April V:
I stated in my original post that I dropped out of tradition, because ,,the given goal to clear out some sankharas did not convince me'', not because I believed all of them had to be eradicated.
I used to get to Equanimity where the heaviest sankharas are left behind, they arise first and only the subtlest ones (intentions, volitions) remain.
as you continue to make insight progress, you may find that the even what you now characterise as the subtlest sankharas are really quite heavy, relative to the ones you will deal with on later paths (which, it can be argued, have been there all along but simply do not prevent the stream-entry attainment).
you may also learn subtler ways of measuring subtlety.. if this does not right away make sense to you, consider carefully the things which are currently implied by your notions of 'heavy' and 'subtle' (or 'gross' and 'subtle', or 'coarse and refined'), and consider how even this metric itself (and the means of knowing it) can change in relation to what is being measured.
April V:
That said, it is a very common belief between people I know in this tradition. It is so common that they don't go to retreats to get enlightened, but to get rid of their sankharas. Also it is believed that they must fulfill 10 perfections of Buddha. Most of them don't even believe that enlightenment is possible. They find it shocking if somoene openly claims it.
having sat something in the vicinty of two dozen courses in the goenka tradition over the last decade, i am well aware of this. fortunately, i sat most of my early courses in a predominantly theravadan buddhist country with many strong practitioners and teachers from a variety of traditions (and resources which support them), and on them i met a few very clearly skilled practitioners, some of whom had ideas of their own as well as a habit of fostering, if only by example, an individualistic and independent approach to practice. therefore, the culture of goenka practitioners you describe above had very little influence on me (which it may have had anyway, as it is possible that i was already particularly inclined to such independence). regardless, even after i left that tradition, i felt no bitterness toward it or regret over the time i spent in it, as i clearly had benefitted much from my experience there, on top of which i saw that any antagonistic relationship i might have with the goenka tradition and the way they do things would only ever truly be one i was having with myself but was projecting onto external objects (funnily enough, i had actually come to understand much of how this process works because of those goenka courses). furthermore, i came to realise that there is much, much of value presented within that tradition that is lacking in other places, including this forum as well as others associated with the 'hardcore dharma movement' or 'pragmatic dharma movement' spearheaded by the book MCTB.
April V:
You started defending Goenka's method which is proved to be very inneficient to get stream-entry, therefore I assumed that you find it more beneficial to work on eradicatiion of sankharas than to get stream-entry, which you responded negatively.
would you please tell me what i have written which has given you the (erroneous) impression that i am, or have been, defending goenka's method? at this point, i am starting to wonder if you did read what i actually wrote.. and so i would like to ask you to please go back and carefully read (or re-read) our correspondence.
in the event that, having done this, you are still arriving to the same conclusion that i am 'warranting [goenka's] method' or 'defending Goenka's method', it may help for me to have here a summary, in order, of all the things i have written which were addressed to you in this correspondence thus far:
in my first reply to your first post which was addressed to me, i answered your question regarding whether my experiences of the respective benefits of pre-path practice and of stream-entry were different from yours; i said 'no', and asked you what made you think so.
i then replied to your following statement, which asserted that practising vipassana with the aim of eradicating all defilements entirely while still in the (pre-path) dark night could be discouraging, with clear agreement. next, i asked you what you thought, on the other hand, about 'doing vipassana for the sake of clearing away a sufficient amount of the coarse defilements, which then gives rise to the experience of nibbana?'. as i assumed your assertion (about the goal of practice you mentioned which a pre-path dark nighter would find discouraging) was meant to be indicative of what goenka teaches, i quoted a couple of passages from one of the recorded discourses played on all his basic 10-day retreats - noting that they are compulsory listening, usually repeatedly, for literally all of his students - in order to demonstrate what goenka actually teaches, and to demonstrate the disparity between 1- what you presented correctly as a likely discouraging teaching but incorrectly as what goenka teaches, and 2- what goenka actually teaches. i emphasised the lines which demonstrated this disparity most clearly in bold.
then, in my next response to you(r subsequent reply), i answered your question about why i had quoted goenka. i explained that i did so because 'he clearly states that it is the heaviest sankhara (as opposed to all of them) which must be eliminated in order to experience nibbana and that those are the sankhara which arise first in the practice of vipassana', and i explained that the particular quotation was relevant to your insinuation that goenka teaches his students to practise vipassana with the aim of eradicating all defilements entirely while they are still in the (pre-path) dark night (which is discouraging) because it demonstrates that he, in fact, teaches no such thing.
as the passages i quoted came directly from goenka's 10-day discourse summaries (which all his students are required to take several times before they are allowed to take any other courses), then you would have had to heard him repeat this again and again.. but as what you presented (that goenka teaches his students to practise vipassana with the aim of eradicating all defilements entirely while they are still in the pre-path dark night) indicated that you were not aware of this, i questioned if perhaps you were simply not listening to the discourses which you were required to attend.
i then proceed to answer your next question, about why i was warranting goenka's method, with the simple fact that i was not, and so could not answer the question (as it was based on a false premise).
i then answered your next question still, about whether or not i had attained stream-entry by following goenka's instructions, and i said no, and asked you why you assumed that i had.
to the following sentence, in which you stated that if i had (attained stream-entry by following goenka's instructions) i would be the first person you know who had done so, i replied that i myself actually know several people who have done just that, including one who did so on her first goenka retreat. i also included some autobiographical information (about the circumstances under which i
did get stream-entry).
after that, i replied to your commentary about your having gotten to low (but never high) equanimity on goenka retreats [which, i neglected to mention in my post, is also very common for people to do on mahasi retreats] as well as your claim that it is not possible, for a practitioner in low equanimity, to see mental reactions/intentions/volitions clearly because of how one is instructed to scan and sweep on those retreats. here, i wrote that my experience was similar (though i was also regularly able to get further into high equanimity), but in retrospect, i realised that this was likely caused, to a great degree, by how i was simply not following the instructions that were given, which instructions were to observe the
impermanence characteristic of sensations. i further noted that i was, instead, only paying attention to the bodily sensations i experienced (however i happened to be experiencing them), and that, as far as i could tell from conversations i had had with others, this mistake (of overlooking impermanence - 'anicca') is widespread in the tradition. with this context in place, i then asked you if you were 'giving full attention to the impermanence of sensations on all those courses you sat' (as i suspected that your lack of success in attaining a path - or at the very least, getting into high equanimity - on goenka courses may have been due to this all-too-common lack of conscientiousness).
i next affirmed that i am aware of the extra instructions given on goenka's 30-day courses which are oriented to help students navigate equanimity nana, and linked to another thread in which i had only recently posted that information myself [in a bid to help somebody else on this forum - who not long ago attended a 10-day retreat - get path, and possibly do this while practising at home].
i then addressed your mention of the goenka tradition's long course admissions policy, and explained that those requirements did not used to be anywhere near as demanding as they now are, as well as why they now are (which is because sufficient experience has shown the organisation that unwanted things happen to a sufficient number of meditators who undetake long courses before they are sufficiently prepared). i explained, to the best of my ability, what the rationale now in place behind the various requirements for admitting a student to a long course is.
in the following section of my reply, i addressed your questions to me concerning a passage of my writing which you selected from my correspondence with nikolai earlier in this thread, a passage which you quoted incompletely (by leaving off the crucial first part of the first sentence of the selection) and out of its proper context and apparently misunderstood. i indicated what i thought was the likely cause of the misunderstanding, and demonstrated how a proper understanding can be achieved by quoting the selected passage in a way that includes its entire sentences as they were written (thereby maintaining the integrity of the passage's meaning which had been lost by your abridgedment). further, in quoting again the passage in question, i emphasised, in bold, the parts which indicate, in no uncertain terms, how the matter with which you took issue (that sankharas arising dependent on vedana) - which you suggested may be, inter alia, a product of my own misunderstanding - is something that goenka teaches, in order to demonstrate that i was clearly presenting the topic in that context (as was relevant to my correspondence with nikolai).
i then stated, in an attempt to be helpful by providing information possibly relevant to your queries (so long as you are interested in why
someone (anyone) would think the things which you questioned, rather than only why
i would think them), that while i ultimately did not know the reason whereby goenka teaches that sankhara arises dependent on vedana, i could speculate that, in addition to the possibilities you presented (of experience, theory, and misunderstanding), he may consider it an appropriate teaching point for his students.
*
having read the above summary, do you still think that i have been 'warranting [goenka's] method' or 'defending Goenka's method'? if so, would you please explain exactly what it is that you mean by this?
April V:
But I don't think that it is innefective only because with time it drowns people's belief that enlightenment is possible, but also because full technique with additional instructions is given only for those who meet rigorous requirements to attend a 30-day course. It is over my head that someone has to wait maybe a decade to hear what to do after getting to 11th nana.
while i am understanding of the reasons behind the rigorous standards to which the goenka tradition now requires their students adhere in order to qualify for admission to the 30-day courses, i, too, cannot fathom why the equanimity nana instructions are not given at all on earlier courses, and think that whatever harm might come of doing so would surely be outweighed by the benefits.
April V:
were you giving full attention to the impermanence of sensations on all those courses you sat?
I still think that it's more important to have 7 factors of enlightenment in harmony and I don't see it possible while the mind is busy with sweeping and scanning, but not because of not seeing impermanence.
while i agree that getting the seven factors of enlightenment in harmony is a valid and possibly very effective means for inducing stream-entry, this matter is tangential, and is ultimately irrelevant to my question, which is as yet unanswered, and still stands: were you giving full attention to the impermanence of sensations on all those courses you sat?
if your answer is 'no', then here is something you may wish to consider: you were not following the instructions.
if you were not following the instructions, then your ability to sensibly discern their efficacy in getting practitioners (who do follow them) to stream-entry is rendered null by the fact that you do not actually know of what you speak.
if, however, your answer is 'yes', then that is another matter entirely.
which is it?
April V:
My epilogue is that those who are stuck in Goenka's tradition should consider if what they practice brought them down-to-earth, practical results and accept to make changes if it hasn't.
indeed, those whose practices have not, after a period of diligent and scrupulous application, brought them down-to-earth, practical results should consider making changes to their practices.
here, it may be pointful to note that I have been told, by a monk in the mahasi tradition (who has spent most of his time living at their retreat centres), that practitioners who do not attain path after 6 months' continuous retreat are discouraged from thereupon continuing (to which he added that he would personally advise them to consider trying another tradition).
April V:
And thanks Tarin for starting the discussion which hopefully somone will find useful.
you're welcome, and i thank you likewise for your engagement. however, in saying 'hopefully someone will find it useful', are you indicating that you, yourself, do not find this discussion useful? please correct me if i misunderstand. (not that i would mind, of course, i'm just asking for clarity's sake and to better know the person with whom i am corresponding)
tarin
