This paper is a pretty comprehensive take on Vipassana, so in case anyone's looking for something a bit more general, I'd like to offer a complementary summary based on my own experiences.
Vipassana is a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Silent in this case really means distraction-free, entertainment-free, or stimulation-free. Think of it as the diametric opposite of social news. No noise, no conversation, no instant gratification, no easy pleasures (not even reading, writing or music). You just eat, sleep and meditate, with occasional breaks in between.
During the course you see other students and listen to recorded meditation lessons, but you are, effectively, alone. It's a cultural trope that having nothing but your own mind for company sends you a bit mad, and in my experience that was basically true. Normally you can count on the distraction stream to save you from your own thoughts, and without it you can spend days stuck in ever-intensifying thought loops with nothing to break you out of them.
Which, to me, gets to the heart of Vipassana. It's not really about silence; it's a specific kind of meditation designed to change your relationship to sensation. I think of it like audio engineering: we have a gain control on what we feel, and when the sensations get too much we turn them down until we're comfortable again. The problem is that you turn down everything at once; distracting yourself from painful experiences also distracts you from pleasurable ones. Keep turning the gain down and you eventually end up with a featureless experience: no peaks or troughs, just a flat line.
The reason you start with silence is because you're going to turn the gain back up, and you don't want to blow out your speakers at the first loud noise. The technique focuses on bodily sensations, but since sensations are mental and physical everything kinda comes along for the ride. You spend hours focusing on the most minute feelings until they fill your entire mind and your whole world is an area of skin the size of a postage stamp. It can get pretty intense.
But what makes it too intense? You do. It's not like bad news is painful because it melts your auditory nerves. Rather, you react to the sound, then you react to your reaction, then you react to that reaction and so on until you've built this unbearable feedback loop. Then you turn down the gain because, damn, that was LOUD. But that's bad engineering; you gotta go fix the feedback at the source. And that means unlearning your reactions.
That was my core experience of Vipassana. Turn up the sensation, learn to accept the sensation. Feel more, react less, repeat. Everything I tried to avoid thinking about, I thought about. Everything I didn't want to feel, I felt. I was defenceless as my self-sabotaging thought patterns sabotaged me over and over until I realised I was the one doing it and I could just... stop.
It's easy to dwell on the hard parts, but it was often quite peaceful. I spent an hour watching a family of lizards (they hid until I'd been still for fifteen minutes), another watching the finches chase each other and listening to their tiny wings, and another just looking at trees. Have you ever noticed how green trees are? I don't think I'd seen anything that green since I was a child.
"...when the sensations get too much we [can] turn them down..."
I can only speak for myself but a) realizing this and b) actually figuring out the real noise sources were a (first) breakthrough for me. Not too obvious to figure out when I think back some time.
Has there ever been a study on the efficacy of Vipassana on clinical depression. How do you think this would affect a depressed person? Would it exacerbate their suicidal ideation or will their depression melt away?
[Steven here. I wrote the paper.] No, there hasn't. Vipassana courses generally reject applications from anyone with clinical depression or anxiety as the meditation practice is not meant to "heal" anything but also because it can be a bit intense for anyone... much less someone with a clinical mental health issue.
There are exceptions. I volunteered for a 10-day course in Gujarat last year and 3 of the men attending had clinical depression. A friend of mine has a very serious history of Bipolar Disorder; she was rejected from her first course application but permitted into her second. In all 4 cases, the individual needs a personal interview with the area teacher and a recommendation from that teacher before they are permitted to take the course.
The black-and-white line is "are you medicated?" — medicine is permitted on Vipassana courses with the permission of the teacher but painkillers, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety meds are not allowed for obvious reasons.
This makes such a study (scientifically) impossible; the applicants are heavily filtered so the sample has quite a significant bias. Positive conclusions would also be dangerous: It could be a very bad scene if someone with a very deep psychological issue lied to attend a course because of its supposedly scientific benefits, found in students with much milder mental health issues.
For what it's worth, in these anecdotal cases I'm aware of, everyone found the practice to be extremely beneficial. Zazen, which in most teachings is also a nervous-system-focused meditation, can also be helpful for people with clinical depression.
I was not considered to be someone with a severe mental illness but ended up developing an intense depersonalization + somatoform disorder during a 10 day retreat that I am still struggling to recover from 2 years later. The staff there refused to let me talk to a doctor who was also at the retreat or to call my parents without listening in on the conversation, which made me extremely uncomfortable and caused me to stay there longer than I should have. By the end of it they continued to insist that the Vipassana was the way to fix my problems instead of advocating that I see a doctor.
My experience was an outlier but I feel that for many people an experience like this can do more harm than good. Isolation and sensory deprivation for 10 days is generally not healthy, when we do that to people in prison it can be considered cruel and unusual punishment. I don't think they did a very good job of encouraging those who were having issues to leave and instead made me want to try and 'power' through what I was going through rather than recognizing it as a serious issue.
The way the class is structured is fundamentally depersonalizing- every night they have you watch video lectures that I found to get increasingly bizarre and cult-like, subjecting you over and over to the notion that the Vipassana method is the way to deal with all suffering and eventually talking about how you can manipulate quantum energy in your body and other crazy shit. It was doubly disorienting to be doing this while eating a low-protein vegetarian diet for the first time
There are many, many others who have had negative, damaging experiences like me and the issue is waved away saying "they were already mentally ill and shouldn't have gone" but the fact there are many other ways to get the benefits that meditation offers in a way that doesn't present the risk of manifesting latent mental illnesses.
I really do not believe a 10 day retreat should even be offered to beginners and if so it should be less dogmatic and more sensitive to the possibility that it can be dangerous to certain personalities
I am quite certain there are a number of 10-day retreats that don't go into the cult-like/dogmatic aspects you describe here (that meditation is a cure and controlling body energy and all that) and would be more free about allowing anyone to leave and/or see a doctor.
I have not been to one myself, but I have read countless recollections of others' experiences, and a focus on caring for those attending is often a priority. Your experience sounds like the opposite of that, and as you've said, there are others with similar negative experiences too.
It's sad that it's out there, because I think there are plenty of 10-day retreats that wouldn't be such a problem, but maybe they should be required to be more upfront in setting expectations and better screen for potential hazards.
If you don't mind me asking, who was the speaker in those videos? Did your center have a specific "lineage" or "school" of Buddhism? Was it Goenka by chance?
> There are many, many others who have had negative, damaging experiences like me
Interesting, thanks for shedding some light from a very different perspective. I’m sorry you had to go through this and I hope you will be able to recover quickly.
Can you substantiate the claim or point to more information about a negative experience that came through Vipassana?
I can see this being beneficial to try before going the antidepressant meds route if given the opportunity. Are there any 10 day retreats in the US? This sounds like a great service to have a retreat in the mountains somewhere in the states for those without the means to travel abroad. Thanks for writing this guide, I may try it.
I heard dissociative or hallucinogenic substances are great for mild depression/anxiety. What are your thoughts on trying those substances to experience a deeper understanding of ones body/world?
I don't think they allow people who have depression to join this course as this is pretty intensive.
Some of the best long time meditators who stumbled upon this path and stuck with it had depression.
The benefits that a regular person gets initially while meditating are pretty cool but not life changing. Like, you tend to get up and clean your room, file for taxes way before the deadline, do your chores without them feeling like chores etc. You also don't react automatically with annoyance etc. Again, cool benefits but not life changing. This is the reason why its hard to maintain regular practice.
But if you have depression, the difference that meditation makes in your life could be large (
Hypothesising) so you have more incentive to stick to the practice and over the years it all adds up and your quality of life might end up even better than those who did not have depression in the first place. Again, this is just my thinking and I am not sure.
If you have depression, you might consider taking some other mindfulness course to get a feel for it.
Arguably, one of the primary driving forces for the popularity of mindfulness in the west was the work done by Joh Kabat-Zinn with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).
Not to be pedantic, but a vipassana retreat is a 10-day (though not always strictly 10) retreat. Vipassana is not itself a retreat but a method for seeing the nature of reality.
My experience was a loss of sweet tooth permanently. Before I had a lot of craving for sweet stuff and had to fight with myself to cut the craving. After the Vipassana that craving is no longer there like before.
Apart from this one thing, there are no lasting impacts. If I meditate an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, the effect lasts around 24 hours and I gradually revert back to my original state, so I have to maintain the meditation practice to maintain the results.
It helped me come out of alcohol and drug addiction (not after a single 10-day course, mind you). It's helped me a great deal with long-standing anger issues. I find myself much more lucid and generally more effective; my decision-making capability is a lot sharper than it was 5 years ago.
Some effects which coincide with my Vipassana practice that I would say are hard to attribute to it (but I'd be tempted) include: calling my parents more often, giving people my attention more meaningfully, an improved diet, and better results from exercise.
Excellent review, thank you. You capture the vividness of it very well.
I will add a disclaimer, if you are talking about Goekna / Dhamma.org retreats. They are absolutely not just about technique or dogma-free, despite their marketing. They are overtly religious and the entire retreat is couched in hand-wavy woo.
The retreat itself was amazing. I went to one in Quebec. Excellent facilities, crystal clear skies (it was -25 C out), very soothing place. Food was excellent and overall, the physical aspects were not nearly as trying as I was expecting (though my back was kill after a couple days). I would recommend bringing a sleep aid if you are used to not sleeping so early (they are accommodating). I went a few days without using it, but it is hard to meditate after a sleepless night.
I was very excited. The place had been hyped up as dogma-free. Sam Harris's Waking Up book seemed to encourage it. No mystical teachings. Just a great practice. No communication. No speaking, writing, reading. Not even eye contact to avoid non-verbal communication. I love the idea.
The reason for this, in their words, is that the chanting of ancient Pali gives off good vibes. Next, they ask all the students to start repeating phrases in Pali. It feels incredibly cultish at that point. The voice of the instructor during key meditation lessons is intentionally over-accented (you can hear Goenka speak just fine at other times). In other languages (not English) the instructions are clear and concise. Only in the original recordings do you get this woo-y voicing.
Finally, you do get sustained language, in the form of the nightly discourses. After having no other serious language input, every night there is an hourly discourse. By that time you're dying to relax a bit, and if you're like me, desperate for communications so that even a cereal box label would be spellbinding.
The lessons are very anti-science and very religious. Goenka explicitly states the purpose of meditation is to purge your deep-seated sins (sankhara I believe was the word he used) so that you can re-incarnate better. He was clear to point out that the study of physics is unnecessary because Buddha had discovered physical secrets long ago. Literally, he makes a point that Buddha determined the vibration of subatomic particles (even though the numbers provided are wrong, and the premise is nuts). He even goes out of the way to criticize a scientist involved in the work of the cloud chamber, saying that the scientist was always unhappy and thus should not have bothered trying to discover things.
Even the non-anti-science parts are a bit off. At one point, during a lecture on not murdering any living being (acceptable, sure), he goes as far as mentioning that "a cat killing a mouse is not following its true nature". Questioning these things gets you a warm smile with a condescending dismissal.
I only mention all this because HN readers are probably less woo/religion minded than most, and Dhamma.org portrays it as no-woo when it is full of it. The annoyance caused me to drop out of the course on day 6 as I could not stand the indoctrination side of things. Physically I was fine and enjoying the structure.
But... I would still recommend it over nothing. I would prefer a retreat that had the structure and setup but without the dogma. If you cannot find such a place nearby (Goenka's retreats are everywhere), well just know going in that you will need to deal with all this and ignore the dogma and not be upset. Consider it additional training. Maybe try hanging out with people praising homeopathy and not saying a single negative word as preparation for the kinds of things you're going to feel?
I would also note that Sam Harris's guided meditation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OboD7JrT0NE) was quite instructive, after reading his book. You do not have to buy into his overall views or be "a proud atheist" to enjoy the book nor his meditation part.
Thank you. Your experiences seem to mirror my own, I was very disappointed when I learned that the vipassana course was full of woo-woo, despite proclaiming not to be. In addition, it kind of messed me up for quite a while afterwards, so I could not recommend it, despite finding some of the sensations I experienced during the course to be interesting. There are almost certainly going to be meditation retreats that teach you the same techniques without the religious indoctrination, which is what I wished I'd found.
Leaving on day 6 was probably a good move. I stayed the full 10 days but the course didn't get any better by the end.
For those that haven't done it before, there are three types of meditation that are taught at a 10-day Goenka Vipassana retreat. The first two, Anapana and Vipassana, are both very interesting and are experiences I would recommend, but the third, Metta, is basically in woo-woo territory. Metta can be described as "positive thoughts" meditation, as opposed to Anapana and Vipassana (which are both about increased self-awareness). Close your eyes, wish for world peace, now you're doing Metta. If you can find a meditation retreat that teaches Anapana and Vipassana without religious dogma then I would recommend giving it a go, but I could not recommend going to a retreat led by Goenka. YMMV.
I was also angry about the religious content. I almost left the course on day 3 because of it. Then I realized that I wasn't really angry at the course. I was re-living my anger at my parents who indoctrinated me with their religion when I was a child. Then I decided to work hard on the technique, since it is a way to deal with anger. I'm glad I did.
I'm sorry that you left on day 6. Day 7 is when I started to make real progress. In one of the recordings, the dude (Goenka) says that your first 10-day course is like lancing open an infected wound, letting all the pus out; painful but ultimately beneficial. That is an accurate description of my experience. Starting on day 7, I was finally able to reduce the negative emotions associated with certain ideas and memories. So I let myself touch those ideas and memories and worked hard to apply the technique. This was extremely unpleasant, but I could feel myself healing emotionally. It was the most difficult experience I have ever voluntarily gone through. But it was worth it. I'm much less angry now. In the year since I took the course, my life has gotten a lot better because of the skills I learned in the course.
I found Metta to be very difficult. And several weeks later I realized why: I couldn't bring up kind thoughts toward anybody, even toward myself. I have been judgemental my entire life, toward everyone and especially toward myself. It's the result of strict authoritarian parenting. After becoming aware of my judgemental tendencies, I've noticed that they cause a lot of problems for me. I'm still really bad at Metta, but I think it helps me be less judgemental. If you can't do Metta, then you will benefit from finding out why you can't do it.
"I stayed the full 10 days but the course didn't get any better by the end."
It was the GP who stayed for 6 days.
Regarding...
> "If you can't do Metta, then you will benefit from finding out why you can't do it."
I have no problem in accessing feelings of compassion, I just don't want to be forced to do it. In my opinion, obligation can take the joy out of anything, and forced love doesn't make any sense. As soon as we seek to control love we kill it. It's far better to be remove the barriers that hold you back from experiencing it, and just let it happen naturally (again, just in my opinion).
The main issue I had with the course was that Goenka was steering the experience towards a certain set of interpretations of the experience. What I wanted was to be taught the technique and then be left alone to find what it uncovered. In my opinion, meditation is a personal experience, and I did not think it helped to frame the experience in the way Goenka did, especially as the people going through the retreat are likely to be in a vulnerable position (isolated, limited human interaction, limited time to adapt to new experiences). For me, attending the course was a mistake, one that I only grew from as I overcame the damage it caused through finding other teachers that I could connect with, but that being said, if you found the course beneficial I'm glad for you, I'm not trying to diminish your experience. I hope you can continue to find personal insight through meditation.
I think that's sort of a mis-characterization of Metta (not accusing you of ill intent, to be clear), but I'm not sure how it's taught by Goenka, maybe it was demonstrated poorly.
In my experience, it has been to try to wish good things towards all beings (the cessation of suffering that is essential to Buddhist philsophy), from those that are easy to love (family friends, etc) all the way out to those that are the most difficult to wish good things for (those that wrong you, prisoners, generally those we view as "less"), and its intent is not like a prayer, where you're trying to ask a deity to make it happen.
It's more like Anapana/Vipassana in that it is a self-work- trying to find more compassion, trying to cultivate that towards all beings and overcome the difficulty and roadblocks that keep us from doing so. I have found Metta at times to be more profound than the rest of the practices, or at least unique. It's maybe the one practice that has made me question my stance on eating meat and has helped re-align my thoughts regarding treating "the least of these" with compassion instead of retribution, negligence, etc.
I think it can be useful without any woo-woo aspects, and I've seen it taught in practical terms multiple times.
> "I think that's sort of a mis-characterization of Metta (not accusing you of ill intent, to be clear), but I'm not sure how it's taught by Goenka, maybe it was demonstrated poorly.
In my experience, it has been to try to wish good things towards all beings (the cessation of suffering that is essential to Buddhist philsophy), from those that are easy to love (family friends, etc) all the way out to those that are the most difficult to wish good things for (those that wrong you, prisoners, generally those we view as "less"), and its intent is not like a prayer, where you're trying to ask a deity to make it happen."
I believe Metta was described as "loving kindess" in the course. My characterisation of "positive thoughts" was just a simplified version of that.
If you get benefits out of Metta, that's fine, I hope you continue to do so, it just doesn't sit right with me. Desire to love and love are two different things, if you already feel it you don't need it, and if you seek it then you hold yourself back from feeling it. That's how I see it, but if you found benefit in the practice of Metta that's a good thing, and I hope you continue to find benefit from doing it.
The important distinction between the Goenka retreats and other dogmatic religious organizations is the instructions to only accept what you find palatable...you're free to pick and choose what you find valuable and what you can validate through personal experience and ignore the rest. If you'll remember the story of the kheer and the cardamom seeds, it's meant to encourage you to be as skeptical as you feel you need to be to get value out of the retreat.
Also, your comment on the sleepless nights makes me realize that you misunderstood the non-meditation periods in the same way that I misunderstood them during my first 10-day. I thought if I wasn't meditating, I was 'off' and mostly just passing time until the next session. But what I realized in my second 10-day was that there should be no down time. If you're not sitting and meditating, you should be walking and meditating, eating and meditating or showering and meditating or whatever and meditating. If you're lying in bed and can't fall asleep, you meditate. And what I found was that it didn't matter how much I actually slept because lying prone and meditating was as restful as sleep. If you ever try it again, try doing it without the notion of any down time...meditate through all of your actions as well as the prescribed meditation periods.
But I agree that the anti-science (and pseudo-scientific) parts were unfortunate. I served a 10-day after having attended twice, and was somewhat upset to see that they only made available traditional Chinese medicines to students and wouldn't even allow basic Western medicine (aspirin, immodium, etc). At one point, we had an elderly man who ran out of his high blood pressure medication. During a meditation session, his pulse rate spiked (~190 bpm) and he started freaking out. After following the teacher's advice and trying a traditional Chinese remedy (which, of course, did nothing), I finally suggested something with an actual basis in science (dipping his face in cold water to activate the mammalian dive reflex). That got the situation under control until an ambulance could arrive.
>you're free to pick and choose what you find valuable
This is what they say, and sure, they cannot force you. But if you do this, they criticize and condescend, telling you you're like a child not eating all his food and that when you grow up you'll find everything they say is correct.
And Goenka is very clear that the goal of Vipassana is improving reincarnation.
There is one point where they say something, maybe literally "we do not teach dogma, only truth". Saying it does not make it so! They'd be much better off not trying to convince people they aren't pushing such beliefs than being misleading about it.
As far as sleep, I tried meditating. Both there and afterwards. I do not find it as resting as sleep, and found myself drifting off while meditating during the rest of the time. What happens in my case is that I'll be awake in bed until 3-4am then finally sleep. This is fine if I don't need to get up at 5-6. But I understand this is personal and I should have fixed my sleeping habits before arriving.
For students, they seem far more tolerant of medication, probably for liability.
> But if you do this, they criticize and condescend, telling you you're like a child not eating all his food and that when you grow up you'll find everything they say is correct.
I am sure this depends a lot from center to center and the one I went to (Sweden, beautiful location) was not like that at all.
The parable in question, about the child not eating the "black stone" in his pudding, is one that many people report hearing. It might have been in one of the discourses.
I must stress that the individuals and teacher in person were wonderful people and I've absolutely nothing against them. The main issue, without slighting the dead, is Goenka's part. Including the condescending parable.
I would probably go again if I can't find a non-goenka course. But I'd listen to all the discourses and get my annoyance out ahead of time and consider the chanting to be an added difficulty.
I recognize this annoyance you have and would say just that everything else that comes up during the retreat (annoying person next to you coughing all the time etc) is part of the exercise. Observe and accept your reaction and keep on practicing. It is all part of the process.
This does not mean that you have to accept all the contents of the discourse as truth or correct or agree. You are listening and meditating, use it as practice.
And no one's going to bust you for not participating in chanting.
I'm not affiliated with any sect and haven't been on a Dhamma.org retreat but I felt compelled to write that you can try to understand where they're coming from.
A 10-day retreat may give you glimpses of what is possible (that there's more than meets the senses) but that is only the beginning. This stuff (meditation and yoga) has been practiced and researched rigorously for thousands of years before being introduced to west. Iinm the many literature spells out pretty early that it's all about purifying your existence. Body, mind, soul, whatever.
Some of the things in the eastern (buddhism, hinduism, jainism, taoism) lore are more metaphorically true than in a very narrow strict literal sense. Some of it it can be understood experientially more so than to be taken on blind faith.
I have to say I really like what Sam Harris is doing and follow his podcast. He certainly has pushed me further into meditation and he seems to have had many insights into the nature of consciousness and did a lot of LSD so he has been to places for sure. Yet sometimes I have wondered if he has missed out something fundamental given his very narrow focus on stuff. Maybe I should listen to his three podcasts with the meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein again...
> it's meant to encourage you to be as skeptical as you feel you need to be to get value out of the retreat.
On the other hand, if you're spotted walking slowly back and forth along a line, you'll be criticized for introducing walking meditation. So while Goenka retreats might encourage skepticism (this has not been my experience), they severely discourage experimentation. They are highly authoritarian environments.
The teacher in my center even encouraged meditating while walking when I asked. I saw other students doing the same and no one made anything out of it. Same in Japan, where I also sat. Sounds like an unfortunate interpretation at the particular center you where at.
No, the complaint is that they make a big point about only being pure technique, no faith, dogma, etc. Then they act like any other place. If they were honest about it from the get-go, then it wouldn't be worth mentioning.
Fwiw, not all Buddhist monasteries or organizations do anything like this. I've been to retreats at a Shambala center and at one of the monasteries in Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village network and they were very secular.
I did a dhamma retreat in India in 2008. I did not notice any of the things you mentioned. I don't know whether they changed any of the instructions in the meantime, but for me it was an immensely insightful, at times painful and scary experience. Learning about Buddhist philosophy was a side bonus (although I don't remember much of it), which I always understood as imparting lessons and enriching my own mental models (why did they reach conclusion x or theory y?) but not necessarily literally true. There was no nlchsnzing back then (except for saying "Sadu Sadu" to express to oneself knes whic's compassion for all licing creatures. Maybe local versions are different despite the recordings?
It would be torture if I were forced to listen to this. Apart from all the religious baggage involved, the vocals are incredibly pitchy. For the minute I tried listening to this, I twitched at each phrase. This won't be calming for the soul at all.
yow! Torture indeed. I'd be running for the hills if I had to listen to this every day. Maybe it is there to validate you are learning the technique. If you can keep calm while being subjected to this, you've learned the technique ;-)
Everything in the Goenka system of Vipassana is "open source". You can listen to the discourses and decide for yourself whether it feels too much like a sect.
And this is precisely what makes it friendly to the Hacker mind-set.
"Art of Living" can be off-putting thanks to its use elsewhere. It took me a long time to realize that "Art of Living" as Goenka uses it has nothing to do with (Sri Sri) Ravi Shankar's church or the business he's built on top of it. Ravi Shankar was actually a student of Goenka's who went on to sell meditation later in life with The Art of Living Foundation. There's no connection between the two organizations.
(Vedic) Hinduism historically was not: scriptures were only transmitted orally; the priests made sure to recite quickly/mutter so onlookers (onhearers?) could not get hold of the texts.
All of the Vedic texts have long been published at this point so this is no longer the case.
Thank you. You are spot on with the quackery! This matches my experiences in participating in a course in Germany.
> Maybe try hanging out with people praising homeopathy and not saying a single negative word as preparation for the kinds of things you're going to feel?
Honestly, the day when silence is broken was hard to grok. The vast majority of participants were deep into esoteric and quackery themes and had a religious admiration for the teachings. Critical discussion is not exactly forbidden but usally swept away.
It's also powerful, I remember speaking that day to someone more sceptical than me at the time and trying to calm him down. In retrospective he was right and I turned into an advertising machine the following weeks - I realized that only quite a while later.
The topics and language used in the course also had a lot of pseudo-scientific topics (even quoting engineers) that are hard to dismantle on first sight.
That beeing said, it's still worth the experience and it was comfortable but be ready to get exposed to all kinds of quack.
At first the supposed religiousness of it annoyed me too - but over time it sat ok with me. If you think about it, the audio course they use for the sessions was recorded back in the 90s, and back then this was refreshingly religion free. Lots of the work on meditation (things like Search Inside Yourself) which have completely reduced the amount of religion in it, are very recent compared to Goenka's course, so I think you have to take it as a product of its time. With a partial Indian background, a few times I've tried Indian writing on meditation, etc, and it is so seemingly intricately bound up with religion (almost to the point of superstition), that to extricate it as much as Goenka did for the vipassana course I think is still great work.
Unfortunately I have to agree that it does attract a lot of participants who want to believe in magic and superstition. I was very disappointed when the course was over and I found this out. Perhaps that is why Goenka is very clear in the recordings to be skeptical and only take what one finds useful from the practice.
Thank you for writing this. Echoes my thoughts but I never bothered to write it down. I participated in a 10 day retreat in California, and was also turned off by the pseudo-science and science-bashing. I almost started back on day 4, but stayed on because my friend who had come with me stayed on. In the end, I am glad I completed it. But the pseudo science bits left a bad taste in my mouth, and I couldn't continue with the practice. I think I learned a lot from the 10 day course, and may be I will try it again in future, though.
[Author of the paper here. I am not the OP, though.]
The post on religious-ness / culty-ness has quite a few replies and I thought I'd bundle up my thoughts and experiences here, so here goes:
## Goenka / chanting / Pali / Hindi
###################################
I definitely had a negative response to the chanting and to Goenka himself on my first 10-day course. The teacher's response of "the chanting provides atmosphere" was pretty unsatisfying. Worse than the chanting, I found myself really hating Goenka. At times he was "cute". At times he was serious. I felt like I was being played and it really rubbed me the wrong way. However, I did find I was seeing utility in the meditation by Day 6 or 7, so I stuck it out. After my first course, I was so horrified by the experience and turned off by the cult-like atmosphere that it took me two years and a lot of research before I returned to my second 10-day course.
By the end of my second course, I had really not come to terms with the chanting. As a monolingual English speaker living in Bangalore, it really had the religious overtones of Hindu shlokas. It was quite a bit later that I started reading translations of the Pali used in the chanting. There are two things to note here:
1) The Format: Pali, like Sanskrit, was probably spoken in a sing-song manner. Although we don't know what either sounds like today, the rhythmic chanting is basically Goenka's best guess. [Aside: there is one village in Karnataka which still speaks Sanskrit natively but the language is obviously not the same Sanskrit spoken 3000 years ago.] Like it or not, the chanting is likely the "correct" way to verbalize Pali.
2) The Content: To my English ears, the Pali still sounds like cult music, even though I know what it says now. But all the Pali chanting is a repeat of the instructions given in Hindi and English; there is nothing said in Pali which you aren't otherwise hearing as part of the course instruction.
A note on call-and-response chanting: "Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu" is the only chanting students are offered to (optionally) participate in. This is less than any other school of meditation I have tried.
After sitting 5 courses, I am now quite comfortable with the chanting. Particularly for English speakers, it will take some getting used to. Listen to it on YouTube before taking a course if it concerns you; if you find it too weird or off-putting, don't take a course. If you find it weird but tolerable, you can probably ignore it when you attend your first 10-day course.
## This Really Feels Like a Cult Guys
#####################################
My worst Vipassana "cult" experience occurred on my third 10-day course. One of the volunteers ruffled my cushion after the 2-hour Vipassana session on Day 4. I had curled up into a ball after a very painful meditation. He had decided it was necessary to break noble silence to tell me not to touch the soles of my feet to the cushion. It was my third course but I almost walked out.
You will run into people like this. The courses are volunteer-run, and some of those volunteers will believe in magic crystals and energy waves and crap like that. Some of the volunteers will be CEOs and scientists. The mix is pretty hard to avoid. Vipassana attracts every sort of person from every walk of life. Try to be tolerant.
After that awful third course experience, I decided to take my Vipassana experiment outside of India. As a Canadian living in Bangalore, I wasn't sure if the cult-like appearance of some of the students had more to do with India or Vipassana itself. I did my fourth course in Japan and found the volunteers and the atmosphere to be MUCH less culty. After that, I served (volunteered) for my first course back in India — in Gujarat — I wanted to see if it was any more cult-like on the inside.
What I found while serving was a huge relief. Yes, some volunteers you meet are "looking for something"... sometimes they are serious Buddhists or responding to an Orthodox Hindu upbringing with something they felt countered that (like many New Atheists today). This was still off-putting, obviously. However, the senior volunteers (one fellow who had done a 60-day course) and the teacher were fantastic. Their only concern was the safety and well-being of the meditators: When you get 200 people in one room for 10 days, there's a good chance someone will have a medical issue. Thankfully the teacher for the female side was a doctor. All the volunteers worked tirelessly for 12 days. I myself found I was working harder than I ever had in my life. The older ladies working in the kitchen were lovely. The teacher had a great sense of humour and was very approachable. Behind the scenes, I didn't see any cult-like behaviour at all.
This is one thing I find (perhaps unfairly) reassuring: Most of the teachers I have met are either doctors or PhDs. The inexperienced volunteers may be new age spiritual quacks but the people who have clocked 20,000+ hours meditating Vipassana are not.
## The Discourses Seem Religious
################################
I am quite happy to drop 90% of the theory and I intentionally left 100% of the theory out of my paper. It's not necessary. I haven't found another community with a comparable practice or environment and I am quite certain at this point that self-taught meditation isn't enough for me.
There is a very good chance this isn't true for you.
I wrote the paper with the interest of poking at peoples' curiosity. I have learned a number of yogic meditations, I have sat Zazen (including 7-day Sesshin), I have tried Tibetan and Thai Forest meditation practices. Vipassana is, far and wide, the most systematic meditation practice I have encountered and after years of meditating, my first 10-day course (as difficult as it may have been) was the first time I really saw not only how to meditate but why to meditate. A 10-day Vipassana course is self-described as "The Kindergarten of Vipassana"; as far as curiosity goes, it's a great way to get your feet wet.
Yes, Vipassana courses include Buddhist philosophy... but not much of it. Expect to encounter much more (and much worse) through Thai Forest, Sinhala, Zen, Chan, and Tibetan traditions. Also expect to find out much later. The advantage of a 10-day Vipassana course is that all the spiritual gobbledygook is laid out on the table, up front: "Here, take it or leave it." With other schools of meditation (Yogic, Buddhist, and "Secular") I have found there's a lot more concealed from students early on. It varies. The Thai Forest Tradition doesn't hide much but they will certainly water down their beliefs to keep you engaged. Tibetan sects have explicit "secret" and "magical" practices. Not for me.
Clojure is the least-worst programming language I have ever used in earnest.
Democratic governments based on proportional representation are the least-worst political structures I am aware of.
Vipassana is the least-worst school of meditation I have found so far.
YMMV.
## Ugh, Reincarnation
#####################
Although a person can leave reincarnation out of the picture completely, one can take stock of it in Theravadan terms as a thought exercise: If there is no "I" and no "self", what is there to reincarnate? If I am "reincarnating" constantly, moment to moment, just what is consciousness and what is the stream of consciousness?
"There is a becoming of continuity, but no continuity of becoming." - Whitehead
...I would suggest spending enough time with this quote and all its surrounding literature to understand precisely what it means (and why it is correct) before bothering with the concept of reincarnation.
Reincarnation is not very interesting, no matter how you look at it, which is precisely why I left it out of the paper completely.
## Sam Harris
#############
I'm not a huge fan but I appreciate why some people enjoy his writing. His guided meditations are pretty light — don't expect to get much out of them.
## Other Literature
###################
"The Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book" — I didn't like this and I don't recommend reading it but if you are going to try it, sit a couple thousand hours first... without experience to back it up, this book is far too easy to misinterpret.
"Mindfulness in Plain English" — This is a great (and light) starting point. Very introductory, though.
"Satipattana: The Direct Path to Realization" — This is a great book for examining a core Buddhist text from many angles. If you want to compare Goenka's teachings to others, this is a good starting point.
"Nothing Special: Living Zen" — Ostensibly about Zen practice, I found this book to be a huge help in understanding what was going on with my deeper meditation experiences. Highly recommended.
"The Mind Illuminated" — I have a copy but I haven't read it. I've heard great things and this comment thread has encouraged me to go back and read it. Thanks. :)
## Vipassana is Anti-Science
############################
Most Vipassana teachers seem to be PhDs. Goenka was a well-educated businessman. Many students on courses I've attended have been neuroscientists or neurosurgeons and they didn't take issue with the course material.
I'm really not sure where or how anyone has experienced "anti-science" in Vipassana courses. Even on my first course, when I found everything Goenka was saying rather distasteful, I didn't interpret his little understanding-the-depths-of-particle-theory-won't-bring-you-happiness anecdote to be "anti-science".
Are the tiniest sensations in my body representative of quarks, strings, or leptons? Probably not and I don't believe it... but no one's asking me to, either.
## In Summary
#############
I wrote this paper with the intention of eliminating all spirituality, pseudo-science, and even Buddhism itself from the equation. I find Vipassana very helpful in my life, regardless of its Buddhist origins. I do not find the nature of the teaching to be too offensive. I expect many hackers to be in the same boat.
That said, if Buddhist philosophy freaks you out, do not attend a Vipassana course. Also, I noticed that a few people have referred to it as a "retreat". Vipassana courses are not "retreats" and one should not expect them to be an escape from normal life. Join a Vipassana course fully expecting to work harder than you ever have.
Hope this helps someone while reading the paper and this comment thread. Thanks for reading and if you have constructive criticism on the paper itself (which is a work-in-progress), please feel free to tweet at me or email my address in the PDF.
I greatly appreciate your responses. Putting it as least-worse is a great idea. Had someone told me up front that it would still have religious aspects, chanting, etc. maybe I'd been more likely to stay instead of feeling mislead/broadsided. Or maybe I'd never have gone.
I think your comments here would be a great addition to your paper. These aspects are a huge part of the course and something I didn't feel was well explained at all. If someone is going to react negatively to the trappings of the course then it seems better that they hear of it before they take two weeks to travel to a centre.
Agree that Sam Harris stuff is in no way a replacement. It was his stuff that lead me to go to Vipassana in the first place.
Vipassana is a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Silent in this case really means distraction-free, entertainment-free, or stimulation-free. Think of it as the diametric opposite of social news. No noise, no conversation, no instant gratification, no easy pleasures (not even reading, writing or music). You just eat, sleep and meditate, with occasional breaks in between.
During the course you see other students and listen to recorded meditation lessons, but you are, effectively, alone. It's a cultural trope that having nothing but your own mind for company sends you a bit mad, and in my experience that was basically true. Normally you can count on the distraction stream to save you from your own thoughts, and without it you can spend days stuck in ever-intensifying thought loops with nothing to break you out of them.
Which, to me, gets to the heart of Vipassana. It's not really about silence; it's a specific kind of meditation designed to change your relationship to sensation. I think of it like audio engineering: we have a gain control on what we feel, and when the sensations get too much we turn them down until we're comfortable again. The problem is that you turn down everything at once; distracting yourself from painful experiences also distracts you from pleasurable ones. Keep turning the gain down and you eventually end up with a featureless experience: no peaks or troughs, just a flat line.
The reason you start with silence is because you're going to turn the gain back up, and you don't want to blow out your speakers at the first loud noise. The technique focuses on bodily sensations, but since sensations are mental and physical everything kinda comes along for the ride. You spend hours focusing on the most minute feelings until they fill your entire mind and your whole world is an area of skin the size of a postage stamp. It can get pretty intense.
But what makes it too intense? You do. It's not like bad news is painful because it melts your auditory nerves. Rather, you react to the sound, then you react to your reaction, then you react to that reaction and so on until you've built this unbearable feedback loop. Then you turn down the gain because, damn, that was LOUD. But that's bad engineering; you gotta go fix the feedback at the source. And that means unlearning your reactions.
That was my core experience of Vipassana. Turn up the sensation, learn to accept the sensation. Feel more, react less, repeat. Everything I tried to avoid thinking about, I thought about. Everything I didn't want to feel, I felt. I was defenceless as my self-sabotaging thought patterns sabotaged me over and over until I realised I was the one doing it and I could just... stop.
It's easy to dwell on the hard parts, but it was often quite peaceful. I spent an hour watching a family of lizards (they hid until I'd been still for fifteen minutes), another watching the finches chase each other and listening to their tiny wings, and another just looking at trees. Have you ever noticed how green trees are? I don't think I'd seen anything that green since I was a child.