Goenka’s Vipassana Movement

S. N. Goenka’s Vipassana movement is famous for its ten-day intensive silent retreats and its consistent rejection of religious categories, though its teachings and practices are directly derived from Theravada Buddhism. Drawing from qualitative research, this chapter examines a range of rhetorical strategies that Goenka uses to distinguish his movement from religion and the implication of these discourses on shaping unique patterns of conversion and disengagement. It introduces the term “tacit conversion” to describe a process whereby increased socialization into a movement and the adoption of its language paradoxically renders conversion invisible for the member. The chapter subsequently explores various disengagement pathways from this movement.

The Feeling of Mindfulness in Meditation

This chapter investigates some of the main meditative techniques practiced in Thailand, as well as what it feels like to practice them and improve over time. It begins with an ethnographic encounter with a man who has just spent a month in meditation at Wat Rampoeng in Chiang Mai, and then follows the author’s personal experience at five different meditation retreats to learn about mindfulness in meditation. These meditative retreats include the training in mindfulness of sensations and saṅkhāras at S.N. Goenka’s vipassana-based courses in India and Phitsanulok, the mindfulness of breathing (ānāpānasati) at Buddhadhasa Bhikkhu’s monastery of Wat Suan Mokkh in Southern Thailand, and the mindfulness of walking (yup naw phong naw) at the rural cave monastery of Wat Tham Thong near Chiang Mai. Together these close descriptive examples of the phenomenological experience of meditation show how mindfulness is trained in the body and mind in Thailand.