In Search of Bhaṅga

Bhaṅga ñāṇa, or the knowledge of dissolution, is a stage where the apparent solidity of the body-mind structure begins to break down, revealing a flow of vibrations. Goenkaji introduces it briefly on Day 8 of the 10-day vipassana course warning that it is both important and dangerous.

If you find yourself wanting this experience after reading my account, you have missed the point entirely. This article is not a map to treasure, but a warning against the search itself.

What follows is my humble story. 

The beginning

I first heard the word bhaṅga within the sacred silence of my first ten-day Vipassana course. Something in the sonority of those syllables resonated deeply. No one needed to tell me it was important; I simply knew. My saññā, the great illusion-maker, covered it in gold and mystery, bestowing upon it a status so magnificent that, in my heart, it even came to overshadow nibbāna itself.

And so, an obsession was born, delicate and devastating. Bhanga became my inner El Dorado, the Holy Grail that no map could pinpoint. Session after session, I dragged myself toward this golden mirage with the blind faith of a thirsty pilgrim. Each sitting brought hope; each ending brought sorrow for not having arrived.

The wise advice of Goenkaji, “do not crave experiences; just observe and remain equanimous,” would enter one ear and leave the other at a speed that put light to shame.

When I finished my first course, I felt an undeniable peace, a lightness I had never known. And yet, my sadness and depression were greater, overshadowing everything positive. It was a disappointment, an emptiness that grew, a sense of cosmic failure that caused unbearable pain.

And the search, now transformed into madness, persisted.

The Trap

Course after course, I entered with the same hope and left with the same frustration. There came a point where I could no longer bear to hear the instructions echoed in the enigmatic voice of Goenkaji: “sweep en masse throughout the body with the free flow....” Every mention felt like receiving news of a loved one’s death—a grief renewed with each session.

No other instruction caused me as much suffering. Not even the excruciating pain in my legs during adhiṭṭhāna sessions, could compare to the anguish those words brought.

While others seemed to navigate an ocean of subtle sensations, I drowned in my own misery. I could only feel solidified intensified gross sensation in some areas; the rest were blind areas, haze and mystical territories that stubbornly refused to reveal themselves.

One could say I was trapped in the game of sensations and perhaps I was, but I refused to accept it. Who? Me? The very ego and arrogance I had vowed to dissolve, firmly refused to accept the diagnosis. Goenkaji said, despite repeated warnings, he sees some students, of course very few, but there are, who keep taking courses after courses, but they don’t understand the technique, they don’t understand dhamma… he was talking to me.

How could I crave something I had never even experienced? I refused to accept it. Just as Winston L. King entitled his book In the Hope of Nibbana, my entire existence could have been called In the Hope of Bhaṅga.

I had entered my first course with no expectations, merely following a call. And I left with a new and heavy burden. In the name of liberation itself, I had forged the most refined chain of all: the craving for subtle sensations.

Like many, once you have tasted the Dhamma, it is difficult to resist. A pure desire to serve was clearly growing within me, and in serving, I learned lessons that not even the silence of meditation could have taught me. I continued to take courses and to serve, yet I had already begun to lose hope that my personal El Dorado, was perhaps not for me. I began to see it as a privilege reserved for a spiritual elite, beings with their pots of pāramīs overflowing. Who was I, indeed, to aspire to such a stage? I barely had a pot to my name.

No explanation could convince me that gross sensations could get divided, dissected, disintegrated and finally dissolved into vibrations. No teacher could promise me its key. And so, the little faith I had left slowly dissipated, like the final effort during a session of adhiṭṭhāna while waiting for the deep, infinite voice of Goenkaji to break the silence with... Aniccā vata saṅkhārā... Uppādavayadhammino.

If there was a detector for craving and attachment, I am certain that in me, no one would ever find a trace of desire for nibbāna. But if they were to search for bhaṅga, I believe the detector would explode into a thousand pieces, obliterated by the pure, concentrated voltage of my craving.

My mind could not comprehend, much less crave, nibbāna. I did not want the end of the entire journey; I wanted, desperately, to catch a glimpse of the most famous landmark along the way. After all, Sayagyi U Ba Khin said in The Clock of Vipassana Has Struck that every householder should try to preserve anicca and once activated one must work towards the stage of bhaṅgañāṇa. Goenkaji defined this as an important yet most dangerous stage. He spoke tirelessly of the dangers of bhaṅga, and yet all of this had the opposite effect on me, it only cemented my craving and my madness, nibbāna was for the privileged; I had identified my own, smaller nibbāna.

Course after course, whether serving or as a student, the reality within me stubbornly revealed itself through a rudimentary alphabet: gross sensations, like stones, and vast blind areas, silence where there should have been symphony.

The Descent

When I asked fellow meditators if they had experienced bhaṅga, I must confess upon hearing them say “no,” I felt a petty happiness. At least I was not the only miserable one on this path—a perverse consolation. Upon hearing them respond affirmatively, I felt envy. Instead of generating sympathetic joy), I only manifested envy. I felt marginalised.

Where are you, bhaṅga, my love? What wrong did I do to you, that you refuse to manifest in my life?

I dove into the texts. In Sayagyi U Ba Khin Journal, I read that the first thing to do is strengthen one’s sīla (morality); when one slips in the five precepts, samādhi weakens and paññā becomes shallow. I took this as divine edict. I launched into an archaeological review of my existence, excavating every action, every intention, searching for the minutest flaw. I corrected, adjusted, polished. I moulded my life into what I believed was perfect sīla.

And still—no subtle sensations. No bhaṅga. Nothing but a word, a ghost of a promise.

Losing Faith

I lost faith. Tense, heart pounding with anger, heavy. The equation was simple: if there is progress, it must be measurable. How could one advance without ever crossing a visible frontier? How long would I remain in this limbo of gross sensations and blind areas? 

This technique is not for me, I concluded. Why do some progress and others don’t? The spiritual world seemed to replicate the injustices of the material one.

When speaking with assistant teachers, my questions were designed to extract any hint of how close I was to El Dorado. If the answer didn’t trigger sirens, I had another question ready, and another, trying to trick them into giving me what I wanted. I never truly heard any answer, because my ears only wanted to hear “bhaṅga.”

And yet, there could have been no better or compassionate answer than the ones given: “Be aware of the sensations and remain equanimous,” or “Go back to Ānāpāna.” “Is that really all they can say?,” I asked myself. They all seemed so unmoved by my frustration, the equanimity they displayed annoyed me beyond words. Now, beside feeling ashamed for my attitude, I also feel tremendous gratitude for their mettā while dealing with such an ignorant and deceptive student.

I stopped meditating at home. I stopped applying for courses. I dropped the burden I had created and for the first time in years, I breathed, free from the weight of expectation. It was just me. Not a “me” that meditates, fails or seeks. Just me, existing, without a spiritual project to define myself. There was no more internal pressure to sit for two hours, nor the shadow of bhaṅga looming over every session. There was no longer any hope of attaining anything, nor of “progressing” towards an invisible milestone. I was free.

Starting Anew

I missed the silence. Little by little, I returned to meditation. But this time, I decided to crave nothing—to simply observe the breath, observe the pains, observe the blind areas, no longer as enemies, but as anicca, anicca. I observed even impatience itself, without wanting to rid of it.

I had decided never to sit again, only to serve. “If I am not fit to meditate,” I thought, with bitter devotion, “then I will serve until my last breath!” Without realising, I had forged another identity: the “failed servant.” My dāna of service had become another means of escape.

Until one visit to the centre, an attentive teacher noticed it had been a long time since I had last sat. His questions was the one I most feared: “It is time for you to sit another course?”

I begged and tried to dissuade him, almost on my knees, to let me just serve. The response was categorical, serene, unbreakable: “First you sit. Only then can you serve.”

That course—against all expectations and resistance—was the turning point.

Disarmed of my personal war, with no more hope of conquering bhaṅga, I began to relearn the simplest and most profound art: that of simply observing.

A genuine interest in theoretical wisdom awoke. I immersed myself in the texts from Pariyatti, allowing the words of the Dhamma to water me. I could genuinely feel the craving for bhaṅga dissipate. It was not a forceful rejection, but a gentle letting go. With it, the pain also departed. Meditation sessions ceased to be battlefields and became... simply meditation sessions.

I decided to follow the instructions and nothing more: observe anicca and maintain equanimity. It was so simple that I, in my thirst for complexity, had ignored it for years.

I reread Bill Crecelius’s The Meditator's Handbook, not as an esoteric text, but as a well-drawn map, confirming the contours of a familiar territory. I had suffered enough from my own ignorance and was resolved that I would no longer be the source of my own suffering.

The Fire

During two subsequent 10-day courses, after Ānāpāna ended and we entered the field of paññā, all I could feel was the most painful sensation I had ever experienced. My body was a volcano erupting. On the right side of my back, a crater opened—about twenty centimetres across—from which gushed incandescent lava, a heat that transcended the physical.

It was a concentrated, cosmic agony. I felt the viscous, burning flow trickling down my back while the vision of a volcano played relentlessly in my mind. The entire universe had transformed into niraya—my personal hell.

But I was aware: this too is anicca.

I endured with the aid of equanimity. And it was astonishing to realise that one can endure the fire of one’s own internal hell when armed with nothing but the unmoving quietude of acceptance.

The Dissolution

On the twelfth day of a long course, a new stratum began to reveal itself. A river of subtle sensations flowed through various parts of my body. Yet I could still faintly feel the volcano in my back. There was a silent prelude in the air, an omen that something new was preparing to be born. My equanimity, far from breaking, was refining itself, becoming vaster, deeper.

“All sensations are dukkha—pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—they are the result of attachment, aversion, and ignorance,” I kept reminding myself.

By the thirteenth day, a mantle of subtle sensations had already enveloped almost my entire body. Yet something was different: my equanimity was not shaken but rather strengthened by this beauty. With it grew a sincere detachment—not coldness, but freedom in the face of arising pleasure.

Then, on the eighteenth day, it happened.

The “free flow,” those words that had never made sense to me, was no longer a concept but the very texture of my existence, coursing through every millimetre of my body. The deeper my concentration, the more intense and rapid the flow; and the more intense the flow, the more my concentration crystallised.

Suddenly, fireworks of subtle sensations erupted from my body. Explosions of indescribable pleasure, sweet and intensely agreeable. I could taste a caramelised flavour, not on my tongue, but as if it came through the sensations themselves. A pleasure so extreme, so overwhelmingly intense, that my mind, for an instant, was blinded.

A question arose, “What is this?”

And the answer followed: “Mere sensations. Anicca, anicca, anicca”

In the very next session, I could no longer trace the boundaries of my own body. Where was my head, hands? Everything had dissolved into an ocean of pure vibration, a continuous flow that increased and decreased in intensity. And the more the intensity grew, the more the pleasure grew. As the intensity mounted, so too did my concentration. I completely lost all sense of space, and the stronger my concentration became, the stronger was the feeling of levitating. I felt I was levitating, am I levitating? I quickly remembered: anicca, anicca.

And then—fear. Extreme fear.

I had to open my eyes slightly to confirm how many metres I was from the floor. To my surprise, my body was solidly anchored to the cushion, as immobile and terrestrial as ever.

For the remaining days, I plunged into a succession of similar sessions. The body was a field of dancing energy, an ocean of anicca in perpetual flux. Craving, that old engine of my suffering, had also dissolved into the very flow it had once coveted. I could play with the flow, which moved autonomously; wherever I placed my attention, the intensity increased. A continuum of instantaneous birth and death, a symphony of pure anicca.

Four Years Later

It was only during an interview with an AT that I inadvertently discovered what I had experienced four years prior was bhaṅga ñāṇa, the knowledge of dissolution.

Even after having devoured countless books and articles, after memorising descriptions and craving this very moment for years, the experience itself had passed me by completely unnoticed. No treatise, no account from other meditators, could have prepared me for the visceral and transcendent reality of what my own being had lived through.

The craving for bhaṅga had been, all along, the greatest obstacle to experiencing it. And when it finally arrived, it was no longer important.

I had become lost in the details, in the waiting, in the dream, in the craving to attain this insight. These, ironically, were the very obstacles to its realisation, for they reinforce the desire and the self-centredness that the insight itself is meant to dissolve.

I didn’t know that the true challenge is not to attain any stage or insight, but to practise detachment, including detachment from the very detachment we aspire to.

An understanding that perhaps, just perhaps, the deepest essence of the Dhamma is that true progress lies not in the experience itself, but in the detachment that makes it possible.

What I Now Understand

Bhaṅga is not the end of the path. It is, as Goenkaji warns, a dangerous stage—not because of the experience itself, but because of how easily we can cling to it. The fireworks of sensation can become a new El Dorado. True progress lies in seeing even this dissolution as anicca.

Not everyone walks through fire. Some dissolve gently, like sugar in water. The path is not measured by the intensity of our pain, but by the depth of our equanimity.

I now see that my years of “failure” were not failure at all. They were the very field where equanimity could have grown had I not been so busy judging the soil.

If you recognise yourself in this story, please know that the problem was never the absence of bhaṅga. It was the presence of craving.

The journey from “doing” to “being,” from struggle to peace, is not measured by the experiences we accumulate, but by the attachments we release.

Attachment, even to the goal of liberation, is the very chain that binds us.

May all beings be truly happy.

May they be free from craving.

May they simply observe—and in that observation, find peace.