Practicing Insight On Your Own: a handbook for Vipassanakamathana

by Acharn Thawee Baldhammo

A succinct but extremely comprehensive handbook for vipassana meditation with detailed instructions for practicing on one's own.

http://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/boo...

Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Wt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This handbook on (dry) vipassana was written by Acharn Thawee for English-speaking meditators who might not have access to a teacher. Even if they have a teacher, meditators will find this handbook invaluable for their practice. Both new and long-time meditators will find this book very helpful.

For new meditators, this book gives clear and precise instructions for doing walking and sitting meditation with different stages of notation, without any omissions whatsoever. It is just like if you were getting instructions sitting in front of a teacher in the Wat. Very concisely and yet very thoroughly, Acharn Thawee then talks about the different signs and phenomena that arises once meditation has gained strength, the obstacles that will be encountered, how to adjust the 5 powers evenly, and how to rise above defilements and kamma.

For meditators who have made progress in meditation, Acharn gives the stages of insight-knowledge and their characteristics, using which one can gauge the results of practice. Acharn's discussion of this is clearer than that given in other handbooks. In particular, his discussion of Sankharaupekkha-nana (the 11th insight-knowledge, the knowledge that contemplates conditioned phenomena with equanimity) and the stages that arise immediately after this leading into Nibbaana are absolutely invaluable in helping meditators understand the process that leads to cessation.

Not only that, Acharn clarifies that there are actually 5 different kinds of cessation (forgetting), but only one of them is due to Maggaphala (path and fruition). Therefore meditators who experience forgetting or cessation might have done so because of thinamiddha (sloth and torpor), or because of piti (rapture), or passaddhi (tranquility), or upekkha (equanimity). These are not the real cessation due to Maggaphala, they do not denote Nirodha (extinction) and Nibbaana. In such cases, there is no change of lineage (in which one crosses over from worldling to the lineage of the Enlightened Noble Ones), even though there might have been cessation. One has to be very careful or one will think one has reached Nibbaana, when in fact one has not. To help meditators understand the real from the false magga or path, Acharn gives the characteristics of cessation due to Maggaphala.

I cannot emphasize enough how important this clarification of cessation and maggaphala is. Many very experienced and reputable teachers do not distinguish the different kinds of cessation in their teaching and guidance, as a result, students never attain the real cessation due to maggaphala. With great kindness, Acharn wrote this book for the very purpose of leading English-speaking meditators, who so often cannot get adequate guidance, onto the right path. This little book might well make the difference between progress and stagnation, right practice and wrong practice, in your journey to Nibbaana.

You can get this book on the internet. The digital version does not give the illustrations for walking as in the printed version. By the power of right understanding and practice, may all beings gain insight and liberation.

[Roger Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book from an enlightened monk. Not to be missed.