Vipassana (group)

Vipassana was a ten-day Pune One non-residential meditation group led initially by Paritosh and Pradeepa. When Paritosh left, Pradeepa took over and was assisted by Gopal. According to the groups timeline chart in The Sound of Running Water, it 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.

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.

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".

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