Confusion Abounds: A split between Joseph Goldstein and SN Goenka

[Joseph] Goldstein’s emphasis on the foundations of mindfulness in his first American retreat diverged in this respect from Goenka’s approach. The teachings of the young American—encapsulated in his pioneering book The Experience of Insight—wove together classical analyses on the four foundations of mindfulness inspired by Munindra and the forceful, body-oriented approach of Goenka’s vipaśyanā. Though there is no explicit public record of the developing tension of this moment, we find echoes of it in one of Goenka’s Dharma talks, given on a course in Varanasi in December 1974, just a month after Goldstein’s “sati-patanna course”:

[There is] a big confusion in the minds of Western students with these words of satipaṭṭhāna and vipaśyanā. Awareness of walking, walking, walking, awareness of eating, eating, eating is taken up by many students as satipaṭṭhāna. And awareness of sensation, subtle sensations in the body, is taken up as vipaśyanā, which has created a lot of confusion. The word sati means “awareness.” Paṭṭhāna means “getting strongly established.” And sati is, the awareness is, really strongly established when there is paññā with it, wisdom with it. Otherwise, it remains in the field of samādhi (concentration) only, samatha (calming) only. You can be just aware; but without wisdom, without paññā, you cannot get established in Dhamma. So the whole discourse of Buddha, called Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta, or Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta, is for training the mind for both: awareness and wisdom. Awareness and wisdom. Sati-sampajāna, sati sapaññā: wisdom, awareness; wisdom, awareness. Because of not understanding the real purpose, those students who have started developing wisdom by experiencing subtler realities, many times, out of just…out of their inquisitiveness, some new practice—that means something new what’s going on in other schools—they start practicing with these grosser objects of the grosser activities of the body. Nothing wrong. But what’s wrong is, by forgetting all about the subtler realities, they get themselves so much engrossed in these gross activities of the body that they start losing all the subtle sensations. The entire body gets once again blocked up. Although the poor teacher—the guide who gives this, this so-called satipaṭṭhāna—says very clearly that you have to go [to] the subtler stages, but because of this not understanding the whole basic theory behind Buddha’s teaching of practice, they again make themselves, their minds, so blunt—though aware, but aware of the grosser things—that for them it becomes a big thing to go to the subtler stages of the body and mind.

This discussion of “confusion in the minds of Western students” is almost certainly a veiled reference to Joseph Goldstein. Goenka here drew a soft line between his own approach and “what’s going on in other schools,” but this moment marks the beginning of a contraction of his ecumenical openness. It is noteworthy that the notice for Goldstein’s first course in America appeared in the international Vipassana Newsletter—the English-language quarterly established by Robert Hover—which later on came to be an exclusive forum for those practicing “in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin.” This lineage-oriented phrase appeared for the first time on the cover of the fall 1975 newsletter about a year after Goldstein taught his “sati-patanna” course. In the pages of this same issue, two notices marked an additional exacerbation of the subtle tensions that had surfaced in the wake of that course.

An excerpt from Daniel Stuart’s S. N. Goenka: Emissary of Insight (Lives of the Masters), describing the difference in opinion between Joseph Goldstein and SN Goenka. Future posts here will look more deeply into this work, and we hope to have Daniel on the Insight Myanmar Podcast as well to discuss his new book.