Questioner on meditation

💐 Questioner: Please explain why we have painful sensations during meditation. 

Goenkaji: Sensations can be of different types and have different causes. 

If you are not accustomed to sit cross-legged for a long time you may experience painful sensations when you start to sit purely because of the sitting posture; 

or there may be painful sensations because of the food you have taken; 

or a painful sensation may be due to the atmosphere around you; if it is very hot, for example, a lot of heat may be felt in the body. 

There can be many reasons for painful sensations. 

Another reason for these sensations is your accumulated sankhāras from the past. When you meditate properly, the power of the anicca-saññā [awareness of impermanence] vibrations is so strong that all the impurities inside are shaken and come up on the surface in a great upheaval. Initially the gross sankhāras surface, and only when they are completely eradicated can one reach the stage of sotāpanna. 

It's like sweeping a floor: The first time, large pieces of debris are removed, the next sweeping will pick up the smaller particles, and the third sweeping will clear away finer dust. When you sweep with a small brush still finer dust will be removed and, finally, when you wash the floor the dust removed is still finer. 

🌷 Similarly, in Vipassana you work moving from the gross to the subtle, to the subtlest. This is the law of nature.