Has anyone attained stream entry using pure Goenka technique?

My question hinges on the meaning of "pure". The Goenka tradition strongly discourages "mixing techniques". I can see three ways of doing this -- previous exposure, during a course, and subsequently -- arranged along a spectrum from inadvertent to deliberate.

In the first case, if someone has previously practiced in another tradition and/or has developed skills and/or habits and/or insights, these may bleed through and crop up or condition the practice of the Goenka Vipassana technique. Even a prior A&P or PCE event would surely influence how the Goenka technique is received or applied. Would this compromise it's "purity"? Is "purity" even possible from this point of view?

The second case is deliberately (or perhaps inadvertently, but that is more subtle) failing to follow instructions during a course, or doing something other than or contrary to the instructions during a course, and attaining stream entry. I am not asking here about the distinction between morality based on obedience versus morality based on responsibility (although that obviously bears on the questions of sila, kamma, etc.,) but rather trying to determine in a pragmatic way what leads to what.

The third case is having trained in the Goenka technique, then going on to altering the instructions, rejecting them, transcending them somehow, but in any case doing something other than what one was told to do subsequent to a course, and then attaining stream entry.

So, my question is: are there any case reports of yogis actually attaining stream entry using "pure" Goenka technique, without doing any of the above?

My working hypothesis is that pure Goenka Vipassana rarely leads to stream entry. I would love to see this falsified. Maybe there is another discussion forum somewhere else where large numbers of Goenka practitioners have attained stream entry using the "pure" Vipassana technique exactly as taught, but they just aren't showing up here? If someone is aware of such a forum, a link would be appreciated.

I've read it elsewhere on DhO that Goenka actually instructs to stop scanning at some point (presumably equanimity) and switch to panoramic awareness. You just don't get to hear that unless you go to a 20-day course. So even according to Goenka body scanning is not the way to stream entry.

In the publication Satipatthana Sutta Discourses, S.N. Goenka (Vipassana Research Institute, Seattle, 1998) ISBN 0-9649484-2-7, p. 101, the following questions and answers appear:

Jill (TJ Broccoli) and Blue have both done this and subsequent paths.

I can tell you that when in high equanimity the full body awareness thing feels intuitively right. Someone else said much the same recently but I can't remember for the life of me who it was. I don't know how that would work from lower down in EQ, but I hope to be in a position to comment on that shortly.

Watch my practice thread for updates on that.

having sat 2 x 20 days, I don't remember these instructions to switch to panoramic awareness. It would have been helpful though. Following anapana for 6 or so days, it was the sweeping method for the majority of the course.

Found the thread:
http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/650316
tarin's post: "goenka does teach this, but not until the 30 day course ..."
So it's 30 days and not 20, which is why you don't remember it.

I had few opportunities to sit a 30 day over the many years sitting and serving at centres. I was even advised to sit a 30 day as soon as possible by the head teacher of Australia after my first serving course (which happened 5 months after my first ever course). But he then told me i couldn't when he realised I had not practiced more than 2 years, sat 5 x 10 days, 1 x sati, and a 20 day course yet. The experiences of constant 'bhanga' in every sit while serving a course and the massive upheavels of strange phenomena were enough for this head teacher to advise me to sit one, but the bureaucracy of the organisation made that impossible. I'm glad I never did for some reason. Cause and effect led me to interactive buddha, Daniel's book, the DhO and mahasi noting. No looking back.

Here is a possibly interesting summary of the 30 day discourses.

I've had luck getting stream entry and further using purely the technique. I have another close friend who also quickly moved through attainments.

You have to keep in mind that the technique has to work. Why?

There is a stage talked about in the Satiphattana sutta which says the meditator experiences the whole body in one breathe. There are many meditation topics but they all must reach this stage at some point. So if all topics must eventually go through this stage why would starting off with body sensations be bad?

On top of that the Anagami and post-Anagami stage is all about body formations. The completion of Anagamihood is the completion of the body (aka sense pleasures). This is inline with my experience and that of the Thai forest monks. You can read about them using body contemplation at the Anagami stage in several books

-d

Blue, did you (and/or your friend) have knowledge of the maps of the progress of insight at the time when you got stream entry using "purely the [Goenka Vipassana] technique"?

I am wondering out loud here if that very knowledge (a) is an important element of getting stream entry using "purely the technique", and (b) might render the technique no longer "pure" by its own terms?

Congratulations on attaining stream entry, by the way, and thank you for participating in these discussions to help others do the same.

Depending on how strictly you define "pure" I could answer yes to this question, as my only formal instructed training was from three Goenka retreats (spread over 10 months) before I hit SE. However I had hit my first A&P before sitting my first course. So in some ways, it could be considered "purer" if someone had both hit the A&P and subsequently gone on to hit SE using the technique. Are you also considering it "purer" if a practitioner does not have knowledge of the maps?

Prior to my hitting SE I has read MCTB and had been paying more and more attention to sensation in daily life. I was also applying the technique according to what seemed to be working. At the point of SE I had recently come off my third retreat (in which I was serving) and was dropping scanning in favour of whole body awareness as I moved into EQ territory, which would happen quite quickly after starting my sits.

Interestingly enough, since SE I went on to hit MCTB 2nd and 3rd paths within eight months, without any subsequent retreat time or contact with a teacher, so you could say I made it to anagami with just Goenka technique. However that's pushing the definition a little, as 3rd path arose after a particularly intense bout of daily life practice (all day and all night at some points, in quite intense and extreme circumstances) in which I moved away from sitting towards a moment to moment investigation of how suffering was created by the "contraction" of the "field of awareness" around certain phenomena, including ideas, and the subsequent fabrications and self-concepts that arose from this moment to moment play of desire and aversion. This was closer to noting practice than anything else, but rather than the Mahasi style note-everything-as-fast-as-you-can approach I was just noting the contracting and sufferering as it happened, from a gently concentrated field-wide sensate base.

So yeh, for me it's a matter of using intuition in practice, and doing what works by honing the self-adjusting feedback mechanism.

In the end, it seems that the question as you phrased it comes down to what is and isn't included in the definition of "Goenka technique". Sitting and scanning aside, I seem to remember that in the discourses he mentions becoming more and more attentive to sensation in daily life. If this instruction is categorised as "Goenka technique" it necessarily means moving into a slightly more personal world of practice, as the ways in which we pay attention and subsequently what we pay attention to (in daily life) varies from individual to individual based on a huge array of factors.

Thom

I got to equanimity without knowledge of the maps. Then later ran into descriptions of the stages in a very old book. After that I was lucky enough to find them described in the pragmatic dharma movement.

As for my friend I don't think he was aware of the stages, he seemed to figure out a lot about them on his own.


-d

Yeh this phrase seemed somehow satisfying to me too ;-)

I want to add that this technique has to work. It is simply one of the methods Buddha gave in the Satiphattana Sutta: body sensations. On top of that, if you take any object (buddho, noting, breathe, body sensation) and stick to it like glue you will become enlightened.