I wrote this essay below about my second 10-day silent meditation retreat, in the first hours upon returning home from it. It’s harried and woolly in places, and I’m not sure how much my thoughts and feelings have changed over time. After sitting on this for a year, I decided to share it with the internet at large, for those considering a retreat of their own. Be the change and all, right?
-Fort
When To Retreat From The Retreat; Meditation Instruction or Cult Indoctrination?
10-day silent meditation retreats are on the upswing in certain crowds to left of center. Mindfulness, Insight, Equanimity are some of the ten-cent-words in use for this movement, hyperlinked and SEO encoded; a corner of the square meal of the blogosphere promoting Wellness, Spirituality, Science (or more likely a ‘Scientism’), and personal development along with the likes of the Paleo diet, High Impact Interval Training, and teraflops of data on Narcissists and How To Avoid Them.
The flavor of retreat I ordered at Lucy’s 5 cent Psychiatry booth: Vipassana as taught by SN Goenka: a global network of mostly rural Vipassana centers (apparently based on a legendary story of how Gotama the first Buddha bought his first meditation gardens). Why did I choose this? It’s free! Yes, for the sincere commitment of just 12 days off of work, a vegetarian diet, freedom from small talk, big talk, or any talk, the path to liberation (the Dhamma) can be yours! Besides, my psychotherapist of a few years back recommended I might benefit from this exact course; PhDs know what from what, right?
Full disclosure: I once attended a 10 day course at this exact retreat center in the Pacific North West for a total of about 36 hours. At the time that my retreat came up (one needs to register a few months in advance due to their popularity relative to the size of the barracks available), I had been just a week or so post break up with a partner whom I will describe solely as “Tornado Armada” and beg the reader to accept and understand. Also, I had decided to quit smoking my daily peach flavored cigarillos (itself a feint toward quitting cigarettes, failing to the see the nicotine for the American Spirits) on the day that I arrived at the meditation center. I was not prepared to face my twin demons, writ 10-feet tall in my third eye. I have often been attracted to “drama” and am most likely a catalyst of it. I snuck out to the parking lot and into my trusty little red pickup at 6 something AM, and peeled out, singingscreaming Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” at our top volume. I drove straight to the first gas station, bought Spirits, a Diet Coke, and a bag of Swedish Fish and had me a grand old, decidedly not silent return to civilization.
I am a business owner and artist by pretention. I clean houses for a living, and my only payees are Uncle Sam and my humble self. I am technically a professional artist (digital comics) but mainly I do what I like as a form of exploration and self-discovery; buyer beware reader be damned. All this is to imply that I am middle class: semi educated/not rich; educated enough to feel confident in making a house-cleaner’s wage while spending 20-30 hours a week making comics about the ups and downs of my childhood, the angst of acquiring ex-girlfriends, and my personal mytho-fantastic-nostalgia that is probably of interest only as a proving ground for the other ~5000 middle-aged white dudes who hope to sell their comics about similar subjects.
So, nine years after that one abortive attempt at Seeing Reality As It Really Is, I am on the brink of doing it all again, for the first time. Rarely does life provide such redos.
The Rules and What Scares Me (the Five Precepts):
- no harming living things
- no taking what is not freely given
- no sexual misconduct
- no lying or gossip
- no intoxicating substance use
Also: no writing, no drawing, no reading, no exercise (desperate Googling of “how quickly does it take to lose muscle”), no talking (to self or others), no touching (no specific mention of the ole Onan-Onan but I suppose it’s implied in that 3rd Precept), no looking at others, no interaction with members of the opposite sex, no outside food (my Paleo diet will have to wait) … the rest I was not worried about (no phone, no internet, no music, no chanting, no other religious or spiritual practices). Oh, and, er, um, NO LEAVING the event before it is over on the 12th day (day one intro, day 2-11 is the eponymous 10 Day, and day 12 is clean-up and good-byes). This is so serious that they make us all take two oaths in group unison, affirming that we want to learn this technique and that we will not leave. Also, I noticed on the drive in that we came through a 5-bar-gate with a chain hanging from it. I am getting ahead of myself.
Upon signing up, I also registered with the ride share board, offering two spaces in my trusty little commuter. And so I picked up a local in my own neighborhood, let’s call him “Jitters,” the poncho-wearing, legit hippie-aged, so called “Old Student” – someone who has taken at least one 10 Day course in the past. I picked Jitters up in a public parking lot and we made some staggered but pleasant small talk about hiking and camping. 40 minutes later, we picked up “JackSprat,” a bright-eyed and unblinking youth with an electric but positive energy who naturally assumed his place at the crest of our isosceles triad. Master Sprat was not only an Old Student many times over, but was also a “Server” (cooking, cleaning; the fascia that binds our collective together) and on a four month jag of Studenting and Serving. He’d just had a few days off between 10-days and was happy to get a ride the 100 miles to the center. “Much Metta, dude!”
The most useful thing anyone said to me, any living person, that is (more on this in the SN Goenka paragraph below) was said by JackSprat. I had raised some concerns I had about the coming experience, having read on the internet, including message boards and Reddit, that some people had terribly difficult experiences, including seeing demons, with problems readjusting to the default world afterward. Mostly, I was concerned to know how serious to take the moratorium on exercise. I was already switching to a vegan diet for the 12 days (from my my pro-meat/egg and grain/dairy-free diet) but how would I fare in changing from my demanding cleaning job plus 5 out of 7 days of intense bodyweights and HIIT, to sitting on my lotus for 12 hours a day. There were two things he said, actually, the second of which was by far the most salient for my week. Sure, exercise if you want, as long as it doesn’t disturb anyone else from their intense focus and deep rest (or distract you from both, you’ll see). And. Don’t be afraid to ask for your needs to be met.
Okay. Here are my notes, purposefully and hopefully scrawled in the hours after my return from the Dhamma Hall.
The Daily Schedule:
4- 4:30 AM – wake, shower, wash clothes
4:30 – 6:30 AM – meditate in your room with your bunkmate
6:30 – 8 AM – breakfast
8 – 9 AM – Group Meditation in the Hall
9 – 11AM – meditate in the Hall or in your room, per instruction
11-12 PM – Lunch
12-1 PM – questions for the assistant leaders (sign up sheet)
1-2:30 PM – meditate in your room or in the Hall
2:30 – 3:30 PM Group Meditation in the Hall
3:30 – 5 PM meditate in the Hall or in your room, per instruction
5 – 6 PM Tea Break
6 – 7 PM Group Meditation in the Hall
7 – 8:15 PM Goenka video projected on the wall in the Hall! Dhamma Talk.
8:15 – 9 PM – more group mediation (usually a new technique to practice all the next day)
9 – 9:30 Questions of the assistants in the hall, or go to bed!
10 PM – lights out
Day One:
Oatmeal and stewed prunes for breakfast. Tastes better than it reads. I guess I’ll stay pretty regular, heh heh.
Everyday we have to sit in meditation for 11 hours, together in the Dhamma Hall for 3 of those hours as a complete group, and watch a one hour video of our guru Goenka explain the Dhamma (same as the more familiar “Dharma” meaning “The Way.”)
End of the day: Whew! A personal best! Before this retreat, the most I’ve managed to sit is 45 minutes. I am astounded I can sit for 2 hours, though, I admit, it hurts something fierce. Look around; see all those unmoving backs of heads. No, don’t look!
Day Two:
Regular use of Beano, god bless it. I keep forgetting to take it until the middle of my meals, but so far, it seems to mitigate based on my past experience with near exclusive grains, legumes, and fruit. Also, note to my fellow PNWers: Folgers crystals really are acceptable when nothing else is available. I vaguely wonder at each breakfast, lunch and snack, will I switch to instant coffee when I get home?
Should mention: two meals a day, the likes of which are oats, prunes, fresh fruit and granola, toast at 6:30 AM, and for lunch at 11 AM – rice, beans, salad, in 11 different combinations and derivations (tofu, sweet potatoes, lentils, taco night, curry night, etc.), and one “tea break at 5 PM” with the option of more fresh fruit.
So, the pain is sort of beyond the pale but also slightly unreal. My two torn meniscus surgeries have either developed into arthritis or the scar tissues from the arthroscopic invasions are not enjoying any long term weight bearing. 30 minutes is about the max I can handle before shifting, changing my position, and sighing in misery. I try umpteen combinations of cushions, cross-legged, Thai-style, half lotus, kneeling both on a fancy-ass pillow (as my chum Ted, who introduced me to meditation two decades past, used to call those lovely slice of a round cushions) and on a wood kneeling bench. All to the same response – burning, flaring, searing jets of electric hell up through my thighs, exacerbating the other loop of lightning white pain connecting my mild scoliosis to my right shoulder impingement, which then zags up through my adam’s apple, behind my right eye to the top of my head. During the first 2 days, and 22 hours of sitting, I learned a mega shit ton about my pain, mentally examined my anatomy, with both creative surmises on proximate causes (another modern flash card term there), and child-like, earnest attempts at EQUANIMITY toward the pain and the sporadic transmogrification of fretful pain into nigh gibberish sensory aggregates (see “fade to white” below).
After the last mandatory group hall meditation, we get a short break to pee, stretch, and go outside in the cold winter air (40f – That IS cold in the humid PNW). I struggle to stand and trying to walk to the exit, taking great care to not fall over on my floor-cushioned neighbors. I hobble, aching but with a tinge of triumph at another hour down, and a second day almost done. Once outside, walking the well worn paths in the field by the hall, which I have dubbed the Mossy Thicket, my upwelling of pride breaks and I begin to silently cry. Can I continue to endure this insanity of self-induced pain for 8 more days; 88 more unflinching hours? Yes, the day is coming soon when all movement on the cushion will be forbidden: Days of Strong Determination.
After the video lecture (yes, yes, I will get to SN Goenka soon!), I decide to dash to the front of the line and avail myself of a question with the assistant teacher. I can him Van-Dham, and he’s a kindly old tyme lemonade sort with a goatee of white, with thick lensed aviator frames, and judging by his gait, a bit more scoliosis than me. His role so far is to sit at the head of the male side of the room (there is a lovely Japanese woman in a dove white kimono on the right side, the head of the female side of the Dhamma hall – who, when she rarely speaks, has the most generic American radio speak voice). Van’s other jobs are to make hall-wide group announcements, off a script judging by the sameness and repetition (“You may now return to your rooms. Return to your rooms”), and pressing “play” for the various audio and video recordings of dear Goenka.
He motions me to sit at his feet, a small cushion on a dais below his own cathedra, so his face is about 5 feet above mine. Directly, succinctly, pleading, I describe that despite all my various sitting combinations, my pain is excruciating and it’s affecting my ability to concentrate.
“Have you tried sitting in a chair?” he indicates the back wall and the half a dozen or so chairs, all occupied.
“I haven’t. They appear to all be claimed.”
“We’ll get you one. Stubblefacedservant? Get this man a chair and put a piece of tape with his name on it for him, for the next meditation.”
Stubblefacedservant nods.
“Thank you.” Breathy, with something like a genuine reverence.
“The goal is not to torture you.” And Van Dham chuckles silently.
This jocular attitude is in marked contrast to the sub textual tone of the Goenka audio and video we have been exposed to thus far.
SN Goenka
Avuncular yet cherubic, and I have to say that he looks quite a bit like my dad. Every day his disembodied voice admonishes us to hold fast to the rules (Sila – morality), to concentrate with rigor and calm attention (Samadhi – observation), and hopefully we will find Panna (wisdom). Right action, right seeing, right judging … if I do add that from other Buddhist readings. He warns us against not trying as hard as we can, warns against talking to others, and warns most of all against leaving early. “It is very dangerous” he intones, a lilt impressing a dark subtext on the mind. And yet his nightly discourses on various subjects designed, I suppose, confusingly, telling some history, some myth, with charm, rhetoric, and humor. He’s very encouraging, very good at knowing the questions that are just occurring to me, despite being a video from 1991, if memory serves. We must learn EQUANIMTY, we can, and this is the only way to liberate ourselves.
Goenka sits next to a woman who I am guessing to be his wife. She looks like she’s struggling to stay awake, but that might be a bit of my inner cynic showing. The assistant leaders, Van Dham and Kimono sit in front of us, mirroring our charismatic guru and his silent, sleepy cohort.
Up until tonight, we have been instructed to do what I have been doing for years, what most, meditators or not, will recognize as the de rigueur – concentrate on the breath, the light touch of the air in the nostrils. You haven’t really experienced concentration until you’ve done little but sit for 24 hours and watch your breath. I’ve made more progress in these two days, on the taming of my mind, that in the previous 46 years of my life.
And, I must say, this chair is remarkably comfortable. It’s just a plastic deck chair with arm rests but, with a few cushions to aid, I finally figure out my proper back position – erect but not flexed to full, chest held forward of 20% engaged abs, with my butthole turned slight toward the back. Support those hips with stable but unflexed legs. Support the weight of my arms, and give a break to that impinged shoulder by crossing my hands deeply pressed into my gut. Head up. The pain is now 90% less than it was. It’s still electrically painful, but I can concentrate.
This is what I signed up for!
DAY 3
Today is the day that we move from the breath to the preparatory stage before we learn the actual technique known as Vipassana. We are to concentrate on the triangle of skin, including the nose and nostrils, down to, including the top of the upper lip. Look to sense any feelings on or in the skin. If nothing, go back to the light touch of air in the nostril. I loooove the way Goenka pronounces “nos treel.”
I broke the Sila, sort of. I wrote a poem, and by wrote, I mean in my head with memorization. I was walking in the yard (there are two male-only yards, and two female-only yards – we are kept completely separate except during the 3 mandatory daily group meditations in the Dhamma Hall). This was the yard I previously called “Mossy Thicket.” In the PNW much is mossy to be sure, but these thorny brambles had thick carpets of tangled drooping moss on the stalks and stems. This thicket defined a border between our walking field (with well-worn footpaths) and the field that separated our grounds from our parking lot, about a football field’s distance away. It had been raining quite a bit (no more explanatory PNW references after this), and the rain had broken, I had a lovely lunch with an extra helping of brown rice and curry. Enjoying my midday walk and “rest”, I composed a haiku around the phrase “Mossy Thicket” which, as a paring of words, delighted me profoundly.
Crystalline pinhead dewdrops
Snowberries, Mossy Thicket
A lone crow caws its freedom
Slightly awkward but also charming, methinks. And for me it captures some natural wonder had in a nice day of good concentration, thanks to my new pool-deck chair.
DAY 4
The technique is taught herein! Shabadu! Sade! (okay, shaaaa dooooo, is what we are supposed to chant after Goenka finishes his throaty Pali chants – though not dogmatically, not reverently – only if we feel it genuinely! We are told to be free thinkers, explorers, accepting nothing on faith. Have you ever tried not standing during a standing ovation? It feels like an effort, a tension, a deliberate thumbing of the nose, and the longer it goes, the more your discomfort, and the more you doubt your own intentions to express yourself, and the more you find that you define yourself as the opposite of whatever the crowd wants –which is a pointless stance, and not genuinely you. When one doesn’t chant “CharDeeee…” along with the dude to your left, right, front and back, as they get louder, more convinced, more passionately grateful for the Panna shared, the more I feel like a total dick; and in not joining, at the very least, I can feel consistently dickish.
Before I get to the method: In the ride down, JackSprat had probed me about why I was interested in Goenka’s method. I mentioned that I had read a bit about the scanning method that Goenka teaches. I was curious to see if I had learned it before. See, in high school, as part of my school’s gratefully elaborate SAT preparation, we had a woman from (?) come in and teach us a body scanning technique to deal with test anxiety. She turned off the lights in our student-only hang out room (with pinball, candy, and lots of thrift store sofas), and guided us through this body scan, starting at the top of the head and ending at our toes, and touching every body bit between. It blew my 17 year old noggin, and I used that technique for years when I was anxious, but mostly just to go to sleep when I was too mentally active. I wondered if these techniques were similar.
So, Goenka, at the end of his nightly lecture, described the scan in the final 5 minutes, and then instructed us from beyond his grave, natch, to try it for the next 45 minutes before bed, as the last group meditation. I had, the room had, felt such a buzzing excitement to learn this new truth – to get the cosmic facial from Guru Goenka, and now was the time to try it. But I was nonplussed to learn this technique was exactly the same, the same one I learned when I was 17 and had since shed and discarded like an over worn, holey, greasy sleeves-cut-off sweat shirt. Was this silent half-hour in just me? Was my doubt infecting others? Where did my sensations start and end, and where did others’? The group dynamic seemed just as confused and ambivalent as the judgment I was somewhat certain belonged only in my head. And yet …
We stood, we crouched, we readjusted our cushions; some of us stretched our arms and chests and shoulders against the wall. I allowed myself a visual sweep of the room, trying to get a sense of the mood, where the separations at the joint were, to borrow an expression from western philosophy. And as I casually broke the rule not to look at others, I compounded it as my sweep stopped, eyes snapped to the eyes of a woman who had stopped her eyes on mine. That moment, 4 days into this social underworld, was a deep shock. Two people, a man and woman, breaking two of the rules together. And what was worse, I was attracted to her. Yep, we all know it only takes a glance to know. Chemistry. Goddamned evolution: baby-maker ordinaire. Forbidden Blonde Top Knot Red Pants White Poncho. Yes, she gets many names.
I glanced away in staccato shames – I broke a rule, will this negatively impact my learning, my liberation, will it impact her learning and liberation, will we meet, speak, ?, when this week is over? And with something akin to anti-free-will-determinism, coz I can’t call it a choice as I understand the term now (being an under experienced Seer of the Truth of Reality), I glanced back, that second glance we all know – and KA-BLAMMO– Forbidden Blonde Top Knot Red Pants White Poncho is side-glancing back at me too! This time I notice she also has half –horn-rimmed glasses, just like mine.
Uncanny. Ehhh, totally to be expected if I take a step back and think about how I am and how I move through the world and my so-called penchant toward “cherchez la femme.” And sure, postmodernists in the readership, I’ll accept your jeers of “sexist!”
Forget it! Forget it! Just try this technique!
And whattaya know? My 3 days of intense concentration, and generally increasing line of success aid me well. And I don’t obsess over Forbidden Blonde Top Knot Red Pants White Poncho Horn Rims for more than a few seconds here and there over the next 35 minutes. Touch of the nostrils … scan the body … head to toe … add nothing …
Wow. I can really feel it. Like these tiny little plasma storms, nodes connected by jets of static electricity. Like a Spencer’s Gifts plasma ball, or “The Badlands” from Star Trek Voyager, but dancing on the surface of my upper lip and the slopes and vale of my philtrum (mind the 4-day-out beard growth). I can’t always feel it, but if I recall the voice of Goenka (light touch of the breath in the nos-treel) then I can find it again. How do I know if I am adding this, willing this, making it up? I mean, the brain, the nerves – it makes this universe, as far as we can experience it. Alright, I am going to give it my skeptical trust. I won’t call it faith.
But let’s take another half step back to tonight’s video. And for that, another giant leap back to my initial sign up. On the website the copy goes something like: “This method is scientific and requires no belief, no religion, no dogma, nothing to believe, and is compatible with all beliefs. It is non sectarian and you only need to learn this practical method to increase personal happiness.” Something like that. But what I heard, summed, and retained: “practical, scientific, non-religious.” And that incongruity is my fault (although …)
Goenka is talking a lot of religion tonight. Lots of Buddhism and Hinduism, and even making little jabs against Christianity. And now he’s talking about metaphysics and how this prefigures discoveries in Western Particle Physics, and how the universe comes down to the interactions between 8 indivisible subatomic particles that form Sankaras (um, Temple of Doom, anyone?) that are akin to Freudian complexes, or rather individual discrete events that contain an emotional-behavioral charge either in grasping, or avoiding, or remaining ignorant to. These are like memories/causes of sins that we contain in our psyches (mind/soul) which are made when we have reactions to sensory events (that is, anything apparent to the 6 senses) in an unskillful way – we either like it and try to GRASP it, don’t like it and try to AVOID it, or we remain IGNORANT and fail to take some action. Ummmmmm. How is this non-religious? Isn’t a positive metaphysics actually a dogma? I mean, the meta- prefix denies the ability to empirically verify it. And Sankaras that we must 1) stop creating by become equanimous toward all sensory experience, and 2) somehow, like draw out salve on a splinter, our ethics, our good-observation, and our wisdom aided by equanimity will make old Sankaras resurface in the mind so we gently smile at and release back into the quantum foam of the netherworld? Anyone else getting vibe of Deepak and/or Orgones?
And AGAIN he warns “veddy danger-uss” to LEAVE.
And this phrase that he keeps repeating: “EQUANIMITY IS PURITY.” Diligent, ardent, equanimus, focused. That’s a slogan straight out of Brazil, They Live, Brave New World, 1984 …
This Goenka is quite the charismatic dear leader. Self-effacing and aggrandizing at the same time. Example: in decrying other so-called gurus who float around the room with their turbans and beards down to their knees, who make gods of themselves – he chants “such a guru wants to make a god of himself. If I did that I’d say Goenka Goenka Goenka Goenka Goenka Goenka Goenka Goenka” and we all laugh at his lampooning of such dangerous silliness. And yet – he plants his name in our softened minds over and over and over.
I feel a churl to say this, but if everyone truly practiced perfect equanimity to both good and bad experience, to all pain and to all pleasure, that group of people would be easy to thrall, no? Is this a philosophy of group control? Hegel’s Slave Morality?
This whole period, this Goenka lecture, and the 10 minute rest before our last group meditation of the night, and first jab at Vipassana scanning (description next), all of this is in my head. And I know my negativity, the very negativity that I am here to expunge, or at least to See Clearly so I can make attempts to expel. I find I am judging my fellow meditators, making up snarky nicknames, begrudging their grunts and groans, and constant movements and … is that one guy asleep on a chaise lounge?! That Japanese dude never takes of his 11th Doctor long coat! Jesus, dead-lift Odin up there at the front of the class is intimidating. By design? Do they recruit giant Old Students to impress the rules of hierarchy on the mind, along with this patriarchal room design, with daddy Van Dham being the only one allowed to speak, supported by his Asian mail order bride on his left? God damn, there are a lot of White Dudes in head scarves here. That guy to my left, who NEVER moves during meditation, smells like … asafetida. He’s silent smirking self satisfaction is really burning my wick.
I’M SUCH A DICK!
And Goenka knows it. And a Buddha can help. Man, Goenka sheds a lot of weepy tears.
This here, free retreat (there can never be a charge associated with the teaching of Vipassana, so decreed the Buddha, I guess). They feed us, they house us, and they share this 2500 year old wisdom.
Let’s think about this. There are some really odd things here. The facts:
- Social isolation/ yet adjacent to temptation to interact
- Less food that any of us would normally eat
- Less sleep (6 hours max)
- Grueling, anti-intellectual mental absorption practiced most waking hours
- The “argument” is experiential instead of rational
- Told no dogma or beliefs required/ metaphysical nonsense sold as proved by science
- Lots of physical pain – we westerners aren’t accustomed to sitting on the floor/not moving for long stretches
The effects of all this are that we are softened mentally, de-energized, under-rested, isolated, confused, but trusting – as we’re all here willingly and are being fed, housed and educated.
EQUANIMITY IS PURITY
Okay, he’s freely giving us wisdom, a gift of the enlightened Gotama. If, ever, during this grueling, weakened mind process Goenka asks for:
- Money
- More of our time commitments
- Our evangelism/ converting our friends and family
Then he’s selling us a product instead of giving us free wisdom. And I gotta say, this seems a little cultish, no? I mean, I’ve seen a VH1 documentary, or a 60 Minutes episode on cults, right? Drawing a blank now, but we all know how this works. Charismatic leader – gigantic promises (liberation from suffering!), charming stories with subtle negative reinforcement by admonishing the risks of leaving/not practicing/breaking the rules/using your own creative/skeptical/rational/interpersonal comparative circuits. The method end runs around the rational in preference of feeling the truth. Social isolation, limits of food, water, sleep … taking TWO VOWS. No guards, but that front gate … I wonder if it’s locked? Can’t know unless I actually try to leave (that area is off limits, according to all the well-posted signs).
Is this brainwashing?
What is a cult? Charles Mansony? Jim Jonsey? Christianity?
I’d argue that it boils down to a group offering outrageous benefits to an exclusive few, via secret methods, anti or pseudo arguments offered, but mainly sold on “you just have to experience it to know.” With a strong implication of the possibility of dangers and expulsion. With at least a bit of self-denial to create a softening of the mind, scarcity, to activate our native acceptance of primate hierarchy.
I read Sartre, Freud, Nietzsche, Arendt, etc. I listen to podcasts (shout out to PEL). I was sucked though New Atheism to the newer anti-postmodernist, quasi conservative, liberal democracy, youtube/podcast/thriftstore trade paper back – mostly moderate or liberal white dudes into nerd culture, technology, the promise of software, science, curious about old-fashioned American values – but overall NON DOGMATIC and ANTI AUTHORITARIAN. Good ideas win out over less good ideas in a neutral environment.
The idea presented in Vipassana is one Goenka says can be understood intellectually but won’t lead to enlightenment. It’s why other religions and scientism ultimately fail us, and this is the gift of Gotama, the awakened: the gift of experience. And hence, only YOUR TRUTH ULTIMATELY MATTERS. Only you can liberate yourself. No one else’s truth will work for you, which is why you can’t liberate anyone else with an argument. So, no argument. Brainwash yourself in this way, and then choose your own answers.
The Method of Vipassana
So, take that concentration you did on the little area under the nostrils, above the upper lip and bordered by the folds of your cheeks. Take that awareness and move it to the very top of your head. Find the sensations there. Then, spiral down, every 3 inches squared, and notice the sensations, and move on. Cover the entire surface of the body. End at the toes. Then go back to the head and do it again. Don’t ignore any area or feeling, don’t add anything. Wait to feel if you don’t feel anything. Be equanimus to strong or weak feelings. Add nothing to the experience.
When done over and over (about ten minutes for each circuit), for 11 hours a day, the rational mind really starts to reel.
Day 5 – 6 – 7
A blur, to be honest. Very grueling. And each night Goenka alters the method slightly having the effect of making sure we aren’t missing any areas, and also preventing us from developing a tolerance through familiarity. Day 5: scan head to toe, then toe to head; Day 6: scan both sides of the body, simultaneously – both eyes, both cheeks, both nostrils, etc. This is where I started to have the greatest difficulty and my “creative mind” started its revolt (more below). Day 7: Scan inch by inch looking or the gross sensations and then examine them deeply and see how they change, flare, and fade away. Also scan the voids where you don’t feel anything. Alternate these minefield explorations with smooth equanimous scans.
During this time a few really odd things had started to aggregate. Though their appearances began on the first day, I didn’t group them together and get concerned about them until after day 4 and my questions on cultishness first appeared.
One of my earliest body scans, one prebreakfast scan, involved deeply scanning my right shoulder impingement pain. And wow, did it explode, and yet I remained openly curious and non judgmental, somehow. And this giant, amorphous white jazz of super electric glowing fuzz descended over my body, erasing the proprioception of my individual body parts with the exception of my nodes of pain in my neck, shoulder and low back, and of my “lens of awareness.” It might have been scary, if this were LSD or Shrooms allowing me this internal experience, but it was simply my waking state, freely chosen, and presumably would be over the instant I opened my eyes. Those first days of the scanning method had a broader range of variety of sensation then in the days since then, including my two weeks post retreat, as I write this.
After that big white glowing thing (shout out to Cerebus) descended, I often saw white flashes of light either with my eyes open or closed, while meditating, walking, eating, trying to sleep. It was odd, and maybe subtly alarming.
Also, there were a few times in my room, meditating, where, exhausted, I would take a few-minute’s break and lie down on my bed to recenter. I could hear that my roommate was also taking such breaks. It’s remarkable how the sense of hearing wells up when everyone stops talking. So, when I would do this, I would instantly hear these voices in my head, talking loudly, but garbled as if cut into pieces and reassembled in the wrong order, and run through some kind of gross audio processing. It was annoying enough that it would impel me to sit back up and resume meditation.
Another curious sensation and I think this was related to my scoliosis and poor sitting posture. If I propped up my lumbar with a cushion and hence reduced my abs usage to hold up my chest, collapsing in on myself a bit, I would get this deep nerve pull that shot up to the back of my eyes, almost giving the feeling of a second of a power-cutoff, like my whole system would be turned off and immediately back on. It was something I was averse to, and tried to be equanimous with, but ultimately seemed like something that might be bad for my nerves. It “taught” me to engage my abs, turn my sit bones toward the back, and align my chest slightly upturned (if his chest had been a mortar…)
Goenka has been advising us to not pile on the food at noon, since it’s the last of the day to see us through (yes, new students get fruit at 5, but not old students), as a full stomach is enemy of the meditator. He advised cutting our normal portions by 1/3. Also, as we sit so much, and move so little, I find I am having trouble staying hydrated. There’s also a tendency to want to avoid the urge too pee, and the bloating and gas from all those carbs and fiber, so I stop eating fruit at 5 PM. The Dhamma Hall noble silence is punctuated by squirts and braps and smells like a wrestler’s locker room. So, again, some more subtle (self) pressure in the direction of the ruminations on the traits of cults. Less water, even less food, and positive encouragement from our leader.
Broke some more Sila during these three days: found a wooden platform on the edge of the woods behind my barracks. I did 25 pushups in the eve, and then 30 in the bathroom the next morning before my shower. Felt lovely at the time to reinflate my trophies and sense of identity for an hour or so. But later, the intense pain in the scans! And the severe flagging of energy with my caloric intake being so low: yes, JackSprat was right about exercise. I found out.
Another broken Sila, I don’t recall which day. I had been stealing furtive side glances in the Dhamma hall for Forbidden Blonde Topknot Red Pants White Poncho Half Horn Rims, but had not caught her glances. I heard a woman coughing a lot and imagined it was her, so I thought of her every time I echolocate her position. Turned out on the last day to have been a woman one floor-mat beyond her.
During my post lunch wander of the lower field walking loops, I noticed, across the dead winter wheat, 50 yards across, the edge of the women’s lower field walking loop. I was standing afore it, looking at the slight break in the gray of the sky. And she was there, squarely facing me, her poncho still in the lightest breeze over her red pants. She was too far for this near-sighted man to see her eyes, so I felt less impulse to look away. We faced each other for at least …I don’t know, that week really altered my perception of time. No more than a few minutes, I’d guess. Again, I imagined the final day in the Dhamma hall when the noble silence was over and the Metta was out new method.
Metta:
Full disclosure, I didn’t make it to this day at the course, so I don’t know what Goenka’s method for this is. I have read that it is about a radical group acceptance and love and that it supplants all our internal frustrations at the farts and frustrations of our brothers or sisters on the cushion. He mentioned this the night of the 7th, my last time in the Dhamma Hall. 2 more days to work diligently, seriously on the Vipassana, so much so that we must scan all the time, while eating, walking, showering, instead of sleeping (don’t worry if you don’t sleep as much, you don’t need it as long as you practice the method – and so I slept less – is it prognostication if the oracle is wired to be a cause?). Meditate all the time, scan, feel, remain equanimus. And the last day we’ll talk and love (and cement your connection to the cult!)
So, my creative mind and its revolution
Somewhere in Days 5-6-7 I started having difficulty concentrating. I’d had remarkable success. I was more focused scanning without distraction that I had been on the first days of just watching breath. But now, the most detailed and elaborate visions of paintings were occurring during rest periods; totally wonderful! I “saw” a whole series of paintings, the color, the tone, the composition, and the text. It was such a welcome side effect of my sequestration and concentration. As well, my dreams were deeply vivid, like being immersed in Hi-Def video, or looking in strong sunlight at a richly printed magazine. Disturbing images, which I won’t get into here, but the point I want to pass is that my mind’s eye seemed to be improving, but it began to intrude on my scanning and would quickly throw me into spinning mental confusion and even affect my balance and posture. I tried not to fight it, but I couldn’t figure out how. And somehow, I equated this will the rational concerns I had about cult. As if my lifelong avocation – image making – was taking a defensive responsibility (and not for the first time in my life – I had a history of art, and the impulse to make it, getting me out of deeply dangerous circumstances). These upwellings confound me and I often forget where in the body I was scanning, and even, once or twice, where I was in space-time.
Sometimes, though, this scanning period was incredible. There was mild peace, deep pleasure, erotic near explosivity, discomfort, pain, screamingsearinghell, seeming bodily dissolution, but most often a sense of easy rhythm and progress (in the method). Some times a dancing electricity spiraling inward or outward, a pre-perspiration dotting heat, a deep cool, shimmering, tingling, throbbing, sometimes my heart beat … My mood though out a day would swing from cautious optimism, to dismal, from acceptance, to fear that I was being indoctrinated into god knows what.
DAY 7
The prunes have kicked in. Today I shit at least five quarts throughout the day; enormous coiled pythons in the bottom of the bowl. How could I possibly evacuate this much while eating so little? Purging; is this a planned purgative to align with the end of the course, to direct our self-assessments toward the truth of the power of this method to purify the mind? Am I reading a text into every god damn little thing?
Goenka tells us that Day 8, we will begin to scan inside our bodies, and honestly, I’ve already started doing that. But I am going wild trying to focus with these visions interrupting and my critical thoughts of Goenka’s overall impression on the mind (my mind?). I’m fighting on and off with some equanimity arising throughout the day. And I recall, just minutes before his voice on the recording mirrors my thoughts (eerie how often that happens), that if you lose balance then return to your breath. I had, and I remain there for the next hour, and, oh, what peace! A return to self control, self identity. No one can fucking know what I am doing in my own head! I’m sure I yelled that in the cavern of my soul.
Though I do notice that the breath is different during Anapana than during Vipassana (the former has a cleansing exhale, the latter doesn’t) and I wonder if my neighbors and roommate know when I’ve stopped scanning. Fuck it. What are they going to do? Expel me? Just returning to me and my will and the gentle touch of the air in the nostrils is a vision of Spring in the Wintertime. Get out of my head you chanting, admonishing cherub!
And as I relieve myself, Goenka tells us that it’s OK if we find we sleep less in the final two serious days. Our bodies don’t need to sleep – just keep scanning. When we walk, eat, bathe: keep meditating.
And Goenka speaks again that night of the day of Metta, and how the only judge of progress our own mind at the day of our death, but that Metta can be judged by our neighbors. You will feel their love, and know they are on the path to Dhamma. And if not … I ponder finding love for Asafetida Smirk, or Jitters, or Deadlift Odin, or braindeadgigglersittinginthechairnexttome. Or Forbidden Blonde Topknot with a now legal smile. My reward? My reinforcement? All annoyances transcended. My farts in the bunkhouse, forgiven by XsovietOnePairUndies.
If I stop now, I will be found out as a fraud, and he knows it, which is why he’s dangling a carrot shaped stick in front of us. YOUR PEERS WILL JUDGE YOU AT THE END OF THIS EVENT.
And then…
Goenka talks about how we all know miserable people, who could be liberated.
Goenka warns that most of us won’t find liberation this week, but we are just firmly starting the path
This freely given wisdom can soon use our help.
We need money. We need you to commit more and more time to this method AND TO SERVE to help others learn this method.
And, while you’re at it, convert your friends and family.
Day 7 – at our weakest point, deeply involved, with a fully sunk cost. I had told myself this was proof of cult, for me, and here it was. Goenka might have been in my mind, predicting my changes, but I predicted this. And it was up to me to give in, or honor my sense of propriety, boundary, and safety.
I slept only an hour between Day 7 and breakfast on Day 8. I packed my shit at 4:15 while my roommate (of some failed former Soviet State) took his shower. I lay still, sweating, and trying to slow my rapid heavy breath while he had his morning 2 hour scan. And rather than scan (okay, I scanned a couple of times) I thought about the artistic visions so threatening my ability to focus my mind. A deep confusion exists as to what this means, and if I am worrying about nothing, or if this conflict is really between being an artist and becoming a Buddha. What is art, if not something damaged people do to avoid living in the moment with other people? Someone once called paintings the footprints of God. It stuck with me, but certainly, evidence of a past passing through is not THE THING IN ITSELF. Maybe, maybe, maybe I shouldcould stop pretending/being an artist in favor of becoming a better human being?
No.
A funny thing punctuated this awareness of the negative: a distant sound of an engine turning over, idling for a few seconds, and pulling away from my hearing. Some one has prepared my way. I’m not the only one about to exodus.
Then the breakfast gong rang, and in five minutes XSoviet was off to breakfast. I gave it 5 more minutes for stragglers, then bee-lined across the yard, avoiding the crunchy gravel paths as much as I could.
A long cool air, predawn sky kept the edges of my flushed skin in relief, no question as to where I end and the universe begins here. Damn, I am feeling weak and these 5 minutes of carrying my sleeping bag, clothes, and cushion are really taxing my arms. Finally at my car. Safe. Wallet, phone, check. I don’t even wait for my engine to warm up before crawling the s-curve out of the lot to the …
FRONT GATE. And it’s closed. And as my headlights illuminate in the deep violet of the AM, there’s a chain between the bars. Shit. I prepare for a confrontation, for ramming speed, for body work repairs on my little commuter. As I stop at the gate, I see there’s no lock. Phew. Get out, lift the chain, and open the gate inward as I notice the lights in the gate house adjacent. Someone is probably watching me out the window, but hopefully is either used to these exits and has no desire for confrontation, or my scruff, my 80s ARMY jacket and determined jaw have convinced them to let this one pass without question. I pull out, and even get back out and close the gate. I DO NOT replace the chain. No one else needs to have to have that moment of heart-sink on their way to the gate.
And out to the long, straight country road past factories farms and fields. And so on.
Judge me. I broke the Sila:
I wrote a poem
I did pushups
I looked at a girl several times, thought about her a bunch
I refused to scan for a day
And
I abandoned two people at the event. Yes, I was able to justify it in my mind; much of those final few hours awaiting the breakfast gong were spent seeking the neural potentials to make this choice. Both old students, one a server, people leave these retreats often enough that the organizers have to have contingencies for this, in an unsafe situation it’s everyone for themselves. I certainly don’t get into situations where I don’t control my ability to exit. Always have a way home. But, yeah … judge me.
Liberation comes one being at a time. This crow caused its freedom; all those crystalline pinhead dew drops are on their own.
—
After a few days of near constant reflection, one thing really sticks out.
Goenka/Buddha says: only you can find your liberation. Your inner truth is the only truth for you. Every individual has their own unique truth.
And: the self is a delusion. It doesn’t exist.
So, it’s incoherent to claim that something that doesn’t exist is a thing that can have a truth.
And the more I think about Anicca, or No Self, as a central tenet of Buddhism, and increasingly accepted in psychology and other areas of culture, I realize that what’s really being said is that there is no never-changing self, the self if always in a state of change. So there IS SOMETHING that is changing. So there IS a Self. Huh. Well, who ever thought that their identity, like everything else in the Universe isn’t always changing? I have never felt there was anything about me, or in me, that was never changing. So, really, this Anicca concept is saying – that thing you feel – that’s exactly right.
A bit of a let down.
But I tell you what isn’t a let down – Vipassana as a technique. It’s waaaay easier to stay focused on examining the body than on staying just on the breath.
I’ve practiced one or two hours a day for a couple of weeks now, post retreat, and I’ve changed my thinking about a few things:
One: I think those visions of paintings were nothing more than the result of reducing distraction and increasing my mind’s ability to “see” in the mind’s eye because I was visualizing my body while scanning it. Once I realized how to stop visualizing and just sense my body, this became a viable explanation.
Two: scanning my body has helped me to face my slight body dysmorphia (fat kid), and also accept repressed areas of my sexuality. Specifically, genital scanning. However, the sensations down there bring out some distracting thoughts that are hard to keep my equanimity toward. I am fairly sure I should, though, instead of looking to become more sexually explorative in my world. I know that this is strongly counter to the permissive wellness notions popular these days. But lust is essentially a distraction. Good for baby-making, but I’ve already rejected that. Still, this one is a challenge, and I most especially don’t want to be repressive or avoidant about it. Lust. Hmpf.
Three: there’s something weird about scanning the brain, spine and heart. I get shivers when I do this.
Four: I don’t really think that Goenka’s Vipassana is a cult. But I do think there’s some truth to the idea of brainwashing. We are essentially all going to such retreats to learn another way of being. I, and perhaps many, don’t realize the full weight of what it means to change our routines of being so completely. Even having rejected it, and run away (such an old and ingrained pattern in my life) my daily sense of activity, thinking, feeling, and being are radically different now. The practice of radical change, aided by all those listed modifiers (diet, sleep, water, activity, socialization, and a deeply mind engaging process) are all the same factors manipulated by cults. And I suggest that the organization of SN Goenka could be more effective by taking this into account, for the sake of communicating this practice to more people.
But as I Google through it all, I see that there is no way for this organization to change, as if it’s the actual process of the Buddha, then not one word can be changed. Plus, Goenka has passed on, so if there is even a structure in place for change, I don’t know. But this is clearly bullshit. The Buddha states many times, there is no dogma. Find your own way. Believe no one. There can be no unchanging Buddhism, nor Vipassana. There is no ritual, no liturgy, no dogma, no method – that is untouchable.
But the question remains, who would I even write my suggestions to?
I do wish I hadn’t felt unsafe at this space, and it would have helped if the event was described better, if other Old Students did a more conscientious job of evangelizing, and if there was a little less environmental rigor. We in the west are accustomed to a dialectic approach to learning, and I think this experiential argument approach can withstand some of this more academic interpretation.
Someone needs to replace Goenka. In the same way that it’s fairly well accepted that sitting on the floor is merely a cultural contingency, and that there is NOTHING about the lotus, etc., that leads one better to enlightenment than sitting in a chair (it’s the sitting still that causes the pain, after all – it’s just a matter of degree), then all other aspects like Pali chanting, or the specific foods, or schedule, or even Guru-esque traits of Goenka himself are merely history, and not needfully normative. People are evolving frames of reference, and culture changes, so why do we need to continue to relate to the same audio and video recordings from 1991, by a guy from some other culture? Vipassana is sold as a method, not a belief system, so let’s dump the religion, the myths, the metaphysics, and just figure out a more effective way of not driving away the lion’s share of attendees. There’s no way to know without looking at the various attendance records, but someone on the internet suggested that about 10% return for more Vipassana training or make claims about continuing. And the prohibition on leaving, and the policy of walls, gates, and requests for keys, wallets, and phones, seem to indicate that a not insignificant number of people split. This doesn’t seem to me to be the most effective way to spread an idea.
So, my claim is that this is totally worth learning about, and using daily. I make no claims on liberation, and I’m not sure I can imagine what that would be like or how I would even know. Hell, it might even just be the extremeness and novelty are what make the difference, but if so, well, that’s still something I say is worth it.
