The Realization of Vipassana

(Note: this post may make more sense if you’ve read the two January Vipassana posts)

Anicca, Anicca, Anicca …the law of impermanence …everything is constantly changing.  Even this trip which slowly became my refuge and which has felt so solid and permanent is now just dissolving away like the pain in my knees and hips did during all those hours of meticulous meditation.

Following the most profound experience of my life to date, I am absolutely clear now that one creates one’s own happiness simply by not creating one’s own misery.  One has the choice to react, or not to react.  One can use the mind to observe the physical sensations manifested by a strong craving or aversion (emotion), or let the emotion take over the mind …the theory is that simple.  The practise of remaining equanamous is the tough bit.  I don’t know this because someone told me to believe it; I know this because I have experienced it first hand at the level of sensation within the body.  I observed the pain in my hips, I watched it for the rising and falling collection of sensations that it really was.  Labelling it pain and reacting to it by changing position is what I have trained my mind to do throughout life but I have taught it a new skill now …to observe those sensations …and ultimately I watched them dissolve.

The objective of these courses is to teach Dhamma¹ through the same experiential technique that the Buddha himself taught 2500 years ago.  Goenka teaches this technique to “purify the mind” in an environment where you can put it to the test sufficiently to be able to take it away and use it in your daily life.  “Purification” of the mind is about uprooting cravings and aversions that have deeply planted themselves within your mind².  On-going practise is about continuing that work and most importantly about remaining equanamous and therefore not generating more cravings and aversions going forward.

The technique itself is very stark and very simple.  It does not use any chanting or staring at and imagining objects, it just teaches you to silently observe your own breath, not to control it but to observe it, from the breath you eventually move to being able to observe sensation all over the body and from there to observing individual sensations at the cellular and molecular level.  It is a scientific and universal path towards real happiness that involves no religious blind faith, rite or ritual.

Clearly there is a bunch of accompanying theory which Mr Goenka delivers in his gentle, learnedly entertaining way through the evening DVD discourses.  I have sat through these discourses before and I have a book summarising them which I have read and delved into several times since my course in Chennai and yet when you take on that information in the midst of personally experiencing what he is talking about you can take so much more away from his stories, analogies and explanations.  For this reason alone my second experience was far deeper and more impactful than my first but I also gave it everything for the sake of my future and all of the interactions I will have in life from now on.

¹ (The Buddha’s Noble 8 Fold Path)

² Since my last course I have been able to eat almost everything that I thought I didn’t like previously …like nuts as a sweet rather than a savoury food and big sloppy raw tomatoes.  I’m still to conquer melon and papaya though!