Published February 23, 2026 12:00PM
Yoga Journal’s archives series is a curated collection of articles originally published in past issues beginning in 1975. This article first appeared in the July-August 1981 issue of Yoga Journal.
In the early fall of 1960, U.S.N. Goenka came to California for the first time to lead a ten-day Vipassana Meditation Retreat Camp Mendocino County, California. He has led hundreds of these retreats in many places around the world, especially in India at the Vipassana International Academy, in Igatpuri. Sri Goenka is one of the best known teachers of Vipassana, continuing the tradition of his Burmese teacher, U Ba Khin.
The Vipassana technique was discovered by the Buddha Gautama over 2500 years ago. It was passed on from teacher to student in an unbroken chain for all these years through several slightly differing lineages, each in its own way directly connected with the Buddha’s original teaching. A portion of Sri Goenka’s talks to students of the camp is quoted here.
The Search to Transcend Negativity in Any Situation
“In ancient days there were many sages and saints whose aim was to find a solution to the universal problem of suffering. Their search made them look within and resulted in the clear understanding that you are bound to get agitated when negativities start being generated in the mind. Since all negativity creates disharmony, misery and unhappiness, why does one allow the process to happen? The wise beings of the past realized that humanity had no control over life, even though the desire to create the feeling of control was very strong.
In day-to-day life, who does not want only good things to happen? Who does not experience unwanted things and situations happening, and wanted things and situations not happening? Can somebody attain the power to control life’s flow and process? Even the most powerful emperor of the universe can not!
Some solutions were found to the problem of generating negativity. For example, as soon as anger or other negative thoughts arise, divert attention to something else. Drink a glass of water, count forwards or backwards, call on your deity or your guru, recite the name of God. All of these are good solutions, for they do work temporarily. But they are not the best solution.
Over time, fully enlightened beings appeared who discovered that running away from the problem is not a true solution. Although at the surface level of the mind, the so-called conscious mind, you may feel free from negativity, actually you have pushed it deep inside to the subconscious level. At this level, your agitation or negativity keeps on boiling, and sooner or later it comes out as a violent eruption. These enlightened masters realized that you could face all situations and problems using the technique of observation.”
Observe, Observe, Observe
“How do you observe? By observing all thoughts and emotions that arise in the mind. If there is anger, just observe the anger. If fear or desire has arisen, just observe the fear or desire. With constant observation, you observe not only at the conscious level, but also, with the powers of concentration and penetration, at the unconscious levels. Because you have not suppressed the thoughts or emotions, they must pass away, since this is the nature of the mind. At the same time, you have not acted on these thoughts or emotions so as to give free license to them. This then was the middle path found by the ancient enlightened ones: observe, observe, observe!
A wonderful solution, easy to understand at the intellectual level, but very difficult to practice at the actual level of day-to-day life. For example, when anger arises, it so quickly overpowers you. How can you observe when you lose control of the senses? Then you do something at the vocal or physical levels, reacting, dealing with the results of the reactions, and generally making life incredibly complicated and disharmonious.
Those who reached the stage of full enlightenment realized by experience that when negativity arises at the mental level, two things start happening at the physical level simultaneously, one at a grosser level, the other at a slightly subtler level. At the grosser level, your normal natural breathing becomes ‘hard’ or ‘choppy.’ At the subtler level, biochemical reactions begin to occur some place in the body. Rather than dealing with the negativity directly, which is very difficult if not impossible considering the makeup of the mind, you can shift attention to respiration and body sensation. If you practice properly and develop this faculty to automatically shift attention to respiration and body sensation, observation begins to take place instead of reaction.
Then, in day-to-day life, whenever a situation arises, and you start to react blindly due to your old habits, you will be able to come out of it sooner. It is not that after taking a ten-day course you will become like a Buddha, not reacting and remaining equanimous. No, the old habit patterns are still there, but they do change slowly with practice and time. Let’s say something has happened that creates a negativity in the mind. Immediately you start observing your respiration, your body sensations. The mind then gets balanced before you act.
Maybe it all happens just for a few moments…It is enough! It is not that when something happens in life you can run to your meditation room, sit down and close your eyes…You can’t!…You are in the situation! So with open eyes you are aware of your respiration, aware of the sensations, even just for a few seconds. This awareness works like a very good set of shock absorbers and balances the mind. Then whatever you do is not a reaction, but an action. And action is always positive and creative, never negative.”
Look Within Yourself
“From the time you are born and open your eyes, you start looking outside. You get so accustomed to seeing things outside that whenever any difficulty or suffering arises, you always look outside to find the cause. ‘Oh l am miserable because of this person, this incident, this thing! Always you find fault outside. Then, once you deceive yourself that you are miserable because of the outside situation, you use all your energy to amend and alter, again from the outside. ‘So-and-so is very bad. If this fellow changes, then I will be so happy. This situation is so bad, if it turns out in a different way, I will be so happy.’ What an illusion!
Because you only looked at life from one angle, from ‘outside,’ it seems that all is happening there. But seeing things, reacting to things only from one angle is very dangerous, because you don’t see the totality of reality. You see partial truth. Partial truth is distorted truth, which of course creates great difficulties. Because we see things only from one angle, we are blind to the others, so many others! It is essential to see things from this most important angle: to see things inside, to observe reality inside, to experience reality inside. If the ‘inside’ angle is missing, then something important is missing in your life.
By using Vipassana technique in daily situations, at least you are using both the outside and the inside angles, and thus coming nearer to the totality of the truth. As you proceed further on the path, there will be even more views and different angles.”
Manage Your Expectations in Relationships
“Every relationship that you have is based on fulfilling your desires and dreams. You expect this person to be a helping hand in their fulfillment. As long as this person remains a helping hand, you love him or her like anything. But the moment he or she starts doing something that goes against your wishes, against your desires and dreams, all the love dissolves.
So it becomes very clear as you go deeper that, although hard and bitter, the fact is that: you love yourself and you love your dreams, nothing else, no one else. When two brothers love each other, or husband and wife love each other, as long as the dreams of both go in the same line, if one’s dream is fulfilled, the other’s also gets fulfilled. Both are dreaming in the same dream. But the moment one starts dreaming in one way and the other starts dreaming in another, one’s dream is fulfilled and the other’s gets smashed. Then there is no more love; only enemies, hatreds and negativities remain. Observing this will make it so clear that love is towards oneself and towards one’s own desires and aspirations.
Now you say: ‘The cause of my suffering or situation is outside, because of this person or situation.’ But soon you will reach a stage where you will say: ‘Yes, the cause of my suffering is this person or situation to some extent, but the cause is within me too. Fifty-fifty, you and I share the responsibility.’
Then, as you proceed further, a stage is bound to come when you will say, not because Buddha said so, not because your teacher says so, not because any scripture says so, but by your own experience you will say: ‘When I am miserable it is one hundred percent my responsibility. No one else is responsible for my misery, not even one percent.’ This cannot be understood at the intellectual level; it can only be comprehended at the actual level when you are experiencing truth. Seen from this new inside angle, many truths will unfold and you will find: “Yes, the responsibility lies deep inside. Whatever changes or repairs I have to make, I have to make inside. I must become a good person to myself, I must change myself.’ It is here that Vipassana will help. Observing reality as it is will make things so clear!
As you develop in wisdom, what you learn is metta, ‘selfless love and compassion.’ No reaction of anger or hatred in any situation, just love and compassion. This development will make your life so full that you will become a real and fully developed human being. All your faculties of love, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity, will develop and unfold so that your life will be healthy and harmonious for you and for all others too.”
