Forty-Five Minutes

45mins is the golden standard minimum meditation time where we can expect progress beyond stages 2/3/4. Just how it works. Like any other skill. If I told you I was learning how to code python but I only practised 15mins a day, you’d reasonably expect me to master the craft by my late 80s. Same with meditation; 45mins is just the bare minimum for progress to occur.

Goenka is a purist and a dogmatist. He claims to adhere strictly to “pure Dhamma” (whatever that means). The irony is that he borrows his technique from the Anapanasati and Satthipathana Suttas; then goes and ignores like 80% of the source material of those Suttas. The Buddha spoke of 4 postures for meditation; sitting, standing, reclining, and walking. So Goenka can, with all due respect, be ignored at all times other than when you’re at his meditation retreat and practicing his technique.

I generally ignore people claiming:

• “This is the proper way to meditate”
• “This technique is the only technique you need”
• “My technique is the purest Buddhist technique from the Buddha himself”
• “Only this technique can give you true liberation. The others are fake/simulated liberation!”
• “I’m allowed to be your only teacher!”

This kind of stuff is pretty harmful and generally manipulative at a subtle level. Meditation is a beautiful thing and a lot of people seek it out for the answer, making them vulnerable and easy to exploit. Goenka, bless his heart, thinks he’s helping by simplifying it all, but he’s really just gatekeeping meditation practice. Adherents of his technique can be very cultish. The saddest part is that he’s now dead, and so all these people have hitched their wagon to a meditation master who is stuck in the 1990s, and just a recording played in a retreat center, unable to further develop his technique, unable to refine his technique, unable to answer people’s questions about the practice, and has deliberately not empowered his assistant teachers to guide his technique along with the trials and tribulations of time.

The Buddha knew that every person was different, meaning everyone has a technique that is right for them depending on their circumstances such as their personality, time constraints, lifestyle, etc.. Plus everyone has a different relationship with their teacher. Some teachers are great with certain issues and not so great with others. Walking meditation is excellent, fun, and a great break away from the normal sitting meditation routine we’ve grown accustomed to. Goenka claims to have pure Dhamma passed down from the Buddha but then ignores his commitment to understanding nuance and context. Pretty frustrating! My guess as to why Culadasa has a different opinion is probably because he had no real intention other than to teach meditation in a purely pragmatic way, meaning that adherence to an idealised purity has no value outside of its pragmatic concerns. Walking meditation is simply another posture to be used. Simple as that. Ironically, by being less dogmatic and purist, Culadasa is actually closer to the Buddha’s original words than Goenka in this regard! What a paradox! :)

PS: I don’t really hate Goenka, but some of the stuff he says is really unproductive and has a lot of guilt/shame built into it. People who practice a lot using his techniques at his retreat centres feel ashamed when doing other techniques; I’ve personally seen this happen IRL. I’ll be introducing them to something like noting and they’ll freak out. They feel like they’re disobeying this authority figure. They internalise this guilt/shame and then feel horrible when trying something new. Imagine that! A man saying, “I have the keys to liberation right here, but there are strings attached”, that’s not liberation. The entire point of liberation is there to be no strings attached to your experience of life at all — no exceptions!

End rant! Hope it helps! :)