Part 1

I returned from Bengaluru last evening by the Vande Bharat Express. A fully air-conditioned train with added features and amenities that set it apart from other superfast trains like the Shatabdi Express, once the pride of the Indian Railways. It is neat, with automatic doors and tablet-wielding train managers who make sure there are no unauthorised intruders. You, of course, know that with the Vande Bharat, there is an Executive Class that offers greater comfort and more perks than the regular chair car coaches. We all take the same path and reach the same destination.

My onward journey to Bengaluru was by the Shatabdi Express. The coaches were run down, the toilets smelly, and the air-conditioning uneven. It bore all the signs of neglect. The proud old superfast express is now somewhat like an ageing superstar.

I have stopped travelling by other trains on the Chennai–Bengaluru sector. And for that matter, I stopped travelling non–air-conditioned some years back. I, now part of the gentry, refuse to suffer the company of the coarse and conditions that are basic or incompatible with my station.

Many years ago, in my naivete, I thought that technological advancements would help raise the conditions of living for all, even allowing for disparities to become more pronounced. It has turned out that the privileged can now hope for bullet trains while the rest make their peace with a little or no improvement in their conditions. We now have islands of plenty amid plenty in poverty. Like the handful of air-conditioned coaches out of the 22–24 ordinary sleeper coaches in a sham superfast train.

Part 2

I learnt about Vipassana for ‘executives’ the other day. It seems that it has been on offer for some years now. From the website of the Vipassana Meditation Course for Business Executives:

The technique of Vipassana meditation that is taught in Executive courses is identical to that taught in regular 10-day courses. The only difference is that in an Executive course there is an additional talk and two sets of questions and answers by Mr. Goenka, who was a businessman himself for many years. In these, he discusses using the principles of Vipassana to deal with the challenges and stresses of the business world.

In addition, Executive courses are only held in venues with ideal conditions for meditation, including single accommodations with en-suite bathrooms. With these facilities, participants have the very best chance of benefiting from their investment of time and energy in attending the course. The teacher conducting the course on behalf of Mr. Goenka will usually be someone that also functions in a corporate/professional environment and who can therefore respond from experience to questions about how this technique can bring benefits to those leading similar lives.

And from the website of Dhamma Pattana, a centre offering this course:

Dhamma Pattana, meaning the “Harbour of Dhamma”, is located on a hill overlooking the beach town of Gorai, in the outer northern suburbs of Mumbai. It is a part of the renowned Global Pagoda complex that opened in 2009. Get sufficient time to practice so as all residential rooms are equipped with western facilities and air conditioning. This center provides facilities suitable to executives and professionals used to a different lifestyle, though the schedule and the teachings remain the same across the centers.

What stood out to me:

1. Facilities suitable to ‘executives’ and ‘professionals’ used to a different lifestyle:
   • Single occupancy accommodation
   • Air-conditioned rooms
   • En-suite bathrooms
   • Laundry services (hearsay)
2. An additional talk
3. Q&A specifically about ‘using the principles of Vipassana to deal with the challenges and stresses of the business world’
4. A teacher from a business/professional environment
5. The schedule and the teachings remain the same across the centres
6. No fee charged

I have attended the 10-day Vipassana course thrice over the last 20 or so years, twice in Chennai and once in Hyderabad. The rooms were clean, basic but adequate, the food was edible and served with quiet devotion, and the bathrooms with western style closets worked. We cleaned our rooms, washed our clothes, fetched buckets of hot water for baths from a common supply point, and had to go to the nearest water points for drinking water. Volunteers were always at hand to help but mostly everything moved like a well-oiled engine. Part of the design, I presumed, was to question everything, break from old patterns, and live a life of simplicity for a few days, free from attachment to people and things. In essence, a monk’s life—not necessarily austere but travelling light.

The Vipassana course for executives, predictably, has struck a jarring note. The course content remains more or less unchanged, but the conditions—more bourgeoisie, one might say—are presented as ‘ideal’ for meditation. The feeling was amplified when a friend, preparing to leave for this course, had questions for me about what she should carry. As I went through my mental checklist, drawing from my past Vipassana course experiences, I realised that many of the items may be irrelevant to her. The course, as I remembered it, wasn’t just about the technique but the totality of the experience, which included taking responsibility for my basic needs, my living quarters, my personal belongings and hygiene, my awareness of the quiet, caring volunteers, and my identification with every other person there, whose name, origin, profession, status and other real or imaginary divisions were unknown and inconsequential to my quest.

Part 3

Prince Siddhartha, or the Enlightened One, the Buddha, as he came to be called in later years, was, by most accounts, ensconced in a palace where privilege, status, wealth and creature comforts were bestowed on him, as befitting royalty. He led a protected existence, shielded from the harsh realities of the world outside the palace gates. His chance encounter with a funeral procession led him to question the nature and fickleness of life and death, of existence itself. He questioned the nature and reality of the self and the world, animate and inanimate. Dissatisfied and unconvinced with answers he came upon, and restless, he became more determined to find answers. He saw in the trappings and comforts of palace life captivity to people and things, limits to experiences, and a veil on realities that he was curious about. And so, he gave up on his life of royalty and privilege and stepped out of the familiar and convenient into a journey of discovery, a search for the ultimate Truth.

It is believed that the Vipassana meditation technique was his vehicle to the ultimate realisation of universal Truth. His key realisation was that attachment and aversion are the principal sources of sorrow and misery and also blind us from realising the truth of who we truly are.

Vipassana is the Buddha’s gift, passed down by dedicated practitioners over millennia to those who seek their own liberation from their bondages. The organisation of this noble effort must contend with modern society, marked by advances in technology, affluence and a range of lifestyles, social and economic inequalities, and a different set of dilemmas and demands from earlier times.

Part 4

Without making it seem like this is building up to a case for frugality and ‘poverty’ as a precondition for the practice of Vipassana and the quest for self-realisation, it does seem ironic that differential living conditions during courses are being justified based on segmented ‘learner’ groups, with some being privileged with conditions ‘more ideal’ for meditation than others. Unintended perhaps, but this merely reinforces classist, elitist segments whose preferred lifestyles have been taken as something to be pandered to. As if their lives in a bubble of affluence and comfort must be replicated to the extent possible by organisers. The rest, who are not so lucky by virtue of their life circumstances or profession, must of course draw inspiration from the Buddha’s life of simplicity and peace with meagre comforts, not be distracted by systemic inequity and stay focused on the technique and evolve.

Mr Goenka’s background as a businessman can hardly be a basis to focus resources exclusively on executives. Given the structure of the course, there is just enough time to focus on matters of technique. Should it therefore matter that teachers in the course are from business backgrounds? In highlighting a teacher’s background, do we risk treating teachers of technique as problem-solving consultants or generate such an expectation? What of the questions, concerns and dilemmas of other professional groups attending courses for the ‘aam janta’? Maybe one is too harsh and critical too soon. Maybe there are plans for dedicated Vipassana meditation centres for medical practitioners, lawyers, teachers, farmers, scientists, and other professions as part of a grand design. Perhaps dedicated centres for the elderly and lost souls labelled losers too. In so doing, we may unwittingly reinforce division, fragmentation and comparison, the sense of exclusivity and superiority of one group over another, and the erosion of a shared sense of humanity and collective destiny, a sense of the sangha that was deemed so crucial to sustain the community of seekers beyond artificial barriers and to develop compassion for all rather than for one’s own kind.

Image: Public Domain Pictures

Also read: 2024 post on my last Vipassana experience – Away from the Grind, off the Grid