Vipassana Meditation - Hope For Human Beings

Vipassana Meditation - Hope For Human Beings

https://www.dhamma.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEW3rgWNFL0&index=17&list=PL9DC043764C731B4C

Vipassana meditation was taught by Gautama the Buddha 2,500 years ago.  There is a direct lineage from Buddha to the S.N. Goenka courses taught around the world today. 

Vipassana meditation is a technique and is not "Buddhism" or any other religion.  It is a method by which meditation practitioners can unravel habituated ways of thinking and reacting that causes the imbalance of their own body-mind complexes, but causes the suffering of loved ones around them too.

I practice Vipassana in order to get to the root of my angry, reactionary arguments that I have with my wife Jennifer.  Like a fighter shadow-boxing while waiting to burst out of  his corner,  all it takes is another triggering "bell ringing" and round ten million and something is on.  This argument reaction  often means the "vocal" gloves come off and we both habitually go for each other's  jugulars. 

Jennifer and I have never physically hit or harmed each other physically in any way.  With that said, who knows how deep the emotional damage runs from our destructive arguments.       

Those arguments are not only pointless but blindly repetitive to us both.  You know - money, chores, baseless mistrust, fill in the blank ad infinitum.  I know something inside of me is threatened and fearful and at the point of arguing I have little or no "control" of what comes out of my mouth.  I have tried therapy over the many years but to no avail.  I take medication for depression which helps.   I suffer from post traumatic stress disorder due primarily to my work as a US Border Patrol agent.  I incorporated (as we all do) what I learned at home as a kid which basically translates arguments into  screaming or leaving - or both.  All of the above are symptoms, but not the cause of my arguing and suffering.  I know that the root cause is buried somewhere in my body-mind complex and Vipassana is the only meditation I know of that directly addresses the body-mind complex as root cause of our problems.    

The promise of Vipassana is to give me awareness of my own bodily sensations before the argumentative, bullet-train blasts off from the station.  This is happening slowly and I trust that I will at some point be able to throw a monkey wrench in my habitual way of reacting and stop hurting Jennifer and myself too.    

Goenka's Ten Day Course offers sitting meditation periods, silence, no communication with the outside world and healthy vegetarian food  too.  By the way, Goenkaji's daily discourses will guide you along the way and one always has the option of privately asking teachers questions too. 

Goenka's 10 day course is a no-nonsense approach to unplug from our own habituated ways of being present in the world.  Some of mine frankly do not work and taint the time I have left on this earth.  The Clock of Vipassana has struck in my heart and gives me results and therefore hope that I actually experience.

Namaste, John