I’m blogging this afternoon from the 4th floor of the Vancouver Public Library. The VPL is housed in Library Square, an impressive structure that includes space for an office complex, shops and restaurants, as well as the library itself.
The 10-day vipassana retreat in Merritt was my sixth in the tradition taught by Goenka-ji. It’s a commonplace among students in this tradition that one’s experience at every retreat, or “course,” is completely different, but only because you, the student, are a different person than you were the last time. The instruction and practices are identical in every course at every center worldwide. For readers who aren’t familiar with this tradition of meditative practice, a little historical explanation might be in order; and providing that explanation will also enable me to mark out some topics for future investigation.
So let’s begin the story with Ledi Sayadaw. (Sayadaw, BTW, is a Burmese term for a senior monk.)
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(two hours later)
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Still at the library. To provide a partial account of how I’ve spent the last couple of hours: I have learned a great deal about Ledi Sayadaw, and have typed up some that information in various formats, both on my own computer and at remote servers. I have also learned something about the Vancouver Public Library’s internet service: they log you off after your account has been inactive for 10 minutes. I have also learned, or had the lesson reinforced, that one can be typing vigorously away and still be “inactive”, if one does not attempt to save, search, or otherwise transmit data to a remote location. In other words, a lot of work down the drain, which I don’t feel like repeating today. The Sayadaw can wait. It’s 4:30 in the afternoon, the sun through the window is blinding, and Vancouver beckons. Hasta luego.
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[...] First, an explanation of the somewhat cryptic reference to Ledi Sayadaw in this post. There are 4 teachers in the tradition of meditation that is taught by S.N. Goenka in Vipassana Centers all over the world: Goenka was taught by U Ba Khin, who was taught by Saya Thetgyi, who was taught by Ledi Sayadaw. Substantial information about each of these guys is available on the Internet, for example by following the above links. This is of more than merely hagiographic interest because: the meditation that Goenka-ji teaches is an immensely powerful tool for self-knowledge; yet in some cases the accompanying explanations he presents in his nightly videotaped dhamma discourses are — well, it’s neither within my competence or any part of my intention to claim that Goenka-ji distorts the dhamma, but some of the things he says definitely have a unorthodox twist to them. Ledi Sayadaw, on the other hand, was an accomplished scholar and one of the great representatives of Theravada orthodoxy of his time. Which raises the question: Where and how, in the three generations of transmission through lay teachers, did the unique features of Goenka-ji’s teaching arise? A good place to begin investigating this question might be at one of the collections of Ledi Sayadaw’s writings available on the Web; these at the site of the U Ba Khin Memorial Trust, or these at the site of the Association for Insight Meditation. (The latter, BTW, appears to be a one-person labor of love, and has what look like some interesting discussions going on.) For example, you can read Ledi’s treatise on the Four Noble Truths, on the Eightfold Path, or on meditating on the breath. (Warning: that last one’s a PDF file.) [...]
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