J C:
Bailey .:
j m m:
Hi,
I have signed up for a Goenka 10 day that is on in April. I have been practicing sporadically for the last year or so using a mixture of techniques mostly focusing on the breath and some metta. About an hour a day on average I'd say. Basically I'd like to spend the next 3 months preparing as best I can so as to get the most out of the retreat (which will be my first retreat).
Any advice would be appreciated.
Metta
There are different categories of sila transgressions. Out of all the types of transgressions, breaking Dhamma sila is one of the worst. As is the nature of transgressions, the penalty reflects the type of infraction, meaning in some way or another your dhamma will suffer. Practicing noting at a Goenka meditation center is breaking Dhamma sila. It is messing with the vibrations of the center and because the transgression is happening in this Dhamma environment the consequences are multiplied.
Would the ends justify the means? Would it be best traveling faster with what some believe to be a stronger technique? I don't know, but I do know that if it were me I would follow the Geonka instructions (exactly emphasized) even if I thought noting was stronger.
good luck
Thanks for bringing this up. I have been reading about this issue and thinking about sila, and it is my belief that it is not breaking sila to note at a Goenka center. Interfering with others' experience by distracting them would be breaking sila, but what I do in my own head does not affect others' experience. I don't see any way that my thoughts could "mess with the vibrations" of the center. Me noting does not cause anyone else any harm. I don't believe sila is based on obedience; following instructions is not necessarily the right thing to do. I have a responsibility to do what I believe is right for my own enlightenment and for others, for the good of all beings.
I could be wrong about this but these are my thoughts at the present time.
From the Goenka course admission terms and code of discipline:
"The other rules should also be carefully read and considered. Only those who feel that they can honestly and scrupulously follow the discipline should apply for admission." [original text in bold typeface]
"Students must declare themselves willing to comply fully and for the duration of the course with the teacher's guidance and instructions; that is, to observe the discipline and to meditate exactly as the teacher asks, without ignoring any part of the instructions, nor adding anything to them. This acceptance should be one of discrimination and understanding, not blind submission. Such confidence in the teacher and the technique is essential for success in meditation."
"All other meditation techniques and healing or spiritual practices should also be suspended." The Goenka course is freely given but it comes with certain clearly expressed terms.
Allow me to kindly point out that you are intending to deceive. Your reasoning is that since no one else will know and you will not get caught, it's therefore not a problem to act deceitfully, as long as you believe that you can personally benefit from it.
Where does such a perspective begin and where does it end?
How do you expect that cultivating deceit will be a valuable quality as you walk on a path which has as it's method and goal the refinement and purification of one's mind? What makes you believe that you'll make progress and arrive at anywhere worth being if the means are fundamentally at odds with the desired goal?
What sort of enlightenment are you after?
Our world is full of takers. We are full of greed and dominated by our cravings. Here's a rare opportunity to spend 10 days purifying your mind and improving yourself. Why poison it at its roots because of past behavior patterns? Why not really try to benefit yourself and see what, if any, impact there is on your practice and personal development by cultivating - at least provisionally - the jewel-like transformative nobility of personal integrity?
Why not see this retreat as a extremely valuable and unusually rare opportunity to try to explore being honest for 10 days, to be truthful with yourself for ten days, to make an
earnest effort not to lie, scam, or steal?
Perhaps this attitude reflects one of the dangers of a certain type of Western dhamma by overemphasizing only a few spokes of the wheel and ignoring the others. How's a wheel out of balance going to roll straight and smooth? It's called the Noble EIGHTFOLD path and it's unlikely one will travel far down the path without keeping all the spokes in tune.
“I have a responsibility to do what I believe is right for my own enlightenment and for others, for the good of all beings.”
By cultivating your capacity to deceive and lie?
By cultivating rationalization?
A couple weeks back I read Bill Hamilton’s book Saints and Psychopaths wherein he writes: ‘That reminded me of a saying attributed to the Buddha, “There are no limits to the evil that a liar can do.” ‘
“I just don't think it's anyone else's business what I do in my head.”
Exactly. Karma**.
In the effort to eradicate our suffering, each of us is the prime beneficiary of his own integrity.
You may discover that cultivating such integrity will improve whatever meditation style you happen to practice.
(I'm not developed enough to know if and how such intentions manifest beyond oneself, for example 'messing with the vibrations' of the meditation center ... although men wiser than me have said that everything is interconnected).
“Nick, my goal is to get to stream entry as quickly as possible. Do you think that body scanning will be as likely to get me to stream entry on a retreat as noting will?”
Exactly what kind of stream are you looking to enter?
The East River?
Buddhism gets a little scary when most of the modern stream enterers are liars, thieves, rapists, alcoholics, and murderers.
Just kidding of course.
The hyperbole is for the sake of driving the point home, which applies equally well to myself.
All my questions above are purely rhetorical ....my roundabout way of saying that the discipline of practicing sila is often very difficult, but balanced cultivation is always beneficial to one's progress. One way to prepare for the retreat is to have as clean a head as possible going in regarding your intentions, resolve to make a sincere and serious effort to honor the five precepts during the ten days, and commit yourself to meet the high standards of discipline and effort that Goenka expects. He and/or his teachings may be stupid or they may not be, but why prejudge it based on others' experience? Have your own experience: resolve to keep an open mind and to learn something. I like Nick's advice.
Off my soapbox ;p
Wishing both JC and JMM a hugely productive and rewarding retreat with whatever techniques(s) they happen to use!
**
"Every moment of our lives represents the causal consequences of, inter alia, all of our prior actions. No action 'lies dormant' waiting for its consequences to emerge. Nor does any action somehow become "canceled" when some salient consequence is noticed. There is no accounting kept, and no debit and credit system, either from the causal or the moral point of view in the continuum of human action and experience. Rather, at each moment we are the total consequence of what we have done and of what we have experienced. And the only sense in which some past action may determine some future reward is one in which that past action, as well as other conditions, have determined a state now that, together with other future conditions, will determine that reward. Mutatis mutandis, of course, for negative consequences. This sober empiricist account of these matters forms the basis for Mahāyāna moral theory and its account of the nature of soteriological practice."The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, translation and commentary by Jay L. Garfield, Oxford University Press 1995, p.238