More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Throw a stone into a stream. The running water would smooth the stone’s surface, but the inside remains unchanged. Take that same stone and place it in the intense fires of a forge, and it all melts; the whole stone changes inside and out. Civilization changes a person on the outside. Meditation softens a person from within, through and through.
We are going to teach you to watch the functioning of your own mind in a calm and detached manner so you can gain insight into your own behavior. The goal is awareness, an awareness so intense, concentrated, and finely tuned that you will be able to pierce the inner workings of reality itself.
All meditation procedures stress concentration of the mind, bringing the mind to rest on one item or one area of thought. Do it strongly and thoroughly enough, and you achieve a deep and blissful relaxation, called jhana. It is a state of such supreme tranquillity that it amounts to rapture, a form of pleasure that lies above and beyond anything that can be experienced in the normal state of consciousness. Most systems stop right there. Jhana is the goal, and when you attain that, you simply repeat the experience for the rest of your life. Not so with vipassana meditation. Vipassana seeks
...more
In hypnotic trance, the subject is susceptible to control by another party, whereas in deep concentration, the meditator remains very much under his or her own control. The similarity is superficial, and in any case, the occurrence of these phenomena is not the point of vipassana. As we have said, the deep concentration of jhana is simply a tool or stepping stone on the route to heightened awareness.
Vipassana, by definition, is the cultivation of mindfulness or awareness.
you can never really predict exactly what will come up during any particular session. It is an investigation and an experiment, an adventure every time. In fact, this is so true that when you do reach a feeling of predictability and sameness in your practice, you can read that as an indication that you have gotten off track and are headed for stagnation. Learning to look at each second as if it were the first and only second in the universe is essential in vipassana meditation.
Some people may experience some intuitive understanding or memories from past lives; others do not. In any case, these phenomena are not regarded as well-developed and reliable psychic abilities, and they should not be given undue importance. Such phenomena are in fact fairly dangerous to new meditators in that they are quite seductive.
There is a point in the meditator’s career where he or she may practice special exercises to develop psychic powers. But this occurs far down the line. Only after the meditator has reached a very deep stage of jhana will he or she be advanced enough to work with such powers without the danger of their running out of control or taking over his or her life.
They are holy men because they meditate; meditation is how they got there. And they started meditating before they became holy, otherwise they would not be holy.
They enter the practice expecting instantaneous cosmic revelation, complete with angelic choirs. What they usually get is a more efficient way to take out the trash and better ways to deal with Uncle Herman. They are needlessly disappointed. The trash solution comes first. The voices of archangels take a bit longer.
Bliss results from relaxation, and relaxation results from release of tension. Seeking bliss from meditation introduces tension into the process, which blows the whole chain of events. It is a catch-22: you can only experience bliss if you don’t chase after it. Euphoria is not the purpose of meditation. It will often arise, but should be regarded as a byproduct.
Still, it is a very pleasant side effect, and it becomes more and more frequent the longer you meditate. You won’t hear any disagreement about this from advanced practitioners.
Cleansing yourself of selfishness is not a selfish activity.
All Buddhist meditation aims at the development of awareness, using concentration as a tool toward that end.
The self-concept or ego is nothing more than a set of reactions and mental images that are artificially pasted to the flowing process of pure awareness.
Vipassana is the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices. The method comes directly from the Satipatthana Sutta, a discourse attributed to the Buddha himself.
The object of vipassana practice is to learn to see the truths of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness of phenomena.
The Pali term for insight meditation is vipassana bhavana.
In vipassana meditation we cultivate this special way of seeing life. We train ourselves to see reality exactly as it is,
and we call this special mode of perception mindfulness.
When you seek to know reality without illusion, complete with all its pain and danger, real freedom and security will be yours.
You set up a collection of mental constructions — “me,” “the book,” “the building” — and you assumed that those were solid, real entities. You assumed that they would endure forever. They never do.
Our human perceptual habits are remarkably stupid in some ways. We tune out 99 percent of all the sensory stimuli we actually receive, and we solidify the remainder into discrete mental objects. Then we react
From the Buddhist perspective, we humans have a backward view of life.
The “I” concept is a process. It is something we are constantly doing. With vipassana we learn to see that we are doing it, when we are doing it, and how we are doing it. Then that mindset moves and fades away, like a cloud passing through a clear sky. We are left in a state where we can decide to do it or not, whichever seems appropriate to the situation. The compulsiveness is gone: now we have a choice.
Your progress to liberation is measured in hours on the cushion.
The very process of our observation changes the things we observe.
An electron is an event more than a thing, and the observer participates in that event by the very act of his or her observation.
We become very understanding people as a result. We no longer get upset by the “failings” of others.
our deeper knowledge of unhappiness overcomes the greed that causes our unhappiness, and our realization of selflessness overcomes the ignorance that arises from the notion of self.
When we face a situation in which we feel indignation, if we mindfully investigate our own mind, we will discover bitter truths about ourselves: for example, that we are selfish; we are egocentric; we are attached to our ego; we hold on to our opinions; we think we are right and everybody else is wrong; we are prejudiced; we are biased; and at the bottom of all of this, we do not really love ourselves. This discovery, though bitter, is a most rewarding experience. And in the long run, this discovery delivers us from deeply rooted psychological and spiritual suffering.
Mindfulness practice is the practice of being 100 percent honest with ourselves. When we watch our own mind and body, we notice certain things that are unpleasant to realize. Since we do not like them, we try to reject them.
If we do not have hatred in us, we will not be concerned when someone points out our shortcomings. Rather, we will be thankful to the person who draws our attention to our faults. We have to be extremely wise and mindful to thank the person who exposes our faults for helping us to tread the upward path of self-improvement. We all have blind spots. The other person is our mirror in which we see our faults with wisdom.
Of course, the person pointing out our mistakes may not be totally free from defects himself, but he can see our faults just as we can see his, which he does not notice until we point them out to him.
is not the vipassana meditator’s goal to become enlightened before other people or to have more power or make more profit than others. Meditators are not in competition with each other for mindfulness.
Every moment is a moment of events and no moment passes by without an event.
The mind can never be focused without a mental object. Therefore we must give our mind an object that is readily available every present moment. One such object is our breath. The mind does not have to make a great effort to find the breath. Every moment the breath is flowing in and out through our nostrils. As our practice of insight meditation is taking place every waking moment, our mind finds it very easy to focus itself on the breath, for it is more conspicuous and constant than any other object.
As you continue to notice the feeling of short inhaling and short exhaling, your body and mind become relatively calm. Then your breath becomes long. Notice the feeling of that long breath as it is without saying, “Long breath.” Then notice the entire breathing process from the beginning to the end. Subsequently the breath becomes subtle, and the mind and body become calmer than before. Notice this calm and peaceful feeling of your breathing.
Conscious thought sets up a corresponding tension in the body, such as muscular contraction or a quickening of the heartbeat.
Now you’ve got a tamed elephant that can be put to useful work. In this analogy the wild elephant is your wildly active mind, the rope is mindfulness, and the post is your object of meditation, your breathing.
Observe the tactile sensation of the in-breath. Feel the touch sensation of the out-breath. Breathe in, breathe out, and watch what happens. When you have been doing that for some time — perhaps weeks or months — you will begin to sense the touch as a physical object.
Your breathing will slow down, and you will track it more and more clearly, with fewer and fewer interruptions. You begin to experience a state of great calm in which you enjoy complete freedom from those things we called psychic irritants. No greed, lust, envy, jealousy, or hatred. Agitation goes away. Fear flees. These are beautiful, clear, blissful states of mind. They are temporary, and they will end when the meditation ends. Yet even these brief experiences will change your life. This is not liberation, but these are stepping stones on the path that leads in that direction. Do not,
...more
The best way to clarify the mental fluid is to just let it settle all by itself. Don’t add any energy to the situation. Just mindfully watch the mud swirl, without any involvement in the process. Then, when it settles at last, it will stay settled. We exert energy in meditation, but not force. Our only effort is gentle, patient mindfulness.
We withdraw from those events that constantly stimulate the mind. We back out of all that activity that prods the emotions. We go off to a quiet place and we sit still, and it all comes bubbling out. Then it goes away. The net effect is like recharging a battery. Meditation recharges your mindfulness.
Your practice will therefore go best when you are looking forward to sitting.
Give yourself time to incorporate the meditation practice into your life, and let your practice grow gradually and gently.
As your interest in meditation grows, you’ll find yourself making more room in your schedule for practice. It’s a spontaneous phenomenon, and it happens pretty much by itself — no force necessary.
We recommend that after a year or so of steady practice you should be sitting comfortably for an hour at a time.
If you haven’t predetermined a minimum, you’ll find yourself prone to short sessions. You’ll bolt every time something unpleasant comes up or whenever you feel restless. That’s no good. These experiences are some of the most profitable a meditator can face, but only if you sit through them.
But look within and watch the stuff coming up — restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain — just watch it come up and don’t get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.
