Vipassana is Optimism, Realism and Workism
- by S. N. Goenka
(The following has been adapted from the sixth day discourse of the ten-day Vipassana course.)
A mother sends her young son to the local grocery store to buy cooking oil. She gives him an empty bottle and a ten-rupee note. He buys the oil and has the bottle filled. On his way back, out of carelessness he falls, drops the bottle, and spills half the oil. Picking up the half-empty bottle, he comes home crying: “Oh, mother, I lost half the oil! I lost half the oil!” A very pessimistic boy.
The mother sends another son, with another empty bottle and another ten-rupee note. He also buys the oil, and has the bottle filled. He also falls, drops the bottle, and spills half the oil. This boy picks up the bottle and goes to his mother, happy and smiling: “Look! I saved half the oil! I fell down so the bottle might have broken and I might have lost all the oil. Look, half the oil is saved!”
It is the same situation, but each boy has responded quite differently. One boy is pessimistic, crying that his bottle is half empty. The other boy is optimistic, happy that at least his bottle is still half full.
The mother sends a third son. He also falls, drops the bottle, and spills half the oil. Like the second boy, he comes smiling, saying: “I saved half the oil.”
But this boy is a Vipassana boy. He is not only optimistic, but also realistic: “The truth is that I have lost half the oil; my bottle is half-empty.” He is not only realistic, but also a real worker, as in Vipassana! He decides to work hard and earn five rupees to fill the bottle by the evening. Dhamma is not merely optimism. It is also realism and also “workism”.
Each inpidual has to work, always remaining optimistic. There is not a trace of pessimism in Dhamma. It is all optimism. There is misery—half of the bottle is empty: you have to accept that. Now how to fill it
You have a path now to come out of the misery. Make use of it, and this is what you have started doing. You are realizing the truth. It is not merely an intellectual exercise, an emotional or devotional acceptance of the truth of misery and the way out of misery. You are experiencing it.
When you work with sensations, you are directly experiencing the truth. It is your own living wisdom, not a borrowed wisdom from somebody else. This whole process of observing sensations helps you understand because you are giving importance to your own experience of the truth within the framework of the body.
Otherwise, throughout life, you keep giving importance to objects outside and craving for them. They have become so predominant that you forget that you are craving for them. You also forget that by craving, you lose the balance of your mind, and become very miserable.
You have to understand how you have become addicted to this craving. If there is a natural requirement, for instance, you are thirsty and you want water, there is nothing wrong; you work hard to get water to quench your thirst. Perhaps you tried and you didn”t get water; you just smile and keep trying. You don”t lose the balance of your mind.
However if you start craving for water, then you have lost the balance of your mind. You start worrying: “What will happen
Will I die if I don”t get water
” You become so agitated; you become so miserable. You are not observing the process inside. Water is secondary compared to your craving. Even your craving is secondary compared to the misery it brings.
The moment that you start craving for something, this means you that you are discontented, dissatisfied with what is. You want something which is not. Because it is not, you become very miserable. Once you have realised that you are becoming miserable, then there is a way out. When you don”t realis…
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