Q & A from SN Goenke

Q & A from SN Goenke

Question: Suppose anger arises while you are practicing Vipassana, or fear or sadness, or an urge to run away. That means you don’t like what you are doing. But Vipassana teaches you to observe whatever arises in the mind without hating it.

SNGoenke: Anger has arisen. If you become angry about the anger, you are not doing Vipassana. Vipassana means observing the reality as it is. Say anger has arisen and you observe, you know that there is anger in the mind. That is good but it is only half the job. Simply observing anger as anger is not fully following the Buddha’s teaching.

You are aware that anger has arisen at the mental level, but what is happening at the physical level? Along with anger, there must be a sensation in the body. You accept the fact that there is anger, fear, anxiety or passion in the mind, and at the same time you try to see what sensation has arisen in the body.

When you are aware of sensation, you are experiencing the anger. And you can also experience that the anger arises and passes away. Your intellect may have told you this, but now you can experience the sensation arising and passing away—anicca.

The power of anicca is so strong that it eradicates all impurities from the mind. They cannot stay.

Q: I do not agree with people who describe the Buddha’s teaching as scientific. I prefer the term “natural law.”

SNG: If you prefer the term “natural law,” that is not a problem. The point is that Buddha taught something that is not to be accepted just because he said so, or because a scripture says so. When we say “science,” we mean that anybody can experience a teaching and understand that it is true. It is not the monopoly of a particular person, it is the law for everybody. But unlike physics or chemistry, the Buddha’s teaching takes you far beyond mind and matter to the experience of nibbāna. It is a super-science.