The Morality of Diet in Goenka Vipassana

I have sat through three ten day vipassana courses; the first in march-april 2013 in MA, and two
others here in hawaii. ...And I have served two ten day courses, on da island as well...
In summary, you go to one of these retreats, either in hawaii or at many centers around the world.
You meditate in silence for the first 9 days basically, and absorb video and tape recordings of SN
goenka as he explains how the meditation is to be done each day, etc.
This technique, which I will call :vipassana meditation in the tradition of SN goenka:, is a very useful
skill to learn and practice. If you would like more general information about this technique you can
check out dhamma.org . This posting is not really about generating interest for this technique or
about explaining what it is. The main focus of this posting is to explain what I personally enjoy about
the technique, and why it is such a great technique, and also to explain what I personally dont enjoy
about the technique, and how this un enjoyment can be overcome, eliminated, minimized etc.
So you will see, this posting is much more directed towards people who are already involved with
vipassana ( dhamma.org ) organization, and towards people who are already involved with hawaii
vipassana organization in particular.
some of you , like myself, are more or less on a high fruit diet. I know ive recommended this course
to a few people who have been extremely hesitant to go due to unabundant fruit situation. Perfectly
understandable. There are ways around it. If youre really determined to learn this technique- where
theres a will, theres a way. Eating some bland cooked food for 10 days not going to do you any
favors but its not a big deal either. This technique is a very useful tool and i feel absolutely blessed
to have found it.
Now, for those who dont know, when you sit the course youre supposed to agree to five precepts.
NO killing
NO stealing
NO intoxicants
NO sexual misconduct ( during the course no sexual conduct is really permitted )
NO lying ( this is pretty easy for the first 9 days since youre not really allowed to talk )
///
Now as a free, thinking, rational person who is somewhat identified with the label of VEGAN...
I can tell you, from my perspective, in my opinion, based on my personal experiences...:::
Stealing milk from a cow is stealing. That cow really wants to give her milk to her baby ( which has
already conveniently been murdered ). Cows milk isnt for humans to drink. i dont know where we
got this crazy idea. i have a special ability , basically its like cow telepathy. I can tell you for 100%
sure, the cow really doesnt want you to have its milk. its a bad deal for the cow, and a bad deal for
the human. cows milk is really really unhealthy... check out notmilk.com or cowspiracy or earthlings
or forks over knives... read the china study campbell , mans higher consciousness hotema, 80 10 10

diet by doug graham, arnold ehrets mucousless diet is great... if youre interested of course... theres
tons of resources out there IF youre willing to give up all of your beliefs and come start fresh with an
open mind and really give this issue fair consideration. If you come and think oh my TV told me my
body needs XYZ 1000G of animal protein per day or i will die.... then of course you wont be able to
really appreciate the (correct, minority , people go mad in herds... and wake up one by one very
slowly) perspective in this case.
Now, as you can see, this leaves me in quite an awkward position. This meditation course that I
have come to is serving stolen food. To me this is a clear breakage of morality ( sila ).
Most people simply do not see eye to eye with me on this issue. Ive brought this issue to multiple
assistant teachers, and while they are understanding.... their hands are tied... what can they really
do? This organization serves the same food , the same menu, the same day, the same schedule to
most or all of the meditation centers in the USA. Its very consistent- you have a pretty reasonable
idea of what food will be presented to you.
One teacher told me that even gautama the buddha would eat flesh. Ive heard stories that this
enlightened one in fact died from food poisonining due to eating spoiled pig flesh. I can completely
appreciate that any food is good and a blessing. Theres a lot of people who cant afford any food at
all. I personally really loathe to take this unhealthy food, but I completely understand how addictive it
is . And I cant really say I have eaten meat in X years or I wont eat meat again in the future.
Because realistically this world is just so fucked up, and the USA is filled with tons and tons of
abundant corpse and chicken ovulations and pus and such...
you go in the store and flesh is 99c a pound and bananas are 1.75 a pound...
people are poor... sometimes u just take the most calorie dense, numbing option... just out of
ignorance... just out of wanting to feel full... wanting to give your stomach some really challenging
thing .... wanting food coma....( is there something i can take because im tired of being awake? yup,
its called spam...) This teacher told me to take the middle path. But he also told me, zach, if you
believe that taking milk is breaking sila, then you absolutely cannot take milk, for you would be
breaking a precept.
A second teacher I asked told me straight up that basically eating milk or meat isnt a problem. I
have never met a vipassana teacher that I know of that doesnt eat meat. he also told me that after
the cows in india stop producing milk that they are left to roam in the wild and live out the rest of their
lives... its so funny and sad that this powerful teacher has such a ridiculous fairytale reality of what
he believes happys to cows after theyre done putting out milk... nah bro once that cow dries up u
slaughter the poor lady and ship her off to macdonalds.... its not like oh we bring the cow out in to
the countryside to live out the rest of her days in peace with her husband... nope! NOTHING DOING!
Just because Goenka ate milk and the buddha ate meat does not mean that we need to. We have
much more intelligence now, we have tons of awesome fruit available from all around the earth.
90% of world population is vegan... probably even 95% ( most people want to eat meat so they can
be great like USA,,, but realistically they simply cant afford it, not available, no refrigeration, etc....
but the 5% meat eaters consume probably 1000 times more resources than the 95% vegans.
B
After the course is over, we are encouraged to practice sila in our daily lives... but the interpretations
of sila are so various and wild and interesting that it becomes almost comical and irrelevant to me.
I understand this whole issue is based around a huge misunderstanding. Because if these people
were truly AWARE of what they were doing.... truly aware of as ye reap ye shall also sow... meat
would simply drop out of their hands.

Anytime you're practicing renunciation, you're deluded. How about

that! You're deluded. What are you renouncing? Anytime you
renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce.
There's a guru in India who says, "Every time a prostitute comes to
me, she's talking about nothing but God. She says I 'm sick of this life
that I 'm living. I want God. But every time a priest comes to me he's
talking about nothing but sex". Very well, when you renounce
something, you're stuck to it forever. When you fight something,
you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you are giving it
power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it.
This includes communism and everything else. So you must "receive"
your demons, because when you fight them, you empower them. Has
nobody ever told you this? When you renounce something, you're
tied to it. The only way to get out of this is to see through it. Don't
renounce it, SEE THROUGH IT. Understand its true value and you
won't need to renounce it; it will just drop from your hands. But of
course, if you don't see that, if you're hypnotized into thinking that
you won't be happy without this, that, or the other thing, you're
stuck. What we need to do for you is not what so-called spirituality
attempts to do --namely, to get you to make sacrifices, to renounce
things. That's useless. You're still asleep. What we need to do is to
help you understand, understand, understand, if you understood,
you'd simply drop tine desire for it. This is another way of saying: If
you woke up, you'd simply drop the desire for it.
Even though this is a great technique to learn, I have severe doubts about whether this technique
has truly been maintained in its purity.
By purchasing cows milk, the vipassana organization is directly contributing to the needless
slaughter of billions of animals per year. We need to adapt to our changing needs and desires of the
students here, and also to the population - of the world- of the animals - of our bodies- etc. I cannot
in good consciousness give any more contribution to this great organization until I see a huge effort
and push to make a change and remain open minded. I really feel quite hesitant to participate,
donate, and recommend this course to anyone. Im not saying I wont take another course again- Im
sure Ill do another course when the opportunity is right.
. This technique is here to serve us- we absolutely need to modify it to meet our needs better! No
technique really can bring you to the final liberation, but this can certainly be of use on the path.
I would love to hear anyones feedback, particularly from those who have completed one of this sn
goenka course.
1> is stealing milk from a cow stealing? Yes or No
2> is stealing honey from bees stealing? Yes or No
3> is raising cows for milk a right livelihood? Yes or No
4> If you pay someone to kill or steal on your behalf, is it still killing or stealing?
IE if I go in to a supermarket and buy corpse or animal secretions or some of those yummy chicken
menstruations, did I steal or kill? Or its ok because it was already dead?