Wandering around India in the early 1970s, I was amused rather than swayed by the gurus who were attracting hordes of Western seekers by means of abstract philosophies, physical distortions, magic tricks, sexual licence, or ganja. But then I happened upon S. N. Goenka. Clean-cut, clean-shaven, clean-living, he certainly didn’t look or act like any other baba. In fact, he had been a prominent businessman and a leader of the traditional Hindu community in Rangoon before he discovered the ancient technique he now taught. It cured him of severe migraines — something none of the medical specialists he had consulted in Switzerland or the United States were able to do — and in 1969 he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to teaching it beyond the borders of Burma, where it had been passed down like a closely guarded secret for more than 2,500 years.
Step by step, for ten days, he taught me how to meditate, and
every evening he gave a lecture on why it worked. There was nothing complicated or occult about it: no doctrinal texts to study or esoteric languages to learn, no mantras or visualizations, no prayers or prostrations, no icons or joss sticks. God and the afterlife weren’t denied so much as set aside, as were reincarnation and nirvana too, and nothing was to be accepted until it had been experienced. Ethical behaviour wasn’t a matter of Mr. Goenka’s laying down the law with promises of heaven or threats of hell; it was reduced to the fact that hurting others by word, thought, or action inevitably boomerangs back upon oneself as some form of misery. Most of all, I responded to the logic that no god, priest, swami, or saint — least of all, Mr. Goenka himself — could redeem me from the consequences of my own deeds.
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