Despite the intellectual disagreements I've shared with various aspects of the Goenka organization over the past 3 months, the aspect of Vipassana that I want the world to recognize and celebrate is its ability to purify one's intentions. Our world is obsessed with "how" to accomplish goals. How do I make money? How do I …
Continue reading Vipassana Purifies Intention, Intellect Solves Problems
Written by Dan Kaminsky In the last post I began by talking about questions I had about vibrations. This post will elaborate more on other concepts that feel to me to be contradictory to the mission of a universal tradition. EnlightenmentEnlightenment has the possibility to be sectarian in the same way heaven and hell is. …
Written by Dan Kaminsky In my first post on this blog, I mentioned a number of concepts that don’t feel to be universal to me. I only mentioned these concepts in passing so I would like to expand on them in the next two posts. In this post I will discuss Vibrations, and in the …
Written by Dan Kaminsky I sat my first course back in 2010. I was 21 years old, about to graduate college, and rather confused about my next steps in life. It proved to be immensely helpful. I continued to sit courses and by my fourth course I decided to make dhamma one of the central …
Continue reading Reflections 1 Year After Leaving Long Term Service
Greetings fellow Vipassanators, I'm writing this post in collaboration with my partner Hannah Joy. Throughout our Vipassana journeys, we both have been inspired to deepen our practice via the sit-serve program and leadership roles within the organization. During our experiences, we too have encountered some challenges and have come to develop some of the same …
Written by Dan Kaminsky In a recent blog post in which I was writing with critical inquisitiveness about practices done at centers, among the many thought provoking responses to come in was the idea that when you are going to a center, you are entering into someone else’s domain and because of that should do …
You know the story: 2500 years ago the Buddha brought the complete path of Dhamma to India. Over the centuries, these teachings became polluted until they were lost in most parts of the world. Only in Burma was the complete teaching preserved in writing and practice. After 2500 years, the teachings were professed to return …
Written by Dan Kaminsky There is this fear that the meditation technique will get watered down or changed by people looking to make it easier or more pleasant, and the essence of the technique will be lost. This fear then leads to some of the rigidities around exploration that are in existence. This fear is …
Goenka shares a lot of theory in the 10-day discourses on topics like reincarnation, sankaras, metta, and liberation. He also shares that believing the theory isn't important as long as you follow the practice of sila, samadhi, and panna. Goenka wants students to learn the benefits of practicing vipassana through their own experience, and since …
Written by Dan Kaminsky My experience with meditation causes me to question Goenka’s explanation of Sankhara’s and the process of purification (discussed in part one of this post). In this post, I want to discuss the intellectual challenges I have with Goenka’s theory on Sankhara’s. On the intellectual level, two main things about Goenka’s model …
Continue reading Alternative Views on Sankhara’s and the Process of Purification: Part 2
Living Vipassana 