Vipassana meditation: Essence of Buddhism

S.M. Wijayaratne
Kurunegala Daily News Corr

Vipassana is the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices. The method comes directly from the Satipatthana Sutta, a discourse attributed to the Buddha Himself. Vipassana is a direct and gradual cultivation of mindfulness or awareness. It proceeds piece by piece over a period of years. The pupil’s attention is carefully directed to an intense examination of certain aspects of his own existence.

Gauthama Buddha who was born into this world 2,635 years ago made the most exciting revolution in the way of thinking of man. We celebrate the 2,600th anniversary of this greatest psychologist’s attaining perfect Enlightenment this year.

He showed the human beings and deities the way to liberation from never-ending birth and death cycle. Although 2,555 years have passed after His passing away, still millions of devotees all over the world honour Him with great devotion for His right vision and wisdom that led His followers towards perfection.

The Buddha was the first to discover the Vipassana meditation. Vipassana means ‘insight” in the ancient Pali language of India. It is the essence of the teaching of the Buddha, the actual experience of the truths of which He spoke.

The Buddha Himself attained that experience by the practice of meditation, and therefore meditation is what he primarily taught. His words are records of his experiences in meditation, as well as detailed instructions on how to practice in order to reach the goal He had attained, the experience of truth.

Instructions

This much is widely accepted, but the problem remains of how to understand and follow the instructions given by the Fully-Awakened One. While His words have been preserved in texts of recognised authenticity, the interpretation of the Buddha’s mediation instructions is difficult without the context of a living practice. But if a technique exists that has been maintained for unknown generations, that offers the very results described by the Buddha and if it conforms precisely to His instructions and elucidates points in them that have long seemed obscure, then that technique is surely worth investigating.

Vipassana is such a method. It is a technique extraordinary in its simplicity, it’s lack of all dogma and above all in the results it offers.

Mindfulness

Vipassana is the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices. The method comes directly from the Satipatthana Sutta, a discourse attributed to the Buddha Himself. Vipassana is a direct and gradual cultivation of mindfulness or awareness.

It proceeds piece by piece over a period of years. The pupil’s attention is carefully directed to an intense examination of certain aspects of his own existence.

The meditator is trained to notice more and more of his own flowing life experience. It is an ancient and codified system of sensitivity training, a set of exercises dedicated to becoming more and more receptive to your own life experience. It is attentive listening, total seeing and careful testing. We learn to smell acutely, to touch fully and really pay attention to what we feel. We learn to listen to our own thoughts without being caught up in them.

Ego

Through the process of mindfulness, we slowly become aware of what we really are down below the ego image. We wake up to what life really is. It is not just a parade of ups and downs, lollipops and smacks on the wrist. That is an illusion. Life has a much deeper texture than that if we bother to look, and if we look in the right way.

Vipassana is a form of mental training that will teach you to experience the world in an completely new way. You will come to know for he first time what is truly happening to you. around you and within you.

Self discovery

It is a process of self-discovery, a participatory investigation in which you observe your own experiences while participating in them, and as they occur. The practice must be approached with this attitude. From the Buddhist point of view, human beings live in a very peculiar fashion. We view impermanent things as permanent, although everything is changing all around us. The process of change is constant and eternal. As you read these words, your body is ageing. But you pay no attention to that.

The newspaper in your hand is decaying. The print is fading and the pages are becoming brittle. The walls around you are ageing. The molecules within those walls are vibrating at an enormous rate, and everything is shifting, going to pieces and dissolving slowly. You pay no attention to that, either.

Then one day you look around you. Your body is wrinkled and squeaky and you are hurt.

So, you pine for lost youth and you cry when the possessions are gone. Where does this pain come from? It comes from your own inattention. You failed to look closely at life. You failed to observe the constantly shifting flow of the world as it went by.

Symphony

You set up the collection of mental constructions, “me”, “the newspaper’, “ the building” and you assumed that those were solid, real entities. You assumed that they would exist forever. They never do. But you can tune into the constantly ongoing change. You can learn to perceive your life as an ever - flowing movement, a thing of great beauty like a dance or symphony.

You can learn to take joy in the perpetual passing away of all phenomena. You can learn to live with the flow of existence rather than running perpetually against the grain. You can learn this. It is just a matter of time and training.

May you all be well and happy!