Perhaps a hundred ordinary looking people, mostly well dressed, are enjoying a hot pumpkin soup and toast on a polar blustery winter evening in Blackheath in a communal dining hall at the Vipassana Meditation Centre. Occassionally the windows arch inwards like sails on a ship catching the roaring foarties as they turn northwards and gush up the great dividing range, bringing sleet snow and ice. A few more feral looking folks wander around in bare feet. Most are talking to friends, family or new acquaintances, while some are immersed in their food and others in their thoughts are contemplating the 10 day silent retreat they are about to join. They have come to learn and practice Vipassana Meditation as taught by SN Goenka, a technique claiming purity through an unbroken lineage back to Gautama Buddha 25 centuries ago.
7.30pm passes and still the latecomers arrive, each person sits to fill in their registration form, and to answer the numerous questions - "have you ever had any mental illness", "What other techniques have you practiced, including Vipassana with other teachers", etcetera.
If a student has sat a course before they are called "old students" and there are extra questions, 'When and with who did you sit your first course? Have you maintained your practice since your last course? Since your last course have you practiced any other techniques, including Vipassana with other teachers? . How many courses have you undertaken? Students fill in their answers with as much or little information as they think appropriate, and the forms are duly collected by the manager to be taken to the Assistant Teacher for perusal prior to the course beginning.
The Old Students generally seem more comfortable, catching up with people they know from previous courses. The New Students are generally caught up in the fairly relaxed, if not slow motion nature of the way the evening is progressing.
Finally a kindly gentleman politely seeks the rooms attention to make a formal welcome and to remind everyone that the course is a serious undertaking and that anybody is free to leave at this point, but that if they choose to stay they should be determined to stay for the whole 10 day course.
Perhaps by 9pm a handheld burmese bell is tapped by one of the volunteers and a beautiful and deep gong hangs in the air. The students congregate at the entrance to the hall, men on one side, and women through a different entrance at the other side. Strict segregation of the sexes will be maintained for the course, except that both sexes sit in the same hall, men on the left, and women on the right with an aisle down the middle.
Students are led in one by one and each assigned a flat blue cussion about 3ft square and perhaps half an inch thick and a smaller but thicker cushion to place on top of the first, on which to sit during the long hours of meditation over the next week and a half. The Assistant Teachers (AT's) are either a single person or a couple, husband and wife and they are sitting on a their cushions on a raised bench some 18 inches above the rest of the meditators. Symbolically behind them is an empty bench, higher than the first, reserved for the Teacher Mr Goenka and his wife Mataji, who will not appear during the course except by way of pre-recorded video and audio cassettes. Every ten years or so the Teacher, Mr Goenka, records a new version lightly updated and with new recording technology. Slightly forwards and to the sides of the Assistant Teachers and seated obliquely facing the area in front of the ATs sit the course volunteers, Old Students who are assisting with the course, who may number 5 or 10, again, males on the one side of the hall, females on the other. Directly facing the ATs sit the Old Students, assigned places according to seniority in the meditation sense of courses sat and dedication or perhaps progress in the technique, with the most senior male and female closest towards the central aisle on their own side, and the less senior in the position to the side of the first and so on, into the second and subsequent rows. Behind the Old Students sit the New Students, in orderly rows at the start of the course, allocated positions according to no set rules.
One of the ATs, by default the male, introduces themselves, welcomes the Students, and then advises that there will be some chantings or blessings, and then the course will begin with some formalities. A tape recorder is pressed to play, and gradually Mr Goenka's voice comes through the amplifier with a hindi chant. After a few minutes the Teachers recorded voice speaks to the students loudly through the Amp; with words reproduced here verbatim to the best of my ability, but necessarily incomplete;
"You have all assembled here to practice the technique of Vipassana Meditation ... to obtain total purification of mind by one's own insight. But before you can begin you must undertake certain formalities. Don't take these formalities as a right or ritual or religious ceremony. They are essential to the practice of this technique. The first formality, you have to take refuge in Triple Gem; - in Buddha, in Dhamma, and in Sangha. ... Not in any person of Buddha, but in the quality of Buddha, and the quality of Buddha is enlightenment. You are to take refuge in enlightenment and that means developing enlightenment within yourself. You are to take refuge in Dhamma, not in any organised religion or sect, Dhamma means Nature, Law, the Law of Nature. You are to develop Dhamma within yourself and that will be your refuge. You are to take refuge in Sangha - all the saintly people of the past and present, you are to take refuge in the quality of Sangha.
You have to take five precepts, or for the Old Students eight precepts, which are: you shall abstain from killing; you shall abstain from stealing; you shall abstain from sexual misconduct, - while you are here that means you will observe complete celibacy; you shall abstain from speaking lies; and you shall abstain from taking any form of intoxicants. For the Old Students they shall take another three precepts which are; you shall abstain from taking any food after 12 noon, you shall abstain from bodily decorations, and you shall abstain from sleeping on very high cosy beds.
...
Next you have to to surrender yourself to Buddha and your present teacher for proper guidance and protection. Again this is not a blind rite or ritual, you are not surrendering to any person, you are surrendering yourself to the quality of Buddha. You are actually surrendering yourself to this technique of meditation. Have a strong feeling of determination that for these ten days I will give a real serious trial to this technique of meditation.
The last formality, you have to ask for the technique of meditation.
So for all these four formalities, better repeat what I say. Repeat what I say.
I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dhamma, I take refuge in Sangha;
[and the students repeat together] "I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dhamma, I take refuge in Sangha"
I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dhamma, I take refuge in Sangha;
[and the students repeat together] "I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dhamma, I take refuge in Sangha"
I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dhamma, I take refuge in Sangha;
[and the students repeat together] "I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dhamma, I take refuge in Sangha"
...
I shall abstain from killing - [and the students repeat together] "I shall abstain from killing"
I shall abstain from stealing; [and the students repeat together] "I shall abstain from stealing"
I shall observe complete celibacy while I am here; [and the students repeat together] "I shall observe complete celibacy while I am here"
I shall abstain from speaking lies; [and the students repeat together] "I shall abstain from speaking lies"
I shall abstain from taking any form of intoxicants [and the students repeat together] "I shall abstain from taking any form of intoxicants"
...
Now for the complete surrender.
"I surrender myself completely, to Buddha and my present teacher, for proper guidance and protection"
[and the students repeat together] "I surrender myself completely, to Buddha and my present teacher for proper guidance and protection"
....
Now for the request for Anapana meditation. 'Please teach me the technique of Anapana Meditation, so that I can experience the Nibbanic peace within myself' [and the students repeat together] "Please teach me the technique of Anapana Meditation, so that I can experience the Nibbanic peace within myself".
After this the instructions of the Teacher continue with instructions to begin observing the breath at the nostrils and the area below the nostrils and above the upper lip. After two days of intense concentration on this area, the focus is changed to any sensations which can be felt in this area and remaining equanimous with these sensations whatever they may be. Then on the fourth day, the students are advised through the recorded teachers instructions to request Vipassana meditation as follows:
"Repeat what I say "Please teach me the technique of Vipassana Meditation, so that I can experience the Nibbanic peace within myself."
[and the students repeat together]; "Please teach me the technique of Vipassana Meditation, so that I can experience the Nibbanic peace within myself."
Vipassana meditation is then taught with students asked to observe sensations first on the skin and later throughout the body, and importantly, emphatically, to remain equanimous with these sensations. Finally the students are also asked to sit without moving for one hour three times a day in sittings of strong determination during the group meditation session.
Now the above formalities contain the whole thrust of the theory and practice of the technique of meditation.
In the last days of the course, through the video recordings, the teacher Mr Goenka asks the students to consider surrendering themselves for the whole life to this technique, but before doing so to ask themselves several questions, including to the effect of 'is it rational, is it scientific, is it really beneficial, is it really non-sectarian, will anyone be harmed if I practice it'.
An examination of the technique;
The technique is one of sila or morality - being the above precepts which the student takes on the first evening, samadhi - mastery over the mind, and panna - wisdom - insight, in the words of Mr Goenka 'total purification of the mind by one's own insight'.
Though the technique was said to be first espoused by Gautam Buddha, it falls to be considered in the present cultural context. Should a technique such as this survive in the era where life is understood as an evolutionary development rather than some metaphysical variation of the cycle of life death and rebirth and liberation from it? There is a great deal of cultural context which is transcribed from the era of Gautam Buddha into the present day teachings of Mr Goenka. For instance Mr Goenka's discourses are replete with references to past and future lives, understandably as the Buddha's discourses are themselves replete with such references.
The concept of purification of mind is culturally specific in that the impurities are said to be untracable but intractably present from previous existences and requiring eradication. Just what is to be purified is potentially subject to limitless imagination so the teacher advises to just get to the task of purification. The culturally specific understanding of past and future lives at the time of Gautam Buddha was even then an ancient understanding, perhaps a reflection of awe at the apparently otherwise inexplicable human ability to rapidly acquire language and abilities as a baby progresses into childhood and adulthood, and at the same time an explanation for the very different natures of different people. Although the teachings of the Buddha were heterodox in the sense of going against the then mainstream understanding of a personal God or Gods, and replacing such a concept with Dhamma, thought of as a Law of Nature, they nevertheless adopted Whollus Bollus the then current understanding of Kamma with it's belief in past and future lives, and a search for escape from such a cycle into a state of deathlessness. Such a concept of past and future lives has no place in the modern era where there is an understanding not only in genetic terms, but also in physical terms, that there is no essence, no substance, not even any wave particle duality, that can convey either the essence of a person, or their kamma - in the language of vipassana their accumulated sankharas, instantly to some other location which conveniently happens to be a just fertilised zygot in a mother's womb. The relationship between a just deceased person, and any other zygot which is formed in the very same instant, is no more than a quirk of time with no more relation to each other than that. Given Einstein's theory of relativity there is no certainty that the time can always be simultaneous either. Would such a transmutation were it to occur transmit at the speed of light, or perhaps faster than the speed of light?
Mr Goenka assures the students that belief in past or future lives is not necessary. Indeed he says that whatever in the theory is found unacceptable, the student may remove, but the practice must remain sila samadhi and panna - morality, mastery over the mind, and purification of the mind by one's own insight.
One problem is that the goal, Nibbana, cessation of suffering, a state where there is no arising and no passing away, the deathless, is necessarily bound up in the context of a metaphysical understanding of past and future lives. It makes no sense to speak of Nibbana in evolutionary terms because presumably and according to Mr Goenka the attainment of the state of Nibbana in the present life then results in the acquisition of a higher state of consciousness where sex is no longer a driving force and one lives in a blissful and joyful celibacy, which is to say that one absents onself from further participation in the human genepool.
Nibbana, which is the explicit goal when one asks for the technique of meditation, is said to be "the Nibbanic peace within myself". That Nibbana is a state of internality is reinforced by statements through the course by Mr Goenka when he says for instance "introspect the leg" and all the other parts of the body. This can be a highly confusing description for the student, who is first asked to observe real sensations on the skin, and then throughout the body, inside and outside, with statements like "start from the front and come out of the back, start from the back and come out of the front" etcetera. Mr Goenka advises that within lies an achievable a state of Nibbana, which he describes as "the deathless", but that the only way to achieve this state of internality is, without any hint of irony at the contradiction in terms, to remain detached.
If Nibbana is a state where nothing arises and nothing passes away, there can by definition be no observer. The explanation that Nibbana can't be explained in worldly language doesn't take us any further than equally ancient descriptions of God as being beyond description. Nibbana clearly could not mean where there is no more atomic or subatomic activity. The body always has atomic, not to mention cellular activity within and through it. So Nibbana must be a purely mental phenomena, - yet Mr Goenka is adamant that Nibbana is beyond mind and matter. If the mind sees nothing arising and nothing passing away while the heart is beating, then it is ignorant of the goings on in the body. If on the other hand the heart stops beating during Nibbana, then cellular death ultimately has to take place within several minutes due to lack of oxygen. Clearly Nibbana is a religious concept and not a scientific concept.
Mr Goenka says, the only way to reach the final goal (of the deathless state of Nibbana) is, 'don't even think of it'.
OK so let us look to the basics of the technique to see if it has any value absent looking at the goal of Nibbana.
The goals then become, Sila, Samadhi, and Panna; morality, mastery over the mind, and purification of the mind by one's own insight.
Sila - Morality is at all times and in all places, culturally and temporally specific. Even in this modern epoch of globalisation, universal human rights are now the culturally specific moral norm of our time.
Of course there is a certain hard core abstinence and apparent pacifism taught which again probably comes from the traditions of the time and place of Gautama Buddha. But the morality is of course relative, and communities whether buddhist or not have always had to grapple with moral questions such as whether to go to war and if so how to fight it - was it right to fight against Hitler but not against Pol Pot in Cambodia and the Interahamwe in Rwanda? Was it right for any of us to sit and meditate, or to watch sport on television, or to continue to go to work, to love and to play, while hundreds of thousands were hunted and murdered in Rwanda and most of us did absolutely nothing about it? Mr Goenka does not advocate the disarmament and disbandment of armies or the disarming of police forces so clearly the threat and use of deadly force is not disavowed. Clearly the morality of killing is culturally specific. What about questions like how to police the state, what is private and what is communal property and what should be done about it, what is or isn't acceptable sexual behaviour and should celibacy be looked at as a goal of life, a higher form of morality, or just a dangerous self deception. In relation to intoxicants, what about pain killers.
None of this is to question that morality is a good thing. It is. It's just that living in the real world is complicated and everyone who comes to a Vipassana course has already been negotiating that complicated course for their whole life prior to coming to a Vipassana course and will of course have to do so for the remainder of their lives.
Samadhi - Mastery over the mind - nobody can question that it's a good thing to have a mind which is well behaved. However trying to tie down and master the mind to a specific task, observation of sensations on the body, or perhaps in the body, or both on and in the body at the same time as the Buddha says in the Satipatthana Sutta may mean focusing on something which need not be focussed on. By observing one thing intensely we may lose the capability to simultaneously observe another. Focusing intensely on sensations may mean that certain other sensations are minised or even not noticed. Or perhaps one loses the kinaesthetic sense of the whole body if one becomes totally focussed on the sensations as directed by Mr Goenka. There is no guarantee of anything - the teacher stresses again and again not to play games of sensations, that some students come to a hundred 10 day courses and still do not know how to practice. What is the appropriate way of understanding sensations and emotions is something which is partly in the genetic codes, partly learned in the womb and in life.
One thing is certain which is that this intense concentration with a specific goal of observing sensations is not what anyone has required up to the point in their lives when they enterred a Vipassana course. And anyone who has lost the plot at the time they want to enter a course will be told this is not appropriate for them at the current time. Moreover it is not established that mastery over the mind in the sense of being able to direct it to observe certain sensations at any given moment, does not result in a correlative loss of awareness of some other thing, which could be equally or more important at the time. Imagination, for instance. Mr Goenka specifically warns against the use of imagination during meditation - "If you use imagination you will only get a bigger imagination".
Panna - Total purification of the mind by one's own insight - Here again we come to the nub of the problem that purity is culturally specific at all times and at all places. Mr Goenka assures the students that the deepest rooted enemy of the meditator, not just in meditation but also in life, is passion, sexual desire - "you have to root it out". This is a highly subjective and religious view. There is nothing scientific about it at all. An evolutionary perspective would indicate that passion, sexual desire, is a normal, and intimate part of the human mind. Of course it has to be kept in balance, but to condemn sexual desire as fundamentally ignorant and impure is a mistake. Sexual desire and sex itself is essential for the continuation of the human species, as for every other eukaryotic specie. Sex is a driver of evolution. So Vipassana comes head to head with Evolution. Mr Goenka says sex is an impurity ultimately to be risen above to a point where even married couples will live together celibate. Darwin and every evolutionary biologist since says sex is part of the essence of humanity. Indeed it is part of all multicellular life on this planet and there is no reason to assume that it should be any different for us.
To solve this riddle it is necessary to go to the essence, the theory of these two now clearly contradictory worldviews, those consistent with traditional buddhisms and those consistent with what we now know about the theory of evolution. Soul and non Soul theory (Anutta), Reincarnation, rebirth, transmutation, rapture into heaven, burning in the lake of fire in hell with gnashing of teeth, rebirth as an animal, or as a god, or for that matter achieving liberation from the cycle of becoming in the deathless state of Nibbana, is simply a culturally specific belief system from several thousand years ago when humanity lacked better explanations for it's own existence and the world and universe around us.
In the modern day we understand sexual reproduction to be a requirement for the passing on and recombination of DNA, Genes. We are no longer so metaphysically bound to seek an impure cause for suffering such as kamma. In evolutionary science there is no expectation of an endpoint such as Nibbana, for we know that at the end of our lives there is simply a termination of existence. There is no need to escape the cycle of birth and death because there is no cycle of becoming. Birth is once and death is once. Any belief system which does not accept that death is final, is simply a religion and not a science. This is not to criticise any religion, including Vipassana, but it does provide a different worldview. We are not impure, just human. Life is complex and sometimes contradictory and difficult but that's part of the joy of life.
Discussion
Our culture is in many ways linked with our present understanding of the universe and ourselves. Past and future lives, Nibbana, and the concept of sexual desire as the deepest impurity and greatest enemy of the disciple have to be rejected as obsolete religious pedagogy. If the technique is being used to try to first reject and then seek to eradicate the most fundamental human nature, that of sexual desire, in the pursuit of purity of mind and the attainment of Nibbana, then is there not a risk a disciple might subvert all of natural, inherited, and learned coping mechanisms and modes of living, in favor of these supernatural goals? Might not the meditator run the risk of inverting his or her mind in this pursuit. The stated goal of the technique is the fundamental reordering of the human psyche to eliminate passion and anything else deemed impure.
The third formality was "I surrender myself completely to Buddha and my present teacher for proper guidance and protection". Gautam Buddha is long dead however the meditator is to surrender completely to the worldview of the Buddha, under the guidance of the present teacher. 'My present teacher' refers to Mr Goenka who has sought to bring to the world the teachings of Gautam Buddha in undiluted and pure form. Unfortunately those teachings may not be relevant given that modern genetic science finds us to be related to our ancestral DNA rather than any kamma - accumulated reaction forces from previous lives - in the terminology of Vipassana called 'bhawa sankharas' - sankharas that give a new life even after death. Evolutionary science won't claim to give the answer to all life's questions, but the big one of how I got here has to be answered plain and simple, not with the 2500 year old and now obsolete chain of dependent origination said to be discovered and taught by the Buddha. The answer of how I got here is that my parents mated, ... their parents mated, ... and some billions of years ago, long after simple unicellular life began on this planet, a single celled creature and a bacteria joined together in the one cell, with the bacteria becoming mitochondria which form part of every cell of our body, and the host cell being a great ancestor of ours way back in deep time. It had nothing to do with the past kamma of the first eukaryotic cells, because by definition there could be no such thing as past kamma. And yet from these cells evolved complex life, all the way through to our early hominid ancestors over the last several million years, not to mention presently homo sapiens, human beings. Kamma theory, the theory that apparently random events such as life and death, birth into riches or poverty, sickness or health, have their cause in good or bad actions of a previous life, simply has no place in the modern world and yet this is part and parcel of the Buddha's worldview (if he existed), and given to the students by Mr Goenka over the course of a Vipassana retreat.
No matter how strong a personality one has, for anyone to come to a course and make this complete surrender to Buddha and the present teacher, at least normally involves some suspension of disbelief in these supernatural phenomena such as past and future lives, Nibanna, and total 'purification' of mind from sexual desire, etcetera. Should one pursue the Vipassana technique with the whole of one's life force, as many do or appear to do, then they will be participating in, or else volunteering within, scores of ten day retreats, not to mention 20, 30, and now 45 day courses or even longer. In the longer courses the only influence for the meditator sitting in a darkened solitary meditation cell - without a lock of course - is the repeated and regular playings of recordings of Mr Goenkas chantings, meditation instructions, and his evening theoretical discourses. Over a period of decades such serious meditators, whether hard core meditators or just regular but committed meditators can't help but imbibe the belief systems in which Mr Goenka so obviously and ardently believes. It is called 'Tapas' in the teachings of the Buddha and Mr Goenka, a burning ardent desire to practice the technique to the utmost.
Incorporation of religious beliefs
2500 years ago not only in India, but also throughout major parts the world including Europe, the common sense of the day dictated that purity could be obtained by sacrificing animals or humans to the gods. Buddha's exhortation to purify oneself by one's own practice was at the time probably a very progressive development. Reviving a nostalgic memory of Buddhism in the modern age will not have the same civilising effect again, precisely because the world's circumstances have changed.
Mr Goenka in his discourses is fond of recalling Gautama Buddha's recollections of previous lives as if they were true. This extends to the point of explaining how Buddha saw back into countless lives, life after life without beginning into the past and saw himself running from birth to death and birth again, only to die again. Mr Goenka then explains that Gautama Buddha did not discover this technique of liberation from the cycle of birth and death, but rather rediscovered a technique that had been discovered and taught by countless Buddhas prior to him. Of course at the time Buddha espoused these beliefs, they may have had a certain resonance with the population who were open to such conjecture as to the nature of existence.
In the modern age, these beliefs are not dignified by the passage of time, but rather conflict with modern scientific knowledge. For an educated person to adopt these beliefs as if they were true, as Mr Goenka certainly does and advocates, is not qualitatively different than adopting any other religion, be it any of the current forms of Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Mormonism, or any such supernatural worldview which offers to the believer a form of life after death.
Since Vipassana in Australia is being taught to a western audience it is relevant that Mr Goenka's discourses seek to incorporate a generic christianity. For most people coming to a Vipassana course for the first time the worldview is not ontologically different from or incompatable with Christianity or any religion of which a student may be either a member or to which one may be at least culturally acclimatized. All religions have some concept if not of past lives then at least of future lives, whether they be in heaven or hell. Mr Goenka is fond of reminding the students that in Christianity the "Kingdom of Heaven is within". I find that Vipassana is taught, for any particular audience, in the framework of that audience's cultural orthodoxy. That is why it is so easy to assimilate for those who become serious, or even less serious practitioners of Vipassana.
The upshot
The heart soul and substance of the technique is the guiding worldview, philosophy and belief system which accompanies and gives purpose and goals to the use of the technique. If one simply defaults to the religious beliefs of the supposed Buddha of belief in kamma, in past lives and future lives, belief in eradicating sexual desire as an impurity, belief in attaining the deathless in Nibbana, a worldview unequivocally supplied by Mr Goenka during his courses, then one is likely to have to do some serious resetting of the makeup of one's own personality.
Can someone reject the primitive belief systems and still follow Mr Goenkas advice to "work out your own liberation with diligence"? But liberation from what, and to what, are questions which only the individual can and should answer for themselves. I doubt whether one can surrender oneself completely to Buddha and one's present teacher for proper guidance and protection, and also ask for the technique of meditation "so that I can experience the nibbanic peace within me", without adopting these supernatural worldviews of Buddha and Mr Goenka.
Mr Goenka himself says the technique carries serious risks of harm to the individual if not properly undertaken. But even if the student aspires to undertake the technique properly, they may become confused as to what is the proper practice of the technique. This is especially so given the apparently contradictory instructions of Mr Goenka to "remain detached" and yet to "take a dip within" - "aware and equanimous, with the understanding of anicca - change - every part of the body every particle of the body, anicca, anicca, anicca" etcetera. Mr Goenka instructs the students "always observe the fundamental principle of Vipassana - always remain within the framework of the body", and yet he also equally reiterates again and again, "remain detached, don't start playing games of sensations". He does say at one stage, "Don't follow the breath into the body, never do that". Yet he is very much into the language of deepness, and transcendent spirituality - "transcend the mundane and experience the supramundane". This will purify the deepest level of the mind, he says. No wonder people get confused.
There are indeed some social insights in the ontological worldviews of ancient India, and specifically of the Buddha, and some of these are passed on through Mr Goenka who provides his own sometimes very profound insights as well. An example is Mr Goenka's story about a housewife whose wealthy father in law turned his back while eating instead of giving food to a begging monk - the daughter in law said "please sir my father is eating stale food"; the father in law became distressed, "what do you mean I am eating stale food!" to which she replied that he was enjoying the fruits now of past good kamma but generating bad kamma now for the future. The psychological insight is profound. Nevertheless the worldview is primitive. What goes around may or may not come around, but the good is just as likely as the bad to get hit by a passing car.
Life is complex and not simple or easy, but simply absorbing whollus bollus an ancient and outdated metaphysical worldview attached to a rigorous mental endeavor involving the complete surrender to Buddha and the present teacher, is no solution. Science can't provide an answer to life the universe and everything, but neither can religion. But what science can do is dispute or hold to standards of accountability claims of the supernatural. Those supernatural claims of kamma, past and future lives, and Nibbana fail the test of science and must be assigned to religious belief.
Ecology of the human psyche
The ecology of the human psyche is finely tuned by evolution and instinct. Mr Goenka identifies it to the devotee as faulty, seeks to equip them with hammer and chisel and literally says that this place is a Dhamma hospital, where patients come as sick people with sick minds, to be equipped with powerful tools to perform mental surgery on their own minds. One can hardly consider a more frightfully harmful instruction. The mind has it's own ecology and to go tampering with it is unnecessary and destructive of the personality. This is why at least one critic has critised the technique as one of many "dissociative" Indian traditions, which also carries the risk of leading to depersonalisation disorder. Of course a person's personality is always there, but it can be interfered with.
Mr Goenka assures the students that though they may start feeling violent thoughts towards others when they start practising Vipassana, these are just past sankharas coming up and that these sankharas will pass away. Mr Goenka reassures the students not to be frightened by this. In reality however these are not sankharas from previous lives, it is a form of pathological psychosis induced by the student trying to force his own mind into the mold proferred by Mr Goenka.
By definition those who come to a Vipassana course have experience and functionality of their own in the world, they have their own wisdom. To throw all that away to replace it with a mystical technique is to give up personal responsibility.
Other meditators
A thoroughly delightful, caring, chirpy, thoughful, an individual kind of man, who also practised Vipassana meditation with me at Dhamma Bhummi in 1993 and who had practised for many years prior to that, committed suicide at the age of 36 in early 1994. Nobody will know the cause of his suicide, but it must be said that Vipassana did not prevent it. Subsequent to his death, it affected many of his co-meditators who also were his friends very deeply.
I have also seen a co-meditator who I will not name, a student who undertook his first course around the same time I did with all the optimism, slide into psychotic episodes, who perhaps with good cause seemed to attribute some responsibility for his situation to the practise of Vipassana . He would call the Vipassana centre on a regular basis and leave unhappy messages on the phone, and was placed on the "referrals list", which is basically the list of students who are not allowed to sit courses except with the express permission of a senior assistant teacher.
While serving on a course I have witnessed a new meditation student go into a kind of psychiatric shock, screaming out during a course, where the Local Health Service - mental health crisis team had to be called to come to the centre and take her to hospital. The young woman started crying as she spoke to the team members saying that nothing like this had ever happened to her before.
There is no reason to assume that these pathologies which can be initiated on a Vipassana course will go away simply by more dedicated and ardent practice of the technique as Mr Goenka teaches. Rather students can take away these problems which have arisen during a Vipassana course into their own lives. If a student obtains such pathologies during a vipassana course and goes away, you may or may not see them at a future vipassana course. If you don't see them at a course they may be self selecting not to come back, or perhaps they may be banned from returning if they have developed a mental illness, even if it was induced by their vipassana course. Or if they do come they may be the ardent but unhappy devotee trying to eliminate and overcome this "sankhara", or perhaps just trying to develop coping mechanisms for this new problem, or perhaps has come back to remain in the busy and purposive environment to avoid suicide.
All of the above simply points to a certain element of the philosophy of Vipassana which undelines the whole technique from start to finish, which is that "the mind is broke, fix it". But there is a better way to understand the human psyche, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Does the technique explain anything real?
Where does the mind lie? Vipassana assistant teachers are adamant that the mind and the brain are not the same thing. Mr Goenka says, wherever there is sensation, the unconscious mind is there, and not only feeling the sensation, but also reacting to it. He says that wherever there is life, bound up by the skin, there is sensation, but the so called conscious mind is too gross to experience it. Mr Goenka talks about sharpening the mind such that wherever the attention is placed, there is a sizzling sensation. Mr Goenka believes that one can achieve, in line with the Satipattana Sutta, a state where one remains detached, and there is mere observation of sensations, without identifying oneself with the sensation, mere awareness. This is achieved, Mr Goenka teaches, by ignoring other elements of the mind which tend to vie for the attention, principally the sense of self - even the sense of oneself as the observer of the sensations while being careful not to identify with the sensations. In this metaphysical world view there is no self. There is no instruction by Mr Goenka of what to do with 'oneself', one's own mind, other than to keep on patiently and quietly training the mind to return to the object of meditation - silent and non-reactive, passionless observation of sensations with equanimity, with the understanding of anicca, change. An intermediate goal is to achieve placidity of mind, he says like a bullock which has a nose ring placed through it's nostril and a rope tied to the ring and attached to a post. But, like the fox with a foot caught in a foxtrap which will bite off it's own foot to escape the certain death of entrapment, the mind needs to escape this newly imposed prison and does revolt against being squashed in this way.
Relationships and sex denying mysticism
Mr Goenka is fond of assuring, at least the old students, that there really is no such thing as mother, father, sister, brother, even husband and wife. There is only the mind and sensations. "You are the creator of the universe" he says at some stage during the 30 day course. Yet he introduces pseudo familial relationship which he introduces by calling the volunteers, "My dear Dhamma sons and Dhamma daughters", and by introducing his Vipassana teacher Sayagi U Ba Khin as his Dhamma father, who gave him a second birth out of the shell of ignorance and instructing the Dhamma workers to treat each other as Dhamma Brothers and Dhamma Sisters. All of this seems to indicate the importance of replicating the familial type relationship while undermining the sexual relationship.
Inegalitarianism
Some years ago Mr Goenka decided to introduce "Executive courses" for 'leaders' in society, that is government officials and business executives, from which presumably ordinary folks are excluded. Whilst some cultures may presently accept such blatant elitism, this should not be acceptable in a taxpayer subsidised institution in Australia - donations made to the Vipassana Centre for the building fund are tax deductible as it is deemed to be an educational institution.
Monumentalism
Mr Goenka has built the world's largest Pagoda, to sit some 10,000 students in India, some 100 metres high, and moreover to be a landmark to his tradition.
Unsurrender
Outside of a course setting I once asked an Assistant Teacher what would happen if Mr Goenka suddenly turned around and said "sorry folks, it was all a mistake. Go home and work out your own salvation", to which he replied, "there'd be a lot of confused people". Any technique which teaches dependency is not a technique at all. This technique is simply devotional and the practitioners are devotees.
Unsurrender is the first part of liberation from Vipassana. It is incumbent upon each to work out their own lives and relations with others.
For any Vipassana meditator, or even former Vipassana Meditator willing to try, the following words might be worth considering stating out loud:
I do not surrender myself at all, to Buddha, or my former teacher, for proper guidance and protection.
I do not take refuge in Buddha
I do not take refuge in Dhamma
I do not take refuge in Sangha
My own morality is my own business
I do not believe in Nibbana.
Dan Taylor
The writer formerly practised Vipassana under Mr Goenka
The writer formerly practiced Vipassana Meditation as taught by Mr Goenka
