{"id":3291,"date":"2013-10-04T19:06:44","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T23:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mindfulnessmatters\/?p=3291"},"modified":"2013-10-04T19:06:58","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T23:06:58","slug":"living-buddha-dead-at-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/2013\/10\/living-buddha-dead-at-90.html","title":{"rendered":"Living Buddha, Goenka, Dead at 90"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"goenka\"<\/a>I was surprised by the news of S. N. Goenka’s death this past Saturday. He was almost 90 years old.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1989, I sat my first vipassana meditation retreat with Goenka at the Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. That experience was a watershed for me. It changed my life. I view it as the single most difficult and\u00a0<\/em>beneficial experience of my life. It put meditation and the Buddha’s teachings at the center of my life and has been part of a daily conversation for the past almost twenty-five years.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has sat with Goenka will remember his deep basso voice encouraging us to: “work diligently, ardently, patiently, and persistently.” If we did so, “We were bound to be successful, bound to be successful.”<\/p>\n

This success was nothing short of liberation from suffering. Goenka was not a Buddhist; he was a Buddha and taught countless people to find their buddhanature.<\/p>\n

<\/em>Goenka was traditional and rigorous. He had a particular method of teaching vipassana that was reductionist: all phenomona were reduced to bodily sensations.<\/p>\n

After years of practicing a devotional form of meditation in the bhakti yoga tradition, I found his disciplined approach refreshing. It grounded me in the present and turned me away from seeking blissful experiences to investigating the reality of my experience. His teachings set me towards seeking wisdom (still seeking, FYI).<\/p>\n

Goenka devoted himself tirelessly to spreading the benefits of meditation around the world. His work in prisons has been the subject of two documentary films: Doing Vipassana; Doing Time and The Dhamma Brothers.<\/p>\n

Goenkaji’s work with prisoners is instructive. Often, my students bristle at the idea of diving into a silent ten-day retreat, especially if they are new to meditation. But if convicts in a maximum security prison with likely little to no meditation experience and as much education can sit the retreat, anyone can. You don’t need an holistic background; you just need a desire to change. A prison is, after all, one of the best places to realize the axiom that life is suffused with anguish, stress, dissatisfaction, and all manner of sufferings.<\/p>\n

The environment of the retreat is more disciplined then prison life. You vow to silence and not just refraining from talking, but abstaining from all social and narrative energies. No reading, no writing. Just staying within your experience and finding out what’s there. Hour after hour, day after day. After a while the mind relents; it gives up its stories and releases into fully into the now.<\/p>\n

Goenka established hundreds of meditation centers around the world and all these centers offer their teaching on a donation basis only. In 2002 he toured North America encouraging people to embrace “Meditation Now.” I took a friend to his session and was pleased and disappointed that the venue filled up before we arrived–a testament to the appeal of his message.<\/p>\n

As far as I know, no scandals are associated with him, a seeming rarity for meditation gurus of his stature.<\/p>\n

He taught the dhamma (dharma), embodied the dhamma. He was Buddha and we should all be so fortunate.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was surprised by the news of S. N. Goenka’s death this past Saturday. He was almost 90 years old. In the summer of 1989, I sat my first vipassana meditation retreat with Goenka at the Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. That experience was a watershed for me. It changed my life. 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Dr. Kozak's ability to translate ancient healing traditions into pragmatic applications suitable for modern lifestyles through the use of metaphors have made him a strong voice in healthcare and business. Beginning with a journey to India in the 80\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where he took the Bodhisattva vows from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Arnie Dr. Kozak began his lifelong practice in mindfulness meditation. Intent on finding a way to bring the practical healing attributes of mindfulness he began incorporating these techniques in his private practice. In 2002 Dr. Kozak created Exquisite Mind in Burlington, Vermont as a vehicle that could expand his wisdom to larger audiences beyond individual psychotherapy to professionals and corporations, health care providers, public groups and, most recently with Exquisite Mind Golf, amateur and professional golfers. His award-winning new book, Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants: 108 Metaphors for Mindfulness (Wisdom Publications, 2009) is a thoughtful, funny, and inspiring translation of mindfulness practice through the inventive use of metaphor applicable to our daily lives. In addition to his work with Exquisite Mind, Arnie Kozak, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist\u00e2\u20ac\u201dDoctorate has been a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Vermont and is a Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry and Medicine, University of Vermont College of Medicine. He has studied and practiced clinical psychology, meditation, and yoga for more than 25 years. He has studied with several meditation masters, including S. N. Goenka, Larry Rosenberg, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. After receiving his bachelors degree with honors from Tufts University, he was awarded a Presidential Fellowship to get his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University at Buffalo. He completed his training as a Psychological Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. Prior to founding the Exquisite Mind in 2002, Arnie worked ten years in the private sector for the PKC Corporation consulting on mental health content for this revolutionary software company.","sameAs":["http:\/\/exquisitemind.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/author\/akozak"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/268"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3291"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3297,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291\/revisions\/3297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}