Spiritual technique for mind repair

Apr 5, 2002, 02.19am IST
RAJA M.

Some of us believe that happiness is subjective. others, however, point out that its objective roots are beyond debate. maintaining balance of mind despite the bumps on the road of daily life means overcoming being miserable. even a moment’s perfect equanimity is actual happiness, peace of mind, or whatever one labels optimum mental functioning. such a temperament does not come readymade. for most of us, attaining a state of level headedness requires hard work and training. occasional unhappiness is an inevitable part of life. so too is disease, bad health and accidents. but we don’t shrug it off saying that it’s just part of life and refuse medical help. so why should we ignore mental short circuits, ranging from mood swings and bad temper to depression and insecurity? a practical-minded person cares as much for repairing the mind as to healing bodily malfunctions. mind repair is simply spirituality at its core practical level. we optimise mind machinery for a better life, for ourselves and for those around us. we need a powerful mind tool, and vipassana is an ancient mind-enhancing technology. in pali, vipassana means ‘insight to see things as they really are’. over 75 vipassana centres worldwide conduct residential 10-day courses for both beginners as well as senior students. vipassana is a self-observation technique taught by gautama the buddha. “its origins were already lost in timeless antiquity”, he had said. he rediscovered it in his prolonged search for a fundamental antidote to human misery. the sakya crown prince who had already mastered every prevalent teaching in india of those times, realised that nothing, including systems of the famous alara and ramputta, touched deep-rooted impurities entrenched in his mind. observing bodily sensations, he realised, led to hidden depths of the mind where our habit patterns are formed and multiplied. at the deepest level, our mind is constantly in touch with any feeling in the body like pain, heat, cold, perspiration and pressure. at the subtler subatomic level of the body, these sensations are felt as a biochemical flow of particles arising and passing away with tremendous velocity. any pleasant feeling in the body, and the mind reacts with clinging. unpleasant feelings are instantly greeted with aversion. the reactions go on every moment of our life, unnoticed. it seems that we are reacting to the external world. but in reality we constantly react with like or dislike to a biochemical flow within caused by our sense organs in contact with external stimuli. this blind reaction pattern forms the root cause of our mind’s malfunctioning, the buddha realised. so instead of neither reacting nor suppressing reality within, he gave humanity the middle path of merely observing reality as it is. this technique of objective observation of mind matter interaction at the level of sensation without blind reaction is vipassana. this practical, universal technique represents the quintessence of the buddha’s actual scientific teaching. it was lost to india and the world 500 years after the buddha’s passing away. fortunately, a little known chain of teachers in neighbouring burma (myanmar) preserved it in its pristine purity. every vipassana student independently performs self-surgery of the mind. a teacher guides and makes clarifications. but the student works very hard nearly 13 hours each day of the meditation course. alone, sometimes in a meditation cell, he or she braves inner demons and fights pain barriers. confronting reality within needs courage. it often shatters carefully polished self-images. “you are your own master”, sayagyi goenka, a vipassana teacher, tells his students. “the cause of your happiness or misery is within you”. this emotional self-dependence helps accept accountability for one’s condition in life. a vipassana practitioner realises everything in the world changes constantly, including people and situations. our full enjoyment of life is not dependent on any particular circumstance. happiness means a balanced mind to face the reality of the moment. only then can the mind calmly and dispassionately unleash its awesome power to solving our problems. life turns from negative reactions to beneficial positive action.