ meditators as they sat there in silence and near-stillness. It was quite humorous for me to watch the ones who were struggling to sit still, as they slowly and painfully shifted their body as silently as possible. People were rocking, tilting their heads, playing with their meditation cushions, coughing and clearing their nose.
At each sitting on day nine I still tested whether vipassana would “work” for me (could I feel my shoulder?), and I was pleasantly surprised when for the final short sitting of the day I regained the ability to “sweep” my body again, though it was more surfacey and I didn’t experience the intense excitement I’d encountered before. I’d ‘lost’ a few days of meditation progression, and so never got to experience the “body dissolution” that others experienced. Nevertheless it was pleasant enough, and gave me hope that perhaps I would make vipassana a practice. By day ten these surfacey sweeps were happening quite consistently for me, revealing the “pain” sensations for what they are (merely indicators that life is present), allowing me to move through the pain and dissolve it — an experience often called ‘mind over matter’. I’d wanted to be able to do this since (as a teenager) I’d read about the Bene Gesserit in Frank Herbert’s Dune novels. It was pretty cool to realize I now had this super-power!
On day ten you’re allowed to speak with the other meditators, which came to me as a massive relief. Exchanging stories and experiences was really helpful for me. The ups and downs I’d experienced were common.
My Issues with Vipassana
Many people state that vipassana meditation has positively changed their lives, and I can understand why. The Dhamma centres have continued on a volunteer and donation basis for several decades, which I think speaks to the beneficial effects it can have on people’s lives. I do not wish to dispute those experiences and changes, and respect these courses for providing a free entrance to vipassana meditation as a practice. However, I also encountered many problems with the course that were significant put-offs for me, and make me question whether I would do it again.
Firstly, I found Goenka (the Teacher) to be patronizing. While some of his teaching and stories was helpful, I found it to be largely cartoonish, even childish. He teaches that we must “do no harm” as if it’s an answer to the world’s problems, and this sounds great until you realize that your trip to the supermarket has already harmed thousands of people in several continents. Goenka’s simplistic suggestions don’t seem fit for the complex, interconnected society in which we live.
In his evening discourses Goenka repeatedly insists that all our lives before coming to the course were miserable — in actuality I quite like my life, and I experience very little misery. In my life journeys I have already discovered several roads out of misery to happiness, and I believe many of them have resulted in an abundance of fruits. See the appendix below for some these pathways.
Goenka then goes on to explain that this technique is the only way to remove misery and find happiness. This exclusionary truth-claim is repeated often, and I found it incredibly off-putting. I’ve already come out of a similar absolutist community (American fundamentalist christianity), and I find such claims to be abhorrent. This is probably the point that grated against me hardest. Goenka is not the (only) voice of god!
Unfortunately, this appears to be somewhat believed by the community who run the centres. The audio and video recordings appear to be becoming a form of holy scripture (even though Goenka taught against such fossilizations). When asking questions to the assistant teacher, he merely repeated the words of Goenka back to me, apparently refusing to add anything new that might have actually been helpful. Yet he had been meditating for forty years! If he didn’t feel empowered to contribute anything beyond the words of Goenka after forty years of practice, this jumps out at me as a red flag. My fellow meditators relayed similar experiences, both with the male and female assistant teachers, and this appears to be institutional. Apparently those in the community are not willing to (taught not to?) contribute their own creativity.
This unwillingness translated into the assistant teacher coming across as detached — unable to engage with my honest and searching questions that were asked from a genuine place of desire to learn the technique. This detachment is also a major issue for me, and seems to be opposed to the exciting and engaging feeling that the “sweep” of sensations had elicited in me. If vipassana results in a detachment from life/body/earth/reality, then I want no part in it. I have known too many detached people: people numbed by celebrity gossip and reality TV, friends I’ve lost to a smokey-high playing video games, and people who have given up having dreams and goals in life and have become consumed by the daily grind. My s/heroes don’t consist of people who have switched off to life — quite the opposite! My s/heroes consist of those who are radically engaged, passionate, and creative.
However, I was reassured by some fellow meditators on day ten that vipassana is all about becoming both and aware and engaged with your body, and therefore with the reality around you. So maybe it’s not the technique itself which is problematic, but rather the Goenka-fixation that seems to have overtaken the “Dhamma centres” community (from what I hear the detachment is also present at other centres around the world).
The courses are advertised as non-religious and non-sectarian, claiming the practice and technique can be used by all. I can attest that this is probably the case, yet the course itself is steeped in Buddhist dogma, theology and beliefs. I don’t mind if the course teaches such things, but please be honest about it! I don’t believe that the bodily awareness technique of vipassana meditation is tied to a believe in reincarnation, past lives, abstinence, sexual conservatism, nor any of the other beliefs that Goenka pushes — even claiming they are necessary to the practice.
The course is also patriarchal in several ways I find to be problematic. The only teacher (Goenka) is a man, who talks about another man’s experience (Siddhartha Gautama, ‘the’ buddha). Additionally, the AV recordings are all started by the male assistant teacher on his time (generally the female teacher arrived first, and he didn’t wait for her if she wasn’t present), and even the meditation hall air conditioning controls are on the male side. The female assistant teacher only ever talks to females, whereas the male assistant teacher’s words are for everyone.
The strictly enforced male-female sex divide also made me feel deeply uncomfortable, serving to reinforce the myth of the gender binary. In some ways I can understand why this is done, in that the sensations of bodily awareness frequently translated into people becoming intensely horny (as many related to me on day ten), and without such a strict divide I could well imagine meditators would likely sleep together, or at least be staring at each other in ways that could become uncomfortable and unwanted (and the silence would prevent expression of such discomfort). While I don’t have a problem with consenting adults sleeping together, I can see how the intense and passionate releases of bodily energy via orgasms would serve as blockers to the vipassana technique, and so reduce people’s ability to experience their bodily sensations. However, while this might be the case, the sex divide excludes trans people, and creates an uncomfortable and unwelcoming space for those with other genders and sexualities (gay, lesbian, queer, non-binary, two-spirited, etc.). I hope the Dhamma centres community engages with this problem with the course structure and adapts in order for the courses to become inclusive and remain relevant. The last thing we need is yet another exclusionary religious sect.
The hierarchy of the course was a problem for me also. We were literally sitting at a lower level than the assistant teachers, who imposingly sat slightly higher than us on stalls. Only (the deceased) Goenka is the teacher, with the people present at the front being merely “assistant teachers”. There doesn’t appear to be a way for this to change. If the vipassana centres continue to develop the way they appear to be heading (into a fledgling religion), it appears as if the “last prophet” will have been Goenka, and the “high priests” will be the assistant teachers. With no ability to creatively contribute, the hierarchy will likely become very rigid. In order to preserve the relevance of the technique, I dearly hope that heretics soon arise to breathe new life into this community!
Appendix
The appendix “Positive Encounters that have Helped Me” is located here.
