Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Gabriel Alba 1
deprives the individual to act according with her/his essence. “Conscience
is a slavery self imposed by men, obliging her/him to act according with the
desires and goals that s/he believes of her/his own, when in reality they are
nothing but the external requirements of society that have become internal”
(Ibid., at 108).
The first and most important critique to the course resides, precisely, in the
fact that Vipassana builds conscience, neglecting freedom. I will start with
this one in order to prove my argument. “The foundation of the practice is
sīla — moral conduct” (http://www.dhamma.org/en/code.shtml). Sīla
consists in following five precepts: to abstain from i) killing any being, ii)
stealing, iii) any sexual activity, iv) telling lies and v) from all intoxicants.
One is supposed to follow these external requirements in daily life
(http://www.dhamma.org/en/os/osguide.htm) obeying to a bright new
conscience built by the technique.
I contend that the path to follow without neglecting freedom is to be
internally truly free to kill, for instance. The actual feeling of being capable
within yourself, within your head to kill, but restrain the possibility to do so
spontaneously by realizing the causes and consequences of doing such deed.
However, when observing sīla, the “self”-restriction of not killing does not
come from spontaneity but from the conscience that generates fear of going
to hell or, in the case of Vipassana, of stopping the path to reach Nirvana.
In his discourses, that I will discuss further later, Goenka claims that
people accept doctrines out from fear or from expectation. Since
“Vipassana is subtly described as the one true path to liberation” (Singh,
2007:12), the participants submit to sīla because they expect to be liberated
at some point; if not in this life, in the next one, or in the next one, but the
expectation is definitely there.
The argument of this document is: any religion neglects freedom and
represents an excuse for a person to avoid the responsibility of her/his life.
I already showed how Vipassana separates a person from her/his real
freedom. Now I am going to try tackling the issue of responsibility. “I
alone am responsible for my life”, each individual has to embrace her/his
own life and make it her/his own.
Catholics finish any phrase that is conjugated in future tense with the
‘suffix’ “if God wants”. It is a long discussion, which I will not embark into,
to conclude whether we have control of our lives or if there is a
predetermined fate for each of us. In any case, what I intend to articulate is
that a person lays on religion to excuse her/his lack of perseverance, her/his
slothfulness and lack of own effort by saying that it was meant to be. Vis-à-
vis Vipassana, the technique teaches that observing sīla is the only important
Gabriel Alba 2
thing to do regardless the atrocities that happen in the world… you are not
responsible for anything else.
This leads to an unproved consideration picked from little details that are
not strong enough to prove anything. Nonetheless, it is a mere suggestion
that I do not mean to demonstrate: it occurred to me that Vipassana
approves capitalism without questioning it.
Such small details are: i) “the teaching of equanimity is explicit”
(Singh, 2007:18). If equanimity leads your acts, you will not react. Hence,
you will lack character depriving the feelings to react to something that is
wrong; e.g the awful things that the system attains: necessity of poverty,
environmental degradation, money as the ultimate goal, etc. You are
supposed to stay still without reacting, to let it just pass… This is confirmed
with ‘The Ultimate truth of misery’: there is misery in the world, that is a
fact and you have to learn to observe it without reacting to it when in reality
is the ultimate flaw of the system, which at the same time is necessary for its
appropriate functioning. ii) The technique is widespread around the world;
it is globalized, just like capitalism. This is merely a coincidence but still a
curious one.
And finally, iii) returning to good conduct, it recognizes private
property since you are supposed “to refrain from stealing” (Singh, 2007:4)
when in reality you cannot have anything! Such verb is difficult to explain.
Possessions are not an extension of your Self, it is an extension of your self
and is a language mistake: e.g. this is not my laptop, it is the laptop I am
using now but I am not blended with the laptop, my Self and the laptop are
not one. A possession increases egoism, because ‘what is mine is mine’ and
is not yours and I do not care how deeply you need it, you have to buy your
own… You have to let go! If you let go the attachment to the laptop, it will
reduce your ego.
The technique neglects, which is remarkably good and necessary, the ‘I’, the
‘me’, the ‘self’, the ‘ego’ but in reality it nurtures it through the paramis of
renunciation (i.e. living like a monk) and tolerance. The first one augments
narcissism since the participant can say ‘I lived 10 days like a monk and I
resisted it. Therefore, I am so great’ and the second claims that ‘I am
tolerant to your action, and you are an ignorant or you are sick. You are
wrong, but I am right’.
Lastly, if someone shares the experience, her/his ego is saying
something like ‘I am so great because I am here suffering all these physical
pains that will take me to a higher level. The people I know should be as
great as I am, so, given the fact that I am so good and compassionate, I will
tell others so they can go to a retreat and feel better thanks to me’.
Gabriel Alba 3
Back to the discourses, they are profoundly brainwashing. Each day
at 7:30pm, after meditating throughout the whole afternoon and having
eaten nothing after 11am the discourses time arrives. The mundane body is
not used to these periods of mental activity that meditation entails and also
without food, the brain becomes weak and accepts easier anything. The
examples Goenka uses make the audience believe that is absolutely true
when it is stupidly obvious what he says but does not provide appropriate
reasons (unfortunately, I was weak myself and I cannot remember specifics).
Gabriel Alba 4
perceives an increase in the welfare of other. Once you accept this and
realize this truth, you can transform such pattern and switch on to truly care
about a few individuals.
The physical benefits of the exercise are clear and maybe I am not
mentioning all: eating healthy vegetarian food, following a schedule that
provides enough rest at night, losing weight due to the less ingest of food,
and strengthening the muscles of your back.
Finally, on day twelve you can choose to donate or not, which
demonstrates that the organization is not driven by profit (but it does not
imply that it neglects capitalism).
Gabriel Alba 5
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gabriel Alba 6