The Hard Lessons from My 10-Day Goenke Vipassana Course

I promised in last week’s post to reveal the personal gunk that churned up to the surface during my recent 10-Day Goenke Vipassana meditation course at Dhamma Delaware. As I said in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, the no speaking, no reading, no writing, and no technology rules were not the hardest parts for me.

The extra time I’ve taken to write this final installment has been necessary and productive, especially since I’ve spent the past week immersed in mindfulness and emotional intelligence exercises at my first in-person session of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) teacher training in San Francisco.

It’s been a pretty intense month, to say the least. Two words come to mind when I widen the aperture to include both experiences: Quantum Growth.

Today I’ll stay focused on the heavy lifting I did during the Goenke Vipassana course.

About three weeks out, the hard parts of the silent retreat do not feel less hard in my memory. But the distance, processing, and conversations I’ve had with some wise friends (including a lovely German woman in my SIYLI teacher training cohort who is a Buddhist priest – how cool is that?) have convinced me fully that the challenges I grappled with at Dhamma Delaware were absolutely necessary to deepen my mindfulness practice and make me a better teacher.

So here goes.

My challenges were delivered by three teachers:

1. The Chanter
2. The Burper
3. The Seemingly Uncompassionate Assistant Teacher

Heads up that this post is pretty long. You can divide it up into “teacher bites” if you’d like. Or you can use it as a mindfulness practice in focused attention and see if you can stick with it in one sitting.

Teacher 1: The Chanter

The meditations at Goenke centers are guided on audio recordings by the late S.N. Goenke. An assistant teacher is on site as well (more about her in a bit), but Goenke is the voice of the meditations and the speaker (on video) for the evening discourse sessions.

So it’s 4:30 am on Day 1 of the course and I’m sitting dutifully on my bench in my assigned spot in the meditation hall (see Part 1 of this series for more on my equipment). The recording starts and Goenke’s distinctive baritone voice fills the room. He’s chanting in Pali, the language of the earliest Buddhist texts.

Within the first 15 seconds, I feel a toxic chemical reaction spread through my body, stress hormones coursing through my veins. From the top of my head to the tips of my toes, I feel engulfed in sensory aversion to both the voice and the words that I can’t understand.

I thought I had dealt with my chanting baggage on a previous weekend stay at Yogaville, an ashram-type of yoga and meditation center in central Virginia (read my post about that here). At Yogaville everyone chants during the group sits, at least for certain portions. I told a nun there about my chanting aversion, and she had me put my hand on top of my head to feel the vibrations we send into the universe when we vocalize through chanting. That shifted my mindset at the time, as I could literally feel the impact of a group of people chanting together as a means to send positive energy into the environment.

But in the Goenke system, he’s the only one chanting, and it’s even just on an audio recording. Each meditation session began and ended with him chanting and singing for varying lengths of time. Signs posted in common areas explained that the chanting was simply about the teacher spreading positive energy. We were told not to worry about the translation (none was provided). The assistant teacher told me to just treat it like the TV on in the background. This was the wrong example to use with me, since I can’t stand having the TV on the background.

I was pretty sure that, at least in the first few days of the course, my visceral reaction to the chanting was producing more negative vibrations than any positive vibrations his chanting could possibly have generated.

My first approach to deal with this aversion was to remember the Sound Meditation that we had practiced during the extension program of my last 30-Day Mindfulness Meditation Challenge. By anchoring your attention on the sounds in your environment and noticing the physical feelings that different types of sounds trigger in the body, you learn to let go of labeling sounds as “good” or “bad”. Sounds are just vibrational patterns. It’s our thinking about the sounds, attaching stories to them, that is the source of our discomfort.

What me might think of as challenging sounds—a siren, car honking, or someone else’s phone beeping, for example—are not the cause of our suffering. It’s the story we attach to those sounds that lead to the physical response in our bodies.

So what was the story I was attaching to the sound of the chanting, and why was it so hard to let go of it?

Let me say at the outset that I have nothing against Pali. I simply don’t enjoy listening to chanting or other language rituals in any tongue, including English, whether delivered in churches, temples, mosques, retreat centers, or at home on a CD. I know that some people listen to Gregorian chants for the same relaxing, soul-nourishing impact that I get from taking a hot bath. It’s just never been my gig.

But my reaction to Goenke’s chanting was particularly strong, leading not only to resistance, but even to the feeling of anger in my body.

I had no problem with the actual meditation technique once Goenke stopped chanting. I liked the way he introduced in-depth mind/body awareness and body scan practices in a step-by-step way.

I knew from my own experience that the technique itself is truly transformational. But the flowery, embellished, exaggerated way that he used his voice was like fingernails grating on a chalkboard for me. I prefer my meditation delivered straight up, with no sweet mixer, Maraschino cherry, or paper umbrella added.

On Day 4, it dawned on me.

By Day 4, the physiological response to the chanting was all mixed up with the multiple layers of physical pain from sitting in one position for 10 hours a day. Who would have thought that my collar bones would hurt from sitting still? But I digress…

Goenke writes that “[a]ny thoughts or emotions, any mental impurities that arise manifest themselves in the breath and the sensations of that moment.”

At some point in the fog of all that painful manifesting, a voice from the past bubbled up to the surface. Close to 30 years ago, when I was just 25 years old, my friend Carol (who appears as “Mae” in my book) told me that I was configured to push back against old orders, especially male dominated structures. I have that conversation on an old cassette tape, which I dug up and listened to again before writing this post. (Full disclosure, Carol was reading my astrology birth chart, which my sister gave me as a gift before I set off for graduate school. It’s the only time I’ve ever had a reading. The older I’ve gotten, the more spot on Carol’s analysis has become.)

“What will serve you is your ability to synthesize and understand the abstractions in our culture, religion, and society, and to take what you know about that and work with those things in a way that will inspire others,” she told me. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about at the time.

Goenke and his chanting represented everything I have pushed back against for most of my life – patriarchy, organized religion, and rigid rules-based structures and approaches.

It was a huge ah ha moment to realize how I experienced this resistance physically in my body, which is what I imagine swimming in a nuclear waste pool would feel like.

The other realization I had was that those old judgments and assumptions would prevent me from serving others fully. The Search Inside Yourself teacher training exercises, in particular, clarified that I need to be able to meet students where they are. If I’m going into corporate or government or any other setting to teach mindfulness, my heart has to be completely open to everyone. Time to let go of it, Martha. 

Having set my intention, I worked through the chanting aversion by visualizing Goenke facing an audience of people who were happily receiving his singing with smiles on their faces. I shifted my mindset from the image of him chanting into my face with an ego-based assumption that of course of I would like it, to an image reflecting the reality that many people really do enjoy his voice and his chanting. As a result, I was able to shift my inner balance to a point of equanimity. I didn’t like the chanting, but I no longer hated it.

I detached. The negative physical reaction in my body ceased. BOOM!

Teacher 2: The Burper

Like the Chanter, the Burper also introduced himself in the very first meditation of Day 1, and made himself heard in each and every session for the entirety of the 10-day course.

To clarify, somebody on the male side of the meditation hall let out extraordinarily loud, open-mouthed burps while the rest of us were doing our best to maintain Noble Silence. If you’ve ever seen the movie Elf, with Will Farrell playing the lead role, you’ll remember him burping with great abandon after eating his maple syrup-drenched spaghetti and guzzling soda to wash it down. I listened to those types of burps for ten days straight.

The burps triggered an additional infusion of stress chemicals on top of my chanting reactions. All sorts of storytelling filled my boy-mom brain. My own sons have sworn that sometimes you just can’t help it, but I’ve never bought that. My reaction to their burping was always swift and critical. “The least you can do is close your mouth!” was my autopilot response.

I tried to tell myself that the Burper might have a medical issue. Or maybe this was just normal when you have a group of over 60 people meditating in one space for extended periods. None of my logical reasoning eased the sense of disgust and, once again, anger that I felt in my body.

I made a concerted effort to turn away from thinking and judging the Burper. Instead, I turned toward the physical sensations in my body to experience them fully. The Burper manifested in a deep constriction of my mid-section and an uncontrolled curl of my lip.

When I breathed into that sensory experience, another memory bubbled up from viscous depths. (Now that I think about it, isn’t “bubble” just another word for “burp”?)

I was brought back to a situation in my early childhood, where I witnessed a person being loudly and angrily berated for burping and farting. I remembered feeling that person’s deep pain and humiliation. In that moment of memory, I was filled with compassion and empathy for the Burper, to the point where I actually felt tears streaming down my cheeks.

He was suffering more than I was. I was creating my own suffering by allowing my aversion to control my body responses. As soon as I allowed compassion and empathy in, my heart and mid-section opened up and my face relaxed. I detached. The physical discomfort ceased. BOOM!

Teacher 3: The Seemingly Uncompassionate Assistant Teacher

Although you weren’t allowed to talk to other participants, you could schedule short interviews with the assistant teacher during the lunch break (this is the case at most silent retreats, from what I understand). One male and one female assistant teacher were at the Goenke Vipassana course. I signed up with the female teacher immediately (you had to stick to your own gender).

“Why is it not a breach of Noble Silence to burp in the meditation hall?” I asked the Indian woman with the long graying braid down her back.

“It’s a natural body function,” she said tersely. “You’re not concentrating hard enough.”

I felt like my palm had been slapped with a ruler.

“Why is it a sin for a cat to kill a mouse, when he has no other means to eat?” I asked, referencing a comment Goenke made in the first evening’s discourse video.

“Because it’s killing!” she said.

“You mean because the cat did something bad in a previous life, it was relegated to having to kill to survive in this life?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“But Goenke says that Vipassana and how he teaches it is nonsectarian. The cat being a sinner comes from a belief system,” I argued (yes, argued…see above for life-long resistance issues).

“It’s not a belief system. It’s the truth!” she shot back.

There’s no bigger button you can push for me than saying, “It’s the truth.”

Maybe it is the truth, maybe it isn’t. None of us knows. Other than sensing the existence of a higher intelligence through my own personal experience and cultivating my connection to the present moment and feelings of alignment and purpose, I don’t live my life based on what may or may not happen after I die. I have no problem with others having their own belief systems, but at least acknowledge it as such.

I decided it was best to just step out and let the next student in line have their turn. But The Seemingly Uncompassionate Teacher continued…

“Don’t you know that all butchers die very violent deaths?” she said.

“Excuse me?”

She repeated her claim.

“Hm. I haven’t done the research on that,” was the most courteous reply I could come up with.

I retreated to Noble Silence and exited.

Needless to say, we didn’t get off on a very good start. The irony was, one reason I had come to this course was to fulfill a silent residential retreat requirement for my Search Inside Yourself teacher certification. And here was the teacher I didn’t want to be.

I scheduled two or three other interviews hoping for more satisfying exchanges. Didn’t happen.

For example, I was excited to share with her my strategy for addressing my chanting aversion. When I started to explain the shift in my mind’s eye to Goenke chanting in the direction of people who enjoyed his voice, she cut me off abruptly before I could finish:

“You’re doing it wrong! You’re not supposed to think!”

She didn’t let me even reach the part about dissolving the negative physical reaction. I was strong enough in my practice to not be shaken. Maybe I was doing it “wrong,” but I didn’t care. It worked for me.

What I was most concerned about was that people new to meditation might be pushed away by her judgmental energy and lack of mindful listening skills. My life’s passion is to invite and encourage people to try meditation as a means to enhance their well-being and navigate life more skillfully. I felt neither invited nor encouraged by her style of teaching.

I compared the situation to soccer parents in the United States hiring coaches with British accents because they assumed that all Brits are good soccer players and coaches. But effective coaching requires training and people skills, and the ability to adapt your approach to your students.

Call me an American snowflake if you will, but I know from experience with my own program participants that new meditators (and we had a lot of them at Dhamma Delaware) need gentle encouragement if they’re going to stick with the practice.

It wasn’t her fault. The assistant teacher at this particular course simply wasn’t trained in mindful listening, empathy, encouragement, or the other skills that I value so highly in a teacher.

When I met Doris, the lovely German woman and Buddhist priest in my SIYLI teacher training cohort last week, I shared my experience with her. I said I recognized that in India and in many other cultures, that might be an appropriate or at least workable teaching style. But I felt unseen and unmet as a student.

Doris pointed out that the assistant teachers at Goenke centers are volunteers, so the skill sets are sure to vary. Hearing this in the context of the intense teacher training that Doris and I were undergoing together finally allowed full empathy to flow in. I detached. The physical feeling of frustration and resentment dissolved. BOOM!

My teachers of hard lessons are surely different from those of other participants. Each person comes in with their own baggage, their own demons, their own areas awaiting growth. And as I described in last week’s post about my positive takeaways, major growth happened for me across a broad spectrum. I’m adding the hard parts described here to that list.

In the end, I’m deeply grateful for The Chanter, The Burper, and The Seemingly Uncompassionate Assistant Teacher. They taught me a lot about myself, helped me recognize that I have more work to do to dissolve judgments, and provided rich material for my mindfulness practice.

I was able to continue to process those lessons at my SIYLI training in San Francisco last week. It was a pretty dramatic transition from the environment at Dhamma Delaware, where you were supposed to avoid eye contact with other participants for ten days, to the intense one-on-one and group mindfulness and emotional intelligence exercises we engaged in last week with our teacher training cohort.

But the combined experiences helped me dig deep, gain clarity, and reach far beyond my previous conceptions of self, connection, and capacity to impact and inspire. I can’t wait to dive even deeper over the remaining eight months of the SIYLI teacher training course!

Thanks for hanging in there with me for this much longer than usual post. Onward!!

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