Hi Vinaire.
Thank you for your write up of Vipassana meditation. I am following Goenkaji's program which is based on the Burmese Sayagyi U Ba Khin tradition with U Ba Khin's encouragement. It is claimed that as Burma had been an isolated community over the centuries, indeed the millennia, their technique of Vipassana is a faithful copy of that taught by the Buddha.
Here is a brief write up of the program:
It is a ten day program conducted in a monastery/convent-like environment, in noble silence. Each student is expected to complete the ten days, as the technique is developed over the full period. Men and women are completely separated. With appropriate breaks, a student meditates for ten and a half hours each day and in addition, there is an hour and a half discourse.
The initial three days is spend on Anapana, where the student focuses his attention on his breathing. This not pranayoga where the exercise is to control the breath. In anapana the student simply observes equanimously the sensation of his breath inside his nostrils and on the section of the face below the nostrils and above the upper lip. The first day is restricted to the nostrils themselves, the second day includes the region above the upper lip, and the third day includes all sensations in the nostrils and the region above the upper lip.
On the fourth day, the student is introduced to the Vipassana technique. The student commences by observing an area about one inch (2 centimeters) square on the top of his head noting its sensation. The sensation could be a pain, soreness, pressure, tightness, itchiness, pulsing, hot, cold, wetness, dryness, numbness, anything, any sensation. Every square centimeter, every square millimeter, has a sensation. The student then proceeds to scan the surface of the top of the head, then the back of the head, then the face, then the neck, then the shoulders, then the arms then the front of the body, then the back of the body, then the legs. No part of the surface of the body is missed.When the student gets to the tip of his toes, he starts again from the top of his head, and continues to cycle through the sequence.
On the fifth day the sequence is extended to include scanning up the body as well, from the tip of the toes to the top of the head. On the sixth day, the student learns to use the symmetry of the body, to speed the process up, by scanning both arms, both legs and so on simultaneously. On the seventh day, the student learns to spot free flows where a particular sensation starts running off previous reactions (sankharas) to the sensation.
On the ninth day, detailed instruction is given, as to how to recognize when the step of the scanning of the skin is finished, and then how to address the inside of the body. And finally, what follows that. On the tenth day, the student is taught a new technique called Metta meditation, which is used at the end of the day. Students are expected to attend at least one ten day program each year, to progress, and to meditate two hours at home each day to maintain what he has achieved.
A student doing the program for a second or subsequent time, follows the same program except for the second and third days, where the anapana is used to sharpen the student's awareness.
David.