I find it very curious that now in my fiftieth year I’ve been practicing Vipassana meditation for more than half my life. Twenty-five years ago, my wife Gail and I began a journey to the East that would turn out to be a transforming one in every sense of the word.
Someone once said that your education only begins when you start to travel. Ours commenced a few weeks after our marriage in 1972 with a flight to Europe. With an eye eastward we slowly meandered southward to Spain, took a boat out of Barcelona to Egypt, visited Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and wound up a couple of months later in Kuwait hoping to find passage on a ship to Bombay. We had read somewhere of a ship that left from Kuwait for Bombay calling at ports in the Persian Gulf. This sounded like just the ticket as it was now January and the overland route to India via Iran and Afghanistan would be too cold for us without winter clothing.
The SS Dwarka was a P&O Line ship built in 1948 as an unberthed passenger ship. This meant that although it offered a few cabins it was designed to serve deck class passengers, steerage in other words. It sailed the Persian Gulf between Basra and Bombay and mostly served the Hajis making the pilgrimage to Mecca. (In the movie “Gandhi,” in the scene where the Mahatma arrives back in India from South Africa, that newly painted white ship was none other than the seaworthy SS Dwarka, which safely delivered not only Ben Kingsley but also Gail and myself to India’s shores.)
Since the cheapest cabin class on the SS Dwarka was a whopping ten times the price of deck class, Gail and I paid our $40 and were counted among the unberthed passengers. We would not be dining at the captain’s table on this voyage!
Along with two intrepid Italians we found ourselves crammed below decks with about 900 Arabs and Pakistanis bound for ports in the Gulf and/or Pakistan. Cold seawater showers and the hottest curries imaginable (to this day) were nicely offset by a kind crew of British and Chinese seamen. They took pity on Gail who couldn’t eat a bite of the fiery fare by supplying her with cheese and bread from their own canteen.
The journey that was supposed to take nine days wound up taking eleven as we made lazy stops in the Persian Gulf at Bahrain, Doha, Dubai, Muscat and then onto the Pakistani ports of Gwadar and Karachi, before steaming into Bombay (now Mumbai) on the 6th of February 1973.
“Why India?” my mother repeatedly asks me. It’s an often-repeated question. In a sense, India is the ancient teacher of humanity. It is the spiritual home of two of the world’s great faiths, Hinduism and Buddhism, which have each had such transforming effects on generations of visitors: conquerors, colonists, traders, travellers and tourists alike. A land imbued with spiritual heights of fantastic vision dovetailed next to deep ignorance and superstition. A magical land where possibilities exist of entry into worlds unimagined. Certainly, India is one of the most otherworldly places on this earth. A timeless place, India is a must-see destination for all seekers.
“Visit India,” the Air India Poster in Baghdad said, “you’ll never be the same again.” Truer words were never spoken.
Was there ever a time, before or since, like India in the early 1970s?
India at that time was going through another of its many invasions as droves of young Westerners now flocked to it. A resurgent interest in things Eastern—philosophy, spirituality, music, not to mention cheap living and an unbelievable degree of unbridled freedom—made the subcontinent an attractive destination for a wide variety of young Westerners.
In those days British young people would set off hitchhiking to India with 50 pounds sterling in their pockets and spend months sampling life on the subcontinent. For North Americans in a hurry, Air India at that time was offering round trip flights to Delhi from New York for $450. Many people went straight from college campuses and/or rock festivals to sample the giddy heights of the mystic East. However, without time to culturally decompress, many found the streets of village India to be somewhat more than they had bargained for. The Air India ticket required a minimum stay of 30 days before the return flight could be used and there were many tearful negotiations at the Air India office in New Delhi for those wanting out early.
Those who had acclimated to West Asia via the overland route from Europe through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan were weary but seasoned travellers by the time they reached India. They fared better and found in India a welcome change from the countries they had passed through. India has an atmosphere of tolerance and freedom seldom encountered elsewhere.
On the overland route to India as well as within India itself young Western travellers would frequently meet at crossroads, share a bus ride or an evening’s lodging and then without design meet thousands of miles and weeks later as their paths crossed once again. Exchanging information on places visited, places to avoid and things to do, this eclectic network of young back-packing nomads included many who were attracted to the early Vipassana meditation courses taught by S.N. Goenka. News of Goenkaji and the Vipassana courses spread almost entirely by word of mouth with the result that literally thousands of young people attended those early courses across the length and breadth of India in the early 1970s. Some would follow Goenkaji from course to course, taking a number of consecutive courses before heading home or to different shores. Some remained in India for years and got involved with serving on the courses. It was these individuals, the handful of early Dhamma servers, who would play such an important role in the beginning days of Dhamma Giri, the first meditation center at Igatpuri.
Contact
As the SS Dwarka steamed into Bombay harbor, it welcomed us just as it did England’s King George V on his state visit to India in 1912. Setting foot for the first time on Indian soil was exhilarating. After eleven days at sea, here we were in India! Down the gangplank, through Indian Customs and into a horsedrawn carriage— even King George couldn’t have felt grander. We were giddy, flushed with excitement at finding ourselves on the threshold of the vast subcontinent, the land of the Buddha, yogis, Gandhi, Kipling. That first night in Bombay we met a British traveller at our guest house in Colaba who, upon hearing that we had just set foot in India said, “Don’t miss taking a Goenka meditation course while you’re here.” When I asked what kind of meditation “Goenka” was, he said “Oh, it’s a meditation on the metabolic processes of the body.” So much for factual descriptions from old students. With that nebulous response I discounted the idea, thinking that here in the mystic East there would be countless techniques of meditation to sample. Little did I know at that time that I would sample only one of them and remain content with it all these years.
We soon left Bombay’s urban commotion for the quiet beaches of Goa, looking forward to rest and relaxation after three months of hard travelling. Another ship and another day at sea and we arrived in Panjim, Goa. We headed to Colva Beach a few kilometers outside the town of Margao. Less crowded than the infamous hip Arjuna Beach, Colva was quiet by comparison. There were a number of rooms for let in the seaside village, but we opted for a grass shack on the beach. A twelve-year-old boy who was to become our first landlord had recently constructed it. He was a hard bargainer, and we finally settled the rent at 100 Indian rupees per month (about $8).
We weren’t long in Colva before we met a Vipassana old student who was able to shed a little more light on this “Goenka meditation.” I remember the young woman well and credit her for “turning us on to Vipassana.” To this day, though we’ve lost contact with Sandy Snyder, we always remember her. She had taken, I think, two courses with Goenkaji and, while she didn’t describe much that I can remember about the course, there was something about her recollections that touched me. She recounted her own misgivings about getting involved with cults and mysticism. Without a trace of preaching, she recounted the no nonsense discipline the course required, what a struggle it was to try to control her mind and the solid benefits she felt she earned as a result. It was just what I wanted to hear: that development of mind was possible and that the only cost was honest effort, not blind belief. When I heard that the next course was about to begin in a few days in Bombay, I was ready to return there immediately for it. Gail persuaded me to register instead for the following course in Madras in early April, which we did by writing the next day to the registration contact asking for a place on the upcoming course at Ram Kalayan Mandapam.
In the meantime, we had time to rest and enjoy a couple of weeks in Goa. Afterward we made a quick journey across south India to Rameswaram, where we boarded a ferry to Ceylon. After a hurried two weeks on the island, we arrived back in India in Madras, a mere ten days early for the meditation course we were determined not to miss.
Meeting a remarkable man
One of the first things we did in Madras was to track down the registration contact for the course, a local businessman, Mr. K.C. Toshniwal. He was quite surprised to find two bedraggled road-weary Westerners at his office door. More would follow though, as the course attracted about a hundred of our tribe. We also learned that shortly before the course Goenkaji would give a public talk on Vipassana and we made plans to attend.
The talk in Madras was in a section of the city that tourists and travellers were not likely to frequent. With difficulty we somehow managed to find the hall and waited with a few other young travellers and about fifty Indians for Goenkaji to arrive. He came in shortly and after a few silent minutes began speaking in Hindi. He went on in Hindi for some time, and then in English, explained to us what we were about to undertake in our first Vipassana course.
Through the years have blurred the details of that first talk I remember it mainly for its clear, down-to-earth presentation and its absence of mysticism. U S.N. Goenka, as he was known then, came across as the genuine article. His sense of humor and self-deprecating lack of airs found a receptive audience in us. We left the hall feeling positive. So far, so good; we were on the right track and looking forward to the course beginning in a few days.
First course, Madras 1973
The course site was Ram Kalayan Mandapam, a small marriage hall in a suburb of Madras. It was quiet enough from the front, but the rear of the two-story building abutted a market street where the daily bazaar sounds provided the backdrop to the course. We arrived early in the day the course was to begin and as others began to arrive, we found familiar faces from the road among them. In all, about 140 students took the course with the majority being young Western travellers. We were shown floor space to lie down. No mattresses, no sitting cushions, no mosquito nets. Unlike today’s comfortable courses, in those days it was bare bones; if you didn’t carry it with you, you went without it. Toilet and bathing facilities were designed for much smaller gatherings, which meant a near-continuous queue during the break times. And it was April—temperatures soared into the high 30s Celsius (upper 90s Fahrenheit).
The ten-day course format was the same then as it is today: Anapana, maintaining awareness of respiration, for the first three and a half days, and then the practice of Vipassana for the remainder. The daily timetable was the same, with the addition of hot milk and fruit at 9:00 p.m.
Goenkaji was a very energetic teacher in those days. He gave two discourses, Hindi and English, each day, led every group sitting, conducted checking, gave noontime interviews and held a lengthy question-and-answer session each evening which lasted well past 10:00 p.m. Only years later, as a new assistant teacher, did I appreciate what an astonishing effort he put into those early courses. And yet he worked so joyfully. Here was a man who practiced what he preached and displayed the benefits of his practice in his every action. His instructions and explanations were so simple, so scientific and down to earth. There was no mysticism, no great leaps of faith; personal experience was the only criterion.
Goenkaji’s message of what the Buddha taught was clear and pragmatic, free from dogma and dependence on any guru: each of us has only himself and the results of his actions to rely on, there is no outside agency he can petition for happiness or liberation. It struck a deep resonance within me for in the end it was simply common sense. Goenkaji’s enthusiasm for this, the heart of the practice of Dhamma, was so full of joy that it was simply infectious. It often served to carry a wavering student over the difficulties of the course.
However, there was no getting around the fact that the course required hard work. And I had mine cut out for me. I had heard that we would be required to sit on the floor, more or less cross-legged. And that there would be sessions in which we were asked not to move for a full hour. Now, despite an athletic background, flexibility of the lower extremities was never my strong point and the mere prospect of sitting cross-legged for ten days was daunting. Sitting in that posture for a full hour was out of the question! A few days before the course, in our hotel I tried to see how long I could manage this sitting position and made it to fifteen minutes before collapsing in pain. Yet somehow on the course I was able to contend with the physical discomfort and incredibly found, after Vipassana practice began on day four, that with a strong determination I could complete each of the hour-long sittings without moving. The levels of pain encountered and transcended were extraordinary. The dredging up of repressed memory and emotional pain accompanied them hand in hand. In turn they ebbed and flowed, as I tried to practice Vipassana and just observe what was taking place within me without the usual habit of reacting to it. With each experience of this ebb and flow of agreeable and disagreeable experiences it began to dawn on me that I was largely responsible for my suffering, both physically and mentally. When pain arose, I made it worse by fighting against it in the hopes of making it go away. When I learned to just accept it for what it was—a passing phenomenon—its entire temper altered. Not that I became insensitive to the pain, but it no longer held the same sway over me. At times (for very brief moments), I was actually able to interrupt the anguish that normally accompanied it. These moments grew and I felt a real sense of gaining control over myself. In the short span of ten days, I had gotten a glimpse of what was possible and began to consider: is there anything that a determined person can’t attain?
Goenkaji said early on that the course was like an equation: you would get out of it exactly what you put into it. I took that advice to heart and made very strong efforts. By the end of ten days I had been through the most wrenching, cathartic experience of my life both physically and emotionally. It felt like a great purge had taken place within me and in its wake had left me strangely quiet and satisfied. I felt I had encountered a practice somehow vaguely familiar.
The benefits of that very first course and two more over the next couple of months were so profound that it took some time to be able to register and view them with perspective. One aspect however was immediately startling. The moral precepts we were asked to follow for the duration of the course had initially struck me as quaint and curious. Now at the end of the course, I had realized directly their importance and from that very first course it has been easy to keep them unbroken in any major way. For me in those days this was no small thing. One of the precepts, though, required some elaboration.
One day late in that first course in Madras I went to Goenkaji at noon to let him know how I was doing and to give him my “take” on his teaching, the Dhamma. Though satisfied in general with his presentation, I thought that in my case I’d require an exemption or at least a more flexible attitude toward sila (the moral precepts), especially the fifth one. But he would hear none of it, saying that even slight use of any kind of intoxicant was totally incompatible with the practice of Vipassana. When I went on and described my practice and said that I thought I might need a little more work on this technique he readily concurred, saying it sometimes took a couple of courses to get the hang of it. With that unambiguous direct invitation ringing in my ears, I made up my mind to attend the next course two weeks later in Baroda, a city northeast of Bombay.
It took a little while to persuade Gail what a good idea it was to take another course so quickly. And Baroda in May was no joke: water shortages, temperatures in the 40s Celsius (110s Fahrenheit) and the two of us the only foreigners on a Hindi-only course. But in the end, all was worth it. With this second course completed we felt over the hump and happily headed off to Nepal to cool out for the remainder of India’s hot season. After trekking in the Himalayas of Nepal, we returned to India for a third course in Dalhousie in August before beginning the long journey home.
Search complete
I remember being asked a number of times during this peripatetic period just what it was that I was searching for. The question always seemed to annoy me, as if searching for something was somehow beneath me, as if it demeaned me in some way. What? Me need something? I’d react and protest that I wasn’t searching for anything. But deep down I knew that while not on a formal search per se I was certainly on the lookout for something, anything, which was good and which would last. In its unrefined mode, that often meant being attracted to greater and greater doses of enjoyment or pleasure. But these temporary diversions never satisfied for long. At a deeper level there was an emptiness needing to be filled, a thirst that I knew sensuality would never be able to fully quench. When I completed my first course, and then two more, I felt satisfied beyond my wildest expectations. From that time onwards I’ve felt an inner certainty that here in the practice of Dhamma was the good path, here in the practice of Vipassana was the development work that needed to be done in this lifetime. That thrill of the enthusiastic new student in 1973 has never long been absent from my mind these twenty-five years. Instead, it has deepened with each succeeding step on the path of Dhamma and has sustained me without interruption. I consider myself the most fortunate person in the world for having found my way at such a comparatively young age. I feel so grateful for the efforts my teacher took on my behalf. Without him I don’t know where I’d be today.
Next
In 1982 Gail and I were among those Goenkaji asked to represent him and conduct courses on his behalf as his assistant teachers. Initially I was reluctant until I began realizing that all I was doing was introducing newcomers to my teacher and his presentation of Vipassana. In effect I’m saying to them now what I said to many others way back then in India, “Hey, you’ve just got to meet this man and listen to what he has to say.” Once when I explained this to Goenkaji he said that, yes, that’s what he’s doing too, continuing to assist his teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin in introducing students to the practice of Dhamma just as he taught it. May all of you who read this take me up on this invitation and come and see for yourselves the benefits of this good path.
May all of you be happy.
This essay originally appeared in Realizing Change: Vipassana Meditation in Action edited by Ian Hetherington
Editor’s Note: On August 28, 2026, surrounded by his loved ones, John Beary peacefully breathed his last after a long illness. Just one week before, he had marked his 78th birthday.