How is "Vipassanavada" defined?

Re. the Goenka movement… I watched this great documentary a while back which documents the history and rationale behind it all. (I’m not a believer personally, but I did want to know what all the fuss was about. :joy:)

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I’m not advocating for a competing franchise of one-flavor-for-everyone Theravada meditation instruction, like Burger King taking on McDonalds, just suggesting that if that did happen and the new franchise offered the combined approach under discussion, it might win the “fast dhamma” competition, because tranquility is nice and Westerners need it. However improper or unwise “replication” is, it is undeniably popular and consequential.

I was also suggesting that it was a quirk of history that migraine-afflicted young Goenka was in Burma rather than Thailand, but now that I think about it, it’s not really a quirk. The standardized 10-day format was not Goenka’s innovation, and had already developed in Burma partially in response to socio-political conditions that were not present in Thailand in the same period. Goenka was also of a nationalist bent and wanted to return Buddhism to his native India, which inspired the packaging, marketing and export. Far less likely for an Indian businessman to be in Thailand for geographical reasons.

Not to tell you anything you don’t already know; in fact, I learned of this from scholars like you. Thank you!

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I think the challenge is to say, how do we shift towards a place where a more balanced approach to meditation is available. And I think that is happening to some degree already.

The real problem, though, is deeper. The reason we find it hard to see a more holistic, if you will, “eightfold path” approach to meditation is because that wouldn’t be just meditation. It would involve getting people to assess their own lives and lifestyles, taking ethical stock, studying suttas, and all the rest of it. A lot of that stuff is often assumed to be basic, but my experience is that it is really skipped over in people’s personal development.

Then the issue becomes, how do we get enough people with enough skills to transfer such information? And again, there are important steps in that direction, be it the “pandita” program in Indonesia, the Dhamma teacher training in the US, or our own AABCAP training course.

Doing it properly takes a long time, as it must, because at the end of the day you come up against a hard reality: human nature is slow to change. You can’t engineer a fast track to enlightenment. Due to industrialization and technology, society is changing very rapidly, but spiritual growth hasn’t changed. This is, I think, why it’s easy to fall into the belief that people can’t change. We’re moving so fast on the outside that the inside looks frozen. It isn’t frozen, it’s just moving with the—sometimes admittedly glacial—speed of nature.

I think this is why the issue of “spiritual bypassing” has become so important for us, whereas it is mostly unknown, or at least, less significant, in the past. Our culture conditions us to expect speedy, predictable, and reliable results. And that is just not how spiritual growth works.

I honestly don’t believe there is a solution for this. We can’t speed up the evolution of human nature, or at least, not nearly enough. The only way to solve it is to slow down or reverse the evolution of human technological culture.

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You’ve touched on so much that interests me deeply that I’m not sure where to begin!

Since the official topic is vipassanavada, here’s a bit of apologia in the theme of holistic Buddhist practice. Despite its deficiencies, Goenka’s organization specifically has some wholesome features that haven’t been emphasized here:

  • Trained, experienced hands-on teachers are fully present and accessible at all retreats to complement the recordings.
  • These teachers are (in my experience) willing to remain in contact with students, sharing their personal contact information.
  • Sila is emphasized. To move beyond the basic 10-day retreat format, you are expected to rigorously maintain the five precepts for a full year.
  • Metta is taught to be part of a daily practice.
  • Accessing non-Buddhist resources for personal development is encouraged and sometimes facilitated.

This is more personal assessment than an unambiguous credit to Goenkavada, but I’ll further note that teachers are not presented as nor carry themselves as authorities. There is no genuflection. They are very much older siblings on the path yet still peers, not holy parents with mysteriously deep wells of wisdom and exotic, esoteric skills. Imo, this is good for Westerners whether they know it or not. Elevated spiritual authority figures often aggravate unhelpful tendencies, namely defiance and fault-finding on the one hand, or idealization and surrender of personal agency on the other. The former can keep people from the path; the latter keeps people from understanding the path and is a common mode of spiritual bypass; moreover, it creates the conditions for traumatic disillusionment. It arises even if the teacher warns against it… the trickiness of the mind at work.

On that topic, I really don’t think that vipassanavada can be accused of facilitating spiritual bypass. Lots of people have a honeymoon phase after their first retreat. This is hardly unique to vipassana, obviously. But the culture and atmosphere tampers that and the hard work and slow pace of true spirituality is embraced.

What it doesn’t do is encourage or even allow for the more insidious forms of spiritual bypass like all the culty stuff associated with “New Religion” as well the hoary old stand-bys like fundamentalism, religious chauvinism/sectarian infighting, zealotry, aggressive prostelytization etc. Again, just my experience, which consists of three retreats sat, two served, and some participation in my local group.

Like so many others, I had a friendly break-up with vipassanavada because I wasn’t getting all I needed… more joy, more community, better integration with mundane life, a wider panel of meditation technique, the suttas, the history, etc.

I am also encouraged, btw, by the steps in the right direction you mention. I hope to participate in that in some way soon. Since I don’t care to ordain, my best option seems to be IMS. If there are monastics in the US who offer teacher training to laypeople, I have yet to hear of them.

As much as I’d like to get into this, it may be for another thread. But I’m very curious…

Do you have ideas about how we can deal with technological culture other than individuals personally dropping out?

Do you ever think about Buddhism in the context of transhumanism? i.e. gene-editing, brain-enhancements, radical life extension, cyborgs, AI, going off-world etc. All that neat-o scify mind candy!

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I had been with Goenka tradition for few years, practiced direct Vipassana (Vipassanavada), never knew what Samatha actually is. Of course one cannot out right reject technique, there are few benefits. Having something is better than nothing.

IMO, when I had started practicing Samatha + Vipassana together with Bhante Vimalaramsi, the progress is much faster(few days), I can verify my progress/experiences with Suttas. I had never progressed with direct Vipassana that fast, I had practiced several years. I humbly ask all direct Vipassana practitioners to try, it really works, because Dhamma is immediately effective. You don’t need few months to realise it works.

I was not convinced initially about Samatha, because practicing direct Vipassana one have tendency to develop rigid mentality, to forsake any other teaching even listening/discussing suttas by other teachers. So, it’s very hard to convince a direct Vipassana practitioner, that Samatha and Vipassana goes together in practice, see MN 111 where Buddha praises Sariputta’s progress of Samata and Vipassana.

The Blessed One said, "Monks, Sariputta is wise, of great discernment, deep discernment, wide… joyous… rapid… quick… penetrating discernment. For half a month, Sariputta clearly saw insight into mental qualities one after another. – MN 111

There are following few points I wish to share humbly based on my experience.

  • Please use Sutta as basis for your understanding. Don’t think Satipattana sutta is only one sutta for meditation.
  • In the path of Dhamma you are your own teacher, compare your progress against Suttas explanation.
  • There is tendency to try too hard with direct Vipassana technique and being so serious with life. Check are you smiling naturally with your day to day activities.
  • Metta is underestimated in direct Vipassana, which causes to develop critical mind. If you check Suttas many places it was mentioned to develop Loving Kindness meditation.
  • Meditation is not just while sitting, it’s all the time practice, it should fit naturally in your daily life.
  • The states of Bhanga is not mentioned in Suttas.
  • 4 Satipattanas of Body, Feelings, Mind, Dhamma are to be seen time to time during our practice, you don’t have to take only Sensations as meditation objects. Whenever there is definition of Sati, it’s all 4 together, not just Feelings.
  • Dependent origination is core of Buddha’s teachings, the understanding should not be theoretical, but you should develop understanding in you practice.

I don’t wish to dissatisfy anyone. If you still didn’t convinced that’s fine, but if you wish to discuss with me drop me a Message.

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Thank you for mentioning these things! An organization or movement has many dimensions, and there is no doubt that Goenkaji’s movement has been very skilful in many respects. To these I’d add that they have maintained an international system for many years based purely on dana, which is a great achievement.

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A lot of these issues get frequent airings in the Forum. A topic search will be interesting. :smiley: Thank you for keeping this thread on-topic. :pray:

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Thanks for the tip! I’ll poke around :slight_smile:

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