INTRODUCTION TO SUCCESSFUL INSIGHT MEDITATION
INTRODUCTION TO VIPASSANA INSIGHT MEDITATION
Instead of just telling you at first how to sit and then how to breathe and try to start you off with the actual meditations, it is always best if you understand why you are doing these strange things. So we will begin with this introduction concerning the structure of INSIGHT meditation and in a later lesson begin with the actual method in detail for sitting in meditation.
The structure of the Samatha Tranquility meditation is quite easy to understand, but the Insight Meditation is quite complex. So, before we begin the detailed teaching regarding the Vipassana meditation, it is useful to understand the Fire Sermon, which explains why such meditations are important for liberation.
This prologue to the Fire Sermon is then here presented for your appraisal.
You will find the language strange and to the modern mind it is quite repetitive, but at that same time it gives an idea of the intensity of practices during Buddha's time, which has been lost today.
What I would like you to do is read it carefully. The task is not as easy as it may seem, but it is a fitting prelude to the attention you must pay to any meditation teaching.
At the time of the Buddha there lived in Uruvela the Jatilas, Brahmana hermits with matted hair, worshipping the fire and keeping a fire-dragon. Kassapa was their chief. He was renowned throughout India, honoured as one of the wisest men on earth and regarded as an authority on religion. He had 500 followers.
The Buddha after the rain period day went to Kassapa and said, 'Let me stay at night in the room where you keep your sacred fire.'
Kassapa, seeing the Blessed One, thought to himself: 'This is a great sage, and a noble teacher. Should he stay overnight in the room where the sacred fire is kept, the serpent will bite him and he will die.' And he said to the Buddha, 'I do not object to your staying overnight in the room where the sacred fire is kept, but the serpent lives there; he will kill you and I should be sorry to see you perish.'
But the Buddha insisted and Kassapa admitted him to the room where the sacred fire was kept.
The Buddha sat with full mindfulness.
At night (allowing here a little poetic license) the huge serpent appeared before the Buddha, angrily belching forth his fiery poison, filling the air with burning vapour, but could do him no harm, and the fire consumed itself while the Buddha remained composed. And the venomous fiend became so very angry that he died in his anger.
At night Kassapa saw light shining forth from the room, he said, 'Alas, what a mystery! Truly the countenance of Shakyamuni is handsome, but the serpent will destroy him.'
In the morning the Buddha showed the dead body of the serpent to Kassapa, saying: 'His fire has been conquered by my fire.'
And Kassapa thought to himself, 'Shakyamuni is a great Sramana and possesses high powers, but he is not holy like me.'
Those were the days of a festival, and Kassapa thought: 'The people will come here from all parts of the country and will see the great Shakyamuni. When he speaks to them they will believe in him and abandon me.' And he grew envious.
When the day of the festival arrived, the Blessed One understood, and did not come to Kassapa. And Kassapa went to the Buddha the following morning, and said, 'Why did the great Shakyamuni not come?'
The Buddha replied: 'Did you not think, O Kassapa, that it would be better, if I stayed away from the festival?' And Kassapa was astonished and thought: 'Great is Shakyamuni; he can read my most secret thoughts, but he is not holy like me.' And the Buddha addressed Kassapa and said: 'You see the truth, but do not accept it because of the envy that dwells in your heart. Is envy holiness? Envy is the last remnant of the ego that has lingered in your mind. You are not holy, Kassapa, you have not entered the path.'
Then Kassapa gave up his resistance. His envy disappeared, and bowing down before the Buddha he said, 'Lord, our Master, let me receive the ordination from the Blessed One.'
And the Buddha said, 'You, Kassapa, are the chief of Jatilas. Go, then, inform them of your intention, and then decide on what is fit to be done.'
Then Kassapa went to the Jatilas and said: 'I am anxious to lead a religious life under the direction of the great Shakyamuni, who is the Enlightened One, the Buddha. Do as you think best.' And the Jatilas replied, 'We have conceived a profound affection for the great Shakyamuni, and if you will join his brotherhood, we will do likewise.' The Jatilas of Uruvela now flung their paraphernalia of fire-worship into the river and went to the Buddha.
Nadi Kassapa with 300 followers and Gaya Kassapa with two hundred followers, brothers of the great Uruvela Kassapa, powerful men and chieftains among the people, were dwelling downstream of the river, and when they saw the instruments used in fire-worship floating in the river, they said, 'Something has happened to our brother.' And they came with their folk to Uruvela. Hearing what had happened they too went to the Buddha.
The Blessed One, the Buddha, seeing that the Jatilas of Nadi and Gaya, who had practised severe austerities and worshipped fire, had now come to him, preached the fire sermon:
The task here is not to go into the details of the method but to present an idea of the structure of the meditation, which takes the memory traces which are stored within long-term memory and by meditating upon different streams limited to Sensations, Discriminations, Perceptions, Consciousness (as the mind) and the Contents of Consciousness, as memory traces, allow them to be seen as all products of the mind without external substance.
This allows Cognition the freedom to give low valences to elements which are impediments to natural behaviour. As an example we present the following.
The application of Concentration in Insight Meditation is made easier by previous experiences with Samatha Meditation. However, access can be attained by skilled practice of Mindfulness of Breathing.
In the meditations, the discernments show the arising and passing away at each moment. We call this the rising and falling away of mind moments. They are seen to arise and fall away from the mind without external substance as far as their sense forms are concerned.
This is called the Stage of Reflection.
In this stage there occurs upon discernment a series of clear realizations concerning the illusory true nature of these events. Mind it is said then "begins to know itself." There may occur sharp flashes of light, which should be ignored, and Rapture.
With stability in the perception of the rising and falling away, there arises a strong Mindfulness and Equanimity towards the retrieved traces of the meditation and the Energy used is steady without the presence of stress or tension.
There is a clear understanding that the mind witnessing its own workings is quite different than the final product of Cognition, which is bound by language. It is also quite clear that the Cognitive Self is illusory and that there is a constant Impermanence of all phenomena.
But let the meditator beware, for this is not in any way an Awakening.