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All Life Is
Suffering The
creation of a Guantamo Bay like environment in the
pseudo-Buddhist sectarian „Vipassana“meditation camps
of the S.N. Goenka movement Are you a
masochist? A spiritual masochist with autistic tendencies and
an overly authoritative father maybe? Then I have just the right thing
for you: I ran into
a guy in Rishikesh who told me of the supposedly free 10 day so called
“Vipassana” retreats the “Dhamma” outfits originally
founded by a Sayagyi U Ba Khin from Burma (now Myanmar) offer. What a steal: 10 days
sitting, all meals provided, one’s own room, huge meditation hall – what could
go wrong! But one
step at a time: The daily routine, starting 4am and ending at 9pm with 3 breaks
for breakfast, lunch and tea seemed harsh but 10 hour sittings are promised to
let you progress fast on the wheel of “Dhamma” (their
version of Dharma) towards the ultimate goal. So I signed in, surrendered my phone
and valuables into the vault for safekeeping and happily moved into my 2x2m
cell with attached bathroom expecting a strict but exhilarating 10 days to
come. Man, was I
ever wrong! Have you ever
sat in a hall with eighty Indians most of whom are new to meditation? Not one of
my favorite situations to be in. I got farted towards on my front, serially
burped on my back, repeatedly and extremely loudly coughed at, sneezed at and
not to be forgotten there was yawning and snot pulled up the nose in 30 second
intervals. Plus there was more traffic of people getting in and out of the hall
during sittings than passengers move at Victoria station at 3pm. None of these
clowns would have lasted 10 minutes in Buddha Hall in Poona, nor in any other
meditation hall I since visited in the ashrams I lived
in over the last decades. They would have been expelled, probably for good. At the
first sitting I was introduced to a bodiless voice of some Pali
sing sang that sounded more like the howling a lovesick sea lion. It kept on
and on, finally ending with a triple “bah, bah, bah” by the audience, right out
of “the sheeple’s handbook for the devout
religionist”. It really made my hair stand up. This not only went on in each
and every single sitting of which there were 10 every day, it culminated in a
90 minute long discourse of a guy who reminded me of Jabba the Hutt. This
person was telling me all about HIS version of Vipassana and in the course of
that getting everything wrong about the real method. The audience was
mesmerized. In his
famous discourse on morals he claimed one should and in fact must be truthful
in speech and at the same time never hurt anyone (in speech) by punishment of missing
enlightenment. Talk about a double bind right there. While he was lying right
out of his nose, mind you. Granted, it takes a few decades of life experience,
possibly the reading of some 6000+ books to figure that out right away and none
of the audience seemed old and/or experienced or even smart enough for that
kind of discernment. No sir, good behavior does NOT come first;
it is a result of rising in awareness, usually thru meditation, not vice versa.
No sir, equanimity is not the be-all-end-all of life, discernment is. Without
that you will never know what to do in a given situation. And discernment equals
wisdom without which a nice person is just a mindless do-gooder who will likely
do more harm than good in any given circumstance. And this you do not get by
sitting watching you body sensations, not even in equanimity. And so on. I
could write an essay about the obvious b/s he spouted about Buddhism and Vipassana,
not even being an expert on that religion. As
mentioned we were expected to sit for 10 hours. Of course nobody in the hall
could do even one straight hour without changing position once or twice, not
even me with 30+ years of almost daily sitting experience. But “Jabba”
insisted. In his daily discourse he would repeat the mantra that the good
student would ignore the pain or transcend it with his method (which did not work, no surprise there). Even the super devoted German
“server” moved every 30 minutes or so, and that after numerous 10-day sitting
experiences. He still had the insolence to lecture us on how to sit right
during those mind numbing discourses. When I told him to f*ck off he was
visibly disturbed, and never talked to me again (well, THAT worked!). Part of
hell for me was that in spite of accumulating evidence of horse manure
distributed among the participants I did try to follow instruction for about six
or seven days as good as I could – with the result of exceedingly painful
sittings that lasted for shorter and shorter periods of time without position
change. Any yoga apprentice could have told me that in advance. Maybe I should
take up yoga next. Is the
essential message that the historical Buddha used Sayagyi
U Ba Khin’s style of
Vipassana correct? It seems very unlikely that 376 million Buddhists, including
the master of all trades, Osho, got it all wrong and only THIS guy has it right.
But what a powerful sales proposal it is. Anyone educated in hypnotic language
can recognize the speech pattern used by him and subsequently there was very
little meditating going on as everyone was put into a mild trance by that slime
bag before meditation even started. It was quite revolting really, once you
recognized the intent behind all that love & light garbage. He would veery slooowly and with a thick
accent spread his religious drivel onto his quite literally captive audience. His
proposed secret, allegedly used over the centuries only in Burma, and now
graciously offered “for free” to the world, consists of something I learned in
1978 in the Auditorium Maximum of the University Hamburg. Then it was called “autogenes Training”. He also in a manner of speaking uses
the real Vipassana technique which quite simply is the watching of the in- and out breath but calls this by a different name and
ostensibly proposes this to be only the entry level to be quickly overtaken by
his “real” version. He also gives a wrong instruction how to do it with
emphasis on “feeling sensations” when in fact that is not the emphasis of
Vipassana at all. In the course of his 15 hours of “discourse”, if you can call
it that because it is more of a sales proposal, he again and again explains his
technique, which btw. could be taught to a smart 10
year old in 15 minutes. The enthralled audience gives the visual impression of listening
to the messiah himself. Talk about trance induction and the dumbing down of participants. How in hell
can moving your consciousness around your body and thereby releasing old
tension with equanimity towards these bodily impressions remove old karma? This
is the all important feature he insists again and again … and again, ad nausea. Beats me. But hey,
there was once a guy called Maharishi who would sell you a “personal mantra”
for 400 bucks that can do the same, and make you invincible to boot and allows
you to live forever. For an extra five grand he even taught you to fly. He sold
millions of them, some even to the Beatles. He is dead now. He was an
accountant and a 100% fraud. But don’t tell that to his disciples. Back to the
sect at hand: there is also an “assistant teacher” on location for questions
one might have. I asked only two. The first one was “if I get suffocated by an
attacker should I defend myself or remain in equanimity towards this bodily
sensation?” – He did not understand what I was saying. He did not have enough
command of the English language for such a complicated grammatical construct. So
he cleverly waved to his German assistant, a lifeless rigid figure who
regardless of his young age came across like a corpse. He woke up from trance
with this genius reply: “This does not happen to good people and if it ever did
they should learn Tai Chi”. Thank you very much. What a shame, over a million Tibetan
Buddhists who where mercilessly slaughtered by communist minions with Kalashnikovs
did not get that life saving wisdom in time. Or they where all wolves in sheep clothing and deserved what was
coming. Who knows with those Asian types anyway? The other
question arose when one morning on day six I experienced a strong vertigo. He
did not understand the word. I had to explain “like drunk” – waving my body
around. Now, he had just given us a sermon on the importance of watching bodily
sensation with equanimity. He repeated exactly that sermon as answer to my
question. Then he summoned me to sit in front of him, and repeated it again. He
must be used to really dumb audiences. Needless to say this did nothing to
alleviate my condition which turned out to be simple dehydration. Yeah, the food. They call it “a simple vegetarian diet”. That is an
euphemism for white rice with overcooked veggies, mostly carrots and peas. I
lost 4 KG in 10 days – which I think was the sole benefit of that entire
exercise. In every
scam there is a financial side. This joint runs on donations, which is touted
as the great selfless work of their founding fathers. But as audits into the red cross, Caritas, UNICEF and other NGOs, that are based on
the same donation principle, show again and again: up to 90% of the donations
end up in the pockets of the trustees. I have a strange feeling this case is no
exception. On the evening before we all got our money back, “Jabba” made it
clear that the sole task of a “householder”, that is
anyone with an income, is to donate a sizeable part of it to charity. When I
went collecting my goods the next day there was already a crowd gathered at a
table set up exclusively to receive checks and cash for that purpose. I asked a
few westerners who had done these courses and no-one gave less than 100 bucks. Pretty good for an investment of maybe 15 bucks for food and gas
and electricity and another 3 bucks for 2 or 3 Indian workers. The rest
was done by so called “servers”, volunteers that were not paid. You do the
math. What did I
take away from that entire episode? Mainly how Jim Jones could get his
followers to drink the cool aide and how Scientology is so successful is
fleecing their members with an equally convincing story of the ultimate goal,
in this case to become a “Thetan”, exclusively thru
their means. In the day
and age of the internet where anyone can read about Dolores Cannons findings,
life between lives with Michael Newton, OBEs with Robert Monroe, NDEs, past
life regressions, UFOs and alien abductions, MK Ultra and a super corrupted elite
running the show using money, manipulation and guns to control the masses, a
seemingly simple solution wrapped into a childish world-view still finds its fanboys and-girls. Ignorance is bliss after all, for the
simpleton humanist hippie as well as the intellectually lazy newager. And of course the old adage assigned to Einstein today
holds truer than ever: “The stupidity of the average human and the Universe are
without bounds, and I am not sure about the latter”. Samvado April 2019 Addendum: I have written the piece above right after my
first experience with the S.N. Goenka sect. It’s
content stands BUT in the meantime I considered two things: one, is there a
benefit for the novice Goenka follower even if what he is trained to do has
nothing to do with Vipassana? And second: can someone who knows the real
technique make use of the setup without being driven nuts by the noise and
turmoil in the meditation hall and those mind numbing discourses? If you
manage to get around that indoctrination crap and wear earplugs during the
sittings in the hall you will be save from the mind numbing Jabba-the-hut
sing-sang and the multitude of human created noises around you. In that case
the structure works for you and you will likely have 10 days of intense
meditation – and those are, at least financially, for free. Footnotes: I only
found this after the fact but I have to agree 100% with my old guru: If you want
to do the right thing listen to the right instructions here: Or read it
here: Contrary to
claims of exclusivity for facilitating enlightenment by the above mentioned
sect there are a few alternatives that are said to also work: |