Comments on “Theravada reinvents meditation”

Hi David.

I’ve really been enjoying reading your posts. Especially the last few. History is ridiculous. Who the hell would have thought Buddhism came to the West this way? Also, the fact that you seem to be hyper-prolific is great. I get to read a new, mind-blowing (not that hard, though, with my mind :)) post almost every other day. I think you were even pumping out one per day for a bit there. Geesh!

And “bogosity” - I looked it up. Maybe you’ve already seen this. Good stuff:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bogosity
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/microLenat

One thing, though. I just started reading this latest post. Is the beginning supposed to be:
“Vipassana meditation is most Buddhist thing in ‘Consensus Buddhism.’ This post starts to ask how Buddhist vipassana is, by tracing its history.” ?

It kind of sounds like a joke. Like you might be intentionally using broken English to be funny, but maybe it’s just a typo.

Either way, thanks so much for all the great posts. Amazing what you can learn on these internets! Go internets!

-noah-

You caught it. :)

“Bogonix”!

Replaced the rotary blade with an “Argon/Cesium vapor laser”.
Yeah, that’s a good idea. You know, oxidation and whatnot. :D

“Training epochs”!!! - I laughed my ass off at the training epochs. :)

Man! Good stuff.

Reading this post was one of those WTF?!?! -moments. So, meditation has been so neglected even in Buddhism? This really puts things in perspective.

Funny thing is that you can see the same thing happening in western mysticism. People have again and again dug out some of those old grimmoires and tried to figure out, how the instructed practices are actually done.

On the positive side, this also shows that real innovation is possible, that the so-called “tradition” is never a static entity in itself. For me, this is always important, because completely static tradition would be a dead one: that nobody is testing and developing methods through practice. Actual practice should always lead to change and refinement.

HI David,

This is great stuff. Deconstructing history to get beyond literal readings. Showing that things have changed and developed, and often in surprising and major ways is a valuable service.

The Sangharakshita who wrote the bio of Dharmapala is the same one who found the Triratna Buddhist Order. I think he was profoundly influenced by his contact with the Mahabodhi Society, who commissioned him to write the biography. However the influence was mostly negatively as the bhikkhus were often arrogant, greedy and even wealthy. The non-monastic nature of our movement can be traced to the fact that many of the monks he met did not meditate or do any kind of spiritual practice. In a related snippet Sangharakshita’s teacher Bhikkhu Jagdish Kasyap was advised against practising meditation by his monastic superiors, who thought that sort of thing incompatible with being a monk. This was early 20th century. Also the Mahabodhi Society allowed anyone with an interest to serve on it’s committees. This resulted in the committees being packed with ambitious and zealous Hindu’s with no sympathy for the aims of the Society.

One thing you do not say much about is that if these guys rediscovered effective meditation techniques on their own - and I mean effective in the sense of liberating - then they are tantamount to being Buddha’s, are they not? It must be a tension for their students. Legitimacy clearly comes through lineage, and yet there is no higher achievement in Buddhism than finding the way on your own. Which aspect to play up?

Great post, David, again! Thanks for all the links and the wonderful summary!

Some side notes:
1. The source texts:
Maha-Satipatthana Sutta: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.22.0.than.html
Anapanasati Sutta: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html
Visuddhimagga (Google Books sample): http://books.google.com/books?id=C389AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

1. Bhante Sujato is a knowledgable researcher (and vigorous fighter :)) of the samatha-vipassana topic (debate):
   Video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSVQhhEt7tQ
   ‘A Brief History of Mindfulness’ bog post: http://sujato.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/a-brief-history-of-mindfulness/
   ‘A Swift Pair of Messengers’ book: http://santipada.org/aswiftpairofmessengers/

2. Pa Auk Sayadaw is also a curious figure in the history of vipassana (or rather his criticism towards contemporary interpretations of vipassana:
   Pa Auk Monastery US site (with further links): http://www.paauk.org/

Greetings,

Roni

PS: How can you link with link text in comments?

Will you talk about tibetan buddhism on this series? I hope you do

“It appears that, in the early 1800s, vipassana had been completely lost in the Theravada world. No one knew how to do it.”

This conclusion is very much overstated.The academic work on this topic is instructive. One of the better sources is Gustaaf Houtman’s 1990 dissertation “Traditions of Buddhist Practice in Burma,” which is freely available on the web. An even better source is “Ledi Sayadaw, Abhidhamma, and the Development of the Modern Insight Meditation Movement in Burma,” a 2008 dissertation by Erik Christopher Braun.

The fact of the matter is, we have only a hazy idea of what was going on throughout the 19th century in Burma, but there is no suggestion that meditation was ever “completely lost.” Certainly, before the 19th century interest seems to have been quite limited. But there seems to have always been some interest in meditation, and there seems to be a degree of clear continuity between Ledi and Mingun and what had come before them, although certainly there was a dynamic of change as well.

Houtman writes writes “while WM [Wi’pat-tha-na, ie Vipassana] was probably practised, there remains little published record of it.” pg 38

Braun writes “isolated instances suggest that meditation practice did generate interest among some monks and possibly among the laity as well before the nineteenth century. Much research remains to be done, however, which is beyond the scope of this thesis, before we can speak with confidence about meditation in this period.” pg 305

Braun also suggests that your contention that the nature of the meditation Ledi and Mingun taught was a dramatic innovation is not at all correct. He writes

“It seems that while the interest in vipassana was a groundswell among both monks and the laity that went beyond any individual teacher, Ledi’s work, and, slightly later, Mingun’s too, marked a watershed moment that moved the interest in meditation in specific directions. Ledi’s works appealed to the Burmese not because they were unprecedented in terms of topic, but because they tapped into a burgeoning interest already present.” pgs 316-317

In some regards it seems your conclusion is predicated on assumptions that are only operative in a Vajrayana or a Zen context - that is, without an unbroken lineage of oral instructions a meditation tradition is “lost.” That attitude does not seem to be relevant to Burma. Monks in Burma could and did base their practices on their own traditional textual study. Certainly meditation became enormously more popular in the 19th century, but that doesn’t mean no one did it in the early 1800s. Ledi and Mingun taught it to the laity more widely, and perhaps set a lower barrier to entry for vipassana practice, but to say they reinvented it and that it was completely lost goes well beyond what the existing evidence supports.

Hi David,

In the same vein as what Greg says above, I would like to add that while I greatly enjoy your posts (I really do!), there does seem to be a tendency to draw very strong conclusions from limited evidence. I, for one, would enjoy them even more if you were slightly more cautious or suggestive rather than presenting a hypothesis as something closer to fact. That’s probably not your intention, but that’s often how it reads to me.

1) ‘Mahasi made several innovations. The most important was skipping samatha and the development of the jhanas (concentration states) and going directly to vipassana. He thought that samatha would take care of itself, if you practice vipassana correctly. The jhanas are not ends in themselves, so bypassing samatha is a practical shortcut.’
It’s fascinating how wrong you can go in Buddhism and still have a grasp on something valid. My analogy is, if you go directly into Tantra, Sutra is spontaneously accomplished, by means of the Tantric ngöndrö. If Mahasi’s Vipassana had comprised its own ngöndrö Mahasi might have been justified. Such a ngöndrö could still be invented and inserted after the fact - but it would look a lot like samatha. It would be valuable, as it would save vipassana meditators from going crazy dealing with intense phantom meditation experiences (nyams) without emptiness as their base. I’ve met a number of them.

2) Trungpa Rinpoche was extraordinary among Tibetan Lamas for - among many things - his interest in Buddhism beyond Vajrayana. I recall from one biography that he met with the senior Buddhist abbot from Burma. They compared their traditional meditation methods, and when Trungpa recounted what he taught the Burmese master exclaimed “Oh, when did you come to Burma?” It is difficult to judge anything from an anecdote which does not report the details of their conversation (e.g. the Burmese might have misunderstood what Trungpa was describing) but on the face of it this looks more complimentary to modern Burmese Buddhism than what one might deduce from reading about vipassana.

@ David:
Excellent research and summarizing – all crucial to useful exploration of the “big picture”. I have one question:
Terma
You said, “I am happy to regard all of [‘reinvented Vipassana’] as terma—the Tibetan term for a valid new religious revelation”

Do you consider your own tradition as “invented” also, or were you being generous in allowing modern invented meditation techniques to be called “religious revelation”?

It seems that your legitamacy criteria is not “lineage”, “revelation” or “authority”, but instead, effectiveness/pragmatism. If a tradition is effective, you don’t care if it is called “revelation”. But just as in the previous post where you did not want “True Self” to be an accepted term for “no Self”, perhaps we should be strict too with the word “revelation”. Or in this case do you feel laxity is of no risk?

@David - I would suggest you look over Braun, if you have not yet done so. Ledi may well have arrived at his particular formulation of Vipassana himself, based on his own textual study. Or at least, that was the claim that was later made on his behalf. But Braun demonstrates that what Ledi came up with was in the context of a general milieu where vipassana practices similar to his were not particularly unusual. There is no evidence that the general typology of the practice was ever entirely unknown in Burma. The various Vipassana traditions we have today seem to be of a general class of meditation which, in Burma at least, has been continually refined and tailored to individual preferences for as far back as anyone can determined. That is, back to a point in history (the early 19th century) when little was documented and about which we are not yet in any position to draw many conclusions.

Interesting article. I don’t know enough about the history of Buddhism to comment intelligently on the details as other commenters have, but I am struck by the similarity in the history of yoga asana. The modern form of yoga as physical asana practice continually claims to reach back thousands of years, but actually was formulated in the 1900’s by a small group of teachers and practitioners with very loose ties at best to ancient texts.

Nice work!

“Theravada meditation was reinvented by guys who were into extreme asceticism.”

I’d be interested in reading what it is about the method of Vipassana as taught by Sayadaw U Pandita (Mahasi Sayadaw) and Buddhadasa Bhikkhu’s method could be called “extreme asceticism”. Perhaps an example or two?

Also, perhaps it isn’t widely known in the West but the Burmese do have lineage.

Thanks,

Joyce

@ David: I tried last time, didn’t seem to work, but than it must have been another problem. Thx anyways. :)

David,

excellent post! great to see all this information in one page along with links to related resources. very geeky indeed.

one thing i’d like to add is this division between Westerns/Eastern is very arbitrary when it comes to dharma.
for example, according to Dr. Lewis Lancaster, a distinguished Buddhologist, Buddhist monks (via the Silk road) influenced the Western religion with their monasteries and such.

see “Burke Lecture: Buddhism in a Global Age of Technology”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX2f6QHkU-I

so from a higher historical vantage point can we really say who influenced whom?

that said, for the sake of conversation we can continue with the East/West designation.

Mahasi Sayadaw and U Ba Khin rock! i’m very thankful for their radical reinterpretation of the dharma. in fact my teacher Shinzen Young has adapted their techniques (e.g. noting technique, and focus on bodily sensations) as his main teaching method.

see: “Adapting Eastern Spiritual Teachings to our Western Culture: A discussion with Shinzen Young and Charles Tart”
http://www.mindfulnessblog.nl/images/pdf/Adapting_Eastern_Spiritual_Teachings_to_our_Western_Culture.pdf

the bottom line is, it’s the unique nature of Buddhadharma that allows it to be radically re-interpreted by any culture that encounters it. it’s really like an open-source “religion.”

imho, the next great leap in the evolution of Buddhadharma is its marriage with Western science. there are four people i know of who are actively and passionately pursuing this “marriage”:

Ken Wilber: see “Marriage of Sense and Soul” (and practically all of his writings)
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/maseso_foreword.cfm/

Shinzen Young: see “Divide and Conquer: How the Essence of Mindfulness Parallels the Nuts and Bolts of Science”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XCWP4pODbs

B. Alan Wallace: see: “Toward the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences “
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhntEOGslbs

Sam Harris: see: “Contemplative Science”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-contemplative-science_b_15024.html

incidentally, those four people have the greatest influence on me in theory and in practice :)

keep up the great post!

~Rommel

I suppose you are aware that within the tradition of Ledi and U Ba Khin, as taught by SN Goenka, we hold that the Burmese monks are the only ones who kept alive the techniques of Vipassana meditation as originally taught by the Buddha. There is a least a rudimentary lineage there, stretching back to the two monks who left India and came to Burma, and these monks are credited with passing the teachings along undiluted. That there may be no scholarly evidence of this certainly doesn’t make it untrue. They were not concerned with such things, so it’s not surprising that nothing was written of it. The real test of this, after all, is in the practicing of it.

David, before it gets lost in the verbiage of my comment, I want to tell you how much I appreciate your blog. I just discovered it, via Jayarava (thanks Jayarava), and so have just begun to rub its salve on my Buddhist-weary head. (But it’s “meaning”-weary, too. More below.) Now:

It is, in part, the kind of historical knowledge that you bring to light in this post that has brought me to the view that the designator “Buddhism” describes nothing in life. What it describes, rather, is a sprawling, ancient conceptual-institutional edifice that is in the process of collapsing under its own conceptual-institutional weight. Historical perspective contributes to the erosion of tradition’s precious foundations; the advances of knowledge, to structural rot. Why is that?

On a personal level, I am curious about how you–or anybody, for that matter–continue to practice in a tradition such as the Nyingma Aro gTér,lineage, with its nagas, ter-ma, quasi-wizards, ahistoricism, absolutization of formlessness, romantization of emptiness, and so on. It is an abiding curiosity of mine how certain people can, with coruscating reason, see the exit to tradition’s walled vallation, only to turn back, stretch their legs, and re-light their warm pipe of curative dreams. As someone whose critical abilities, and historical and philological knowledge, automatically voids his subscription to all programs, I am genuinely curious about this matter. Does it involve a strategy to counter cognitive dissonance?

Another matter. I am writing a book, tentatively called Meditation as Organon of Dissolution, wherein I present the nihilistic calculus of Gotama’s dispensation. So, I have some questions about your view of nilhilism. Are you really so sure that nihilism “simply inverts the core claim of eternalism: everything is really meaningless. Seeming meanings are illusory or arbitrary or subjective, and therefore unreal or unimportant.” Does, that is, the conclusion “unreal or unimportant” necessarily follow from the premises?

“Attempting to live without significance, purpose, or value leads to rage, anguish, alienation, depression, and exhaustion.” I do attempt to live as you say here. And I find just the opposite to follow: exhilaration, passion, honesty, freedom. I have no illusions about “significance, purpose, or value,” yet live a life of action and engagement.

Do an experiment. What happens when you cease to exert your energy shoring up the “threat” of nihilism with the heavy sandbags of “meaning”? What happens when you see the disenchantment of the world–indeed a “value” posited by both good Gotama and the western Enlightenment thinkers–not as a sort of life-denying catastrophe, but, rather, as a path to freedom–or at least to creative speculation about new human possibilities? I am really curious: what happens?

Thanks again for all of your hard work and great care on this blog.

Glenn

I, also, want to thank you for the energy you’re putting into your wide-ranging inquiry, David. It’s having a salutary effect on my own muddling attempts at ordering my own perceptions, motives, assumptions, capacities, and practice.

@ Glenn

Hi.
Nice comment.

I found what you said interesting, for two reasons:

1) “[W]ithout significance, purpose, or value” how or where do you experience “exhilaration” and “passion”?
Do you not experience even transient purpose in your life?
When you wake up every morning, do you not go to the bathroom for purposes of peeing (especially if you drank a bunch of Riverwest Stein Lagers the night before - yum!), and do you not experience the value of doing so; the value* of not having your bladder rupture? I value my intact bladders walls. But maybe I’m missing your point. :)

@ David

2) Glen wrote, “I am curious about how you–or anybody, for that matter–continue to practice in a tradition such as the Nyingma Aro gTér,lineage, with its nagas, ter-ma, quasi-wizards, ahistoricism, absolutization of formlessness, romantization of emptiness, and so on.”

I guess I have wondered a little about this myself. Do you see yourself moving towards taking a Stance position in your life instead of remaining in a System?
You seem to very much enjoy being an Apprentice in the Aro community (given your comments, and obvious HUGE amounts of work on Approaching Aro**, for example).

I could hazard some guesses as to why you stay in the Aro lineage - you want to work with specific teachers, and those teachers are Aro teachers, and so, if you want to work with them, you have to do the Aro stuff. And, perhaps, the stuff you have to do isn’t sooo terrible?

Why DO you stay with those crazy Aro gTér-ers?

New slogan for the AgT???:
“gTérin’ it up with the Aro gTér! OOOOOHHHHH yeah!!!”
(“it” being dualism, obviously:))

I wonder if Tony the Tiger is still around. He’d be the perfect voice.

ALSO:
@Glenn

What do you have against the Quasi-Wisards?
That’s the name of my new Lord of the Rings jazz-fusion trio!
My band name is “Mortimer”. It means “stagnant water”***.:lol:

Just kidding. :)

-noah-

http://www.lakefrontbrewery.com/riverwest_stein_lager.html - HIGHLY recommended.
http://approachingaro.org
**http://sihiri0.tripod.com/id7.html

@Noah. You said: “Why DO you stay with those crazy Aro gTér-ers?”

I do not speak for David, but as another Aro apprentice with a high level of scientific education:

Crazyness is one of my many modes. ^_^

It is suprisingly worthwhile to practice “demon-worship and abominable rituals” among other things. Have you tried? :)

@ David

“What I hope to do late in this series is to articulate my post-systems experience, in case that’s useful for people who are younger than me.”

Cool. I look forward to it. :)

@Kündröl

“Crazyness is one of my many modes.”

:) Ha!

“It is suprisingly worthwhile to practice ‘demon-worship and abominable rituals’ among other things. Have you tried?”

I’m still just shi-nè-ing around these days. But shi-nè is pretty abominable sometimes.

What about eating at McDonalds? Does that count?
It’s pretty demonic and abominable. :) I only do that once in a while. #6 Crispy Chicken Extra Value Meal. So bad, but soo good. Kind of my punk version of corpse eating practice. Just kidding. :D Sorry, McDonalds.

Was that a thing though? Eating corpses to become enlightened? I know it’s not in the Aro gTér. But in Tibet, was that considered a fast track to realization if you knew how to do it correctly?

I’d do it.
I’d eat a corpse to be come enlightened. There, I said it. :)
Can it at least be a pretty corpse? Maybe the corpse of someone who liked the same music as me? Are salt and pepper allowed?

Kündröl, are there specific “demons” you might suggest worshiping, or any particular “abominations” you’ve found particularly helpful? :)

Cheers.

@Noah

“But shi-nè is pretty abominable sometimes.”

Oh yeah, it can be like grinding yourself to little pieces while waiting that wild dogs come to eat them away.

“What about eating at McDonalds? Does that count?”

Sure, if you eat most abominably. Have also some demonic laughter while doing it. :D

“But in Tibet, was that considered a fast track to realization if you knew how to do it correctly?”

At least in India as far a I have heard. I have to admit that I do not really understand the principle and function - maybe for the reason that I have never tried…

“Can it at least be a pretty corpse? Maybe the corpse of someone who liked the same music as me? Are salt and pepper allowed?”

Just go pick one from your local charnel ground. ^_^

“Kündröl, are there specific “demons” you might suggest worshiping, or any particular “abominations” you’ve found particularly helpful?”

The say that the “Lesser Key of the Solomon” (http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/lks/index.htm) is quite a classic if you are into some good old fashioned demon summoning ;) - but that is not very Buddhist. I have heard that protector practices are quite funky though… At the moment, most of my “demon” worshipping within Aro is about Yeshe Tsogyel mantra practice. It has had its peculiar side(?) effects as far as I’m concerned.

When it comes to “abominations” I find the gChod practice very fascinating. Its concerns itself in certain matters that I find central to my life and path. You can also call upon some demons with that :D.

I hava also practical experience with the good ol’ sorcery (outside Aro), and I think that many people really do not have any idea of its principle and funtion. But that path of discussion I will not take here… It would be too off-topic nad I do not have the time.

Re: ” I take the magical stuff as inspiring entertainment. And I love that stuff.” I think this is vital. You’ve got to enjoy whatever you do or you’re going to struggle to stick at it. The more intellectual/scientific/rational deconstruction one engages in, the greater the risk that at a certain point you’re just surrounded by bits of lifeless junk that you’ve ripped apart. I had thought at one point to study English Literature at University, but after spending a couple of months ripping apart a single short collection of poems that I loved, looking at the mechanics of what made them tick, all I had was empty words on a page. The intellectual process had killed all the passion.

This is a risk with regards the statement that “what, if anything, do we want to rescue from the rubble [of the collapse of Buddhism], and what to reassemble it into?” First up, implicit in that kind of statement is the notion that ‘My brain/rational scientific methodology/philological redactionist talents are bigger than Buddhism and I’m capable of deciding which bits to keep and which to ditch’. I’d guess that determining the future course of Buddhism is pretty hard unless one is Realised, but even setting that little detail to one side if one cannot approach the task with a sense of enjoyment and appreciation for the tradition(s) one is dealing with, all that will result is a lifeless souless husk. I reckon this is one of the problems that Consensus Buddhism faces - these guys just don’t seem to be enjoying themselves enough. They think that by leaving off the mayo & salad and adding extra couscous & museli their Buddha King Buddha Burger (You want it your way at BK? You gottit!) will become sufficiently paletable for them to chow down on. When that doesn’t work they’ll replace the sesame seed bun with a wholegrain bap, and the 14oz mega burger with a extra bland McTofu Speciale and by the end of the process it won’t look anything like Buddhism at all. And they’ll still be hungry. And miserable.

Hi David, being a student of SN Goenka I had in mind to post regarding the Burmese lineage to him and U Ba Khin, but I saw John Eden had very kindly posted it for me:-

‘I suppose you are aware that within the tradition of Ledi and U Ba Khin, as taught by SN Goenka, we hold that the Burmese monks are the only ones who kept alive the techniques of Vipassana meditation as originally taught by the Buddha. There is a least a rudimentary lineage there, stretching back to the two monks who left India and came to Burma, and these monks are credited with passing the teachings along undiluted. That there may be no scholarly evidence of this certainly doesn’t make it untrue. They were not concerned with such things, so it’s not surprising that nothing was written of it. The real test of this, after all, is in the practicing of it.’

As John says there is no scholarly evidence of this, but it’s worth taking note that there maybe enough evidence in the phenomenal growth of Vipassana meditation centres (as taught by SN Goenka) throughout the world while there is a parallel decline in Buddhism as a whole (the general theme throughout this series). I feel the fact that there has never been a single cent or penny charged to sit a course (with an aim of not polluting the dhamma) speaks volumes.

Thanks for changing the ‘completely lost’ to ‘almost completely lost’, it makes a big difference to the thread.

@Lawrence - Thanks for the “second”! Seems David is not interested in responding to this line of thought… perhaps most of these mostly academic commentators are missing the “swim-ology” piece!

I don’t think Goenka emphasizes the lineage idea, it’s more the idea that the teachings themselves, the techniques and the emphasis on observing sensation, as described in both the Anapanasati and Sattipathana suttas, were passed down by Burmese monks. It’s not offensive to point out that there’s lack of evidence, just seems important that we realize that lack of scholarly evidence, written records, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.

And certainly U Ba Khin and Goenka may have revised the techniques, but they were not so influenced by Westerners; he was teaching pretty much totally Burmese, and Goenka began teaching Indians. Westerners began coming to his courses after they were well-established in India, and I don’t think the teachings changed much as a result. Even in the US, it’s still the same as it’s taught in India and elsewhere. My point is that this tradition seems to be different in some important ways than the other vipassana groups that you are discussing here, so I’m just pointing out some of those fine points of difference.

I’m really enjoying the blog and the discussion! Thanks for your response!

Oh, sorry, missed the question. “Swim-ology” refers to a story - on the virtue of practice - that Goenka tells in his discourses, about an academic and an ignorant ship worker… The academic tells the ignorant fellow that he’s wasted half his life because he knows nothing of Geology, Oceanography, Climatology and such, and then when the ship begins to sink, the worker comes to the academic and asks him if he has studied ‘swim-ology’ and when he says no, the worker says he is so sorry, he’s wasted his whole life because the ship is sinking and he won’t be able to swim to shore.

… my comment to Lawrence on academics, however, was not directed at you… some of the other commentators seemed to me to be excessively into display of technical terms and big words and other “academic” paraphernalia! As I said, I find your blog to be very interesting and stimulating.

I also think that the differences in this tradition are important to recognise. Rather than it getting tied up with being instrumental to ‘Consensus Buddhism’ and ‘A New World Religion’, the teachings suggest an awareness around the time of re-invention by keeping well away from the whole ‘Buddhist’ and ‘Religion’ ideas altogether, thus keeping it very open and diverse for all to attend whatever one’s religion or lack of relgion may be. There are no robes, no statues, no mantras etc etc. The emphasis is entirely on the practise of meditation.

I am not Buddhist, nor do I practise Buddhism.

In regards to Buddhism being fun I can only talk about vipassana meditation itself, which for me is something to be taken seriously, and very hard work to! There are plenty of other things I can do for fun.

The clock of Vipassana meditation has struck, it appears to be exactly what the world is in need of at this present time.

@David, definitely no offence has been taken, quite the opposite! I have been really enjoying this whole series and thouroghly admire your knowledge, research and approach to what I consider to be a really important subject.

@John, the swim-ology quote made me smile, thanks.

@Kündröl

Thanks for the info. And thanks for the sense of humor. :D

@David

In regards to that whole “swim-ology” thing: I’m sorry people keep doing that whole “this guy must not practice very much” routine. It’s kinda weird.

@ David re: “I am not Realized, so all I can offer are some tentative guesses.” Apologies if it seemed my comment was criticising your critique. Actually what I was trying (failing) to articulate is that the leaders of Consensus Buddhism seem to be saying ‘We aren’t Realized yet, so what do we change about Buddhism and incorporate from elsewhere to attend to that problem’. I don’t think that is a place from which to launch a major reform. I am very much looking forward to your tentative suggestions and am glad Fun is going to be part of that! I think the possibility of Realization is a Big Problem for some folk. As Ngak’chang Rinpoche has said in the past - ‘. . . in the Himalayas people practice because that is what they do. They do not do so with any great expectation of becoming Enlightened’. Yes some form of accomplishment is the goal, is wished and hoped for, and some people do get there. But, I figure it is a bit like running the London Marathon. Maybe 30 people run it each year because they honestly think they might win. The other 36,000 they do it for fun, or for the challenge, or self-improvement, or to raise money for good causes, or as purist runners ‘because this is what we do around here’. Ngak’chang Rinpoche primarily asks his students merely ‘To become just a little bit kinder’ as a result of their practice. One of the virtues of Fun, and also of being part of a Tradition, is that these are things are supportive of the notion that ‘I practice, because that is what we do around here’.

@Noah. I think it’s kinda weird that you feel the need to keep jumping to David’s defence… even after it’s been made perfectly clear that it wasn’t directed at him

David

Starting to read your rich serie about protestant buddhism or whatever the name is …
I have some small remarks on this one.
You say “Since the late 1950s, the Mahasi method (…) has been dominant in Sri Lanka.
And, Sri Lankan Buddhism has not had much influence on the West.”

I agree with the first part: it is dominant and one of the man that made much propaganda for it, in Sri Lanka and in the West (perhaps only in Europe) was the monk Nyanaponika Thera, who as a young German Jew got to Sri Lanka in 1935 (?) and has written much, in English and German about the Dhamma and (Mahasi) meditation.
His pupil is the well known American Jew (I mention the fact that they are jewish to make clear that they were no christians) Bhikkhu Bodhi who did enormous translation work - from Pali to English - and wrote many essays in which he in a way translated the Sri Lankan Theravada to the West: that is the influence. A small detail: he hardly meditates, is much more a scholar-monk.

Another man of influence is the (Sri Lankan-born), Bhikkhu Gunaratana who for decades teached vipassana (a la Mahasi) BUT ALSO samatha-meditation, about entering the jhanas, in the USA

Greetings

Joop

This is really a good website for info in meditation. I wonder how Thai meditation differs from the original?

Is vipassana Buddhist? Is the Pope Catholic? Is the Dalai Lama Buddhist? Chogyam Trungpa employed Joseph Goldstein to work at Naropa. The Dali Lama employed Theravadins to teach vipassana at Dharamsala. Ricard’s “The art of meditation” recommends Bhante Guanaratano’s book on meditation, and quotes him.

The only thing unclear at this point was whether he was too lazy to read the post or whether he has serious problems with reading comprehension.

It sounds like what we consider to be the venerable, hoary tradition of Theravada, delivered in a straight line from ancient India to the present, is in fact an invention of the late-19/early-20th centuries (at least as concerns its practice).

If that’s so, what was Theravada doing between the time of the Visuddhimagga and the late-19th century?

Well, I’m interested to hear, too. I’ve been practicing in the Mahasi tradition for the last year, ardently noting sensations and traversing the Progress of Insight. (I study with one of Kenneth Folk’s students.) Many times it’s occurred to me that so much of the practice and theory is like German philosophy. I studied Kant and Heidegger at the graduate level, and I’ve been struck so many times by the similarities between these philosophical accounts of subjectivity and what the practice seems to be aiming for (a clear perception that whatever is for me cannot be identical with me, and that this subjective remainder is “empty” and not-a-thing/nothing). And then why is it that the /Nazis/ of all people are so interested in Buddhism, to the point where a contemporary neo-Nazi mystic like Miguel Serrano thinks Hitler was a Bodhisattva? This made no sense to me until now.

And also, this explains so well the rejection of jhana in American Buddhism. I was told on my last retreat (at the Mecca of Consensus Buddhism) that jhana is anti-life, and that it is the mental equivalent of totalitarian communism (which oddly made it more appealing), and that we’ll learn vipassana meditation instead, which helps with life and leads to awakening. Wow. This is before I looked at the Pali canon and saw everyone doing jhana, bossing the hell out of jhanas left and right (which Buddhaghosa says is near impossible), and nowhere is anyone “doing insight meditation”. (I found this blog post while trying to figure out where the hell Mahasi-style meditation even came from.) I now have a good reason for this: it’s because Buddhist meditation isn’t Buddhist meditation. It’s ideas and practices from Buddhism that are heavily inflected through late-19th century mysticism, itself an heir of German philosophy, and one of the streams feeding early 20th-century reaction. Heavy!

I’ve read a few essays by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, but I’ve never read Romancing the Buddha. In general I’ve found what he has to say interesting and a helpful antidote to a lot of the fluff out there about “letting it be” and whatnot, so I’ll check this out.

I’m exaggerating a bit about the anti-life thing. As I recall, the claim was that jhana makes you focus on one thing and takes you into altered states of consciousness, so it’s not useful for ordinary life; whereas vipassana somehow is useful for ordinary life [insert something here about how wonderful “mindfulness” is].

The claim about totalitarian communism is an almost exact quote, though.

Doesn’t it seem, though, like Mahasi just based his Progress of Insight on Buddhaghosa? Perhaps the basis wasn’t the Pali canon (I’ve found no “progress of insight” there), but is it fair to say that this all a purely modern invention? For instance, here’s an argument for the Mahasi noting technique being based in the suttas: http://theravadin.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/iti-and-sallakkheti/

David, thank you for the links to all the blog posts, they were very interesting - as was the Thannisaro Bhikkhu article. This is a topic I’m looking forward to probing in more depth.

I’m not really convinced by what you say about the Vissudhimagga. I haven’t read much of it, but what I have looked at really does sound descriptive and prescriptive to me. It doesn’t come across to me like a purely theoretical work. It seems entirely plausible to me that yogis in the Mahasi lineage mined this document for their own practices and descriptions. And even if what we Mahasi folks are doing isn’t the exact same thing as what Buddhaghosa was doing or even what the Buddha was doing, well, it certainly does have interesting and often positive results, so it may not matter as much overall what the exact origin is. But as for the purely theoretical side of this - exactly what Buddhaghosa was doing versus what he was saying and where all this originated from - I find it very interesting and I’m looking forward to having my views about all this changed in due time.

What’s impressed me the most so far in all this is the idea that the infinite, open, spacious, etc., self - the “true” self - is an invention of Romanticism and not of Buddhism. I’ve applied the Mahasi techniques pretty rigorously, and I have not found such a self. Rather, what I seem to have found is just the aggregates - which seems more in keeping with what I’ve encountered in the Pali canon. And after a period of discomfort and disorientation, there seems to be great relief in letting go of all that, to not taking all that so seriously, to seeing it all as not-self. And it’s this sense of relief which speaks most strongly to me (as opposed to the doctrines, where it all came from, the maps (even though I think they’re often useful), etc.).

So, that’s just my own, limited perspective on the thing.

Anyway, I’m glad I found your blog, and I look forward to reading more.

Actually, he was talking about Thailand, and goes on to note that Mahayana teachings flourished in Thailand for centuries so it is not even just a matter of stuff trickling across the border.

My two questions would be “how does the modern interpretation relate to what was happening in Buddhaghosa’s time” and “how does modern practice relate to reality.”

I have those questions as well, though there is the additional problem: How do we figure out what “reality” means here, since so much of this is subjective?

The answer of the “pragmatic dharma” community, of which I am a member, often is to understand it in terms of results and to ignore the question of “reality”, because what does that matter, and who could possibly know that anyway, and isn’t it more important to you to just be happy?

I have a lot of problems with this response:

(1) Unless you’re completely devoid of anything resembling human curiosity, you’re going to wonder about stuffy concepts like “reality” and “truth”. Yes, there are some people who can, at least in their own minds, dispense with such concepts, but they’re rare, and more importantly, they’re boring. Also? A concern with truth didn’t arise over night. It is somehow, some way, a product of evolution, which leads me to believe such concerns are, at the end of the day, “pragmatic”, too.

(2) Most spiritual traditions, no matter how nutty and stupid, say they’re interested in “results”, and that you have to “See For Yourself”. If they didn’t say that, they’d just be religions, and no one wants to be accused of being religious, because religion is bad. Obviously. So there’s a constant appeal to “experience” and “anecdotal evidence”, even when “experience” and “anecdotal evidence” can be used to confirm just about anything, from astrology to the most hard-core, delirious racism. So, yes, practical results are indispensable. If I thought I could get enlightened by saying the rosary, I’d give saying the rosary a shot. But there has to be some process of discernment.

(3) What you consider to be “practice” or a “practical result” is highly conditioned and highly suggestible. It is my opinion that in my own practice I have encountered Real Spiritual Experiences that were just not ideas put in my head - but I’m also pretty sure some things come up in my practice just because I expect them to be there. This is not because I’m some highly suggestible nit-wit. Worse: I’m an ordinary human being, and ordinary human beings are great at making shit up, and they’re great at making shit up when a bunch of other people around them are constantly making the same shit up. “Wow. You got the same result, too. Amazing.” Except maybe it isn’t.

(4) If you’re going to call it “Buddhist meditation” and “Buddhist enlightenment” and “dharma” and have other trappings of Buddhism around, don’t you owe it to yourself and others to be sure you know what you’re talking about? If you’re going to be completely free-form about it and say you’re doing something totally new, then that’s fine, just say that. But I feel like if you’re going to make a big deal about talking about the dhamma all the time, then you also have to be interested in the truth content of what you’re saying. (Which I think people are, anyway, at least until you raise hard questions about it, and then sometimes people fall back into the mysticism of “practice”.)

Also, I think you said this somewhere in one of your blog posts, but doing different practices will bring you different results. “Enlightenment” is used to describe many, many things. This is true even in pragmatic dharma. Daniel Ingram and Kenneth Folk do not use the word “rigpa” to mean the same things. And that’s not really a problem as long as we’re rigorous about the terms.

I guess the problem arises when you start to say that the awakening you’re achieving now, with these practices, is the same thing the Buddha was doing. There are Theravada people doing stuff which I’m almost certain is not the same stuff I’m doing. Or their interpretation of it is wildly different. This was a bit of a trip for me when I first discovered it and sewed the seeds of doubt in my head. This is why it’s cool there are people like Thannisaro who are such (down-to-earth) hard-asses about this stuff, because then at least you can look at the practice, look at the results, and decide whether what the Buddha was doing is something you want to do, or whether you want to look at something different. He’s bringing the kind of rigor to the scholarship and practice that I think is exemplary.

And in the absence of something like a partial reverse-engineering of the brain, that’s the best we’ve got. Understanding all this on a pure information-processing level would solve an awful lot, even if it didn’t solve everything. “Okay, what you call ‘perceiving emptiness’ is this particular routing of information through here, and it’s different from how ‘normal’ people look at things, which is like this. But you over here, you only think you perceive emptiness, but in fact you’re doing this third thing, which has almost no relationship at all to what person 1 was doing.” That would fix a lot. But we don’t have that, so we have first-person report, maps, texts, and the like, and we make due. But we have to get a lot more precise with our language, and we have to drop the dogma of “practice” as a means to dispelling any skepticism about this stuff.

Hi again David.

A while ago you did a twitter poll for which projects your readers would like you to update first. Now, my vote would always be the next instalment of Buddhism for Vampires, because you’ve had me hooked for months despite the drip-feed of content. On the other hand, it’s still bugging me why (Buddhist) monism bugs you so much. Reading meaningness.com, your objection seemed to be that monists should stop saying “really, you’re not you, you’re the whole universe” and say instead “in some sense, you’re not just you, you’re also the whole universe”. But from the energy you’re expending on these multiple-site critiques, there must be something more? That monism makes people impractical? That glossing over differentiation leads to…? I’d love you to explain it more fully, because my intellectual inability to replace that ellipsis on my own is frustrating.

Thank you for your reply. I am still mulling it over, and re-reading stubs in the book. I feel like there is something I want to articulate in response, but I don’t quite know what it is yet. Very nebulous.

Re-reading the book I was reminded of my initial experience of applying the idea of inherent ambiguity to a variety of my own situations. Releasing the guilty feeling that if only I tried harder then the perfect solution would appear is like a weight lifting.

Having a meditation practice in which you stop neurotically trying to compartmentalise the messy reality that is chalk and cheese, and narrate your story in relation to them, is wonderful. But outside of that practice, having a conceptual reminder not to fixate on achieving certainty, or being beyond the reach of criticism, is also very powerful.

Thank you for your efforts to articulate one.

Thank you very much for this article. The more I am exposed to it, the more convinced I become that Theravada Buddhism is a “put-up job,” and your article confirms my suspicion. Incidentally, do you know if Allan Bennett (Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya) contributed at all to this process of meditation rediscovery and development? I know he and Aleister Crowley and he were practising Yoga under the patronage of the Solicitor General of Ceylon circa 1900. Interestingly, Gendun Choepal also met the Solicitor General of Ceylon.

Im actually a Crowley scholar and have written a book on him, entitled The Secret Wisdom of 666, although I am a Buddhist. I was hoping you might be able to add something new! :) By the time Bennett was studying in Sri Lanka, he was already a Buddhist en route to Burma, although it’s true he was an advanced practitioner of Patanjali’s Yoga. He is even reputed to have levitated! A very interesting, underestimated man. I am familiar with the article you cite. I don’t know too much about his sojourn in Burma, however. Id love to visit the ruins of his monastery. Thanks for your response. Incidentally, I just finished writing a book on the Pali Canon. Id be happy to send you a copy.

What article is that? Thanks.

Ah yes, thanks!

Thanks for this, David. I had wondered about the whole process of how the Goenka/UBahKhin strain got started if what you had said earlier was the historical case… this helps to put the whole thing in perspective. I’m not so involved with Vipassana at this point, but have friends who are, so is good to know the whole thing’s not based on a misunderstanding!

Interesting, thanks for calling our attention to this. One can imagine how difficult it must be for scholars to try to sort out.

Most of the information are not supported by scientific datas and not correct (those two guys who reinvented vipassana please …very funny). Other mistake: In satipattahana there are not vague or contraddictory info; please make a comparison with Mahayana sutta. Overmore he’s forgot that Pali cannon (the one of which is referred the Theravada approach) is the closest to Buddha thought. The Tibetan/Vajrayana are the farest and not storically due to the Buddha (Prajnaparamita sutra, Lotus) as you should have been know. Buddha never gave initiatinos with magical plumes, oils, rice to be launched and all those magical ritual superstitious staff as Tibetans do. All is just that the Buddha didn’t want. I would rememeber that since Anagami level you lose all those attachaments. It seems that similar wrong article would oly create divisions in the Sangha. That’s very unpleasant. I’m really sorry for this approach. Andrea Serafino

Are there any vipassana type meditations within the Tibetan lineage that we could say are ‘authentic’?

It depends on what you mean by “vipassana type meditation” and what you mean by “authentic.”

Ha, indeed you did!

I would add that if we are talking about mindfulness of breathing (ānāpānasati / ānāpānasmṛti) in Tibet, we seem to be talking about one of two things.

First, there is the Sūtrayāna tradition of ānāpānasmṛti that draws from the Abhidharma-kośa. In Tibet this was generally considered śamatha rather than vipaśyanā (although in Study and Practice of Meditation: Tibetan Interpretations of the Concentrations and Formless Absorptions, Leah Zahler demonstrates that for Vasubandhu ānāpānasmṛti was a means of accomplishing both śamatha and vipaśyanā, in a manner that seems to resemble modern Theravada Vipassanā. This seems to have been superseded by the later Indian Madhyamaka mania for more conceptual/analytic vipaśyanā practices involving the rehearsal of reasonings).

Then there are the ānāpānasmṛti practices found in the Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen traditions, and one could argue that these would be considered vipaśyanā practices by those traditions, although sometimes they are presented more as close immediate preliminaries to the actual vipaśyanā practices.

Very interesting! I am not an expert on these things, but in the U Ba Khin/Goenka version of Vipassana - which I was involved with for a few years - anapana is what they call the breath awareness part (the first 3 days of a 10 day period), and vipassana is the vedana, body sensations part. There is some blend there, because the anapana involves awareness of the sensation of the breath passing in and out of the nostrils and over the upper lip.

I suppose anything aimed at ‘insight’ could be called properly vipassana, right?

Also, as I understand it, tho haven’t read all of Ledi Sayadaw’s books, he only taught the breath awareness part, not the body scan sensations part, so that would leave U Ba Khin adding that to the technique. As he is the one who moved it from monastery to lay people, in fact teaching all his employees in a government office, he is a fairly likely candidate for the origination of that particular technique. Does that seem reasonably accurate to you folks?

Thanks for your response David. I do enjoy reading your blog from time to time. I’m still kinda searching for a practice that works for me, so may be looking more into Vajrayana. I’ve done the lojong slogans and tonglen for a long time, thru various other meditation orientations, so am drawn to the Tibetan side - just some of the ‘magic’ aspects of it keep me shying away…!

I’ll check those out… I’m trying to avoid the ‘collection of things on my mantle’ that Trungpa spoke of… but just working thru some various perspectives. And trying to keep practicing. Thanks!

I’m curious how you conclude that there are no transcendental Buddhas? How do you know this? As for “magic,” there are clear and explicit references to this in the much touted Pali Canon, some of which are actually suppressed by translators (I have found two examples of such suppression so far). The doctrine of karma is inherently magical. Is someone going to argue that karma is not a Buddhist doctrine?

Why is it good to remove something you agree is essential?

I think Theravadin Tantra (Yogacara I think its called) is interesting in this regard.

Sorry, I was thinking of Yogavacara’s Manual of Indian Mysticism, translated by Rhys Davids (Pali Tex Society, 1896).

Yes, it is, but Buddha’s karma is not Hindu karma. Buddha said that nothing passed from life to life but the karma. Not as magical as the Hindu version.

“Munindra was also a student of S.N. Goenka, from the other Burmese lineage. Munindra therefore joined the two Burmese vipassana systems. Munindra was the teacher of Dipa Ma.”

Munindra studied many different types of vipassana with the encouragement of Mahasi Sayadaw, he was familiar with ‘at least four dozen different techniques of insight mediation’ learned in Burma. Its important to note that Munindra did NOT teach a synthesis of Goenka and Mahasi ‘systems’ as you put it but taught strongly within Mahasi technique whilst knowing that the Dharma is not restricted to one approach alone.

See Mirka Knaster’s excellent biography of Anagarika Munindra for more details.

Re;Dhammakaya movement - not sure in what sense its ‘quasi tantric’ as I know nothing about tantra and my understanding is that dhammakaya is strong on samatha before embarking on vipassana albeit in a less common format (as with Pa Auk Sayadaw in Burma) Highly recommend ‘Life as a Siamese Monk’ as an excellent dharma read - details Kapilavaḍḍho Bhikkhu’s (Richard Randal’s) ordination and training under Phra Mongkhonthepmuni (Sodh Candasaro; 10 October 1884 – 3 February 1959) including knowledge of past lives. Anyhow, the Dhammakaya movement has had an influence in the UK if not in the USA… see following link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhammakaya_Movement_UK

Hello David,
Thank you for taking the time to think through these ideas and share them with us.
I have a few question and some comments that I hope will help me get a better understanding of the ideas your communicating.

By outlining some of this historical accounts of the potential western influences (including ‘rationality’ and anti-superstituous tendencies) of post mid-19th century Theravadin Vipassana you are bringing into question the ‘consensus’/accepted story that their practices have a ‘direct lineage’ to the Buddha and highlighting the cultural/historical context of how these systems developed.

You don’t claim that this makes them unauthentic, which would seem to indicate that ‘authenticity’, by your standards, is not a matter of provable lineage, but if lineage is not the metrics of authenticity then what is? I would argue it is the efficacy of the vehicle or method to culminate in realization. If you and the commentators agree with this, then the question likely becomes: has vipassana helped many people gain enlightenment and, if so, does that not make it authentic? (@jayavara mentions this point of view when he said:” One thing you do not say much about is that if these guys rediscovered effective meditation techniques on their own – and I mean effective in the sense of liberating – then they are tantamount to being Buddha’s, are they not?”)

Beyond this, there are several developments you mention that were key factors in the ‘invention’/’reinvention’ of vipassana that don’t seem to indicate any causal connection to western influence but rather might point out correlatives to western cultural norms.

For example, you say that:

Cheers,
Alex

I think all religions have gone/are undergoing a reformation as a result of modernity. Theravada Buddhism is no different. Its interesting to note that Protestant Christianity stems form the early phase of modernity in Western Europe and no earlier. Arguably (according to the likes of Reza Azlan) Islam is currently undergoing its own reformation right now. Modernity changes our life-culture radically, so inevitably religion has to respond to that in order to maintain relevance. Ditto contemporary Orthodox Judaism which is really a product of the 18th/19th Century.

Re Dharmakaya Movement - My sense of its mass movement status is that this has meant its a very different practice in practice than what Richard Randall experienced in the 1950s in his solitary mediation hut for weeks and months at a time. Would be interested to hear Davids thoughts on ‘Life as a Siamese Monk’ if you get round to reading it… esp re tantric connection (if indeed there is one).

http://www.amazon.com/LIFE-AS-A-SIAMESE-MONK/dp/0951176927/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414429008&sr=8-1&keywords=life+as+a+siamese+monk

Also recommend ‘ The Buddha in the Jungle’ http://www.amazon.com/The-Buddha-Jungle-Kamala-Tiyavanich/dp/0295983728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414428969&sr=8-1&keywords=buddha+in+the+jungle

Many thanks.

David,

Thanks for your reply. I recently saw this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USJPI7MP3Tw

which pointed out the very interesting and seemingly significant impact of the Visuddhimagga on the Theravada lineage in Sri Lanka and (consequently) Burma. From Bhiku Bhante’s description it seems to have diverged significantly from Theravada Suttas (I’ve since encountered this idea in several other places as well), especially in regards to theory and practice of jhanna attainments.

I would question the perspective that vipassana hasn’t helped millions of people. I think the rapid growth of Goenka’s meditation centers is a testament to it’s relevance. In it’s basic form (as I understand it), Vipassana consists of sila, samahdi, and panna and I find it hard to grapple with the idea that basic practices in morality, concentration and wisdom wouldn’t be helpful to all those who make a real effort to undertake them.

All that being said, Goenka (and his teachers) have a questionable way of claiming that their particular brand of vipassana is the de facto method taught by the Gotoma the Buddha. The apparent revival of meditation and regards for the sutta ((which, as one scholar pointed out had more of the meaning of a ‘realization or wisdom’ rather than a term denoting a defined practice or set of practices) as you outline them help point out that it’s quite unlikely that there was some pure, unadulterated practice handed down from the Buddha to a set of Burmese monks.

I look forward to reading more of your posts and listening to the podcasts (super stoked on those!).

Cheers,
Alex

Hi David, saw this post mentioned on Twitter today and had a look. Very interesting.

Re: Anagarika Dharmapala: A Biographical Sketch. It is by the same Sangharakshita. It’s republished in a longer book which is available as a pdf from his website: http://www.sangharakshita.org/_books/Flame%20in%20Darkness.pdf

Oh and Visuddhi Magga, ought to be Visuddhimagga. One may hyphenate for ease of reading, Visuddhi-magga, but it’s one word.

Hi David, I’m wondering if you ever read the short but excellent biography of Dipa Ma (1911-1989)? ‘Dipa Ma; The Life and Legacy of a Buddhist Master’ - I’d really recommend it if you haven’t & want to build up a fuller picture of vipassana - she was a student of Mahasi Sayadaw and Anagarika Munindra in Burma - She learnt not only vipassana but also the jahnas & siddhis under Mahasi Sayadaws encouragment- was a key figure & teacher of the likes of Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstien and Sharon Salzberg. Anyhow, both that and the Munindra book are available on amazon. She’s at the further end of the spectrum in terms of human potential with mediation I think… which makes it so fascinating.

Secondly, I’m wondering if you ever sat a vipassana course yourself? Say at IMS, Spirit Rock, Goenka or Mahasi Tradition? - Can’t help but think if you did it might make your more open minded re ‘consensus buddhism/vipassana movement/insight tradition/mindfulness scene’ - from what I can see its all quite diverse and for decades not as much as a consensus as you make out, far from it.

“Thank you for the recommendations! Dipa Ma sounds like a highly inspiring character.”

I don’t know how trusting you are David but I’d be really happy to send you a book or two via Amazon. Say Dipa Ma bio and perhaps another one – to whet your appetite.

“I haven’t done a vipassana course. I have heard descriptions, from people who I’m close to, of their experience with them, which have confirmed what I believed based on reading. But maybe personal experience would be different.”

Yes, your right – personal experience would probably be different. The pali word that springs to mind here is ‘ehipassiko’ – attributed to the Buddha ‘come and see for yourself’ I think is the rough translation. Vipassana and contemplative practices in general are nothing if not experiential. So, banging the drum here, I’d really encourage you to find a 7-10 day silent retreat (that it looks like you could get on with) and give it a whirl. Reading and writing about vipassana or insight meditation is a bit like doing the same for Spanish cuisine, at some stage its gonna pay to actually taste the tapas!

“Also, among the groups you mention, my opinion of Spirit Rock is slowly changing. Perhaps that’s because Spirit Rock is also slowly changing—or maybe I’m just getting slowly better informed.”

Or probably both.

In reading your various posts on CB together with your latest reply David, I cant help but feel that its all related in some way to the American Culture wars – certainly Spirit Rock Liberal concerned with Social Justice vs. Heavy Metal possum hunter/gun enthusiast examples you gave might have a correlation there.

In connection with this there is a British Anglican Bishop & prolific theologian NT Wright who gives lectures/sermons in the USA – I think he’s a breath of fresh air in the States because he’s got the credentials without being bogged down or partial re culture wars, able to say, essentially ‘Look, all this stuff about Creationism vs. Evolution is just not an issue outside the USA – its to do with your own history, politics etc. Not to do with Christianity per se’. Perhaps there is a parallel with Buddhism – CB, such as it is – fits on one side of that cultural division and perhaps David you’re saying ‘What about the rest of us?’ As an outsider I’m bound to say that there is so much more to Theravada, vipassana movement/insight tradition/mindfulness scene than this American cultural stuff. Besides, (lets be frank) there are far worse things in the world right now than middle class white American yogis being ‘nice & inclusive’.

I’ve never sat a retreat at IMS or Sprit Rock myself but I’ve done plenty at the UK equivalent of Gaia House (loosely affiliated, some overlapping teachers) – What I love about this place is that your not really asked to sign up to any beliefs and teachings are made relevant and meaningful in the here & now without resorting to unnecessary Asian cultural baggage or indeed any other heavy cultural persuasion – I strongly suspect that’s why vipassana/insight and latterly mindfulness movement has been so successful on both sides of the pond. Just now one of the Gaia House teachers is teaching about 70 British politicians mindfulness in the UK House of Parliament. Meanwhile, Jon Kabat-Zinn came last year to the Prime Ministers office to advise on mindfulness and the UK NHS (National Health Service), British doctors now routinely prescribe mindfulness to patients with stress/pain/illness… quite weird when you think that’s (or a variation thereof) is what Buddha taught 2,600 years ago in a totally different late-vedic iron-age context!

All this would have been very surprising had you told me 20 years ago when I first got started. I also feel its only made possible by putting baggage aside and giving people what really works in a language and context that’s going to fit. This is also what the likes of Goldstein, Kornfield etc have very consciously done to a large extent and met with the same success.

“If I showed up at a Spirit Rock retreat and talked about cooking and eating possums and the relative merits of different handgun ammunition, would I be welcome? Curious.”

Am chuckling at the thought – (and funnily enough am applying for my UK shotgun certificate this week!) In a perverse way I think you really would be welcome, that’s what inclusivity means – I know you would at Gaia House.
A teacher interview might cut you off in a vipassana/insight/mindfulness meditation course and get you to focus on your immediate experience - but they would do just the same if you were rattling on about social justice or a love of tennis for that matter.

Anyhow, let me know about the books David – I’ve really enjoyed your posts.

PS – Just to show we Brits are not immune ourselves from these sort of culture divisions – I noticed in the (right of centre) Telegraph newspaper that the Jon Kabat-Zinn NHS mindfulness story had various readers online comments underneath basically saying mindfulness was ‘hippy nonsense’ – meanwhile the same story in the (left of centre) Guardian had a similar number of comments about how this rich looking American was teaming up with a right-wing Conservative Government to undermine the NHS! In both case’s I think it said more about the prejudices of the readers than it did about the story itself or indeed those who might actually benefit.

PPS – As an antidote to the ‘American vipassana as white privileged consensus Buddhism’ check out this link… ‘Dhamma Brothers’ documentary filmed in Angola Prison, Alabama (unsurprisingly not a granola bar in sight!) The doc starts after minute 43 of this youtube link. A personal favorite, even if the Goenka technique itself is not really my bag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCXeHNL3s8

“My impression is that Consensus Buddhism requires you to sign up to the beliefs and teachings of the “green meme” side of the American culture war. Consensus Buddhists don’t notice they do this, because they are so immersed in that culture that it’s invisible to them. In fact, Consensus Buddhism mostly just is the left side of the American culture war, plus vipassana.”

Though my point is of course that vipassana is not CB. As it turns out neither one of us has been to Spirit Rock or IMS so its hard to really tell to what extent your view (above) holds water or is very relevant from the point of view of a prospective yogi (who may or may not be a ‘green meme’ type of person in the first place). Also, of course vipassana courses at say IMS (like Gaia House) are largely silent retreats… I don’t see how this leaves much time or space for ‘meme chatter’ - green or otherwise.

“I have been heavily involved in American Buddhism for more than 20 years, so it’s possible that I understand the Consensus variety better than you.”

Quite possibly David, though its also possible that your letting your stance as a self-perceived outsider get the better of you. When the invitation is there to attend a vipassana retreat or actually experience something for yourself - (rather than weave this slightly ornery ‘theology’ of exclusion) - you seem to go limp. Its like the whole CB trip is torn between on the one hand trying to provide an objective view (readings on protestant Buddhism, research on 19th & 20th c vipassana in Asia etc) and on the other with a polemic aimed at seeing the dissolution of CB - the net result is that any hope of a judicious balanced view is lost. To the extent that CB is real (or might be) you don’t really investigate the reasons for its popularity - why is it that say IMS etc and mindfulness meditation movement has mushroomed in recent decades?

Notwithstanding, have really enjoy your posts & feedback.

“Vipassana—as practiced now—originated in Burma and Thailand in the early 20th Century, and the Buddhism there then was definitely not Consensus at all.”

Yes we are in broad agreement here David - Erik Braun (Burma) and Kamala Tiyavanich (Thailand) would say about 1870-80’s onwards.

What I would say David re your point made about Ajhan Jumnien & also Dhammakaya Movement as possible future western sources for Theravadin derived ‘tantra’ - Is that in the case of yogis like Jumnien, Dipa Ma and Sodh Candasaro - they all without fail were blessed with extraordinary talents for jhana - Dipa Ma could literally sit still in mediation for days at a time, Jumnien would fall into jhana as a boy after his daily chores and the founder of Dhammakaya would often rely on jhanic skills in meditative guidance - in each and every case jhana was the basis for their various extraordinary ‘tantric/shamanic’ skills (siddhi’s etc).

I’d have to conclude at least in the specifically Theravada Buddhist examples that I can find, one might reasonably say ‘no jhana, no meaningful tantric/shamanic skills’. Which makes it difficult to see how it could be ‘retrofitted’ into Western vipassana - or used as a Theravadin source of ‘tantra’ more broadly in Western Buddhism. Lets face it, virtually no Westerners (and very few Asians either) would be capable of emulating Jumnien, Dipa Ma etc’s meditative skill set.

What modern vipassana did in the 20thC was broaden out the audience beyond a very narrow strand of adepts for whom jhana was easily attainable. As you know the growth of Asian vipassana and subsequent boom in West – is largely built on what we might call a ‘pragmatic jhana-bypass’.

my point is of course that vipassana is not CB
“Yes, of course! If something I wrote implies that the two are the same, I would like to fix that. Please point it out!”

Not at all David. I just wanted to emphasise the distinction before writing what followed.

“In early 20th-century Theravada, it was believed that many years of practicing monastic austerity was a prerequisite to meaningful meditative accomplishment. Mahasi and other modernizers found that this was not true.”

To which I would say ‘Yes and No’ – On the on hand I agree and this is done by skipping jhana as mentioned – However, even with that said, Jack Kornfield who spent a year or so practicing vipassana with Mahasi Sayadaw in Burma estimated that if you had 1,000 yogis doing long term retreat (3 months plus) – about 3% would experience sottopana, about 100 would be making serious progress with the insight knowledges – but that still leaves 870 who are nowhere near – and this is in Burma during the golden age of Mahasi Sayadaw with all the cultural supports that involved. Also, the traditional Mahasi system involves plenty of austerity akin to intensity of monastic austerity of Thai or Burmese ‘dhautanga’ – silence, sleeping 3-4 hours per night, no eating after 11.30am until 7.30am next day, constant noting of the perceptual field from waking till sleep, up to 17-18 hours per day of formal sitting and walking mediation, long retreats etc.

Kornfield has gone on to suggest elsewhere that during the 3 month IMS Retreats (where mainly Mahasi style vipassana is practiced) they found ‘at least half of all (western) yogis’ are not even able to practice Insight Meditation – getting bogged down in wounds, trauma, other pyschological ‘stuff’ – That picture may have changed in the last 10-15 years but it caught my attention and suggests there is a yet further narrowing down of traditional meditative accomplishments as one switches culture.

“There’s an interesting related question here, which is to what extent the Burmese and Thai meditation modernizers covertly drew on Mahayana sources—either indigenous Mahayana survivals, or newly imported from predominantly-Mahayana countries.”

I don’t know enough re Thailand but certainly Burma has plenty of historic Mahayana temples – so its reasonable to assume some ‘cross-fertilization’ – Also, leaving labels like ‘Mahayana’ and ‘Theravada’ aside, you leave any Buddhist & animist yogis in remote pre-modern heavily forested rice-farming context for hundreds of years and you will get a diverse mix of practices (jhana, vipassana, metta, astrology, divination, herbalism, healing, mindfulness of death practices, spirit worship etc and many more) – such as Jumien etc still practices today – certainly that’s the picture from Kamala Tiyavanich.
I did a postgrad years ago and was taught by a professor who wrote a big tome ‘Civilized Shamans’ – as far as I can remember a similar picture is found in Tibet – Hindu and Buddhist tantric practices come in from India then get reformulated in a new cultural context to give us over time the ‘shamanic’ side of Tibetan Buddhism.

I still can’t help but think though if you take ‘jhana’ out of Theravadin ‘tantra’ – you might just be left with a load of empty rural Thai practices that are virtually meaningless to a modern Westerner with a completely different set of issues and world-view. Who knows? Perhaps you really might find your ‘tantric killer app’ there, but am struggling to see it somehow.

“So now it is quite unclear exactly what the functional prerequisites for tantra are. There is extensive, and often acrimonious, disagreement even among Tibetans who teach Westerners now”

Fair point and to an extent I suspect its also to do with exactly what we mean by ‘tantra’ and what our expectations are.

Heres my crack-pot theory for what its worth David. All cultures have some kind of prevailing discourse & set of practices etc for dealing with inner/outer worlds. Middle-ages Europe it might be Clerical/Theological, BBC footage Mahasi Sayadaw in 1950s Burma shows a ‘Dhamma Culture’ – Pre-modern Siberia or Australia ‘Shamanic’ – Ancient India or pre-modern Tibet ‘Tantric culture’. Granted, you may have a mix but there is always a prevailing or predominant cultural modality.

The truth be told… we don’t live in a tantric, shamanic, dharma or even theological/clerical culture in the modern West. Our dominant discourse for dealing with the inner/outer is psychotheraputic. I don’t mean to suggest that everyone in the modern West is a shrink or indeed seeing one – any more than it suggests everyone in pre-modern Australia is a shaman or seeing one. Nevertheless, there is a lexicon and world-view at least which will speak to the people of any given culture.

A few years back I translated for an Ayahuasca shaman in Peru for 6 weeks – I did my best with the language but it was clear over time that there was a certain amount of often quite complex and subtle ‘cultural miss-encounter’ from both sides.

I did ask what the differences were between Peruvians and gringos seeking this shamans help – In my naïve Western way I had thought he might say ‘Oh, deep down we are all the same’. But no, the reply was that most Perivans suffer brujeria (witchcraft) and Westerners have psychological trauma that the Currandero or healer has to help deal with. These may or may not be to some extent the same things (just understood very differently) I could never really decide.

It is clear though that for psycho-spiritual practices such as Buddhist meditation – certainly needs to speak to the culture in which it finds itself (where the vipassana movement, insight tradition, mindfulness scene has excelled). We just don’t live in a culture where the CEO of Microsoft accounts for a 12% fall in the 2014 stock price by saying ‘We’ve long suspected Apple of witchcraft, our latest figures are proof that it’s going on!’

In conclusion, I think vipassana/insight/mindfulness has done so well not just because its straightforward and works but because its been able to find an authentic place in our culture (albeit in a somewhat attenuated form some might argue) - The CB guys for all their faults you list, have often shown themselves to be adept and adaptable midwives in this particular birthing process.

Thanks for your reply David… my comments as follows:

“As an engineer, when I read about high failure rates, my immediate reaction is “they have probably set up the process badly; let’s apply standard process optimization methods, and I bet we can reduce the failure rate dramatically.”

Assume you mean in vipassana/insight tradition here. It’s hard to say – my guess is that the truth is that just as jhana is not universally possible (even in ideal conditions) – nor are insight knowleges or path experiences. Amongst other factors, there are evidently cultural issues (as per Kornfields point re psychotherapy) – and possibly gender ones too (Dipa Ma thought progress was a little easier for women). Also, I think Westerners often underestimate how hard meditative progress really is re the classical stages of enlightenment – or indeed sometimes display a rampant (and deluded, I feel) over-estimation of their own attainments i.e. the ‘arahat’ Daniel Ingram!

In short, I don’t share your optimism re ‘reducing the failure rate dramatically’ David. If anything the Vipassana Center format is already exactly about gearing to ‘standard process optimization’, along very rigorous lines one might add.

Granted, sottapana seems almost routine for some of Dipa Ma’s Rangoon & Calcutta students many of whom practiced entirely at home or attending short ‘retreats’ at Dipa Ma’s tiny apartment. Though teaching was apparently quite intimate in small groups and Dipa Ma (like Mahasi Sayadaw) was a rare Anagami and had highly developed paramis for teaching as well as mediation. Also I’m assuming that there were plenty of her students who never got close.

“Yes; and as you say, the mindfulness movement has been very successful at adapting vipassana to that. This is, indeed, a remarkable accomplishment. Although, I’d point out that vipassana was probably invented under the influence of Western Romanticism—which was the origin of the psychotherapeutic worldview—so it may not be as spectacular a leap as it would otherwise appear.”

To my mind, the legacy of Western Romanticism might (at a push) have belatedly been a factor in Sri Lanka with monks like Nyanatiloka and later Nyanaponika – but this is because they were from the West (Germany). I think less so in Burma and Thailand where such Western concepts were pretty alien to the Asian population at the start of the meditation revivals we’re talking about.

To the extent that there is a kind of ‘Asian Romanticism’ with say, the Thai Kammatthana lineage – this comes to the fore much later in historical terms, by about 100-150 years (because modernity arrived later). So when Maha Boowa died in 2011 it was the passing of an era, like the last old tiger to die in captivity – a time of nostalgic Thai nationalism in an era of mobile phones and traffic pollution - presided over by the same royal family that had given the Thai Forest tradition such a hard time generations before!

To my mind the Burmese ‘vipassana revival/reinvention’ of 19/20thC. Is really a product of modernity – (as is pretty much every religious and spiritual tradition in the world today). As you know originally constructed (in part) as a nationalist movement in direct opposition to Western Colonialism and Protestant Evangelism. The relationship between vipassana mediation and Burmese politics is a complex one that continues to this day (detailed v.well in Ingrid Jordt ‘Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement’).

Hi David… following our online discussion I found an interesting McGill Uni link (below) with video talks from Geoffrey Samuel, Rob Sharf & others on contemporary mindfulness, MBSR etc. Interesting critiques & additions to the debate. Thought you might be interested as you had mentioned Prof.Samuel positively.

http://blogs.mcgill.ca/tcpsych/tag/geoffrey-samuel/

Hi David. As for Ledi Sayadaw’s legacy, another pupil of his own, Saya Thet Gyi, teaches a body scan technique very similar to U Ba Khin’s. It is described in the appendix of the book: “Journey into Burmese Silence” (http://store.pariyatti.org/Journey-into-Burmese-Silence–eBook_p_4370.html). So U Ba Khin most probably didn’t invent it.

As far as I know, a source of the body scan method in Ledy Sayadaw’s works can be found in the “Analysis of the Element of Extension” chapter:

“When he contemplates the Earth Element in his own body with a view to gaining insight into physical phenomena, he should concentrate on a specific part at a time. So when he is contemplating Earth Element in the head he should exercise his thought throughout the head both inside and out. While doing so the concept of colour might come in which is not the ultimate property of Earth Element. So also the concept of form or shape might stand in the way.
All these obstructionist concepts must be discarded with great mental alertness.
As he proceeds to the lower parts of his body, down to the soles, he should specify his field only to the extent of his practical capability in concentration.
Having thus covered the whole body piecemeal, he will now be in a position to contemplate on a part, say, the head, and yet be able to comprehend the whole body. Once such comprehension has arisen within oneself, one comprehends the same phenomenon in all other things, animate or inanimate, in all the universe - indeed, all other universes.”
(A Collection of Manuals of Buddhism by Ledi Sayadaw - http://www.scribd.com/doc/243495010/A-Collection-of-Manuals-of-Buddhism-by-Ledi-Sayadaw#scribd)

(I forgot to point out in my previous comment that Saya Thet Gyi was the teacher of U Ba Khin).

@David In an old comment you said “Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha were well-known in both. So were meditation methods similar to those developed in 20th century Theravada”. What meditation method were you meaning?

Dear David,
I don’t agree with you that vipassaana medication was gone and then reinvented. You said, you don’t find any evidence.
There were two types of monks those times. Those who teaches at the school (I.e. For spreading Buddhism to people) and those who did work for themselves. The latter types were not well known because they left the society and lived in the forest to practice the vipassana meditation, among other things. Those teaches at school were Mindon Sayadar, Maharsi Sayadaw, or Ledi Sayadaw. Ledi Sayadaw was very studious and read all the scriptures himself and his Pali was so good that he translated for the people just so there was no misrepresentation. People misunderstood it and said, he reinvented. What little time left from teaching, those teaching monks do meditate. They could not do teach the vipassana meditation until the students reached a certain level which is called basic, middle and advanced. Also, in the old times, Buddhism was transmitted only through the school. Consensus Buddhism term seemed to sprout from the teaching, discussion of the school. Medication was more of a private practice. Even in the olden times, it existed though may not be well known.
Until a time, Buddhism was accepted by a king, and then taught widely, the practices were not famous including vi passant medication. Prior to that time, those who follow Buddhism left the society and live in forest.

Very interesting post. When you write ‘Vipassana was reinvented by four people in the late 1800s and early 1900s’, it’s not quite clear in your post who these are. I assume you mean Dharmapala, Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta, Ledi Sayadaw and U Narada. I am unclear how much the last 3 were influenced by Dharmapala and the new translations of Pali texts, or how much the Theravada revival had already got under way by that time. What happened to ‘Manual of a Mystic’?

Another thing that I’m unclear about is that many modern authors write at length about the jhanas. Where did that knowledge come from? It seems that the two Burmese traditions have no interest in them.

If you read the Satipatthana Sutta it mentions meditating on corpses a lot, yet nobody today of any lineage does that. There are four aspects of vipassana, and the Ledi lineage only seems to use one of the aspects, mindfulness of bodily sensations. It seems a long way from the Satipatthana Sutta, and yet all vipassana meditators claim it as their inspiration.

Have you heard of so-called Krishnamurti meditation? I heard about Krishnamurti decades ago but since his main idea seems to be that no teacher or method is any good it’s surprising to find that he did teach a form of meditation. When I read what it was I thought immediately that it sounds like vipassana, or rather what I’ve always thought vipassana should be. There are people in Indonesia who are Buddhists but practice this Krishnamurti meditation as their form of vipassana. They call it MMD. They don’t seem to use the jhanas though, and so many authors say the jhanas are beneficial in conjuction with vipassana. I would be interested in what you think.

The Thais have always been much more interested in jhanas . . . .

This is just so weird. There are dates, facts and wishes coming together to make some Vipassana story. But what is the meaning of Vipassana here? Seems it should rather use word meditation that commonly wrongly understand word Vipassana. This word (Vipassana) is mostly used and wrongly understand by Goenka movement and Vipassana movement. That is too far from what is here described. :/ the other misunderstandings are probably mainly coming from authors lack of knowledge of theravada and Vinaya. That’s not a big deal. :)

Interesting comment thread. Old post I know, but would like to add to it anyway.

Someone above asked about where modern authors’ information of jhanas come from. The Visiddhimagga also has extensive prescriptive explanations for jhana and so this has been the ‘go to’ source for jhana meditation, at least here in Burma. (As a side-note, I also don’t agree that the Vism was a purely scholastic work and you have provided no source or evidence for that claim. It seems to me that, precisely because it is so prescriptive is exactly why it has become the ‘go to’ text in Theravada.) All current ‘samatha’ practices here in Burma that I know, whether preliminary practices for vipassana or for attaining jhana, use the Vism as their main source. Currently there are two traditions here in Burma that give extensive attention to attaining jhanas first, described as ideal in Vism, the popular with westerners Pa Auk method and the lesser known Kanni method. Modern authors may have had practical instruction more likely from the former. Since the Vism is an ancient text and Pali study was the defacto occupation, the forest meditators have, for centuries, had the texts as guides and perhaps teachers with varying levels of success in following them, teaching others.

It seems the Vism has been a long revered text in Burma and it makes much of the jhana first, then vipassana approach. It also says this is a difficult task at which few will succeed. It seems to me that the popular opinion was that one need be a monk alone in the forest for many years to attain such states. To me this would seem to put off most, even most monks, from even attempting it. The Vism though has an exception, less preferable than the jhana first method, the dry approach which bypasses such jhanic states. It is this exception that the likes of Ledi Sayadaw used to make meditation practice and success seem more possible to the Buddhist population. This then open the doors for the proliferation of vipassana meditation techniques that followed. It makes me wonder if this more modern proliferation would have ever occurred if the subjectively authoritative text did not include this exemption?

It is a theory of mine that the more difficult and complicated theory, practice, and discipline become, the less it is undertaken, giving rise to the decline of the sasana and the rise and popularity of simple religious, devotional, faith based practices. Of course if it drops to the other end of the spectrum, this would likely be a cause for decline as well. When I read the suttas, I get the feeling that Buddha’s dispensation hits the middle mark, being neither too narrow, prescriptive, difficult, or complicated, nor too easy, general, ‘anything is alright,’ ‘it’s all good.’

I do think there are boundaries, definitions, a framework, signs of what make the discipline, theory, and practice ‘Buddhist.’ So it’s not anything goes. Nor is it too tight, narrow, or rigid. One supposed hallmark of a Sammasambuddha is that not only are they self enlightened, but the teaching will last well beyond the time and place in which the teaching arises. In order to do so, it needs to be flexible enough to adapt to new times and places and yet still maintain its sense of being a distinct teaching. In this sense, what you call CB has its place in the greater context of expression of Buddhist adaptation. Much of that has been already spoken about here already. I find it fascinating to be aware of this, have some knowledge of what came before, and watch adaptations unfold before our very eyes.

Gentle David,
thank you for summarising your research on the origins of modern Buddhism. I found your list of sources useful too. I am currently developing an artistic research on Vipassana meditation in Goenka’s style, as a doctoral candidate at the Theatre Academy of Helsinki. As a meditator in a tradition which encourages me to ‘see things as they really are’, I find Goenka’s claim of transmitting Buddha’s teaching in its ‘pristine purity’ somehow disturbing.

Your blog is definitely insightful. You have a new follower :)
Best wishes,

Gabriele

If you are curious, you can read some of my current struggles here: https://gabrielegoria.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/questions-around-vipassana/

I know I am biased but I sure feel that you are missing out on the most concise and practical scientific spiritual practice. The Mahasi method is a “to the point”, yet comprehensive interpretation of Satipathana scripture and actual experience. Mahasi’s method and theory fits perfect with the Buddha’s actual Dhamma.