Yes, I still have a copy of it either on my computer or on an external hard-drive. I am happy to attach it to a post should anybody be interested.IanAnd wrote: S.N. Goenka is a curious fellow (and I don't mean that in a disparaging way). When, ten years ago, I was beginning to get back into a study of Buddhism, I read an interview he did with Tricycle magazine (2000 Winter edition; at the time I had a subscription, otherwise I might not have seen the interview) and what he had to say in that interview really impressed me. Especially the answers he gave to the first couple of questions. It was the story he told of his teacher, U Ba Khin, that impressed me. The relative simplicity of the answers to his questions that U Ba Khin gave really made practical sense:I wondered if you had ever come across this interview and were aware of his outlook.Goenka: He asked me if, as a Hindu leader, I had any objection towards sila, that is, morality. How can there be any objection? But how can you practice sila unless you have control of the mind? He said, I will teach you to practice sila with controlled mind. I will teach you samadhi, concentration. Any objection? What can be objected to in samadhi? Then he said, that alone will not help—that will purify your mind at the surface level. Deep inside there are complexes, there are habit patterns, which are not broken by samadhi. I will teach you prajna, wisdom, insight, which will take you to the depth of the mind. I will teach you to go to the depth of the mind, the source where the impurities start and they get multiplied and they get stored so that you can clear them out.
So when my teacher told me: I will teach you only these three—sila, samadhi and prajna—and nothing else, I was affected. I said, let me try.
Having sat and served with him in Australia in the mid-to-late 1980s and sitting and serving with him during the 1989/90 Indian winter (long course) program at his main centre "Dhammagiri" west of Mumbai, I have had the opportunity to spend some time in close proximity with him as a student and also as a server. To quote a cliche, 'what you see is what you get', the Goenkaji one reads in the Tricycle article and the one on the ten-day course discourses is the same as the one who you see when you attend a one-on-one interview with him or in the presence of other servers discussing course management issues. He has a particular knack with humour. He's just a very natural man with no pretensions. Another impression I have of him is just being the font of unbelievable amount of metta. Sitting in front of him, with his metta, is at times almost overwhelming.IanAnd wrote: I also wondered whether or not Goenka presents himself in that manner at gatherings he attends. I'm speaking primarily about his view of the Buddha, which after I had an opportunity to read the discourses and do a little a little more reading and thinking about the matter, I tended to agree with. Goenka mentioned:
"When I began to learn Vipassana meditation, I became convinced that Buddha was a not a founder of religion, he was a super-scientist. A spiritual super-scientist." Then toward the end of the interview he states again: "Buddha never taught any isms. In all his words, and the commentaries, which number thousands of pages, the word 'Buddhism' is not there. So this all started much later, when Buddha’s teaching began to settle. I don’t know when it started, how it started, calling it Buddhism, but the day it happened it devalued the teaching of Buddha. It was a universal teaching, and that made it sectarian, as if to say that Buddhism is only for Buddhists, like Hinduism is for Hindus, Islam is for Muslims. Dharma is for all."
He was probably one of the first people I came across who presented the idea that Gotama never intended to found a religion. He did, however, intend to set up a mechanism that passed along the truths he had learned, which is why he set up monastic colonies to preserve the teachings for future generations. Yet, when you stop to think about it, sila, samadhi, and prajna, these are simple concepts to get the mind around. Of course, the Dhamma is a little bit more complicated than that. But that's why virtue, concentration, and wisdom are stressed as keys which will help open the door to comprehension and eventual awakening.
Not quite so. Certainly during the 'introductory' ten day courses, one could be forgiven for thinking that there is a hesitancy to teach jhana. During the context of the ten-day course, the emphasis is on developing moment-to-moment samadhi during the 3.5 days one is practicing anapana. And for most people who are complete newbies not having had exposure to the Buddhadhamma and intensive retreat settings, that might be quite appropriate. In the afternoon of the fourth day, one ceases anapana and begins vedananupassana (vipassana). My understanding is, and I could be wrong here, the emphasis on acquiring less-than-jhana samadhi is common to many strands of the Burmese vipassana culture. Certainly during the special courses for 'old students' only, and during the long courses, there is far more emphasis on samadhi, greater precision of detail and on the 20-day course, more emphasis on upacarasamadhi and jhana. I have been augmenting my own practice by reading and integrating some aspects of Buddhaghosa's exposition on anapanasati in Vism. One of the things I am looking forward to in my upcoming 30-day course is actually practicing anapana uninterrupted for ten days.IanAnd wrote: I've gotten the impression from your posts, as well as others in the Goenka movement, that it seems hesitant to teach samadhi. Is that correct, or do I have that all wrong? Perhaps he does teach samadhi, but it is jhana that he is hesitant to teach. The reason I ask is that it seems strange that he would talk openly about this in an interview and yet not included it in his general curriculum. Curious. But then, I can understand why he might be hesitant to teach jhana given the way the organization he runs is set up.
Thanks for your patience. I have experienced some serious computer issues over the last 24 hours and I don't think I'm out of the woods yet. I did see your post yesterday and had written a long and detailed post but when I hit 'submit', my modem dropped out which was the beginning of some computer problems.
kind regards
Ben