A secular take on 10 Day Vipassana Retreats

Authors note: if you are thinking about doing one of these retreats and wondering if it’s a cult, the answer is no. The core of the teaching is secular, but it’s definitely a tiny bit wrapped up in mysticism.

I am sitting, somewhat ironically at a McDonald’s a few miles outside this S.N. Goenka retreat, about a half an hour after completing a 10 day Vipassana course; waiting for a friend to call me back so I can re-enter the “mundane” life and do some casual hanging out.

I thought I would take the time to get some of these thoughts about the retreat out of my head while they are still fresh.

This is written for those considering one of these retreats, but hesitant to step into something dripping with dogma and rituals. Or those who have read reports that Vipassana is a “cult”.

I consider myself a rational, secular person. I was raised Christian and turned into an outspoken atheist in my late teens. I’ve developed into a much more (I think) reasonable agnostic. I have no idea what the universe is made of or came from, and I don’t think you do either.

So that’s where I am coming from. I am a software developer, I work with logic. Etc etc etc.

Where did these retreats come from?

Goenka was a born to a wealthy Hindu family in Burma and spent his early life as a very successful business man. As still a young man, he was suffering from debilitating migraines; with morphine being the only relief, his doctors warned he would soon become an addict.

Desperate to get non-opiate relief from these headaches, he traveled the world speaking “to the best doctors” to no-avail. Exasperated and left without options, he eventually took a 10 day Vipassana course and found immense benefits.

Goenka repeatedly claims what he is teaching is descended from the original teachings of Siddhārtha Gautama (whom we usually refer to as Buddha).

Having gained great benefit from this teaching — which is collectively referred to as The Dhamma — he traveled to India to give a course to his mother, who was suffering her own psychosomatic traumas he believed this practice would help and a few other people took the course as well.

The demand for these courses was surprising and he ended up giving multiple 10 day courses in his visit to India. As demand kept growing, and people kept asking for more of this course, before long “the Ganges of Dhamma was flowing.”

What actually goes on in these 10 day courses?

If you are reading this you probably already know that the courses themselves are somewhat crazy from an outside perspective. Up at 4am every day, 10.5 hours of meditation every day for 10 days. You take a vow of silence. You agree to basically do nothing but meditate and eat and walk around a little path through the woods for exercise. No phones, no writing utensils, no yoga.

In addition with these meditations there is, each night, a lecture recorded by the (now late) Goenka which goes for maybe an hour and fifteen minutes. The these lecture were recorded in 1991 and the quality shows.

This is somewhat jarring against the background of truly immaculate grounds. Everything is clean and modern and beautiful.

Why they don’t have the teachers they have trained give these lectures is beyond me (and I believe, something of a fault that will lead eventually to too much focus on Goenka rather than the teaching itself).

The lectures (referred to as discourses) are surprisingly engaging, especially his insight into what is going on inside your head, despite the fact you are on a deeply personal journey and not talking to anyone. As well, you are probably beat after so much sitting, and not exactly comfortable as you’re just sitting on the floor (any attempt to sneak a lay-down will get you a polite admonishment). Overall I found him warm and insightful; but not exactly “entertaining.”

Early on in these lectures, as well as in the literature/propaganda, there are many claims that this is a non-sectarian, scientific, non dogmatic, non ritualistic, purely secular practice.

This is 100% not true.

Rather, though the practice itself IS secular and I see no reason why it would interfere with any religion or non-religion, the lectures and the actual things that go on are definitely full of their own dogmas and seemingly arbitrary metaphysics.

There was a bit of chanting by Goenka (not his best skill, imho) to mark the end of the group sits (definitely a ritual in my estimation, especially since they were in a language other than what the course is taught in), there were silly rules like “don’t point the soles of your feet at the teacher” (not enforced during my course, for whatever that’s worth — and I would consider this rule at least slightly dogmatic).

Additionally, there was talk of karmas, re-birth (but NOT reincarnation, the teacher admonished me when I challenged this aspect as being obviously dogmatic), and significant metaphysics involving the nature of reality which, if they are true, are certainly not accepted by the standard view of physicists.

To his credit, Goenka repeatedly says if you don’t like any of these parts.. no matter. Just reject them. This is what I chose to do; and really it was only the chanting when I was trying to meditate that truly bothered me.

I do think it’s very unfortunate, especially in the west, for these thinsg to be included as they are. They will definitely turn off many rationally minded folks that would otherwise be perfectly happy to give a real test of this technique, which I DO believe is a legitimate way to make your life nearly infinitely better.

I think if they had a little disclaimer like the below, it would be much more easy for the most scientific-self-identifiers to give this practice a fair shot.

We maintain that the actual practice of Vipassana as taught in these courses is a purely secular, non sectarian act, compatible with any set of beliefs.

In addition to this practice, the discourses will contain references to metaphysics which some may not accept. These parts of the discourses are maintained as they can help some in their practice, but also for historical reasons. They are ultimately inessential and we insist that just like the practice, the theory should be accepted or rejected by each individual based on his or her own volition, and nothing else.

How can free 10 day courses with room and board exist?

Given the fact that these are 100% free courses, (and Goenka makes some funny pokes at this), people in the west are very suspicious of the motivations of these centers. You will be given free (delicious, incredible) food. In most cases, a private room, a private bathroom (some people at some centers will bunk with 1 or 2 people). Get sick? They will bring you medicine.

As far as I know, no one is paid anything. At the end of the course, no one so much as asked for a donation. No one suggested an amount (I expected them to say it costs $xxx per student for a 10 day course). Instead they had a table accepting donations and a note that said (paraphrased), if you decide to give, do it only because you felt benefit and you want someone else to get benefit; give only what comes from genuine good will to future students.

Despite my strong objections to the chanting and to the dogma of the metaphysics, I gave — which I didn’t necessarily intend on. I truly felt, and continue to feel deeply moved by the experience, the institution, and the individuals who took the time out of their lives to make this possible.

The opportunity to live the secluded life of a monk, to be served by others in a pristine, beautiful location because they truly think this will make your life better is just out of this world.

Of course we would be skeptical of the intentions, there is nothing like this on this scale that almost anyone comes into contact with — you are treated like you would be coming home to a loving family you haven’t seen in half a year. But these are strangers.

Yet, it does exist.

Is Vipassana a Cult?

There are people who claim that Vipassana is a cult. I just can’t see it that way. Though the discourses are done by Goenka, he is certainly not a ‘charismatic leader’; he speaks well, but slowly and heavily accented. There are no images of him anywhere except when the videos of his lectures are playing.

If I had to distill the fundamental aspect of the teaching it’s that:

you are ultimately responsible for your own suffering. When you suffer, you share that suffering with others. Here is a way to stop suffering inside yourself, this will also help you make those around you happier. It’s very very hard work, there is no short cut, and you have to do the work yourself. Please do it, for the sake of all living beings, including yourself.

The ultimate teaching is that your suffering is your own damn fault, no one elses. Reject everything you hear from everyone, including Goenka, and accept what you find to be true in your practice; since afterall these are the rules of nature and are universally true. The technique taught is simply a lens for which to examine your inner self to see these things for yourself.

No one asked me to stop talking to non Vipassana practitioners, or pressed me to “convert” others. No one asked anything of me except to clean my room after I left.

What is actually taught?

Despite my rejection/ignoring of the metaphysics of it all, I do feel quite convinced on some aspects of it; the things I saw for myself.

The basic idea is that what we might call the “subconcious” might better be referred to as ‘subtle concious’ since with a little bit of practice you can actually bring it into awareness; at least aspects of it.

The way this subconcious functions is by giving pleasent or unpleasant sensations throughout the body in order to get the driver (what you would typically consider “I” or the mind or soul or whatever) to do certain things. From an evolutionary perspective this makes sense to me; as seemingly-free beings how do we get ourselves to eat food, and not be total assholes to our tribe-mates?

Well, eating food feels good, so we get rewarded for this. So we “freely” seek out food because it feels good, not because it has nourishment, per se. Having your tribe mates hates you feels bad, so you are inclined to act in accordance with them to get their acceptance. The mechanism being used is good and bad feelings, and we grow craving and aversions to these simply-physical-sensations as the unconscious background noise to our life.

As someone who has struggled with caffeine and nicotine addiction my whole life, I already have a good intuition for how our biochemistry meant to keep the ape-versions of ourselves alive gets hijacked quite easily.

An unfortunate side-effect of this is that when our cravings are unmet (I am SO HUNGRY) or our aversions come to fruition (I am SO HUMILIATED); we feel bad. This is suffering. These are big, loud, “gross” examples but part of the core of the teaching (that I became convinced of on this retreat) is that this process is happening at a frightengly rapid pace 24/7 in ways that almost never hit our conscious awareness.

For myself, and I would guess almost everyone, this is happening especially rapidly on the ego-image aspect of ourselves. Both the image we maintain of ourselves and the image we try to maintain of ourselves in others’ minds.

Vipassana teaches us to see these aversions and cravings bubble to the surface, and, instead of reacting to them unconsciously we simply learn to look at them non judgmentally until they just fizzle out. The idea is that when one of these unconscious reactions manifests, it will naturally get a tiny bit stronger and ultimately trigger the next unconscious reaction in the chain.

Instead, by getting our awareness between the physical sensation and the automatic reaction to it, we can use our volition to not react and break the chain. This ends up looking very similar breaking an addiction; where eventually the power of the urge to react automatically just fades away. In deep states of meditation, this process is happening at a very rapid pace.

What are the benefits of Vipassana?

Over time these aversions/cravings (referred to collectively as sankaras) and their automatic reactions stop happening. This frees up a tremendous amount of energy for more conscious living.

An analogy I am particularly proud of is to think of a constant buzzing background noise, like an air conditioner, a lawn mower, or CPU fan.. something that eventually fades to the background and is not on your conscious mind.

Yet, when the noise eventually stops you get the nice sense of “ahhhhh”. To me, the benefit I feel from practicing this technique is deeper and deeper levels of “ahhhh” as this tightly wound knot slowly unwinds.

And that’s pretty much the whole thing. The whole technique is teaching and training you to see this process happen at a subtler and subtler level. If vipassana is a cult, I suppose I am apart of it now; sitting at a Mc Donalds in Kaufman TX, writing about how the chanting was annoying as fuck.