I attended my first Vipassana course in May 2009 at Dhamma Pakasa, Illinois. Exactly 15 years later I went to my second course at Dhamma Siri in Texas.
I wish I could say that what brought me to my first course was a search for happiness, a search for meaning. Rather, it was suffering, as it is with many of us. I worried all the time and couldn't escape it. I worried about my brother who had lost everything and moved to our place in St. Paul. I also worried about my son. Worry as a form of aversion consumed me.
In worrying about the people I cared about, I was essentially communicating to them that I didn't trust them, did not think they were capable. I was constantly pushing solutions at them. I thought I was being compassionate. Maybe it was some cruel semblance of compassion.
The truth is that I did not trust myself. I was under tremendous pressure from the chair of the English department at the university where I was teaching. I was oversensitive, anxious, angry and exhausted. I felt unworthy and confused. I couldn't sleep. I was incapable of encouraging anyone; worrying was all that I could do. It had become my way of relating to people. It was my loyalty card.
I worked hard and felt that I was doing my best. Maybe I was. But the more I tried, the less I accomplished. I couldn't focus. I couldn't even organize a kitchen drawer. I was not capable of listening to anything anyone was saying to me; I could only react. My husband, who had returned from his second course, told me about Vipassana, and how it could make a difference. I resisted, but after a while decided to apply because I could not endure the chaos that had taken over my mind.
My first course was not easy, but I went armed with a priceless piece of advice from my husband: “Listen to Goenkaji’s instructions with 100 percent attention and trust, and do not alter them.” Every day was a surprise. I kept coughing and that embarrassed me. I rolled in thoughts for the first five days and then my concentration improved. As challenging as my first course was, I perceived the great potential of this gift. Afterwards, I served a couple of courses and attended a few three-day courses, but I discontinued my daily practice within the first year.
The benefits of Vipassana are cultivated in the daily sittings. Even though I was never far away from the discourses, since I have the good fortune of living in a Vipassana household, not sitting made it difficult to see a way forward. Unbeknownst to me, I was undermining my own well-being, and it took many, many years for me to return for my second 10-day course.
In May 2024 my husband dropped me at Dhamma Siri. In front of the mirror over the sink in my room, as nervous as I was, I voiced three intentions before heading out to the orientation meeting: I will give it my best effort; I will receive Goenkaji’s teaching in a spirit of complete trust and gratitude; I will not miss the 4:30 a.m. sittings or the morning chanting. (Although I did sleep through the gong and my alarm on day 8, which happened to be my most difficult day.)
On the evening of Day 1, when I saw Goenkaji’s face suffused with mettā, saying with his characteristic humor, “The first day is over,” my heart was heavy. “Where had I been all these years, I wondered. What had I been doing?” I was now being given a second chance, a chance that I could have taken earlier but had not. But it was here now.
The memory returned of having been before, in this kindest of all places. Even though we cannot assume we shall get one, a second chance is what we humans often want, what we long for. A second chance produces both that memory of the past and another opportunity to re-imagine something better. I was once more being offered help to enable me to do better. And this second chance has made all the difference.
Maybe I had begun to prepare for my second chance without being aware of it. After many years, in December 2023, I suddenly started meditating again, sitting twice daily. And, when I got accepted into this course, I was ready for the effort that it calls for. I had received all the help I needed and then some.
For me, this second chance brought a clearer, deeper understanding of the links between the explanations and stories in Goenkaji’s discourses, the instructions for meditation, the chanting, and the central significance of sīla, samādhi, pañña, and mettā. And I felt the power of Goenkaji’s metta and that of the assistant teachers, especially on the difficult days of anguish and tears.
Goenkaji, translating the Pali word “dukkha,” describes “misery” as a universal human condition, the predicament of “wanted things not happening and unwanted things happening.” While we might have an intellectual awareness of how we are complicit in allowing suffering to take hold of us, we do not know “how to come out of misery.” This is what the Buddha’s teachings—the equanimous, objective observation of respiration and bodily sensations (Ānāpāna and Vipassana)—distilled by Goenkaji, offer us.
In the Day 11 morning discourse, exhibiting the same open-minded generosity with which he summarizes and relays the Buddha’s teachings, Goenkaji grants us the freedom to determine whether this path is for us. “After you return home, review what you have learned here,” he says, and ask yourself with honesty: Is this for me? Yes or no. If yes, only then walk this path and try your best.
He warns us not to mix Vipassana with any other technique so that we can measure what we have gained with clarity. As with the black cardamom of the kheer pudding metaphor, out of compassion, like the mother for her child in the story, Goenkaji tells us—rather, allows us—to leave aside any metaphysical aspects of Buddha’s teachings with which we have difficulty. But do not give up the practice, Goenkaji asks of us.
He reminds us, however, that we should keep checking whether equanimity is manifesting in our daily lives. He wants us to understand that if our equanimity is not improving, then we are not practicing the technique properly.
And, whether acceptance, which is part of the practical objectivity that I find so helpful, is growing too. I must accept, not resist, the reality of where I now am in my practice and keep returning “smilingly, patiently and persistently” to effort and to adhitthāna (strong determination). Not accepting, or resistance to, the reality of where I am, or craving for someone else’s adhitthāna, can become a block.
As for me, I have made the decision to do two sittings daily for one year. This is the undertaking to which I have bound myself. Building the sinew of equanimity is now my goal.
Padmaja Challakere