Vipassana Meditation and the Laws of Nature

      An Interview with S.N. Goenka by Alan AtKisson (Part 1)

Introduction: I can’t tell you anything about what vipassana meditation feels like, because i’ve never done it. But while definitions are tricky, what we call “spirituality”—the reaching of human awareness and conduct toward “that truth which passeth all understanding”—seems basic to meeting the enormous challenges of our times. Which is why i accepted an invitation to interview s. N. Goenka during his 1992 visit to the seattle area, where i was living at the time. Goenka—a leading teacher of the ancient vipassana meditation technique—is not spiritual “leader” in the sense one usually means by the term, for he has no “followers. ” he would likely prefer to be described as a scientist who researches the relationship of mind, body, and matter via insight meditation, and teaches others how to do the same—directly, for themselves. A former wealthy industrialist, born in burma to parents of indian de-scent, goenka turned to vipassana (which means “insight,” as in “seeing into reality as it is”) when nothing else could alleviate his severe migraine headaches. He was introduced to the practice—reputed to be the method of meditation originally taught by the buddha, though vipassana itself is not a sectarian movement—by senior burmese government official and meditation master, sayagyi u ba khin. Goenka became a devoted practitioner of vipassana, and in 1969, having given up his businesses in burma, he moved to india to begin teaching the technique in the land where it originated. Two decades later, there are vipassana meditation centers throughout the world, and they attract people from all faiths. Many things seem to distinguish vipassana (as taught by goenka) from other meditation techniques, including its insistence on receiving an initial ten-day training directly from a qualified teacher. But more importantly, in an era when too many priests and gurus have been accused of sexual or financial misconduct, the goenka-led vipassana network seems beyond reproach. As goenka explains below, no one is allowed to pay for training in vipassana, and no teacher is permitted to earn money from teaching. The expenses of those who take the training courses are covered by donations of time and money from students who came before them and want to help spread the benefit of the practice. The following is condensed from a lengthy interview conducted at the northwest vipassana center in onalaska, washington, in the summer of 1991. 

Question: Many people today are embracing the idea that truths are multiple—that there are many different kinds of truth, that truth is something created by humans and that there is no one ultimate truth. Yet Vipassana, as I under-stand it, seems to point toward an understanding of truth as something absolute. From the perspective of Vipassana, what is truth?

Goenkaji: You are quite correct when you say that, gener-ally, human beings have created truth. Different people have different views. Human beings are intellectual beings, and at the level of intellect—reasoning, logic—someone will say, “Perhaps this is so. It appears to be so. This seems logical.” Someone else will say, “No, this is not logical, that is logi-cal.” All those perceptions are at the intellectual level, and the intellect has its own limitation—it differs from person to person.But there are basic laws of the nature: for example, fire burns. What does this have to do with intellect? It is simply the truth. If you put your hand in the fire, it burns. If it does not burn, it is not fire, though it may be something else. This is the law of nature, which can be experienced by one and all. It is not somebody’s intellectual game—it is truth.

Vipassana meditation works with the actual truth, which can be experienced by one and all. Vipassana is not an intel-lectual game. It is also not an emotional or devotional game. This is another kind of truth that human beings create: “I have great devotion in Buddha, so whatever Buddha says is the truth.” “ I have great devotion for Jesus Christ,” and I will say, “Whatever Jesus Christ said is truth.” These are devotional games and they also vary from person to person.So truths which are based on devotion, or truths which are based on intellect, will always differ. They cannot be the same. But truth based on actual experience will remain the same.Vipassana gives importance to the actual experience. The truth experienced by each individual is the truth for that person.Now there are levels of experience; one may not be able to experience a particular truth now. But as one goes deeper inside—experimenting, experimenting, and starts experiencing subtler things, then everyone will experience the same subtle reality at the deeper level. It is not that only a particular gifted person will experience it—the law of nature is the same law for everybody.

Anybody who puts a hand in fire gets burned. Fire won’t discriminate for a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew. The defilements of the mind act the same way: if you generate anger, hatred, ill will, animosity, passion, fear, ego, worry, anxiety—any impurity in the mind—it will make you miserable, it will make everyone miserable. The result is the same for an Indian or a Russian, a European or an American. The law of the nature does not discriminate, does not favor. This is truth, truth eternal—for everybody, all the time, past, present and future.Similarly, if the mind is free from these defilements—if one does not generate anger and the mind is free from neg-ativity, if the mind is pure—one will notice that the mind becomes full of love, full of compassion and goodwill. These good qualities arise naturally in a pure mind. And when these wholesome qualities are in the mind, one naturally feels very peaceful, very harmonious. Again, this is a law of nature. Whether you are a Muslim or a Hindu or a Chris-tian, makes no difference, white or black or yellow, makes no difference.Purity of the mind makes us feel very happy, peaceful and harmonious. We may belong to any community, any religion, any sect or none at all. Vipassana is beyond all religions, beyond all sects, beyond all beliefs, beyond all dogmas or cults. It is a pure science of mind and matter—of how they interact, how they keep on influencing and being influenced by each other. This reality is not to be accepted at the intellectual level, not to be accepted at the devotional level; it has to be experienced by each individual.

Suppose I have never experienced the burning of fire. I may have understood it intellectually because others have said, “If you put your hand in fire, it will burn.” But once I have actually put my hand on a fire, and I find that it burns, naturally I will keep my hand away from fire afterwards. In the same way, if we understand intellectually that all these negativities make us unhappy, this is an intellectual under-standing. But when you go deep inside, you can experience this truth for yourself: “Look, anger has arisen, and I have become so agitated. Passion has arisen, I have become so agitated. When any impurity arises, I become so agitated, so irritated, so miserable.” You are experiencing it. And when you experience it directly, the next time you will be more careful not to generate such negativity: “Look, this is like fire. If I generate anger, it burns.This is not a sermon, there is no a devotion involved: it is a fact, a hard fact of the life. If you defile your mind nature, the law of nature, starts punishing you then and there. It won’t wait until after death and take you to hell. You suffer the pangs of hell now. You become so miserable. Similarly if you keep your mind pure—full of love, compassion and goodwill—it starts giving the reward here and now. Look, your mind is pure, no negativity: you feel so peaceful, so happy. So simple That’s all Vipassana is, just following the law of nature. And by practicing, practicing; experiencing, experiencing, one starts changing the behavior pattern of the mind.

To come out of misery and live a happy life—everyone wants this, but one doesn’t know how to do it. By the practice of Vipassana you go to the depth of your mind—where the actual misery starts because of these negativities, where the actual happiness is experienced because of the absence of these negativities—and once you start experiencing these things for yourself, a change automatically happens in your mind. You live a better life. Everyone lives better life.

Question: Is Vipassana a religion?

Goenkaji: No. There is no cult or sect or religion involved in Vipassana. For example, people used to be under the impression that the world was flat. And Galileo said, “No, it is round and it rotates on its own axis.” This was so even before Galileo; it was so at the time of Galileo; it was so af-terwards. People simply started accepting it: “Yes, it’s true, it’s round, it’s rotating.” They didn’t get converted to “Galileo-ism,” they didn’t become “Galileo-ists.” Similarly, there is a law of gravity in nature. Newton discovered it. That doesn’t mean he created a law; the law was always there. The law of relativity was there too; Einstein discovered it.In the same way in Vipassana, there is no conversion to any religion or any sectarianism involved. An enlightened person discovers this law, that when we generate negativity nature punishes us. Everyone wants to be free of this misery, and look, nature has also given us a way. We can observe it. We can observe the mind and matter reactions going on inside, and we will find we are coming out of it. This is the truth, which was always there. This universal truth can be experienced by one and all, all can benefit from it. A Christian will continue to remain a Christian his whole life, a Hindu a Hindu, a Muslim a Muslim, Jew a Jew. But they will start living a better life.This is all Vipassana wants. This is what attracted me to Vipassana. I came from a totally different tradition, but when I passed through one Vipassana course I found it is so scientific, so rational, so non-sectarian, universal, and so result-oriented. It gives results here and now: what more could anybody want? Nobody told me to become a Bud-dhist. My teacher said, “If you are a Hindu you remain a Hindu. I don’t care.” Doing Vipassana is like doing physical exercises to keep your body healthy. Here is a mental exercise to keep the mind healthy, which is much more important. The body may be very healthy, and yet if your mind is not healthy, you can’t keep your body healthy. It will become unhealthy.So to me this mental exercise is so scientific, so non-sectarian, so rational, so universal, that everyone should take advantage of it. It is not a foreign cult which is being imposed on a particular community, nothing like that. People are afraid, I understand, because many gurus have come from India and tried to exploit the people in different ways, financially and socially. People are afraid when they see, “Oh, another meditation teacher has come. Well, he may talk very fine, but ultimately he will try to exploit us and make us his slaves or this or that, or we may lose our own religion and get converted.” That fear is natural, I can understand.

Question: How is the Vipassana organization set up to pre-vent the kinds of abuse—especially financial and sexual—that have plagued so many other spiritual organizations?

Goenkaji: Financial abuse is impossible in this tradition, because anybody who teaches must have some other means of livelihood. This teaching can never become a profession or a means of livelihood for the teacher, or the assistants, or those who serve on courses. Anybody who gives any kind of assistance in this organization must have his or her own means of livelihood. So that nobody expects anything. And even if something is offered, they are not supposed to take it. They are giving this service because they have gotten so much from it—as in my case.I got so much from this technique. I was a very rich, very angry person, and very unhappy. I had a lot of problems in my life. And this technique took me out of those problems as if I had a totally new birth. So, because I feel so happy with this technique, I feel like sharing with others, because I know people are miserable in the same ways I was.

Rich or poor, everyone is living an egoistic, self-centered life, generating negativities, becoming miserable. If this tech-nique is given to these people, they will become happy. So one feels like sharing it.In the same way, there are those who have learned from me—thousands of them around the world—who feel like sharing. Some cannot serve, cannot give time, so they donate money. That donation is notlike a fee for what they received. What they got, they got for free. They donate so that others can learn this technique. You see, this technique is such that it can only be given in a residential course—people have to come and stay for ten days. So there are boarding, lodging, and other expenses. But we do not charge people for those expenses—there is not a trace of commercialism involved. So where does the money come from? It comes from old students, who may feel that, “I can’t personally go and serve people directl . But I am comfortable in many ways, so I will give five dollars, or ten dollars, or five thousand dollars, according to my capacity.” And this is how it works.Now, there are other way of exploiting people: one is socially. Those who start teaching may try to keep people under their clutches, like slaves: “My guru says I must murder that fellow,” or “Whatever you have in your house, bring it and donate it here.” All such things are possible, if people become slaves. The Vipassana tradition is totally against that. Each individual is one’s own master. There is no “gurudom” involved. You experience the practice yourself. If you find it is good for you, then accept it. Don’t accept the word of a guru unless you have experienced the teaching and found it helpful to you and helpful to others.A guru may say, “You are a very ordinary person, I am such a wise, enlightened person, so whatever I say, you must accept.” That is totally prohibited in Vipassana. Each individual has to enlighten oneself, and then only should one accept the truth—not because the teacher says so. Not because the Buddha said so. Not because the Christ said so. Not because the scriptures said so. You experience, yourself, the truth, and you find that, “Yes, it is good for me, good for others.” Then you accept it.Now with regard to sex, we have seen—and it is a very sorry state—that some people who are teaching spiritual-ity (not all, but many of them) have had sexual relations with their own students. The whole teaching of Vipassana goes completely against that, because when a teacher gives the technique, gives Dhamma to anyone, then this person becomes like a son or a daughter of the teacher. A teacher must have that much love and that type of love and com-passion, like the love of a father or a mother. How can one think of such madness as having sexual relations with one’s students?Such a personis not fit toteachDhamma.His mind is so full of passion, lust, impurity. How can he or she teach this—a technique for ridding the mind of impurities? Such a person is not allowed to become a full teacher. One is given the responsibility to teach only when one has developed to a stage where the mind is reasonably pure, and where one cannot have even a thought of sexual relations with a student. All assistant teachers are trained to develop these qualities and if anyone is found to have committed this kind of misconduct he or she will immediately be deauthorized from assistant teaching.

Question: You were speaking earlier of the laws of nature and, right now, many people are observing that nature itself is in trouble. Some are concerned that much of nature is, in fact, dying, and many parts of our natural world are expe-riencing great suffering. Many people feel a great urgency about responding to that suffering and sometimes they feel anger towards those people who are causing it. What do you recommend? How might they respond to the suffering that they see—both in nature and in human society—with equanimity?

Goenkaji: There are two aspects to this problem. One aspect is polluting the whole natural atmosphere, for example by different kinds of chemicals which harm the vegetation, the life of animals, birds and so on. Of course, any sensible, wise person must stop such pollution. If nature gets polluted, nature’s harm is secondary. We are getting harmed. If the whole atmosphere becomes poisonous, how can people, who have mainly made it poisonous, live a healthy life? They have to live in this atmosphere, and they are spoiling it. So it’s not that they should be kind to nature—I would say, better be kind to themselves. We don’t understand what we are doing. Nature may be polluted now and later on again may become fresh again—after, say, some hundreds of years. Meanwhile, what have we done to ourselves?So people should think about themselves. I want ev-eryone to be selfish, but selfish in a proper sense. Right now, people don’t know where their real self-interest lies, and they harm themselves. People need to be compassionate toward themselves.Chemical poisoning is one kind of pollution that is harm-ing people. But another, bigger pollution, happens whenever our minds generate a defilement. That defilement is nothing but a vibration—an unhealthy vibration. It first it defiles the atmosphere within ourselves, and then it starts permeating the atmosphere around us. If I become angry, I am the first victim of my anger. I am the first person who is harmed by it. The second victim will be affected a little later, but first, I’ll be harmed. Then, after I am harmed by this anger, the vi-bration that goes out from me pollutes the whole atmosphere around me. If there are more and more angry people, how can you expect people to live peacefully in that atmosphere? It’s impossible.In a family, if there is one angry person, all the family members will become very unhappy. And if all of them are angry, it is a hell. What sort of life is that? But this is what is happening! People forget that when they generate negativity they are not only harming others, they are harming them-selves. But if they learn Vipassana, this technique which nature has given us, they can come out of this pollution. See how peacefully they live now, how harmoniously! They are giving peace and harmony to the atmosphere. Anybody who comes in contact with that atmosphere will start feeling peace and harmony.So that pollution is, to me, is more dangerous. For ages we have been doing this. Saintly people who experience the truth, come and say, “Oh, no, don’t do this.” But still we do. Because we do not understand that we are harming ourselves.It is the same for the external pollution—people should understand that they are harming ourselves. A factory owner who is polluting the atmosphere with chemical gasses is not only harming others, he is harming himself also, living in that atmosphere. He can’t have a separate atmosphere for himself. But one who is polluting the atmosphere at the mental level is suffering much more. The moment he starts generating anger, he is its first victim, and becomes a very miserable person.So the atmosphere outside us is bad, as you say, and something has to be done. But when you said that people become angry when they see the pollution, that is not help-ful. They have started producing anotherpollution with their anger. Anger cannot solve the problem. You must have com-passion for other people. They are ignorant, they don’t know what they are doing. We have to be firm and very stern, and very strong in opposing them, but deep inside there must be only love and compassion, no hatred. Hatred and anger cannot solve any problem.

Question: It strikes me that what you are saying is something that all political leaders should hear.

Goenkaji: Well, it starts from there. Every good or bad thing starts from the top and percolates through the society. If these people remain bad, the whole society has to suffer, and can’t get the truth. But if the leaders start realizing that they are more or less owning the destiny of the whole hu-man society, then they should live a better life, a good life, which can give a good example to the people—an example not just of power, but purity. Purity is the greatest power. If they learn how to keep their minds pure, they won’t pollute the atmosphere around. And if they start doing that, it will certainly be so helpful to the whole human nation.

Question: You said Vipassana requires a ten-day residential course. But is it possible to learn Vipassana on one’s own? Suppose one lives where there is no access to a Vipassana teacher?

Goenkaji: I would very much like it if people could just listen to a few words about the technique, which is so simple. In about ten minutes I can explain what the technique is, and people can understand. They can tell you what they understand. But we have tried this and it doesn’t work. Because from birth, when we first opened our eyes and started looking outside, we have been giving all importance to things out-side. Our whole life we have been extroverted. Now all of a sudden we want to change that habit and experience things inside. Just saying that doesn’t work. We have to practice. One wishing to practice must be under a proper guide, who has himself practiced properly, and who can guide properly. And must be in an environment where there is least disturbance. You can’t learn it in the normal “marketplace” environment with all the disturbances. Once you have learned then, yes, you go to live in the world outside, with all its distractions, and yet you can practice. But for learning the first time, the proper environment is essential.

I know it is so difficult for somebody to find ten days of life free, to leave all one’s other responsibilities and come to learn this technique. But it is essential.

Question: What would you say to the businessman or the doctor who says, “I can’t give ten days of my life”?

Goenkaji: The same thing happened to me—I was such a busy businessman, an industrialist. For me to give ten days was unthinkable. I was a very angry person, a very egoistic person, living an ego-centered life, hating others and feeling that “I am the wisest and most intelligent person, because at this young age I have so much money. All the others are useless, that’s why they can’t earn money, they can’t be successful in life.” That ego was so strong.Intellectually, I started realizing that this was so—and that it was my own ego, my own impurity which was making me miserable. How to come out of it? I tried different ways. I practiced devotional songs and chanting, for years, but this didn’t work. I tried at the intellectual level to understand all the scriptures, how all the negativities are so harmful and the positive feelings of the mind are so good. I kept on thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. As with the chanting and devotional practices, this worked for some time only, but again I felt the same misery.Then I contacted a wise person, Sayagyi U Ba Khin, who became my teacher. He said, “All these are games of the conscious level of the mind, the surface level, whereas your habit pattern lies at the root level.”The root level is what we call the unconscious mind. It is very blind. It will not listen to any advice from the intellect. It will not listen to any advice. It will just keep on reacting. Whenever it feels something pleasant, it will react with craving, clinging. When it feels something unpleasant, it will react with aversion, hatred. That has become the habit pattern of this deepest level of the mind. And unless we change this deepest level, all other things that we are doing at the surface are only temporary. They cannot help. If the root is unhealthy, the whole tree is unhealthy.So you must go to that root. If you don’t make the whole journey from the surface level of your mind to the depth of your mind, how can you change your mind at the depth level? That requires something like a surgical operation of the mind—and that requires proper guidance, a proper envi-ronment, and some time. You don’t just sit down, meditate, and immediately penetrate to the depth; it’s not possible. You have to go layer by layer, layer by layer, and reach the place where the deep unconscious mind is blindly reacting, all the time reacting: anger, hatred, anger, hatred, craving, clinging. These are the habit patterns. You have to reach that stage, and it takes time.So I understood. If I am sick, I have to go to a hospital. I can’t help it. And that may take ten days, it may take ten months. I have to take these ten days and see what hap-pens. And now, I find everybody is a sick person. Each one requires this particular treatment. Less or more, everyone requires it.So ten days, initially, will look like too much time to spare. But once people pass through a course, they start saying,“These are the ten best days of my life, up till now, and, I feel, for the future also. They gave me a totally new life.” So people don’t waste their ten days. Once they pass through it, they feel it is wonderful.

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