Vipassana (group)

Vipassana was a ten-day Pune One meditation group led initially by Paritosh and Pradeepa. Venu was also mentioned as an assistant in a couple of early Darshan Diaries. When Paritosh left, Pradeepa took over and was assisted by Gopal. According to the groups timeline chart in The Sound of Running Water, Vipassana was offered continuously from Jan 1976 until Mar 1978, TSORW's cut-off date for group info. In fact, it was likely offered all the way through to Jun 1981, when Osho left for the States. It seems to have been residential for most of that time, changing over to non-residential around the end of 1979. And early on, a twenty-day version was also offered, but that offer may not have had a long run.

The Community to Provoke God brochure had this to say as a brief description:

The word Vipassana means insight and this meditation is the one used by Buddha two and a half thousand years ago. For ten days participants maintain silence and practise an awareness technique of watching the breath as it goes in and out of the body. As a detached witnessing state becomes possible, thoughts are simply watched with indifference as they pass through the mind; feelings and emotions are allowed to come and go. Sitting meditations are alternated with walking meditations and all daily activities during this period are done with slow, silent awareness.

Information and stories of the Vipassana group show up several times in early Darshan Diaries. The first is in Hammer on the Rock, from 11 Jan 1976:

The Vipassana group came to darshan for the first time, all aglow and eager for more. The group runs for ten days, at least this first group did, but as things transpired during the evening, it may be extended.

Vipassana is described as "the backbone of all southern buddhist meditation". Closely related to the Japanese zazen, it was referred to by Buddha as "the only way".

The groupleader explained the format as: "a ten day experiment in mindfulness, without interruption or distraction of any kind. The technique of Vipassana, or insight meditation, is very simple. It includes one hour of sitting and watching the rising and falling of the abdomen, in inspiration and expiration. This is alternated with half an hour’s slow meditative walking. The course is fully residential, and allows for no reading or writing for its entire duration. Silence will be maintained throughout".

Bhagwan said in darshan several nights ago, that after everything has been brought up -- through encountering and other techniques -- Vipassana gives one "a resettlement, a new pattern to one’s being".

In that same darshan, in the interplay between Osho, the leaders and participants, we learn that Gopal was a participant and that his girlfriend Venu was an assistant leader. Already for this first group a "Zen stick" had been fashioned and put to use. This special stick has a long section at "the business end" split in half, so that a light tap on the head with the stick makes the two halves come together in a loud "clack", making a "hit" mildly startling in both feel and sound. It is a "wake-up call", which many blindfolded participants come to expect and hope for. Venu got to wield the stick.

Osho asks, "What about you? Did you enjoy hitting people?" She replies, "I had to hit, but not very much. Gopal I hit the most! I found I got a lot of energy from it".

Early on in the next Darshan Diary, Above All, Don't Wobble, there is already a note, in a list about all the groups and therapies offered in the ashram, that Vipassana now is available as a ten- or twenty-day course. A few days later (30 Jan 1976), still in Wobble, there is this extended note about the group:

A group of sannyasins who had just completed ten days of the Vipassana course, came to darshan. Bhagwan usually suggests that people pass through some of the western techniques before undertaking Vipassana, so that they have thrown out any suppressed material that might otherwise be a disturbance. The basic format involves simply sitting silently for an hour, alternated with half an hour’s walking meditation.

Bhagwan asked Paritosh, the leader of the group, how he felt about the group. Paritosh said that at the seventh day things looked bad but then picked up again, though somebody had run away. Pradeepa, who was assisting, came forward bearing the staff, a zen stick, that is used as part of the technique to help people to maintain an alert and aware state of consciousness.

Bhagwan took the staff (made in the ashram’s workshop) and demonstrated on Pradeepa’s head how to use the stick and the correct place to hit that would be most beneficial. Pradeepa said that people had actually asked her to hit harder than she had been initially. Bhagwan agreed that this was needed ...

In a certain moment when a person is falling asleep, if you hit hard suddenly the energy surges up, and that’s a beautiful experience. If you just do it very mildly it won’t stir the energy.

And when you hit, first just wait and become completely silent. Because it is not just a question of a stick hitting; it is a transfer of energy. So first stand, be very prayerful, very silent. A deep compassion should come, you should feel much for the person in front of you -- and then hit.

Osho went on to talk about the tensions and frustrations that would accumulate and come to a head around the seventh day, and again around the fourteenth day in a longer course, that these were inevitable churnings-up of the mind, and that people should be helped to stay the course and go beyond them.

The group description gets a bit fuller in Nothing to Lose but Your Head (Feb 29 1976), when Maneesha writes, about the half-hour walking meditations:

In this, the primary object of attention is the sensitivity of movement in the lower part of the legs, and contact with the ground through the feet.

The day commences at three in the morning and ends at nine at night. There are breaks for meals, for the daily discourse at the ashram and a period set aside in the evening when the leader is available to answer problems related to meditation.

Silence is maintained throughout the course, and reading, writing and smoking are not allowed.

In this darshan, Osho demonstrates the use of the Zen stick on Pradeepa. Maneesha writes:

Bhagwan lightly places the end of the stick on her head, the other end resting in his hand. Slowly he raises the stick, staring all the time at Pradeepa's head, then higher. The atmosphere feels very charged somehow ... a sense of the significance of the act of being hit by the master. After a minute or two, Bhagwan suddenly gives a light hit to Pradeepa's head. She slowly raises her head, looking moved -- and then breaks into a giggle, murmuring a thank you. (picture to come ...)

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