I finished a Goenka Satipatthana course last month and it was such a positive experience, I wanted to post some notes that could possibly be useful or relevant to someone.
I should start by saying this was the 10th course I've done, and as in other courses I experimented somewhat, and over the past 6 years have found my own unique way to approach these courses, so some of the things I say may not be useful to someone new to the goenka tradition, or to someone who is determined to follow instructions to the tee, which is a very good thing to do.
I was constantly amazed how this particular course, the Satipatthana course, was so relevant to the way I have been practicing recently. I did this course 4 years ago, and even though at the time my practice was strong, and it was a great course in that an important shift happened, I did not have the background to really appreciate what was being taught. But since finding DhO, reading, MCTB, and all the places those have led the past two years, including some AF practices, and some of Kenneth Folks practices, so many things have become much more clear.
On my first few courses my tendency was to overwork, to strain, and I learned this was counterproductive. Goenka in fact fueled this tendency with his constant instructions to work seriously, work ardently, etc. I eventually learned that working ardently and seriously does not mean straining in any way - in fact he made this perfectly clear in the Satipatthana course, when he emphasized that we should be doing NOTHING - just observing, and certainly not straining. So to work ardently and seriously basically means to simply remain calmly and continuously alert. Regarding this, Tarin's retreat advice, to not miss a second, not even a split second, has been very helpful for me - now now now now now now now
So to apply this during the first few days of anapana, when one's "entire attention" is to remain on the tiny spot above the upper lip, rather than focus hard on this area, I found that by lightly, gently repeatedly and continuously touching this area with awareness, very calmly, stillness and tranquility being more useful words than ardently and seriously, attention was sharpened, and samadhi was quickly and very strongly developed. I did veer away from the anapana spot and experimented with the third eye spot, between the brows, on the surface, just touching this lightly but continuously for a number of hours - and this led to a very profound experience later in the course, which I will describe later (future post).
One thing I was determined to work on was to keep awareness on the surface, on the skin, like for example the touch of clothes on the skin, or body contact with the floor, or body to body contact, very simple, obvious surface sensations, "low hanging fruit" to use Kenneth's term. I had always neglected this for a number of reasons (one being all the deep bodywork training I had), despite Goenka's very clear instructions to remain on the surface until every single part is known. It became so obvious that all along he had been teaching us to spread awareness, to make awareness more diffuse, and to slowly learn to be sensitive to the entire body at once. When I did start scanning I did so in a calm and tranquil manner, without the feeling of actually moving attention around, but rather tuning attention in such a way as to perceive all the body at once, or as much as possible at once, which seems to be the opposite of a "one pointed mind", and this was a very helpful.
At one point early in the course, while in the meditation cell, there was pivotal moment when it felt as if the entire surface of my body sort of caught fire, all at once it started buzzing in an exaggerated way. From then on it felt like I was protected by a forcefield or something, and it remained for the remainder of the course. And this was very easy to keep track of, because there was very very loud construction going on just outside the meditation cells, which had been disturbing until this moment. By loud construction I mean sledge hammering rebar in concrete not more than 10 feet from me, the pounding reverberation through my body, and sawing through metal pipe right below with a sawzall, not more than 6 feet away, day after day, almost every time I sat in there (except pre-dawn). This was probably the most striking thing that happened on the course, that I did not have even the slightest reaction to any of this noise for the remainder of the course. If there was a reaction meter hooked up to me it would not have moved even once. In fact many of those hours spent in that cell, with those noises vibrating through my body, were extremely sublime.
An aside - one sitting position that has been very helpful the past few years, and particularly for keeping awareness on the surface, and feeling much of the body at once, as there is much body to body contact, is the normal break position when on a cushion - when knees are brought up close to the chest, feet flat on ground, arms wrapped around knees, butte on cushion - the very positive effects of this position should not be underestimated imo, in fact I think it accelerated progress for me. During this past course there was no difference in quality of meditation whether I was sitting like this, or sitting in my normal cross legged position.
Anyway probably the most important thing I learned on the course, and Goenka mentioned this at least a couple of times, as it was right in the sutta, was to learn to experience both the surface of the body, and the interior of the body, at the same time - together. I had not gotten this memo before. Because I had not followed instructions on earlier courses, and had not mastered the surface of the body before going inside, thinking it was superficial or somehow inferior, I couldn't have been more wrong about this, I had not learned to untangle the two, and this has resulted in a lot of needless suffering and confusion. So now my practice is very much about learning to first clearly differentiate the two, then experience both interior and exterior together. And this practice goes right into Kenneth's lightning rod/direct mode territory, as well as into actualizing the jhanas territory, if I understand this right, in that by simply being attentive to the interior twangs/emotions/disturbances etc, and juxtaposing these onto one's experience at the surface, even something as simple as the clothes on the skin, or breeze on the skin, or awareness of seeing and hearing, or awareness of actuality itself, is a very effective way to de-twang, to cleanse the system. If it works for neutralizing lust, which it has been, then it should work for anything.
There's a few other points I want to make, but will have to be in a future post.
