[This is a “back-post”; it is a work-in-progress, so it may change partially or completely, with materials added or taken away, over the next several days or weeks. This is “day 9(d)” of my stay at the Vipassana Meditation retreat. For general comments and summary, see “day 11.”]
This is a very grim title. But actually, it’s not a negative moment. There’s a raucous rock song by a group called Zeromancer, entitled “Doctor Online“. It has the line “1-800-suicide” as part of its chorus.
It is stuck in my head, this evening, after a minor epiphany. I’d returned to my room, after tea… after my weeping during meditation earlier. After my loss of equanimity.
And I somehow decided, or realized, that setting aside “desires and aversions” – losing my attachment to these things… this seems like a kind of “spiritual suicide.” I mean… its our desires and aversions that let us know that we’re alive, right? If we no longer have desires and aversions, mightn’t we as well be dead?
I think the more nuanced view is that it’s not that we’re to get rid of desires and aversions, but only that we’re to lose our attachment to the results of our actions that those desires and aversions engender. But Goenka, in his presentations and discourses, utterly fails to convey this nuance clearly. And the more blunt view (which seems to prevail in a lot of Theravada) that nirvanna (enlightenment) is all about letting go of desires and aversions altogether seems too shallow to me. Too much like quitting the world in the name of happiness. Too much like giving up.
So the song was stuck in my head. But it restored my equanimity. Although it left me with a certain degree of apathy vis-a-vis the meditation program.
