Ācariya Satya Narayan Goenka and His Teaching 📜Live in the Present Moment, Live in Reality

Ācariya Satya Narayan Goenka and His Teaching
📜Live in the Present Moment, Live in Reality

To live in the present moment is to live in reality. Moments that have passed are no longer real, only memory. Similarly, moments yet to come are unreal; you can only have expectations, fears and hopes of the future.

Living in the present moment means to be fully aware of whatever you experience at this very moment, now - by objectively observing the reality within yourself.

Pleasant, unpleasant memories and hopes, insecurity, fears of the future takes you away from reality of the present moment. This wandering habit pattern of the mind causes problems.

A life not lived in reality, i.e, in the present, is a life of delusion. Delusions defile the mind, causing difficulties in life. 

The wandering, impure mind leads to suffering anxiety, tension, dissatisfaction and frustration.

Strong determined efforts are needed to change this habit pattern of the mind. Stop the mind constantly wandering into the past or future. You train your own mind to remain in reality of the present.

A Vipassana meditator become aware how much the mind rolls in thoughts – past or future. Thoughts are agreeable or disagreeable. You  relish agreeable thoughts, disagreeable thoughts causes suffering. But a Vipassana meditator is with reality when the mind is with sensations, or the natural breath - not with the mind wandering in thoughts.

Sometimes before a thought is completed, another thought arises. Before that thought is completed, a third thought arises. Thoughts arise without sequence or meaning.

A Vipassana meditator realizes how a wandering mind suffers from rolling randomly in thoughts of past or future – generating craving or aversion, and becoming restless, agitated, unhappy. 

The wonderful practice of Vipassana enables us to live in the present moment. 

Be master of this present moment, and be master of your future. 

Attā hi attano nātho, attā hi attano gati. 

You are your own master, you make your own future

By bare observation of sensations, without blindly reacting with craving and aversion, the mind starts getting purified at the deepest level. 

For a relative beginner of Vipassana, there may be only a few moments of remaining purely in the present, not rolling in thoughts of past or future. The mind is fully concentrated in the truth of the present moment – at the level of physical sensations. No delusion, no ignorance. 

A moment of purity from Vipassana practice has a strong impact on old impurities accumulated in deeper levels of the mind. Accumulated impurities and this moment of purity come in explosive contact as negative and positive forces - like eruption of a volcano within. As a result, some deep-rooted impurities may surface as various physical or mental discomforts - such as pain in the legs or in the head, or fear or agitation. What seems a problem is actually signs of progress in meditation. 

When cutting open an abscess, pus is bound to surface. Similarly, during this Vipassana surgery of the mind, some underlying pus is coming out of the wound. Although unpleasant, this is the only way to get rid of the pus, to remove impurities that for long are cause of one's misery.

May the munificent, benevolent, universal nature of Vipassana practice reach all suffering beings, thereby bringing peace, happiness and liberation.

May all beings be happy!

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Words of Dhamma

This mind that wanders wherever it wishes, desires, wherever it sees pleasure, I will first make it steadfast. I will train it thoroughly like a mahout with a goad trains a wild elephant.

Dhammapada 326