thecages

ra·tion·al     adj.           1. Having or exercising the ability to reason.
dis·sent       intr.v.      1.To differ in opinion or feeling; disagree.

Just back from the Vipassana course.
I only stayed 8 of the 10 days, though I found the time there valuable and the last two days would have been simple to sit out.

I'd like to do a good write-up of my Vipassana experience, but for now I'll only note down some highlights.

The course itself is beautifully run - austere.
Everything from the landscape to the living arrangements to the menu is designed to encourage and support mental silence, as Mr. Goenka says: '... a calm and quiet mind'.

The entire day is metered by the hypnotic sound of a Burmese bell which spins when hit causing its ringing sound to phase in and out like a slowly humming siren.

Mr. Goenka is a fantastic teacher (the course is taught using audio instructions and chants and discourses on DVD at night).
The course could never be taught without Mr. Goenka's voice as his intonations ('...start again, start again...') and chants are central to the type of focus required by the technique.

As far as the technique (Vipassana meditation) is concerned, it clearly has real merit and the benefits of practicing it becomes apparent after just a few days (the 4th and 5th days were best for me).

Here's my take on how it works:

• Vipassana meditation is a form of observational meditation in which the meditator observes the physical sensations he/she feels at that time, either in one specific area of the body or on the entire body.
• The idea is to not neglect any sensation (including discomformt, numbness, pain etc.) but to give preference to the more subtle sensations until all that you feel is a very light sweeping sensation (a light feather brushing your skin).
• Experienced meditators then pursue these subtle sensations internally as well (not only on the skin).
• The goal with this is to develop the faculty of constant awareness in the cognitive brain of what is happening in the lower brain, i.e. to allow the cognitive brain to observe the functioning of the nervous system, spinal column and reptilian brain.
• Once you have developed this faculty you can moderate the reactions of the lower brain to stimuli thereby pusuing the Buddhist goal of avoiding craving and aversion.
  

And now for my reason for not finishing[1] the course.

Mr. Goenka teaches the technique using Buddhist philosphy(craving/aversion), cosmology(past lives) and science(kalapas and sankharas) [2]

The problem is that Mr. Goenka teaches the technique exactly as the Buddha taught it.
i.e. using 2500 year-old science.
For example Kalapa's

Everything that exists at the material level is composed of "Kalapas." Kalapas are material units very much smaller than atoms, which die out immediately after they come into being. Each kalapa is a mass formed of the eight basic constituents of matter, the solid, liquid, calorific and oscillatory, together with color, smell, taste, and nutriment. The first four are called primary qualities, and are predominant in a kalapa. The other four are subsidiaries, dependent upon and springing from the former. A kalapa is the minutest particle in the physical plane — still beyond the range of science today. It is only when the eight basic material constituents unite together that the kalapa is formed. In other words, the momentary collocation of these eight basic elements of behavior makes a man just for that moment, which in Buddhism is known as a kalapa. The life-span of a kalapa is termed a moment, and a trillion such moments are said to elapse during the wink of a man's eye. These kalapas are all in a state of perpetual change or flux.

Basically, the scientific basis of the teaching is horseshit.

This itself does not discredit the technique (I still believe that the technique is valuable) but it does discredit the teacher.

In my last discussion with the assistent teacher I tried to explain that, while I found the technique valuable, I couldn't accept any more of Mr. Goenka's teachings since I viewed the theoretical foundations of his teachings as doo-doo.

To this the assistent teacher responded that I should try to observe where all of this anger that I was generating was coming from and use the Vipassana technique to let go of it.

And that is when I realised that it was time for me to leave.
I didn't even stay to explain this.
The reason why I could not stay the last two days is that Mr. Goenka's teaching (being pure buddhist) classifies all reactions as being either a form of craving or a form of aversion.

Therefore my reaction to his theoretical points would qualify as an aversion (I am averse to his theoretical teachings and therefore generate an emotion of anger).

But it's not: rational dissent is not an emotion, it is not an aversion, it is a cognitive function and the result of thinking for myself, of questioning authority.


[1] I had quite a long discussion with the assistent teacher[i] about the difference between 'finish' and 'complete'.
He wanted me to finish the course while I felt that I had completed my stay[ii].
[i] A very soft spoken and likable guy named James
[ii] Consider a school classroom, you attend the class (as a pupil) and while you may have completed your learning (got what you wanted) the class is not finished.
In the end I realise that James was right that completing what I had come for did not mean that the teacher was finished with me[iii].
[iii] But that was exactly the point - the teacher wasn't finished with me, but I was finished with the teacher - I had gobbled down the first few teachings of Mr. Goenka but rejected him later down the line, and with him the rest of his teachings [iv].
[iv] Clearly I may very well have missed on some important stuff here, but I wasn't receptive to any more teaching and would just have spent the next two days rejecting every new idea from Mr. Goenka

[2] Sure, they do say that you do not have to accept the philosophy/cosmology/science to use the technique, but I was there to learn about the foundation of the technique as well.