Here are the main points.
It’s [U Ba Khin’s technique] not the unique teaching of the historical Buddha, lost to humanity for two millennia. He taught an integrated approach to meditation, and explicitly recommended a dozen other different things you can try (focusing on the repulsiveness of the body… developing lovingkindness and empathetic joy…) which I haven’t mentioned here.
There is no “technique”. What’s more, anyone who tells you they have the one correct way of teaching meditation is fundamentally deluded.There can be no set technique for teaching a skill. Skills are creative; they are adaptive to different circumstances; they are a process. Thus, there can be no static, universalizable, exclusive way of attaining mastery in them. People will become great writers doing a huge variety of specific things; the only similarities will be general ones (good style; good structure; etc.). Just so, the only universals in becoming a great meditator are extremely general (calm; awareness; insightfulness; equanimity…). There are only different approaches, which emphasize different things to varying extents, and have different historical idiosyncrasies. Which leads me to my next point…
The only reason Goenka thinks that what he’s doing is optimal or unique is because of twists and turns in the history of thought. It’s only the division of meditation into two unrelated streams of concentration and observation that allows him to champion the supremacy of “Vipassana”, as opposed to something else. And it’s the bare-bones approach of Burmese modernism which created the idea that simply looking at physical experience, without any further intellectual or spiritual sophistication, is the road to enlightenment. On which note…
What he teaches is literally just mindfulness. In terms of ‘technique’, everything he teaches is identical to what you’d find on a mindfulness course. He doesn’t actually teach insight (vipassana). He teaches the establishment of mindfulness (satipatthana). Only Burmese Modernists think they are the same thing. He tells you where to look; he doesn’t teach you how to understand what you see there. In fact, he only even does the first half of it; the last two parts of the Satipatthana Sutta are pretty much ignored. So, he just tells you to pay attention to the breath, then your physical sensations. And he tells you to do it clearly, calmly, and equanimously. What you see when you get there… never goes farther than the most basic and universally known of Buddhist doctrines — the three marks of existence.
There are, in fact, only three main things which make Goenka’s particular approach to teaching really unique.
The courses are free.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. This means that way, way, way more people will go to them than the competition.
They actually make you sit down and meditate
Imagine a fitness programme where they take you for ten days and make you run ten laps around a track, then do a hundred push-ups and then a hundred sit-ups, on a loop, for ten hours a day. By the end of it… you’d be physically fit. Is it because those laps around that specific track are f*** magic? No. It’s because they actually make you do it. Other fitness programmes don’t sequester you and force you to do it. So, other fitness programmes don’t get the same results. That being said, other fitness programmes don’t usually end up with a bunch of brainwashed drones running the same ten laps around the same track for ten days in a row again and again and again… forever… but… whatever.
They emphasize bodily sensations
The U Ba Khin–Goenka tradition has exactly one key innovation — one element of their teaching and practice that is relatively unique to them. It is unique from any other strand of Burmese modernism and the wider Vipassana movement. It is, as best I can tell, fairly unique in Buddhist history. They emphasize the heck out of the physicality of vedanā. That the pleasant and unpleasant sensations which lead to your patterns of reaction are physical sensations that affect your actual, physical body. That’s an astonishingly good call, which tends to get criminally under-emphasized in the traditionally mind-body-dualistic trend of Indian and European thought. Because even if you don’t buy their theory of mind, it is, in practice, much, much easier to notice that your chest is tightening than that the general tone and direction of your thoughts is trending towards anger or anxiety. And, noticing that, one can start to arrest the pattern of blind reactions.
But those three points aside, there is nothing — nothing — to the core technique which is unique to Goenka and his way of teaching.
And everything he says to obfuscate that fact is either a misdirection or, very often, a straight-up lie. That being said, there are things Goenka does that other New Burmese Method or Mindfulness teachers do not do. And it’s those that I’ll discuss in the next section.
II.
He points you down a path that leads you not to liberation, but back to him
OK. So let’s say Goenka were actually a teacher of vipassana. He might sit you down and make you focus on something until you developed an elementary level of samādhi — mental clarity, calm, concentration. And then he’d establish mindfulness (sati) — telling you to observe different aspects of your experience, like your breath, or bodily sensations, or emotional states. And then he might give you a few pointers as to how to gain insight into the nature of existence (vipassana). He could introduce you to the basic Buddhist notions of the three marks of existence, for example. So far, so good. But then again… nearly anyone could do that. As he himself says in his discourses: the ten-day course is just the “kindergarten” of vipassana. Just the shallows of the great ocean of insight. So you’d keep at these things. But sooner or later, you’d notice that you’re not fully enlightened. You still experience suffering. You act in ways you’d rather not. And you don’t fully understand how and why all this happens the way it does. And so you’d come to him with questions. Elementary school questions, middle school questions, high school questions, undergraduate questions, post-graduate questions… And, as a guide to liberation, who knows the path ahead, he could explain these things to you; suggest new ways of looking at it; gauge where you are, where you want to get to, how you take on board input… and come up with the right thing to say, which will induce you to go in the right direction. This is what the historical Buddha did. And nothing about Goenka’s words or actions leads me to believe he would be capable of this, to virtually any degree. And so he has to misdirect you, to stop this from happening, and showing him up as a charlatan and a fraud. What’s more — such an approach would be useless for marketing purposes. Because if he taught you how to do it, and you came to understand it… then you could just go off and do it yourself. And you could even teach it to other people, using different language and different teaching methods (you know… like the Buddha did). And so, he doesn’t do that. What he does instead is establish the following model:
Step 1 : Meditation means going round and round your body, doing body scans for the rest of your life. As you get better at this… well, you can scan your body with a finer-tooth comb. And then you keep doing it.
Step 2 : Every so often, come back to the meditation centre… and do the exact same course you did the first time.
Step 3: There’s not really a Step 3. Just repeat Steps 1 and 2.
In this model, there is no development, no further progress, no liberation. It’s just a tight loop with his face and his voice and his exact words at the centre. And so, most of the unique elements of his teaching are designed to get you to buy into this model, rather than lead you to greater insight. I’ve boiled these elements down to two main points.
II.1. Developing awareness = more subtle sensations
Goenka devotes a huge chunk of the ten days to develop the following narrative:
When you first start observing your bodily sensations, you notice “gross, solidified” sensations. That is, basically, normal sensations. Pain, muscle tightness, heat, cold, pressure. You also have “blind spots”, where you don’t particularly feel anything on that part of the body. But, if you keep on observing your bodily sensations, and keep narrowing down your field of observation (from the whole arm at once… to the whole forearm at once… to a few inches of the forearm at once), you start to experience “subtle” sensations. Tingling. Buzzing. Glowing. Something like an electric current. Basically, stuff that isn’t there in everyday life. And if you keep going at it, the gross, solidified sensations and blind spots start to disappear. And you begin to feel subtle sensations uniformly, all across the body. OK.
Now, get this. The path to full enlightenment is to keep doing this until you constantly feel this uniform field of subtle sensations, and to be constantly aware of it, at all times. At that point, you keep sweeping up and down the body… until your awareness becomes so acute that you start to feel the subatomic particles of your body. When you get to the point of feeling the subatomic particles of your body, you are now directly experiencing how they arise and pass away instantly — popping up in one location and then winking out of existence, only to pop up somewhere else. Once you directly experience the quantum field, you literally observe impermanence. You no longer perceive objects as permanent — literally and directly. As such, you no longer have any objects you can attach yourself to. You literally do not perceive them. As a result, you are liberated from attachment. You are actually incapable of it. There is nothing in your field of awareness you can attach yourself to. You are fully enlightened. You are now a Buddha.
OK. So. First off. This is absolute insanity. But let’s put that aside for the moment. The important point is that what he has done is take you away from the path of insight and understanding, and led you onto a path that will stretch on forever.
Let’s say you went to Goenka to learn mathematics. You want to understand maths at a deeper and deeper and deeper level. And Goenka says “OK. Before I can teach you to understand mathematics, I first have to teach you numbers. The first number is 1. The second is 2. But actually there are lots of numbers between 1 and 2. So go sit over there until you find all the numbers between 1 and 2.” You will be there forever. There are infinite numbers between 1 and 2. And knowing them all has basically nothing to do with understanding mathematics. But it does take a long time. And it can be quite addictive, if you start to get into it. Just so: there will never be an end to the subtlety of the bodily sensations you can experience. The more you sit there and do it, the more the neural network responsible for monitoring physical sensations will expand. And it can keep expanding, keep expanding, keep expanding. Keep dedicating more and more neurons to the task… keep making more and more complex inter-connections between those neurons.
So you’ll just sit there for the rest of your life, until you are, essentially, on a constant, high dose of LSD, experiencing a raging wildfire of sensation. And he will never have to do anything again, except keep telling you to scan your body until you reach the f*** quarks. It’s like putting you on a treadmill, dangling a carrot in front of it, and telling you to keep running til you catch it. So, that’s Part I of his Closed-Circle Path to Liberation. One quick note before we move on, though. Despite the generally disparaging tone I’ve fallen into… I’m not actually against doing any of this. In fact, I’m increasingly of the opinion that this is one of the best things you can do with your time. For one thing, you don’t even need a partner or a equipment to practice it, so there are no external circumstances which would get in the way. For another, you will almost certainly feel amazing all the time. For a third, the body is, at minimum, super super super super super important. And, at maximum, it’s the one and only thing you have. So spending all your time getting intimate with it is a pretty safe bet.
So, to be clear: I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with doing this. All I’m trying to do is point out how it’s used as an intrinsic part of Goenka’s propaganda machine. The same way that building roads and holding parades on them where people congregate and play music and have fun is a great thing… but parades can still be used to manipulate you by totalitarian regimes.
II. 2. Developing equanimity = rote repetition
Goenka establishes a parallel narrative of the Path to Liberation, which interacts with the first in a few interesting ways. The story goes thus:
The state of ignorance (avidya) and the constant cycle of suffering (samsara) is the result of the deeply-ingrained habit pattern of the mind to crave pleasant sensations and be averse to unpleasant sensations. Every time you feel a pleasant sensation, and desire it, you create a sankhara. From that point on, you want it more, and are frustrated when you don’t get it, or can’t keep hold of it (which will eventually happen, because things are impermanent). Every time you feel an unpleasant sensation, and desire to stop feeling it, you create a sankhara. From that point on, you are frustrated when it comes again, and you can’t get rid of it (which will eventually happen, because things are impermanent). So. The way out of this is to stop this habit pattern of craving and aversion. And this is how you do that. You scan your body, on the lookout for sensations. When you find a pleasant one… you resolutely refuse to crave it. And when you find an unpleasant one… you resolutely refuse to be averse to it. You keep doing this… keep doing this… until you reverse the conditioning.
OK. So this next bit may be a little bit of a stretch. But I think the kernel of insight here is potentially very important. He is not saying “examine your field of sensations, and maintain a general attitude of equanimity. As you keep doing this, day by day, this attitude will become more natural to you, until it permeates your life.” He is saying “examine your field of sensations… and at each thing you find, one by one, maintain your equanimity. Each time you notice something, first assess whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. If it is pleasant, exert an active effort not to react with craving. If it is unpleasant, exert an active effort not to react with aversion. Once that has been accomplished, move on. At the next thing you notice, repeat the process. It is the rote repetition of this process which will eventually lead you out of unhappiness.” He is saying that the way to reverse your underlying disposition to crave and be averse is to avoid doing that, on a micro scale, until you brute-force yourself into a different disposition. Like turning around a landlocked aircraft carrier by pushing at one end of it, one millimeter at a time… I’ll give an example to illustrate the point. Suppose someone says: “Always tell the truth. If you keep doing that, you’ll change your general disposition — the trend of your speech. It’ll become a habit, and thus be very easy.” Great. Now suppose someone says: “Every time you are about to open your mouth, rehearse what you are going to say. Assess whether it is the truth or a lie. If it is a lie, stop, and then tell the truth instead. If it is the truth, proceed. It is by paying conscious attention to every single moment of speech that you will gradually re-wire yourself to tell the truth.” He’s suggesting you manually reroute each moment of experience, one by one. Rather than adopt a general approach to your experience. It’s like trying to divert a river by dipping a bucket into it and tossing the contents to the side, one bucket at a time. Rather than digging a new channel and putting up a dam — doing something so that the river flows a different direction on its own, without active effort or intervention. Or it’s like trying to cut down a tree by snapping off each leaf and branch individually, rather than pulling it up by its roots. I hope that’s clear.
Alright. So here’s how this traps you.
First point.
Just like the last one, this is, in my opinion, an endless path. You will never get to a point where you don’t desire pleasant sensations and not desire unpleasant sensations. Pretty much by definition. What you can do is increase your detachment, your equanimity. You can care less and less about it, through calming yourself down. And you can certainly diminish your disappointment when the pleasant goes away and the unpleasant arises, through understanding. But you can keep doing that forever. Just like there are infinite numbers between 1 and 2, there are infinitely many numbers between 1 and 0. You’ll never reach Absolute 0. You’ll just keep getting asymptotically closer, and closer, and closer… until you die. But that’s just my guess, and constitutes a departure from Buddhist tradition. So we won’t linger on it.
Second point.
Basically, he’s f*** with you. He spends all this time and all this effort building up this myth of Subtle Sensations as the Path to Liberation… and then punishes you for seeking them out. “These tingles are the best things in the world. But you’re not allowed to like them! …but they’re the best thing in the world. Hey! You’re not allowed to like them. …….have I ever told you how great they are? They’re really great. They’re actually the best. But……hey! Is that you liking them? Bad boy! Bad!” It’s like dangling a doggie treat in front of a dog, and striking it every time it tries to have a lick.
Third point .
Basically……. he’s still f*** with you. Let’s say you didn’t buy that these Subtle Sensations are so amazing when he told you to. Well, you almost certainly will now, via reverse psychology. Cus the more someone tells you NOT to crave something… the more you’ll crave it. (And then we cycle back to the previous point, where he smacks you for craving it.) So, the first time he put this forward, I was like: “Cool. Fair point. I mean, I didn’t come here to feel a pleasant tingling up my butt. There are definitely quicker ways to do that. But, fair enough. Some people might indeed be here cus they can’t afford the drugs or dildos. So yeah, Goenka — you tell ’em!” And then, the fifty-seventh time he put this forward, I was like: “…oh. He’s doing the ‘Don’t think of a pink elephant…. don’t think of a pink elephant!’ trick. The one thing that accomplishes is making us think of a pink elephant. I see that every time the tingles disappear from a part of the body, I’m now disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed on Day 4. I wasn’t disappointed on Day 5. But now it’s starting to get to me. He’s definitely, definitely f*** with us.”
Fourth point.
Basically… he’s still f*** with you. As with so many things, he’s super vague about this point, so it’s hard to pin him down on it exactly. But he definitely says dozens and dozens of things which all imply that the gross, solidified sensations are the result of past aversion. So, if at some point you stop feeling uniform subtle sensations, and instead feel a pain in your knee, or the feeling of pressure where you’re sitting on your cushion… it’s because at some point, you generated a negative sankhara of aversion. So, firstly, this makes you feel guilty for feeling pain or mundane sensations. But secondly, it leads you on this feedback loop between the two things he has you doing forever. Unless you literally sit all day body-scanning, you will eventually return back to normal and not feel constant tingles. At which point, it’s not just that you failed on the first thing (you’re not body-scanning enough), it’s that you failed at the second thing (you must have been reacting negatively to unpleasant sensations without noticing!). It’s as if he gave you two sandpits and told you to make two cubes of dry sand. You won’t be able to — you’ll just keep picking up sand and pouring it on top, and it will keep sliding off sideways. But then he tells you that when the first pile of sand slips down, it’s because you didn’t stack the second pile of sand well enough. So you get into a more frantic feedback loop, where the success of one task is dependent on the other.
But anyway. None of that is the main point, in my opinion. The main point is that it makes you depressed as f***. I’m not saying “it will make you sad”, or “it will make you unhappy”. I’m saying it will make you depressed. That it will make you get stuck in a cycle of sadness and unhappiness. (And then you’ll reach for salvation from this depression… in the very thing that made you depressed. In other words, it’s a classic example of addiction.) There’s the obvious argument for this — namely, that you’re telling people to stop enjoying things. Which is asceticism. Which is, famously, not Buddhism. That’s why it’s called the Middle Way — between asceticism and just doing whatever the hell you want. At which point, you rock out the usual quotes about sukha and piti — wholesome mental joy, and wholesome physical pleasure, where the Buddha says things like:
‘Know how to assess different kinds of pleasure. Knowing this, pursue inner bliss.’ (…) This is called the pleasure of renunciation, the pleasure of seclusion, the pleasure of peace, the pleasure of awakening. Such pleasure should be cultivated and developed, and should not be feared, I say. ‘Know how to assess different kinds of pleasure. Knowing this, pursue inner bliss.’ That’s what I said, and this is why I said it.
Araṇavibhaṅga Sutta, MN.III.230-236 (Sujato translation)
