Vol.7 No.3 May, 1997
Words of Dhamma
Subhasitam uttamamahu santo, Dhammam bhane nadhammam tam dutiyam. Piyam bhane nappiyam tam tatiyam, Saccam bhane nalikam tam catuttham.
-Saints have said: well-spoken words are the best speech. Speaking Dhamma words instead of immoral words is the second best speech. Speaking kindly instead of harshly is the third best speech. Speaking the truth instead of falsehood is the fourth best speech.
-Suttanipata 452 (Subhasitasutta)
The Floodgates of Dhamma Open
- by S. N. Goenka
Sayagyi U Ba Khin, my revered teacher, strongly believed that 2500 years after the Buddha's mahaparinibbana (final passing away of Enlightened Ones), the second Buddha-sasana (cycle of teaching) will start again in the land of its origin, and from there spread throughout the world for the boundless benefit of humankind.
Dhamma will again arise with the practice of Vipassana. For millennia, Vipassana was lost to India. But it was preserved in its pristine purity in Myanmar (Burma).
Close to the end of this 2500-year period, the historical Sixth Council was held from 1954 to 1956 in Yangon (Rangoon). It was during this time - from 1st to 11th September, 1955 - that I got my Dhamma birth. I sat my first Vipassana course.
After benefiting me immeasurably for fourteen years, Vipassana returned to India on 22 June, 1969, with the blessings of my teacher. An interval of about 2000 years had passed. In spite of all the self-doubts about my ability, Dhamma started to take root in India.
I am merely a medium. Dhamma is doing its own work. "The clock of Vipassana has struck," Sayagyi often said. "At this time, many people endowed with abundant paramita have been born in India and in the other countries of the world. The ticking of this Vipassana clock will attract these people towards Dhamma".
So it happened. Innumerable people from different countries, religions, beliefs started participating in courses. So too did leaders of various religions. All of them accepted this technique as their own; none of them felt that it was alien.
These intitial Vipassana courses were taught only in Hindi since the majority of courses were held in North India. After a few months, a few westerners also started participating in these courses.
After giving the Dhamma talk in Hindi, I used to give them a five or ten- minute discourse summary and instructions. These students were very hard working and this brief guidance was enough for them to achieve surprisingly good results.
Gradually, words of praise of Vipassana spread amongst western travellers. A year later, a group of tourists staying at Dalhousie requested me to come there and conduct a course exclusively for them.
It was difficult for me. The entire course would have to be conducted in English. To talk a few English sentences of guidance and to clear their doubts would have been simple. But to give an hour-long discourse fluently in English, or to give long, inspirational instructions throughout the day, as I did in Hindi, was impossible for me.
In Rangoon, I used to read out a written speech whenever I had to give a talk in English as President of Chamber of Commerce and Industry, or at any important public function. I neither had the experience nor the ability to give a talk in English without reading from a text.
And a talk on meditation, in which I have to give English equivalents of technical terms of Indian spiritual traditions, was even more difficult for me.
So I expressed my inability to conduct a course in English and advised them to keep joining courses conducted in Hindi in small numbers. They argued that whereas Hindi- speaking students benefited greatly from the inspiring discourses and instructions, the foreign students were deprived of this benefit. Besides, they were convinced I knew enough English to conduct the course.
When I still refused, they contacted Sayagyi U Ba Khin and complained to him about me. "Sir, outside Burma, only one of your representatives is teaching this technique and he is not accepting our request", they told him. "Where can we go to learn this technique?".
Besides, in those days, one could not get a visa to Burma for more than three days. So they pleaded with Sayagyi that he should order me to conduct courses in English.
I was in Bombay, then. My revered teacher telephoned me and ordered that I should go to Dalhousie to conduct that course. He told me with loving firmness : "You must go. Whatever English you know will be enough. You will be successful. Dhamma will help. All my mettā is with you." After getting such a powerful reassurance I went to Dalhousie .
I had nothing against going to Dalhousie. In fact, I had reasons to look forward to the trip. This would be my first course in the lap of the Himalayas. Sayagyi used to say : "Who knows how long in how many lives we have meditated in the serene caves of the Himalayas." That is why on reaching there, my mind was filled with rapture. My self-doubts began to melt.
The course started. For the first two days, while sitting on the Dhamma seat I experienced an inexplicable feeling of suffocation. As a result, I was unable to speak for more than fifteen minutes the first evening.
On the second evening, I had to struggle to speak for about twenty-five minutes. I felt suffocated again. Although, I found no cause for it in the surface layers of my mind, I felt that maybe the inferiority complex of having trouble speaking English was creating obstacles at the deepest level.
But the actual cause turned out to be something else. This was a small course with eleven students. It was conducted in a little bungalow called Shanti Kutir. The group sittings and discourses were held in a small room. The student who had invited me for the course lived in the adjacent room.
On the third day, I felt strong, impure, anti-Dhamma vibrations flowing from that room and polluting the adjacent meditation room.
With the pure vibrations of the Himalayas on the one hand and the powerful mettā of my revered teacher on the other hand, I could not understand what could cause these anti-Dhamma vibrations.
That afternoon, when I went to that room to check the student, I was startled to see a human skull on his table. Nearby was a blood-stained kukri, [curved knife used by Gurkhas].
The student explained he was the disciple of some local tantric [member of a mystical cult]. Only three nights ago he had gone to the cremation ground, and had made an animal sacrifice with this kukri as part of a tantric ritual. His guru had told him that his meditation would be very successful if he kept the skull and kukri close to him.
Now I understood the cause of the suffocating, negative vibrations pervading the meditation room. Only after much persuasion by me did he throw that kukri and skull in some cavern faraway. And only then was the anti-Dhamma force eliminated from Shanti Kutir.
That afternoon, I meditated on the Dhamma seat for a long time. The time for the evening discourse approached. I saw that the entire atmosphere, washed by the purifying waves of the breeze from the Himalayas, had become even purer with the mettā-filled Dhamma vibrations from my revered teacher.
Just a few moments before the start of the discourse, Dhamma vibrations flooded my being through the top of the head . I began the discourse and I found I spoke English as fluently as I speak Hindi. I spoke for an entire hour.
After the five-minute break, I gave long instructions with the same fluency. I could see that all meditators - male and female - were absorbed in deep meditation. At 9:00 p. m., when the day ended, their faces were radiant. I was wonderstruck.
It was Sayagyi's mettā that gave me the Dhamma strength to turn what seemed impossible to possible. The first-ever Vipassana course in English became successful. What Dhamma desired happened.
After this, all courses were bilingual. Daily, I gave Hindi discourses in the morning and English discourses in the evening. Instructions too were bilingual.
More courses and courses with more students were conducted. The number of foreign students progressively increased. Courses in places like Bodhgaya, Kushinagar, Varanasi and Rajagir had almost only foreign students. Word spread to many Western countries. Groups of foreigners came to learn Vipassana. With courses often running full, many had to wait for the next course.
In a few years, thousands from about eighty countries came for Vipassana courses. Students came from neighbouring Sri Lanka and Thailand. The time had come for the prophecy and Dhamma wish of Sayagyi to come true.
Vipassana will spread throughout the world. Perhaps that is why it became possible to conduct courses in English. Without this, Vipassana would not have spread among the people of foreign countries.
I felt contented. The Vipassana flood gates had opened and the infinitely beneficial Ganges of Dhamma also flowed to students outside India, to the world.
My First Course by Sarah Bridgeland
Editor's Note :
This article is reproduced in memory of Sarah Bridgeland. 17-year old Sarah met with a road accident in Blackheath, Australia, and died on 12th April, 1997.
Sarah's parents - Gerry and Margaret Bridgeland - are senior assistant teachers. Her elder brother David is a serious old student and a Dhamma worker. She is survived by two other brothers Kim and James.
(Sarah gave this talk at the International Seminar on "The Importance Of Vedana and Sampajanna" held at Dhamma Giri in March 1990. This article is from the "Sayagyi U Ba Khin Journal").
My name is Sarah and I am ten years old. I am here to tell you of my experience doing my first ten-day course.
I loved the idea of being able to come to India, but having to do the course was a different story. I do want to, I don't want to, I do, I don't. It was like that for a few weeks, but one day my mother told me to meet Mr.Ram Singh and his wife Mrs.Jagdish. So that morning I walked over with some flowers. Me and my mother sat down on the floor, but Mr.Ram Singh said we could not sit on a lower level than him and so we sat on chairs.
I gave him the flowers and then said 'hello', and my mother introduced me and then herself and then told Mr.Ram Singh about how my elder brother, David, went to India last year. You could say that my brief visit to Mr.Ram Singh was sukha (pleasant) - sukha, sukha, not an iota of dukha (unpleasant). "I' m going to India!" I said, and that was definite.
A few weeks later we arrived in India at about two o'clock in the morning Indian time. The next day we set off to Igatpuri. Once we had settled in we went and got ready for an hour's group sit and introduction to meditation and S. N. Goenka.
Next day after breakfast I got ready for the eight o'clock group sit and then went to the hall. A very big amount of females went in and I went along with them. I went to my place near the front, sat down and got comfortable then closed my eyes, but after about ten seconds opened them again and looked around, and after five minutes everyone was in and a strange talking started. All the time I had my eyes open, but the strange talking said "close your eyes", so I did.
I started concentrating on the upper area under the nostrils and above the upper lip. Hot, cold, fast, slow, left, right, prickly, smooth, hard, soft - these were all my sensations. But suddenly they all went, they all left me. Where had they gone ?
Then soon I realized my mind had wandered, wandered to school, so off I went to find my mind, to find and to bring it back to the area of the lower nostril and upper lip. But when I found it I got pulled into the thoughts of school and my fellow classmates, and this is what happened in all my other hours, half hours, minutes, seconds of all my meditation hours.
Until along came the wonderful technique of Vipassana. Along came day four and we were to learn Vipassana after the morning group sit. Vipassana was to be taught and I closed my eyes and got comfortable. This morning, I thought, I couldn't possibly sit through two hours even if it was Vipassana, and I even expressed my feelings to my mother and my two friends Debbie and Uwana who helped me get through the ten days.
But now in the hall I was eager to learn Vipassana and I totally neglected my first thoughts. At last Mr. & Mrs.S. N. Goenka and Vimala, the assistant teacher for females and the male assistant teacher came in and at last I was to learn Vipassana. I paid little attention toS. N. Goenka's first minor speech but finally I was taught Vipassana. "Feeling sensations all over the body" and I did. Again I got prickly, smooth, soft, hard, fast, slow and all other sensations over my body. But again my mind wandered, but this time I brought it back again.
I was also taught the minor technique of Mettā Bhavana.
To finish my rather long speech I would like to tell you about a rather important day that probably happens to most people on their courses. This day was around day five and this was probably the best day of the course. That day I was full of anger, meanness, unkindness, and wouldn't do anything I didn't want to do, and showed it all immensely. But late that same night I realized that that day was the day all my sankharas didn't like me anymore and decided to go to someone else, and then I suddenly felt happy.
When the course was over I couldn't believe how somebody could ever be so happy as I was that day and practically vowed to myself to come back next year, may be with my younger brother.
I'm sukha, sukha, not an iota of dukha, a thousand time over.
Thank You.
The Bridgeland family has forgiven the driver who caused Sarah's accident. A message from the family says, "The driver wanted to phone us and apologize. He was an inexperienced driver and lost control. We have said he can phone us. We all have mettā for him.
"Sarah was so deeply loved. Messages have been pouring in from all around the world from her Dhamma family . She was so wonderful. . ."
Better than to live a hundred years of ignorance , is one day spent in meditation.
Better to live one day, realising how all things arise and pass away.
- The Dhammapada
Letters to the Teacher
Respected S. N. Goenka,
I am happy, at long last I found the time and determination to attend the 10-day Vipassana course at Dhamma Khetta, Hyderabad. I am totally convinced by the potential of the technique, though as you have been rightly emphasising that this is only the first step in a long, long and difficult path.
But certainly, even now, I am able to realise the great potential this path has for humanity, particularly in this country where many conflicts, miseries and tensions are growing day by day. As you have rightly said, "What is necessary at the moment is the mastery of the mind and not only mastery of the matter."
I was also highly impressed by the dedication, commitment and sincerity of the persons in charge of the Centre, as well as the competence, commitment and compassion of the teachers.
I have no hesitation in expressing my appreciation and admiration for the efforts to bring solace, happiness, peace, harmony and liberation to millions of people.
In fact, I have already written a report to the Director, CBI, and Director General, CRPF, that we should explore ways of either sending our own officers to your centres or introducing it in our own training institutions.
My family too is planning to sit Vipassana courses .
With kind regards,
D.R. Karthikeyan
I.P.S., Special Director Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
March 26th,1997
Govt. of India