[Buddha-l] FW: Stephen Batchelor --video--seminars on

[Curt Steinmetz]

Hans Gijsen wrote:
> On Apr 23, 2010, at 2:37 PM, Curt Steinmetz wrote:
>  
>   
>> Does anyone know why Batchelor broke with Goenka?
>>     
>  
> Did he?
>  
>   
>> Batchelor claims to 
>> practice vipassana in the style of Goenka, but he actually only attended 
>> one Goenka retreat back in his 20's, and they parted company after that, 
>> and not on good terms.
>>     
>  
> Does he make this claim? 
> Did they part not on good terms?
>  
> In Batchelor’s book ‘The Faith to Doubt’ he clearly states that this rather short 10-day retreat with Goenka had an ‘overwhelming impact’ on him, his ‘consciousness was unquestionably altered’ and he gained ‘direct experiential insights into the meaning of the Buddhist teachings’.
>  
In a 1996 interview, Batchelor stated that during the whole time he was 
supposedly studying Tibetan Buddhism, he was, in fact, practicing what 
he imagined "Goenka-style vipassana" to be:

"I had actually, throughout this period as a monk in the Tibetan 
tradition, been practicing vipassana [insight meditation] in the Goenka 
style."

The interviewer then asked: "As a Tibetan monk, you were practicing 
Goenka-style vipassana?"

Stephen: "Yes. Goenka came to Dharamsala in 1974 or 1975, shortly after 
I was ordained, and I did a 10-day vipassana retreat with him. It 
completely turned my whole view of Buddhism around, because it then 
became clear that one could actually, in a relatively short period of 
time, enter into a meditative state that really altered one's quality of 
experience. The mind slowed down and became still, and one saw things in 
another way. This was quite different from what the geshes would say, 
and certainly it was more immediately effective than any of the 
meditations I was doing with the Tibetans."

Interviewer: "Was there any conflict or difficulty around mixing the 
practices?"

Stephen: "Yes and no. There was a conflict in the sense that this 
practice was not really understood by the Tibetans, and also not 
regarded as being of any great significance. Yet, it was tolerated. The 
Tibetan Lamas realized it was not incompatible with what they were 
doing, but it certainly didn't fit into their scheme of things. But I 
had run into a certain conflict with Goenka, so I chose to stay in my 
Tibetan training but to continue the vipassana practice. But that 
quality of satipatthana [mindfulness] never left me, and that is really 
what I wanted to develop. But I did find an element in the vipassana 
practice that was a somewhat passive observation, whereas I found the 
Zen approach—particularly as I found it taught in Korea—to be a more 
dynamic inquiry. That appealed to me because it valued a deep kind of 
existential question which I didn't find in Tibetan Buddhism or (at that 
time at least) in the Theravada approach either. Therefore I chose to go 
to Korea, and found it exactly what I wanted. I was very, very happy 
there; I stayed for the last three years of Master Kusan's life, and 
then for another year to try and help keep the International Meditation 
Center going. It was at that point that Martine and I decided that we 
wanted to return to the West."

The interview is here:
http://www.dharma.org/ij/archives/1996b/batchelor.htm

Curt