Vipassana: 10 days of solitude and insights gained from it

"You were wrong." In what way was I wrong? Perhaps you don't understand that whilst the panic attack was the 'straw that broke the camels back' so to speak, it was the teachings and approach that I disagreed with most in the end, the panic attack just woke me up to paying more attention to them.

"Vipassanna is the rather upsetting path toward learning to be able to sit quietly in a room, alone." If that's all it was, I would've been happier with it. Being told you create misery, that your love (unless you follow the path) is shallow, that your ego will disappear, being told that Buddhism is 'scientific' and then being told the smallest particles in the universe are 'kalapas' of earth, air, fire, etc... wasn't exactly reassuring. I also disliked the chanting (you don't have to do it, but I personally found it off-putting to listen to).

I actually enjoyed practising anapana and vipassana (less so the third type, can't remember the name), though of course you're not meant to enjoy it. Becoming aware of the extra sensation you have of your body was pretty interesting.

If the path you've chosen works for you, great, but please open your mind to accept it might not work great for everybody. One of the saving graces of the vipassana course for me is they didn't expect you to believe what they were saying, but rather believe in your own experience. That sort of honesty I can respect.

> The only tangible harm is that it annoys people who attempt to apply logical reasoning to every situation and interaction, even where other human faculties are obviously more appropriate.

You are applying logical reasoning at any given time. What varies only are the assumptions you're concsciously or unconsciously making about yourself and the world.

As time passed by, humanity made various conscious and unconscious assumptions about the structure of the world. These assumptions got captured into language, which enabled passing the assumptions from one generation to the next. This is what happened with words like "soul" and "mind" (which assume possibility of absolute separation between elements). But as scientific revolutions occurred, assumptions were revised, and we created new terms, like "network" (a very important term from the semantic pov, as it assumes connectedness). Unlike thousands of years ago, today (year 2013), we know that the impossibility of absolute separation between elements is a fact of the world in which we live. By subscribing to the older systems of thought, you are going against scientifically (i.e publicly) accepted facts in your thought and actions.

>human mind seems to have no trouble at all with combining arbitrary and contradictory concepts into one big mushy whole.

The "mind"? Yes, maybe. The nervous system? Not so sure.

We know from neurology101 that observations are given by impulses received from the senses and processed in the thalamus. The cortex enables more abstract processing of observations (i.e interpretation, ideas, theories, etc.); the impulses reach the cortex after they have been processed by the thalamus. The entire thing is cyclical [1]. As the brain is one connected whole, it is neurologically important that the cortical and thalamic processes remain coordinated. This means it is undesirable that ideas are in a mushy relationship within themselves and with the empirical observations. If they were, this would essentially disconnect the activity of the brain. A very handy example of this is (my Western understanding of) mantras: they are not words, yet they are treated as if they have meaning (i.e, if I start repeating a mantra, I will deal will purely cortical products, instead of starting from observations and facts – that is, starting with thalamic products, and afterwards proceed by processing those cortically).

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7d4ROvZ6I

Having completed a full course, I agree with you regarding the video content. It went beyond practice guidance and veered into disappointing endorsements of woo-woo.

The nightly videos start out objective and practice-focused, but by the middle of the course Goenka suggests quantum-scariness explanations for the sensations meditators are feeling.

As one retreat participant noted, in one of the nightly video talks [0]:

> [Goenka] mixes quantum mechanics with "psychology of enlightenment"

What makes it a bit more of a breach of trust is that by the time he breaks out the full-on woo-woo, you're deep in the process—the days are flying by—you purposely don't have your critical thought facilities active.

Aside from that sour note, I'd still suggest this course to others. Hitting a stride with practice and tuning your ability to focus your attention on minute sensations is a fascinating experience, especially if you've taken any courses on proprioception, sensation and perception.

If you're a rationalist who already firmly rejects the ideas of mind-body separation and reincarnation then you have nothing to worry about.

[0]: http://www.vipassanaforum.net/forum/index.php?topic=1871.0

Vipassana is a great practice — in my experience, finding other people to sit with consistently has helped better than anything else. Like weekly or even a few times per week.

I've been to a number of 10-day Goenka courses, and agree that in the videos he occasionally drifts off to questionably relevant territory.

However, the evening talks also point out that we should mentally "leave aside" any of the intellectual stuff we don't agree with, and instead focus on what our own experience with the technique reveals.

The technique itself — actually sitting still and observing breath and sensations — is the important part, not the stuff about bubble chambers, etc.