The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: A Critique of the Goenka 10 – Day Vipassana Retreat
(Please read this if you are thinking about doing a retreat)
I just got done with a S.N. Goenka 10 – Day Vipassana Retreat in Pyin Oo Lwin Myanmar and I am coming away with mixed feelings about the whole experience. Before going into the retreat, I heard overwhelmingly good things how it changed people’s lives for the better with the only negative things being about how intense sitting for 10 1/2 hours of meditation a day was. Even doing quick research beforehand you don’t find much balance or critique unless you really look for it.
After completing the retreat there was so much I agree with and can see how people gain valuable insight into themselves and have better perspectives to live a more happy life. The problem is that there is also a subtle dark side that many people may not be aware of that I believe could have serious complications on one’s views and mental state.
This is my critique of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Goenka specific Vipassana 10 – day meditation retreat.
Good
Awareness of Breath and Body
Provides focus to your mind. It also makes you more aware of your emotions and what you are experiencing. You are being conditioned to live in the present moment.
Theory of Impermanence
Sensations and life will rise and pass. Teaches you to be aware that what you are experiencing is not permanent so you should not develop attachment or avoidance. This helps provide stability of the mind.
Strength
Meditating for 10 1/2 hours a day is hard work. Each time you master another level of the technique you gain confidence.
Often you set goals for yourself especially during the hour of determination (where you cannot move your legs, unclasp your hands, or open your eyes for 1 hour) and by accomplishing them you keep increasing your confidence.
After meditating for so long when you go home meditating for half an hour to an hour should be easy work.
Meditating for over an hour when you are not flexible can be painful. You ignore and overcome your pain.
Time to Yourself
You are in your own head for 10 days cut off from interacting with others. You are completely unplugged from the outside world which is always a benefit in the hectic world we live in.
You are in your mind for 10 days which means you have time to take a step back and reflect on past, present, and future during the breaks and/or meditations (you are supposed to acknowledge your mind is wandering during meditation and return to the present)
Karma
If you do good things you will have good happen back to you in return and if you do bad things you will have bad things happen to you in return. This mindset promotes people to act in good ways and avoid acting in bad ways.
Retreat Structure
A lot of time was put into the schedule and how to effectively facilitate 10 1/2 hours of meditation a day. Everything ran like clockwork. Facilities were beautiful and the food was good.
Bad
Pureness of Technique Claim
Goenka makes the claim that his Vipassana technique has been preserved for 2500 years in purity passed down directly from Buddha. If it does not work for you it is because you are practicing it wrong and nothing due to flaws in the technique.
Surgical Operation of the Mind
Goenka comments during the video discourses at night that he is giving you the tools to do surgical operations on your mind. You will be going deep into your mind to find the root causes of your misery. It will be unpleasant, but you are just removing the pus or impurities that cause your misery.
This creates a mindset that you can treat whatever negative conditions you have using this technique. This can be very dangerous for people who experience serious symptoms because it may prevent them from seeking proper professional help or even degrade their condition further if they only utilize this technique thinking it will cure their condition if they just keep practicing.
Thought, Verbal, and Physical
Goenka rationalizes that verbal and physical actions that harm others but come from a mindset of love are okay. He uses an example of forcefully grabbing a child who is running towards fire to save them from being burned.
What he doesn’t talk about are the numerous examples in history where horrible things have happened, and people have suffered tremendously or were killed. I mentioned this to a fellow retreat member afterwards and she brought up the example of gay-conversion therapy. Often it is done out of love, but it rationalizes the suffering of the person being abused.
Liberation
Although Goenka makes the claim that all of this is non-sectarian he then goes into teaching aspects of Buddhism and claims that your only path to salvation is by using his technique. If you aren’t looking for enlightenment, he then claims that removal of all your misery by this technique is the key to pure love and happiness.
No Trained Staff
All the staff are volunteers and the assistant teachers who lead the sessions seem only qualified to answer any questions or concerns with just repeating what Goenka has instructed for the technique. If anybody had any severe traumatic issues they were dealing with I am afraid they would not find help in the retreats beyond possibly stick it out or focus on your breathing. They have a warning when you sign up about previous mental conditions, but this does not help those who develop issues during the retreat.
Ugly
Goenka’s Ego
Goenka claims in one of the last discourses that there was a prophecy that when Vipassana was spread to Myanmar that Vipassana would be lost in India and that the technique would have to remain pure in Myanmar so that it could be reintroduced to India 2500 years later. It just so happens that 2500 years was the same time he brought it to India. Why couldn’t it have been 2499 or 2501 years?
I was surprised at how much ego Goenka had for being the leader of a practice that is supposed to dissolve your ego.
Dark Side of Persuasion
(Before I get into this, I just want to note that these are my personal opinions from my observations, and I do not believe there are serious bad intentions beyond trying to suck people into his practice).
Sets up agreeable logic trains but then delivers the opposite.
He gains your trust by saying that you should question things. He later preaches that his technique is pure (unquestionable).
He says that everybody is going through their own individual experience. What was weird was that the general emotional trend (worst times such as the afternoon of day 8) was shared by everybody.
Us vs. Them Mentality
Organized religion has rites and rituals that get away from what the original meaning of the religious teaching. This technique is pure and doesn’t do that. He makes fun of religious practices to both relate to those who are non-religious and to say that what he is doing is superior.
He talks about the people who leave as being weak minded. Implies that we who stay are strong-minded and creates judgement towards those who leave.
On the last day he says we are Vipassana meditators now and that we only practice Vipassana. This leaves out all sorts of other types of meditation and may even dissuades people from other versions of Vipassana.
Audio and Video
While meditating in deep states or while mentally tired and watching the discussions where you may be more suggestable you will hear Goenka say different things. You don’t realize it but Goenka is planting seeds for you to keep coming back or to tell others to come.
Be alert. Be attentive. Be happy. Be peaceful. Anicca. The gross sensations you are feeling is aversion, when you are feeling this you are releasing your build up aversion sakkrahs. When you feel subtle sensations, you are experiencing built up craving sakkrahs. By treating them with indifference you will release these craving sakkrahs. (telling you what mindset to be in and influencing what sensations you are aware of and reinforcing that you are releasing Sakkrahs).
If you can see into your body and dissolve everything, start working on your spinal cord. You can feel blockages and remove those. Then dissolve everything and work just with the 6 senses. (planting the seed of what is possible if you keep practicing).
The best gift of love you can give is spreading Dhamma (telling people to tell others to join his retreat).
You should practice 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening every day and come back every year to refresh on the technique (telling you come back each year).
Association (this one isn’t too bad)
Has singing in both the video and audio to connect concepts across the discourses and in meditation. This is to have the concepts sink in deeper.
Frequency buzzing during influential parts of meditation to influence trance like states
(This one may be a little out there and could just be in my head, but I thought I should throw this out there in case it actually is happening. It would be worth testing this as a hypothesis…)
When I first started the retreat, I was right next to the speakers and noticed that there was a weird buzzing frequency at times during the audio of the meditations. I didn’t think anything of it.
Later after the 8th day afternoon session I was suddenly super depressed. I was having good meditations in the early afternoon sessions but then after the hour of determination session I couldn’t focus very much. I am always a very optimistic person, so I was very confused why my loss of focus suddenly put me into this depressive state. After the session ended during tea time I walk outside, and everybody was sitting around looking way sadder and more depressed than normal. This was also weird because we were supposed to all be having our own individual experiences and mental journey. Why was everybody having what appeared to be similar emotional states?
I go into the night hour of determination meditation session and I began meditating at a certain level of consciousness. I am focusing on scanning different parts of my body for sensations when suddenly while Goenka is talking I drop into a deeper state of consciousness. “Wait a second,” I thought, “I didn’t cause myself to go into a deeper state of consciousness. That came from the audio tape.”
I started listening to the Burmese translation that played after Goenka talked and there was something disconcerting about it and it sounded different than what it normally sounded.
Am I being brainwashed?
Am I aware of all the messages that he has been preaching?
Is there the potential for bad effects and should I care?
I thought back on how intense the meditation sessions were throughout the week. I was comparing sitting and meditating to some of the most difficult wrestling practices that I have ever done. It didn’t make sense that the pain from sitting could be at the same level of intenseness as some of the most physically grueling workouts I have ever done in my life. I thought it was just because the pain was in the joints, but I wasn’t sure that really made sense anymore…
I started freaking out trying to think of everything that occurred throughout the week when I remembered before I started the session a guy from Israel gave the advice not to get caught up in the brainwashing. That the message is mostly the truth and you choose to accept what you agree with and reject what you disagree with. Save any judgement on brainwashing until the end and then you can formulate your thoughts on it.
This was reassuring in a way and calmed my thoughts of packing my bags and leaving before any more damage was done. I decided to finish out the retreat and keep giving the technique a chance to see where things would go. This also gave me a chance to see if there was any evidence of possible inducing of deeper trance like states during the audio meditation sessions.
During the audio sessions I now paid close attention to any noises coming out of the speakers. I noticed that during the instructions there would be blips of this static frequency noise that would come in, but it wouldn’t be at other times. During the happiness session on the last day this humming frequency was going constantly when he was instructing everybody to be happy and loving towards everybody else. When thinking back I realized I had heard this at random times at the beginning of the retreat meditations but didn’t give it much thought. If I had to put my money on something, I would start with looking into this.
The other thing I noticed as a potential cue was this double cough that would occur in different frequencies during the audio. It could just be somebody coughing in the crowd. What was weird about it was that if you didn’t pay attention it didn’t sound abnormal but when you did pay attention each time it occurred (in some instances it was a lot) it sounded the same and I can’t recall ever hearing somebody cough like that.
Another thing that was interesting was that during the 9th day my mind felt very concentrated to the point I was able to feel the tip of my heart contracting when beating and my intestines when looking inside myself. During the last half hour session there was no audio played which from what I remember audio was usually played at the beginning during this session. I went from what felt like super mind powers of focus to barely being able to feel any situations at all. This seemed like too much of a coincidence.
The last observation I have involves the physical behavior of Goenka himself. I have been traveling throughout Asia for 7 months now and there are many places I go where it is hard to communicate. I have gotten very used to communicating through body language and to pay attention to people’s body language. One thing I picked up on during the Goenka discourse tapes was that whenever he said a story that he was unsure of or may not have been completely true he would rub his nose quick. I didn’t give it much mind until on the last morning he brought up that some people may think that the teacher hypnotizes them during the individual sessions. He said this while doing a repeated gesture with his hand but at the beginning of the gesture he did his telltale sign. It seemed half pronounced as the other ones, so I took it as a half lie or that by doing a gesture after that it altered it.
To wrap this up the last thing I should mention were the after effects that occurred on the 10th day and 11th day. It felt like the “juice” was cut off. You are able to talk on the 10th day but when you start talking to people words are difficult, and it is hard to concentrate. Conversations between people were not coherent and very weird. The focus of things was off and it was hard remembering things. This was weird because during the course you still had the opportunity to talk to one of the assistants when you had general questions and talk to the assistant teacher when you had questions about the technique. It did not feel like this.
The next couple of days I felt way more dehydrated than normal and had to drink lots of water. My mind was fuzzy, and I did not want to reach out to family or friends once I got my phone back. It was like you were hungover but hungover from some drug of the mind that spent all of your brain power. This lasted for 2 days.
I want to say that until the 8th day I was fully bought into the technique and the positive parts that Goenka was teaching. There is a great quantity of good that in Goenka’s words, to throw out the sweet keel because of a black stone in it, may be a little extreme. I think there are a lot of positive parts to Vipassana meditation and I suggest for anybody who wants to increase their focus or have more awareness of their body and mind to take up some sort of meditation.
Would I recommend the Goenka class to others? Probably not to be honest. There are other Vipassana techniques or even other types of meditation that one could consider. You don’t need to have a 10-day intense meditation boot camp full of pain to learn how to meditate or to incorporate it into your life. Find a course with an actual qualified teacher that doesn’t have controversy surrounding it and begin you your journey of inner peace!
This retreat and technique have changed many lives for the better so there is a lot of good associated with it. I’m sorry to have had to bring up all of the negatives that I believe are associated with this particular branch of Vipassana. I felt like I had to speak up because it seems like the negative aspects of this practice have been suppressed (even the Wikipedia page, check out the dialogue on the Wikipedia page edits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AS._N._Goenka). During the retreat I was so excited to share this meditation technique with others and I am sad that I came to the conclusion that I did. For those who did get lots of benefit I am glad for you and please don’t let this critique take anything away from that.
Let me know your thoughts! If you disagree please provide logical arguments and don’t quote directly from Goenka’s teachings (I have read enough on the internet that whenever someone says something bad, they are often attacked and usually the person only uses arguments or points that come directly from Goenka’s discourses). If you have similar thoughts I would love to hear about your experience!
Hi Anders! I have been in five of these retreats and have served in two, but that was years ago. Then I just decided I didn’t feel like going anymore… I do agree with some of your points… The thing that personally made me more uncomfortable are the chants that are used during the course and that you are supposed or at least encouraged to use for your daily meditation. They do explain you the meaning of those chants but I always wondered what if they are lying? What if they are brainwashing me? How could I know? So I decided to quit, just in case… also, I was pretty sad on those years and I’m not sure if that meditation helped… but I do miss the sense of community, but, the risk was too much for me…
Gabriela, you have exactly on point. Well done for spotting it. You must watch and share this video with those who you know have done it: https://youtu.be/kHF6ZkrZPuU
Hi Stop, I watched your video and it seems like you have gone through some hard times. I wish you the best on your healing and getting rid of what has been bothering you. I have not experienced what you have but you may want to seek out a professional or others who have overcome something similar.
I do believe the Goenka retreat uses manipulative techniques to get you hooked and to get you to spread the word, but I do not suspect there is anything sinister or evil in the messaging, at least I haven’t noticed anything other than the manipulative techniques used and some of the faulty logic trains.
Hi Gabriela, I hope you are doing well and thanks for sharing your experience! It is good you stopped if it made you uncomfortable and that it wasn’t helping your sadness. I could see it turning into a negative loop where you are led to believe that the technique is the only way to truly deal with your sadness so you put your energy into it but don’t receive results so you put more energy into it and this keeps going on and on.
For the sense of community, there are many other ways you can find that. Maybe you could join a sports, card game, or any other kind of interest league (when covid dies down, or you could do a virtual one!). Or you could volunteer or search for other people in the community who have shared interests or reach out to friends and family more or any other number of ways! You can build your own community! Wishing you the best!
I have document proof of brainwashing techniques used at the SN Goenka retreat centers. Your intuition is right on the money
Hello together,
I die all together 5 retreats, one with goenka. Yes, vipassana is a great technique, even some Christian monks use.
And the goenka club is one of the less open ones with teachers, which are often no help, because they are too close to the “perfect” techniques. In other retreats its more common to emphasize, that there are really different ways. And that if problems occur, maybe psychological advice is necessary.
I will never go to a goenka retreat any more. There are more humble organisations.
Sorry my bad English.
Hardy
Hi Anders,
I have done more than 6 retreats and well I understand some of your remarks.
If there is brainwashing ? of course there is… but everyday we are brainswashing… just the fact to listen music or radio is brainwashing. I just mean we are always influenced by our environement… im sure during youtr 10 days… there were day where u hear some music you often listen… happened to me… its just our subconscient always works and record.
About your day 8 depressed… its also a normal fact… its not coz you are in general positive you have nothing to clear as past experience. I had also some days where i was depressed…. its a tough retreat and we are there to clean impurities… to make a reset. to remove negative part of us.
About Goenka Ego… well is not to defend him… but atleast he doesn’t pretend to be illuminated as others (Sadghuru for instance)… I have never heard someone with less ego than this man to be honest… now sure he has some ego i guess.
But according to me… what he says about the 2500 years to spread the dhamma…. Its just when you practise Vipassana… you become more and more connected with universe and you understand a lot synchronicity what happened me often.
For sure Vipassana is not something to take lightly… and i think the after vipassana should be more supported by the organisation, like following the new meditator once they go back to normal life.
I would just say… you have to feel when you have to go to vipassana… and not exagerated with it….
if you have a really active life, very social with a lot responsability then Vipassana will help you to transcend this energy into light and strenght…. like… less fear, less ego… happier (but not always).
But if you are not really active … vipassana could not bring you a lot result… and even not help you to socialize.
whats is difficult to deal with vipassana is the fact you can’t lie to yourself anymore… you can’t invent a story to make u feel better.
I would finaly say… important is always the middle path…. spirituality yes but always with feet on the ground.
Take care
Thanks for the response S. You are right on the everyday brainwashing! We are definitely influenced by our environments and what we listen to. A great example that highlights this is the divisiveness of belief in the current USA political system!
Yeah they are definitely positives to Vipassana and other forms of meditation. A couple of weeks after I did the course I met a girl who talked about her experience going to a random temple and meditating with the monks there. The schedule was loose and included various styles of meditation. And probably most importantly the messaging wasn’t one sided. You actually had a dialogue with the monks, could ask questions, and people shared the wisdom they have learned. They didn’t say one method is the right way and that you should only practice that. I think this is a much healthier form of mediation and spiritual guidance then what is offered at the Goenka courses.
I chose the 10-day course because I wanted to completely dive into one style of meditation. I believe there are better ways of doing this than the Goenka courses or other courses that use manipulative practices. Just my thoughts!
Thanks for the comments and choosing the middle path is good advice! Wishing you the best on your personal/spiritual journey!
Hi, when you say what is difficult to deal with Vipassana is the fact that you can’t lie to yourself – I’m afraid with documented proff of brainwashing techniques and advanced psycological mind control being implemented at these centers, it appears that any defense of the Goenka organization is a form of self-deceit. I know its a tough pill to swallow, but happy to share the evidence with you if you’d like.
I would love to hear Namrata! Where can I find it?
hi can u send me this proof on gupta.sheel@gmail.com
I have written a letter to my grown up children that i want to share with you incase it helps people on the practice.
Here it is.
My Life Philosophy. 10th October 2020.
I have written this note to explain my life philosophy so that you can better understand me and my actions.
It may appear radical and selfish. It has taken me many years to develop these ideas and if it can help to improve me, I can then help others with this knowledge and have achieved my objectives.
My mindset is built on the word LIFE.
The L stands for letting go.
The I stands for identify.
The F stands for focus.
The E stands for essential.
letting go
I concentrate on four elements.
1. tension in the body.
2. unpleasant feeling.
3. negative emotions.
4. negative thoughts.
With the first element, tension in the body, I concentrate on the tensions and after a while the tension is released as explained in the book ” You must relax” by Jacobson.
With unpleasant feeling, I concentrate on the unpleasant feeling to prevent the feeling from leading to action by thought word or deed (T,W&D) which will lead to problems.
With negative emotions like greed, hate and all their derivatives like anger, jealousy, frustration, rage, boredom etc. I concentrate on the emotions and prevent them from resulting in action by T,W&D that are detrimental. I “let them go”.
Greed is not evil except that it is addictive and can lead to mental turmoil.
With negative thoughts, I concentrate on the thoughts and prevent them from unbalancing the mind and leading to mental proliferation and action T,W&D that will lead to life problems. I “let them go”. Thoughts have their own momentum and are difficult to bring to an end, especially negative thoughts that are associated with the ego.
When I meditate, I have to concentrate on a single item like the breath or the movement of the stomach when breathing. Thoughts continually interrupt my meditation and I have to keep “letting go” of the thoughts and returning to my object of meditation, tens or hundreds of times. This is an excellent training in “letting go” of tension in the body, unpleasant feeling, negative emotions and thoughts.
A great philosopher once said; if you know everything then its all about “letting go”
identify
Identifying with the world involves me with the outside world. Identifying also means getting involved, interacting and associating. I get carried away in proliferation of thought, word and deed which can sometimes lead to problems. I try to control and sort out the world, other people, situations. I thrive on stimulation and get dragged into the worlds problems causing mental proliferation and mental unbalance.
The world is stressful, unreliable, constantly changeable and causes me suffering.
I thus try and identify and get involved with the world as little as possible.
Its like knowing someone who constantly gets you in trouble; so you avoid them.
If you eat food that makes you ill, then you avoid it. I thus try and spend more time focusing on the inside world like the four elements of body, feeling, emotions and thoughts.
focus
Using meditation. I teach myself how to focus. I then focus on the four elements.
This helps me to reduce tension in the body and mind, prevent the unpleasant feeling from developing into problems in life with friends, relations, partner or the outside world.
By concentrating on my emotions, again I prevent them from developing into serious situations that cause problems for me or others. For example, an unpleasant feeling can develop into anger. I them project that anger onto others around me and think that they have caused my anger, but the real cause is my unpleasant feeling. When people say that he got out of the wrong side of the bed, its because he is feeling in a bad mood and so sees the world in a bad light and is angry with everyone. When I am in a bad mood, any trigger such someone saying something or bumping into me can set off a chain reaction of unwholesome T,W&D. The cause is not the trigger, but my internal unpleasant feeling.
essential.
I try and do only what is necessary during the day by T,W&D.
Before I carry out any action by T,W&D I ask myself.
1. What is my objective in carrying out this action by T,W &D.
2. Is it a realistic objective which can bear fruit.
3. Will it help me and others or cause problems.
4. If I think its worth carrying out the action then I proceed with it.
5. When the action is complete, I review the results to see if it has achieved the desired affect. If not, then I try and avoid any similar action in the future.
I try and concentrate on actions that meet my needs for food, medicine, shelter and the well-being of friends and family.
I am only just starting on this journey and I have yet to see its fruits.
In addition, I try to develop positive emotions of love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.
As young people you three need to engage with the world to achieve your objectives.
As I am now old, I do not need to engage with the world in the same way and can limit my attention to it and concentrate on the inside world.
In addition my mental stamina is not what it used to be, so I need to minimise its use for important matters and so need to live LIFE.
I hope this gives you a small insight into my life philosophy.
Lots of love,
Dad.
Thank you Menashe for sharing the words of wisdom you gave to your children. I think you have some very good advice and have found what works for you. Everybody is different and has to find what works best for them. I really like how you are mindful in the things that you do and then reflect on the results of what happens. This is a great way to figure out what will work best for you. It all starts with self-reflection.
The part where I differ from you is staying out of the world in your identify passage, but this is what you have found is important for you. I think we are all connected and both positive and negative energy can pass from person to person. My personal view of karma is that the more positive things that are shared, they are passed along, and overall the positivity of the world is increased which comes back in positive forms. I have found generating positive energy comes naturally to me so I try to share it when I can.
Thanks for your comment and I hope it will help those who come across it!
Yes it is just you. There is no buzzing with secret brainwashing subliminal messages in secret frequencies. You are totally paranoid. The ego you see at Goenka, servers or teachers belongs to no one but yourself. There is no charge for the course, what would Goenka gain if you went to a course or a holiday resort? Do you remember the part about generating karma through offending or harboring negative or offensive thoughts about people who selflessly served humanity? Plus it is not sakkrah, it is called sankhara. Do your homework first.
Hi Abby, I am sorry if I offended you and did not mean for my critique to take anything away from your experience. I just reported what I observed, which included techniques of persuasion that crossed over into the negative side of manipulation and that the environment was set up to increase receptiveness of the messaging.
Could I have become paranoid after being in my head for so long? Of course that is possible. Do I think you should trust people that say that they, and only they, know the path to salvation so you should follow them without question? Of course not.
Yes the courses are donation based, but people can be driven by fame or a sense of importance beyond just greed. I do not know Goenka or his intentions and they very well may have been positive, but the persuasion techniques that he used during the course along with his apparent ego do make me think he selfless. If what you are selling is truly that good, I don’t think you need/should manipulate people to buy and spread it.
I think there is a lot of positive things that people can gain from meditation and courses. But I would suggest ones that leave out the manipulation. Thanks for the comment!
Hi Anders, Please! do not apologize for being able to see past the veil. You are right on the money. My email address is provided when I post a comment. Feel free to reach out should you want to discuss the evidence that I have. Thank you for having the courage to write about this and expressing your truth with the intention of helping others even though it is an unpopular truth that invites such aggression
Hi Namrata, I would like to see the documented evidence please.
Hi Abby,
For someone who supports Goenka’s Vipassana, you seem anything but equanimous. This author is entitled to his opinion just like you are to yours.
You are right, there is no charge here but these centers are worth millions. Their donation ranges anywhere from $50-$10000 per student per course. Their committees are focused on raising funds and keeping a significant amount in reserves. Servers and students alike are made to feel so connected to their centers and the practice that many leave their entire estate after their death. Please remember, in life, there is no such thing as free. Look at their trust minutes and 1099 and you will see what I am talking about.
I cannot speak to Goenka’s ego although I do understand where the author is coming from. However, I have seen some really nasty behavior from teachers and fellow servers. I served once and the AT kept disclosing details about her student’s issue during server meetings. Another teacher kept advising this server who DEFINITELY needed professional mental help. She was supremely paranoid and was accusing fellow servers of things they didn’t say or do. When we approached the AT, we were told to have compassion and take it as a test from dhamma. Meanwhile, this girl was talking to herself. I have seen AT’s gangup on a student who was a community leader. They thought she was way too invested and too young to be responsible for the community. They collectively forced her out. She was an incredible meditator and a great community server. Lot of these centers (especially the older and more established ones) will excommunicate senior servers if they question the practice. There have been suicides so let’s not paint vipassana as this safe haven. I know this because I have worked closely with these people.
I have benefitted from these 10 day courses because it gave me a space to be with myself. Initially, I made the mistake of talking to the assigned AT but quickly realized they are parroting Goenka’s sermon. After serving, I realized how these AT’s openly discuss their students so decided to keep my distance. I go for 10 day courses once a year because it helps me decompress and lose weight. I meditate while we are in the hall but don’t meditate otherwise. Initially, I followed their instructions like a maniac but quickly realized I was stressing myself out. In addition, I met lot of serious meditators(2 hours everyday for years type) who had pretty shitty lives. Of course, according to Goenka, these meditators are not seeing the fruit of dhamma because they are doing it wrong. I mean this practice is fool proof. If something good happens, it’s because of vipassana, if something bad happens, it’s you and you alone.
Those 10 day courses are good for mental and physical detox if you don’t take this practice too seriously. Listen to your body. I screwed up my ankle because my AT told me to sit through the pain. I wish I didn’t listen to her. Oh well, you learn.
Your claim of about 50-10000 USD per student per course: This is highly exaggerated for most centres. I personally saw the donation lists in centres in Germany, Colombia, Venezuela and spoke with donating students in India. In poorer countries students often don’t give anything. In Venezuela and Colombia some centres can barely continue funcitoning. E.g. 10-day course in Venezuela for 40 persons the course officially costs the center a bit over 1900 USD (as you can read in their official statement). Many students in Colombia, Venezuela and India give nothing, or 5-80 USD.
In Germany I’ve seen only parts of the donation list, and most of the donations I’ve seen were in the 200-500 Euro range. But running a course is way more expensive there as well, I remember about 18000 Euro for a course of 80 people, but on this number I am not so sure.
Hi Ken. Replying in 2024.
This teacher discussing about students thing, it true. I came to realize this, after sending my daughter for years, since she was 9 years. Yes, they do discuss about students. When she turned a teen, she became a verocious eater and would eat a lot at the center. After covid, she went back, a bit subdued and less of an eater. But her stories are getting passed down to teachers who are new and never met her before. And they tell her on her face, in front of other students. I have recently asked her to confront them….giving her the example of the electron. If you can’t see it, it does not exist for you. So what they did not see, is not their truth. And they are not able to answer any of her penetrating questions, since she was 9 years. Some get angry/irritated.
I believe what they preach, they are not practicing. They are themselves confused as I saw with my daughter’s teachers. In the end, I have to explain things to her. They have no answers to any questions.
The caretakers are goenka’s children…family.
My daughter has met his granddaughters. They are rude, mean, bully and feel privileged.
I have been asked to come for the courses, but I guess I am not the sort to have a guru. Maybe I am too conceited. Maybe I have my own journey that is full of questions that need answering. So why waste time with people who have no answers.
Hi Abby, Please wake up. There is now documented proof of advanced brainwashing and psycological mind control being employed at SN Goenka retreats. The fact that I am saying this publically means that I have enough evidence to defend myself in a court of law should the Goenka Organization sue me for defamation. So in short, unless you can win a court case on what you just stated, I would respectfully ask you to STOP calling people paranoid.
Abby, what you say about Anders says more about you than about him. The harshness in your comment and your accusing him of harboring negative thoughts are all about you. If you followed Goenka’s teachings, you would like all beings to be happy and you would be understanding. Stop the BS!
I think your criticism is towards goenka and not to vipassana meditation if you think goenka is trying to prove that buddhism is superior to other religion(what you have written in liberation part) then you should try to understand goenka past he was a hindu he was born as a hindu and died as a hindu any member of his family did not got converted into buddism the meditation technique is not goenka’s it’s buddha’s meditation buddha himself practiced various other meditation technique which helped him but in the end vipassana was the one which helped him to attain enlightenment if you think vipassana doesnt work then that totally wrong buddha is known for meditation it does works and i am no buddhist a hindu is saying these goenka discourse or the theoritical part of vipassana whatever you dont like take it out like the black stone story and enjoy the rest but if you think goenka is using manipulative technique or some kind of hypnosis on student then that is totally wrong you are imposing your own imagination on him still I would Recommend you to take another 10 day course
May you be peacefull
You are correct, my criticism is towards the Goenka 10-day retreat and not towards meditation or Vipassana meditation. There is a lot of value in meditation and I believe I would have got more value meditating at a temple for 10 days then doing the retreat. May you be peaceful as well!
Child, with documented proof that the Goenka organization is practicing advanced brain washing and psychic mind control, you could actually be sued by the person you are directing this comment to for simply making this comment. Check yourself before you get aggressive with anyone who has shown no aggression or animosity in their posts/blogs/comments
I am not for Vipassana either. I have seen that it in no way helps an individual or society. Then why waste time on it.
https://lifensocietyblog.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-loyal-vipassana-returnees-confused.html
It is no science either.
https://lifensocietyblog.blogspot.com/2021/03/Post-mortem-vipassana-unscientific-analysis.html
In my area there is famous quote, ‘when someone spitting on sun. Then the shit return back to face of same person’. So please wake up…
People like you @maske aggressively turn on anybody who questions the practice which leads me to believe that you are not a vipassana practitioner in practice. You bow three times and meditate but the true essence of the teachings is lost on you. Smh.
well said ken, it takes more than a rob and a cup of tea to reach any truth! and when one cannot answer a question with nothing more than, just practice your breathing, your in the wrong place.
Hi Anders,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I´ve participated to the Vipassana in Myanmar in 2020 and I got a weird feeling.
It was indeed beneficial, I felt very good, relaxed and calm but I recognize its dark side. Goenka is an incredibly charismatic and smart person, I love this meditation technique and the way the retreat is structured. Nevertheless, his focus on “cleaning our impurities” has led me to some dark side that pointed out probably some shades I did not want to see in myself. It´s speeches of radical detachment from live and death are somehow dark. Once he makes a joke about the ignorance (this is what for him is the cause of suffering) of a mother crying desperate for loosing her little child. She lives in ignorance, which may be true from a spiritual point of view but at the same time reaching a state of complete detachment from feelings with other human beings its indeed close to what we call psychopathy in modern psychology. The presence of his wife in the videos is definitely odd, she stands there all the time without saying a word. He emphasises the fact that the best way to get illuminated is to become a monk, however if you can´t you should meditate 2 hours per day. Whilst you are feeling calmer and see the benefits of this state of mind, you get bombarded by its messages which is indeed a good way to plant seeds in you. I left the retreat very fascinated about meditation but with some bitter sensation of culpability. I think that when we engage in the process of dissolution of ego this is part of the process. When all we know about what we are started to get questioned, it comes normal to feel lost. Anyway, I was happy to participate to Vipassana and I will do it again for my curiosity but I recognize Goenka´s ego in his speeches.
What s the point to criticize a course, a technique without having meditated for at least a few months 2h a day?
Goenka, unlike many others, does not create illussions, didn t became rich, made profit with his courses.
Sadguru, Osho sold products, became rich with their teaching, Goenka just teached a tecnique for free.
He never promise enlightenment after the first course but a more harmonious life if you meditate 2 hours a day for at least a year.
It’s like expecting to run a 50km marathon after a 10 day workout. :-/
Even when I do a workout I sometimes feel out of energy this doesn’t mean that the exercise is not good.
You must see the result at the long term.
Anyway, I think that Vipassana can give a lot but if u find that another meditation makes you happier than you have to chose the other meditation
He didn’t become rich, as is very frequently emphasized. However he did become quite famous, which is often motivation on its own. And in fact, due to his fame he may have made some money doing speaking engagements and things of that kind. I don’t know, but that would be fairly typical for a guy like that. There are many other retreats one can attend. I prefer Zen groups; they may ask for a little money to cover costs, and they are in many important ways similar to Goenka, but one very important difference is that it’s not focused on one individual teacher. Sometimes a particular teacher or “master” is very revered within a school, and you may have a local teacher you see every week. But there are many such teachers, and the focus of the organization is on teaching and passing a tradition on through time, not just on one person. One may argue that it is “religion” and hence irrational but I prefer that to the intense exposure to Goenka’s ego, which really does shine through here.
I agree and there is a really dark side to this retreat and meditation. I just completed one and they threw me out after 4 days They argue that it was because they were concerns for my health but when challenged it become apparent that the reason is because i listening to my body and managing my health rather than blindly taking their advice. In fact on the one Goenke is telling you not to accept to comply with blind submission but with understanding and discrimination but when you start using your own judgement they ask you to go just like this with not support after warning you that you should not leave as you have started a deep operation of your brain and this could be dangerous. I ask you to consider the follwing questions?
What is more dangerous and which of these examples would lead you to have concerns for the health and well being of the participants?
A) 8 months old pregnant woman start running across a field after hours of sitting filled with roots which could cause her to fall and endager her life and that of her unborn child
B) partcipant which losses consciousness after a sitting and fells back on his head
C) participant that makes a conscious choice to go and meditate outside for an hour to regain alertness of the mind and avoid zooming out.
Do you think that some-one on site should be paying close attention to a pregnant woman to ensure her safety while coming out of these sessions? Do you think that someone should be paying close attention to this participant that lost consciousness afterward? Would you say that it would be irresponsible and mal practice not to so so?
Another question if this meditation is to teach you enlightenment and liberate you from false illusions would you say that being told not to extend your leg and point your feet at the teacher who by the way is on a screen during his discourse to relieve your pain because this amount to squashing his head is delusion and belief not based on universal truth?
I would not recommend this retreat for the same reasons there is something deeply disturbing behind the good . In fact i would add that these retreats should be investigated to ensure the protection and safety of all
I think I have 0 problems with vipassana meditation. All of my problems came from the course, its nature, and S.N. Goenka’s pure belief that Dhamma is love. Love is love. We all know it. Christians nor Buddhists nor anyone has a claim to knowing it better than anyone else. We know it differently. Dhamma cannot be love though, the sharing of dhamma can be a kindness to the right person who is in need of it, but I hold that I was not in need of it. I came to the course very happy, felt like my world view was so joyous and wonderful, it was already about loving other people and learning to love myself more in the process. And so hearing that I need to purify my mind and all of the other strange things mentioned in the post above really shocked me. I can’t remember what day of the course it was that I started to be like hmm this feels like indoctrination.
They tell you don’t worry if you disagree with the teaching when you have issues with it, but I can’t ignore it. If you are walking through a beautiful thornless garden told this is the best garden in the world and then you find yourself getting snagged by thorns and finding some weeds it is very jarring and I am too big picture to get into the practice at that point.
If S.N. Goenka taught that this course was simply to learn vipassana, if there hadn’t been a single nightly discourse perhaps, then I can see myself doing one like this. But I grew up religious so I can feel when someone is spewing their beliefs at me when I chose to trust them.
They can’t in their right minds ask us to “give vipassana a shot” for the ten days and act like we can just go back to whatever life we had before if we don’t want it, and then throughout the course present some of us with ideas and words that drive us crazy since they feel so wrong.
I won’t harp too much on the nature of the course, the 0 talking, the averting our eyes from catching with one another, the segregation of the sexes, since I agree that it is good to have 0 distractions. But if this course teaches love it sure doesn’t know what love looks like. I think the course should have started with 0 talking for 4 or 5 days and transitioned into simple talking like thank you, or simple things like you can use the sink now. It is better to teach us how to hear each other earlier on, and to teach us more thoughtful thinking, where we don’t just spew out reactions. Then by day 10 when the vow of silence is fully broken we can talk to each other freely AND CONNECT AS PEOPLE. BECAUSE MOTHERFUCKER WE ARE PEOPLE. lol sorry I am still really mad he acts like sharing this with people is looooove in his creepy way of saying it, it just rubs me wrong that he tries to monopolize love.
I was out there enjoying nature every day, watching squirrels and birds and being present the whole time, appreciating nature, mixing in following the breath and body scans. I unfortunately did not follow the directions well enough I don’t think though. I didn’t realize until it was too late that I was visualizing everything to help me connect with certain parts of the body, and so I was doing the technique wrong but I appreciate what I learned. I ended up dropping out night 7/morning of day 8 due to my first ever panic attack. I was too confused trying to commit to the rest of the course when I didn’t agree with the teacher. I even told the assistant teacher that it felt like my body was rejecting the dhamma and i was struggling to not become emotional. He said don’t worry if you don’t agree with some of what is in the videos, but later that night I got stuck in a cycle of overthinking to try and make a stay or go decision, and an if I stay, how do I proceed. I had a friend at the center who I would be traveling home with and so it was hard for me to consider leaving. I ended up leaving in an ambulance thinking I was dying lol, After a week I can say I am much better although the symptoms were severe. But this is more related to my extreme emotional state and I ended up tracking the breath from my nose down my throat and was able to control it and make it feel really smooth, and then make the throat incredibly narrow and have this insanely slow respiration and also it felt euphoric, blissful, which is strictly against the teaching of not judging a sensation good or bad. Don’t lose equanimity when playing with internal things, otherwise pieces of your focused mind can get stuck there.
It ended up backfiring on me. If you form a euphoric link with the breathing, and controlling your lungs and indirectly controlling heart rate, then during normal times you may find your mind pulled from thought into the breath and feeling the heart and you won’t know what is going on, but now your heart is pounding in your chest. It is scary, it lead me to 5 or so days of insomnia despite being severely tired. Every time I was about to drift into pure sleep my lungs wouldn’t pick up the automatic breathing and then my heart would pound in my chest because it was freaking out, lack of oxygen maybe idk. But after a 7 days my heart feels a little sore at times, which is scary.
I will say again, my qualms with this course do not come from my disobeying instructions, it is almost entirely from the videos and from the lack of compassion in the teaching.
It is because they don’t support students with mental health issues. I think anyone who is capable of obeying the vow of silence and can attempt to sit still should be allowed in and their relationship with meditation should be fostered from a place of kindness, not from pure obedience and diligence. Some people can be diligent and naturally follow the rules, other people will get confused and struggle, and we should make sure those people know they are doing their best, and that is the spirit of the quest, but to know that we also want you to learn the technique right, and to give us some pointers. I was very mad thinking about him saying this is love, and simulatenously operating a course I could never recommend to any of my loved ones because it wouldn’t be cater itself like love does sometimes, it would be strict. My sister could make great use of meditation, vipassana, but not this course.
I have come to understand that I think vipassana is good to dabble in, but that this course should be restructured and the recordings updated to match the times. And the course should extend its hand to the mentally unwell, because if it can’t kindly attempt to reach them, then all of its ideals are flawed. There should be consultations like “hey I have mental health issues but am interested, how can we make this work?”
Rant over, if you enjoyed the course I am glad, I think it offered more good than bad, I was just too big picture to accept the little blips of bad, judging the practice as I was learning. The present moment is now, now is when we should live life fully, enjoy your day. Don’t carry any sour thoughts, let it go. It felt nice to get this out so I can stop thinking about it hahaha, not the most present but I hope it helps someone somehow.
Hi Anders, thank you for writing a balanced and thoughtful review of the course. I completed the course in 2015 and left with some similar doubts. I’ll only add one comment to your point that the 10 day meditation felt somehow “painful”. For me it was not as much feeling painful, as feeling very stiff at the end of it (mentally and physically). I didn’t meditate for 5 years afterwards for that reason.
I’ve since had the great fortune to come into contact with Buddhist and meditation teachings that bring great joy to my daily lives, built on the foundation of insight and concentration. The meditations that I currently practice are truly joyful, not painful. It makes me smile and feel relieved, not stiff. And this feels right.
I’m grateful to Goenka for planting the seeds of Dharma in me, and I’m equally glad that I took the liberty to learn from and read other Buddhist traditions (this very act of reading other Buddhist teachers felt morally wrong at first somehow, to your point of brainwashing and detrimental exclusivity). Through this bold “betrayal” and detour, I somehow came closer to the ideal of “being happy”, as repeatedly chanted during the 10 day course.
It’s interesting that Goenka claimed to be teaching Buddhism and not Jainism. Pick up and read a copy of the Majjhima Nikāya and contrast the Buddha’s actual teaching with Goenka’s version of Jainism mixed with Buddhaghosaism.
Guys let’s be real here, the Buddha even spent like a decade before he reached enlightenment. It’s most likely that even if we spend our lifetime searching for that and won’t be able to achieve it at the end. I don’t know how far Geonka got before he died but his teaching is definitely one of the best options out there. Buddha had to learn from many before going onto the last part of that journey by himself. I’m sure we won’t have that perfect person who can show us the best way to reach enlightenment. It will be a long journey
Hey Anders.
I resonated a lot with some of your points. I am a young but long time meditator, and I just experienced my first Vipassana retreat. I took it supremely seriously, and was essentially meditating on and off the cushion for the entire time that I was awake. What was incredible to me, and took me several days until after the retreat ended to see, was how the technique simultaneously helped me to cope with immense amounts of physical and emotional pain in a healthy way (at least from the Buddhist perspective) that felt quite liberating, and yet it completely sapped away my ability to think critically.
I began seeing my thoughts as subtle expressions of clinging or aversion. And because the Vipassana rubric is so comprehensive of all sensations, I slowly started to actually just stop thinking in discursive thought and instead rested with the sensations in my body and tried to approach them with equanimity, at all times, because this was essentially the only way to brave the immense psychological pain I was experiencing. And it totally worked as well. When I was able to rest completely in the present, not getting lost in thoughts nor sensations nor wanting of any sort, I felt completely free. But it also sapped away my ability to think critically in any respect, and if I did, I started interpreting it as a form of weakness, clinging, and suffering. Because everything is encouraged to be interpreted via the rubric of sensation. All is sensation, just don’t cling to it and you’ll be alright is the messaging, day and night, for 10 days.
By the end, I felt a supreme gratitude for what I had learned. I felt as though I would be able to conquer absolutely everything I felt by approaching it through the lens of equanimity and awareness. And it was a completely self-consistent truth. I felt no need to question anything, because all questions can be interpreted as simply sensations. And the rhetoric about the Dhamma being Universal Truth and the constant reassurance of that truth being infallible from all sides certainly contributed to this state of mind. I facetimed my girlfriend upon my return and felt absolutely wonderful, while at the same time being subject to mood swings, loss of appetite, manic depression/anxiety and dissociation. I was actively interpreting ALL of these things as simply sensations, and I was doing it quite contentedly. But when my girlfriend saw me, she burst out into tears. She told me she was worried about me and that I needed to come home, and I simply couldn’t see why, because I kept interpreting ALL of my experience as simply sensation, not to be clinged to nor rejected.
I think the most disturbing thing about this whole experience was how I completely lost my ability to think critically in that state, because my thoughts all but disappeared. I no longer had enough desire to think about anything in particular. I didn’t have enough desire to wonder if the feeling of levitating a foot away from my body was an issue. I just embraced it. And when one walks down all the way the Buddhist path, embracing these things is NECESSARY and EXPECTED to reach enlightenment. And enlightenment is not about the contents of consciousness (i.e. pleasure or pain), it is about this gentle acquiescence, this equanimity towards whatever comes up. And when you go deep enough, some really disturbing things start to come up. But the rhetoric of purification simply continues all the way down the rabbit hole, and one really can interpret all of this that way, if one desires. The issue stems from Goenka FORCING DOWN YOUR THROAT that this is the ultimate state of all human experience. Everybody did something kammically good in the past to have arrived at this school of all schools, learning the knowledge of all knowledge. This is what all human beings should and MUST desire if they are ever to have any sort of meaning aside from the suffering of ordinary human existence. All ruminations of the ego are just that, ruminations, and they are meaningless suffering that you must put aside always in order to see this truth,
At the end of the day, I am very happy I went on the retreat. I don’t think I plan to continue with my practice, but I learned immense lessons about the power of self-reliance, awareness of sensation, and habituated patterns and what perpetuates them. I think the project of enlightenment is, in general, quite beneficial to both self and society. But I do not think the way to enlightenment is to do violence upon violence to ourselves and to our egos until we are able to totally accept without reservation ALL of the fucked shit that appears in our psyches. If your hand is on a stove, you can either choose to accept the sensations as impermanent, or you can take your hand off of the stove. Some people have their hand on a stove that isn’t going anywhere, any it hurts, and this practice can be wildly beneficial for them. Other people just need to take their hand off of the stove. We need to balance the external reality with the internal one, and think rationally about both. This practice IMO interprets everything as internal in a way that can be repressive and harmful to society at large, even if the individual learns to find egoless bliss in the process.
Sorry for the long rant. Hope you enjoy and find something useful if you decide to read.
Much love.
Thanks so much for your review. I was happily shocked when reading this. Because i got confirmed about my own experience.
I just left my vipassana retreat at day 8 after the afternoon meditation. I felt the group vibe, and my mood suddenly changed and it was almost impossible to ‘scan’ the body as we’re supposed to be doing. I felt the frequency had changed after the mornings meditations. You almost could not feel it. Then something clicked in my brain and ears and I could tune in again but you had to stay super focused… , my ears were ringing and my heart beat was unregular. This sudden shift was to strange for words.
Then after a 10m break a sit out a full 75min working on staying with my feelings, I still taught it could be my own resistance to go deeper. Everybody left the hall at that point, every body was going tru the same heavy change, nobody could stay for long with it.
Because I just left for 10min I was so shocked to notice the frequency had changed again. It was even higher and almost impossible to tune in to. But again my brain clicked into it after a while and I could scan 3 rounds and was surprised that when the chants ended I was done exactly my scan!. This time I felt, I knew, they were manipulating the frequency in the room. I looked up and saw all the speakers and it suddenly al made sense.
I confronted the assistant teacher with this, because I needed to talk with him before I was able to leave. He said nothing, he was holding back and deliberately lying. So I left, but looked straight after online if other people had had similar experiences. When I read your review I was confirmed but felt really messed with.
I strongly advise people to stay a way from these retreats, they are using differt frequencies to alter states off consciousness.
I had very weird experiences in the nights. At when one point I could not controll the scanning off my body myself anymore it was if it went automatically. I opent a portal and shit broke loose in the room were i was in.
When I talk about this with the assistant teacher and asked him if the method was safe he told me it was completely safe and It was best for me not to judge anything that happened as good or bad i forgot the specific word the used all the time. Then he ask me if I had healing sessions or worked with binural techniques in the past. Which I had never done and later that question stayed with me. But then during day 8 it all fell in place and I could not stay there another night.
It took me 3 days to recover from my night fears and get the automatic body scanning out of my system. Also my ears kept ringing for those 3 days and I felt super funky and dehydrated.
Now I’m happy to say I feel normal again. But never ever would go there again. They are using the group for there own purposes and are not straight forward about the techniques they are using. BE AWARE.
I have completed two 10-day courses. I enjoyed the first course so much; I was thrilled to learn the meditation technique. Then as I started practicing, I started having deeper questions. But I didn’t get any satisfactory answers either from his talks or his books. So, I went for the second course to ask ATAs directly.
It got worse, I started having more questions and confusion, but the teacher could hardly give any answers. All she said was that I would understand myself gradually. But I couldn’t see any progress, all seemed quite pointless. I also felt quite aloof, detached from society, I could hardly connect with other people, unintentionally I started judging others for not walking in the path of Dhamma, which just made my life miserable. The course imposes a sense of self-grandiosity attaching to the brand of Goenka, creates a mindset of we vs them. I have met a couple of old students who were quite proud to be associated with the brand, which is spiritual materialism. My question is, isn’t it true Dhamma should remove our pride, ego and make us humbler?
So, after my second course, I stopped practicing. I felt like I was brainwashed to try only this Vipassana technique and felt a compulsion to stay truthful to the technique. But after few years, I somehow overcome my inner resistance and started exploring the other school of Buddhism. The wide teachings of Dhamma really helped me to have a deeper understanding of reality. I wish this course could introduce a truly clear understanding of what awareness is and most importantly how to apply meditation in everyday life with different examples.
In summary, I am grateful to Goenka and to the technique for allowing me to try out as a beginner and actually introduced me to the experience level. But if someone wants to get deeper, I will strongly suggest exploring other schools as well, you may get bigger picture of Buddhism and may have more informed choice. I understand it takes lots of effort and time to find out and go through different views, but the journey is worthwhile, I can bet from my personal experience.
I have considered a Goenka retreat but when I went to their website I quickly realized that he was willfully ignorant or dishonest. It is said that followers of any religion can do a retreat but later I read that practices associated with those religions are not allowed for the duration of the retreat.
Their is no true Christian, Muslim or Orthodox Jew who would agree to go even one day without praying to God. Belief in God and the necessity of regular and daily prayer are intrinsic to those religions.
So no the retreats are not open to followers of all religious beliefs.
Nominal members of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths can.
After completing my first 10-day course, my feelings are largely the same (except the “Frequency buzzing” experience, though I must admit I felt quite depressed on the evening of day 8). Еhe entire course felt like an emotional rollercoaster, filled with its highs and lows — something expected from such an intense experience.
I totally agree about the benefits of the meditation itself and the vipassana in particular. Nonetheless, the manner in which it’s delivered sparked significant resistance within me, as manipulation remains manipulation, regardless of its intentions to spread a good ideas. The evening discussions were dampening my enthusiasm, as I encountered numerous points of contention (well, may be it is just me). The apparent ego of the leader, combined with his reflections ego dissolution, made me both confused and annoyed.
The idea that this method is purely scientific, allowing anyone to confirm its benefits without blindly trusting, amused me. This comes with the caveat that if the method fails, the fault lies with you. This is especially so, considering that many of these “proofs” rely on “the universal law of nature”, folclore tales and other “examples”.
P.S. Should anyone ask whether I recommend Vipassana meditation as a tool for emotional regulation and achieving a more balanced life, I’d say it’s certainly worth exploring (among other techniques like psychotherapy, for example). However, if you’re contemplating attending Goenka’s 10-day course, be mindful that his version of Vipassana comes with its pitfalls and manipulations, and it’s best not to take the “delivery method” too seriously.
when I meet someone who claims to know the complete definition of meditation, I like to ask the question. What does The Path mean to you. I have yet to get an answer from anyone. And when someone says, do what works for you and it may not work for someone else, is a huge red flag. There is only on Path and everyone has it within, and it is the same one that leads to the universal connection. There is only one universe, so what works for you and maybe not everyone means your truly lost in the woods and will wonder for the rest of your life without the truth. The truth is not an opinion.
I’ve never tried it but my husband has been attending retreats and practicing daily meditation accompanied by the sounds of chanting for the last 13 years.
He initially went there seeking ways to help him deal with professional and personal stress. He got hooked on to it and went year after year, sometimes even twice a year, leaving me to deal with our toddler alone.
He feels it has helped him tremendously but as the person living with him I will say categorically that it has completely ruined my married and family life.
1. He has become selfish and self absorbed. He puts himself first, even before our child. Nothing matters to him more than his needs being fulfilled.
2. He has become almost completely silent and will not speak unless it’s to people at work or anyone he has to put up a front for, like friends and extended family.
To his immediate family – me and our son – he is silent, withdrawn, detached and emotionally unavailable
3. He has become inward looking. He claims that Vipassana has taught him to ‘withdraw’ and ‘not to engage’ when it comes to any ‘controversial’ discussion. This includes critical issues such as problems our child may be having or relationship problems we may be having. By doing so, nothing ever gets resolved.
4. From being a very social person, he has become anti social, refusing to take us out anywhere as a family, refusing to be a part of social gatherings unless unavoidable.
Thank you Anders for sharing your experiences in the course and offering a platform in which people now started discussing about the courses.
Personally I have done four 10-day courses and a course in the Satipatthana-Sutta. In short, it seems to me that not all, but most of your negative points lack substance and seem to big compared to the benefits people gain from this teaching. I hope that your post does not discourage people new to meditation to give this technique a serious try.
First to the benefits: Personally I know people who followed this technique and achieved astounding tranquility, happiness and peace in their daily life. I myself could witness the depth of the wisdom that they achieved practicing Vipassana. Most of those I witnessed that practiced diligently did not yet reach this point, but of all the people I met doing Vipassana for 2h/day, every single person reported benefits.
To your negative points about Goenka: I personally do not really like his way of teaching and also his personality does not seem even a little bit charismatic to me. Frome the second 10-day course the Evening talks started being repetitive, and I literally facepalm at least once during every single talk, every single day. However, I am also extremely grateful to this man: Through him at least a hundred thousand new students learn this technique. For many it is their first encounter with meditation, and they instantly get very established in it, with a very good technique. This is amazing. For this gratefulness to Goenka is very appropriate.
Hy!
Don’t know if it is to late for a comment and to get a rply.
Just finished my 3d retreat, a shorter 3 day version. served for 10 days 6 months ago, and seated my first 10 days about a year ago.
I liked the points you highligt, agree with most of them, and was bewildered by the 8 day depression you described. I recall it as being the worst day for me either. But I was going throught a hard personal moment, and the whole experience was not that great at all. It is getting better know.
But there are stuff I see the other way around. I don’t see goenka as that egoccentric, for instance. I may be just naive or bad informed, but I went to the first retreat without even knowing who he was. Never heard of the guy before. I think he insisted in being the solely perpetual instructor to the sake of the preservation of the morality religion brings to the technique. The sīla. Are you being brainwashed? Yes. and that is not necessarily evil. It is religion. It is fundamental to social cohesion. It keeps dumb people away of dumb sh**t (and I am not above anyone else for that matter).
But it is buddhist morality. In practice is almost the same as christian morality – hence his many opportunistic parallels with Jesus and Buddha, implying Jesus was a Buddha too – but in theory it is not. for instance, the parable of the boy who cries to the Buddha about his father’s death and gets an apparently cold reply – stop crying, just accept it – stroke me for it’s contrast with the ressurrection of Lazarus. In cristianity we have a God, they have none. Christianity is scathological: history goes towards somewhere. We do “good” because the opposite would be “evil”. Buddhism is depressing, at least in a first glance. I was familiarized with some of it, but the whole stuff was a punch in the stomach anyway. In Buddhism there is no meaning, no hope. The only hope is our capacity of learning to accept reality is s**t and go on with it. And they tell you to do “good” because the opposite would be foolish, and by no other reason. There is where universal, objectless, love come in. The only way to cope with that revelation without becoming a cold hearted monster is with a love that is equally indiferent. It is a schok that takes a long time to assimilate. Studing more about Buddhism, going to other temples of other traditions, reading other stuff that is not the Goenka books (i.e. the Suttas, Ledi Sayadaw books, etc.), or even seeking the guidance of a monk are the best advices I can give. It worked for me.
Goenka was an intelligent man, and a business man. The mechanisms of persuasion and attachment he uses are legitimate, in my understanding. He is not acting to feed his ego, he just understands the importance of the preservation of marality. The Otherwise, society would collapse. And for the organization, well, it is an entepreneurship in Weberian sense. It has to assure its means to mantain itself.
Well, that is it. Sorry for the wall of text and for the painful english. Would like very much to know if I am being coherent. Thanks.
I think the emphasis on the money made of the critiquing of Vipassana is a bit misguided. The ones just goes back to the centres . It doesn’t go back to any individual, so that really seems irrelevant to me and all I can say about the brain washing techniques , have you been to a casino! Driven down the road in a city with all the lights flashing , I mean really? Maybe he uses some . I didn’t notice and while I’m not completely adverse the notion that this meditation might have some negative impact on people , this is not really what I was thinking about . I have been more concerned that some how we can impact our illnesses negatively and ,are them more instead of less 😂. I have done many Vipassana courses. It is normal for people to idolise teachers . His wife’s position doesn’t bother me . She is his support. People can have their relationships however they look like as far as I’m concerned . Goenka ji does not claims enlightenment and neither do the teachers therefore they are just playing out their own shit. Just like everyone else. All I can say is to each their own. But if anyone has had any problems from the practice that are obvious and physical , I would be interested to hear them