What is Vipassana Meditation?

A sleeping Buddha image in Ayutthaya. 

In way do I consider myself an expert on Vipassana, or Insight Meditation, but I will attempt to give an explanation based on my experiences with practicing it for the sake of those who might be interested in learning more about this ancient and powerful technique.

Vipassana is not something that you do, it’s something that happens to you when the conditions are right.

Ok, so maybe it's not a technique per se, but there are certainly techniques that lead to these conditions arising. I won't get into the actual techniques of what I practice in this post as much, but more of the philosophy that allows the techniques to be effective. 

So what happens?

I “practice” meditation a lot, but a lot of the time, I am unable to enter the state of clear-seeing that is vipassana. My mind is not yet trained enough to be able to get to that state very easily, and the more I try to make it happen, the further away it seems to be. When the conditions are right, I enter a state of seeing and knowing. Not like I know something that I can put my finger on, but more of an understanding.

The mind is a tricky thing. It likes to play games and it works in patterns. Insight meditation looks to dive into these inner workings of the mind by using the tools available to us. These tools are intention, willingness, and observation. Just like a skilled laborer, the meditator can apply these tools to see the nature of the mind. But there is a condition—there is always a condition— and the mind is not granted the opportunity to observe in any given moment. Certain factors are usually required before we are able to observe any aspect of our direct experience as it is happening. When something startling happens, the jolt can be so great as to create a sudden experience of awareness. You can think of a time when you had a near death experience, or a near car accident, or something that really rattled the cage.

Intention is a common predecessor to observation. When we set the intention to be mindful, it acts as a reminder, and as we find out, mindfulness is a lot like remembering the present from moment to moment. It’s sort of like the empty stomach of the hawk that acts as a constant reminder for the hawk to keep its eye on the prey. If we don’t know that we want to be observant, chances are, we won’t be. The mind has a million other things that are waiting to take the center stage, and those things don’t require any effort. Observation requires effort. That’s why we call meditation a practice. It’s not something that you just go and do, it’s something that you work toward, and the more you exercise the muscle of mindfulness the stronger it becomes.

Especially at first, the challenge is so great that it is easy to give up.

Willingness is the difference between experimenting and practicing. I think most people, especially in the west, come to meditation as an experiment. They want to see what it’s like, and when they quickly discover how difficult it can be, suffering overcomes curiosity and they stop meditating. Or maybe they sit once a month, but can never seem to lock it in.

The first couple of years were like this for me. I was attracted to meditation for various reasons, but none of them gave me the willingness necessary to actually do much sitting. I liked to read a lot of books about the philosophy of mindfulness and talk about it with friends and strangers, but the actual amount of time I spent sitting in silence was next to nothing. This is because I had no idea what was meditation was supposed to be like and was lying to myself about the success of my sessions. “That was a good mediation,” I’d say to myself, even though I couldn’t make myself sit for longer than 10 minutes...

Now I understand that there is no such thing as a good meditation. "Good" is just a label that the mind likes to put on things that it finds favorable. Good doesn’t exist in reality, and as it turns out, discovering reality is really the reason why meditation seems to be worth all the trouble. So now with a new found purpose, other than experimenting with some heady philosophical concepts of what meditation is all about, I find myself much more willing to endure great amounts of suffering for small glimpses of truth and freedom. And what I used to think was something of magic, now seems to be very straightforward and practical, as vipassana allows you to see, step by step, how the mind works, thus allowing you the opportunity to find freedom from those activities which prevent you from understanding reality.

Finally, when the conditions are right, observation happens. When I stopped lying to myself about the success of my meditations, I realized that I wasn’t meditating at all, but rather, that I was just sitting there drifting in neural space. This is usually what happens for me, to this day, when the conditions for observation aren’t right. I say that there needs to be intention and willingness, but beyond that, I don’t always know what’s preventing me from being able to observe. As I said before, once you are able to observe, things become clear, and you can understand why things are and aren’t happening. But until that observation occurs, you are largely in the dark, feeling around for the light switch.

My guess is that it has something to do with how many layers of dark clouds are already hovering over your mind. If it is too thick, all the intention and willingness in the world won’t necessarily grant you the ability to observe the present moment. There are days like this for me, when I just can’t seem to be able to focus, no matter how many times I keep coming back to that intention to do so.

So what happens when we are granted the ability to observe?

Well, a lot can happen, but basically, a space-time event occurs and then we have a reaction to it. These events are occurring all the time, but we rarely realize they are even happening. That’s not to say that we didn’t sense the event, but that we weren’t aware of our reaction to it. In mindfulness, both the event and the reaction need to be observed, otherwise, we are just asleep at the wheel.

One thing I like about visiting some of these ancient
ruins is the serenity expressed on the Buddha images.

When we become aware of an event as it happens, our interpretation of it comes in three different flavors, according to the Buddha. It can either be pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant (neutral). From this initial interpretation, a whole chain reaction of mental activity is spawned. The way this works is interesting to watch, and when you see how one thing leads to another, it sort of makes sense out of presumed randomness.

Oftentimes, I miss many of the steps along the way, as my mind drifts from concentration and into chatter mode, but when I snap out of La La Land, I can remember the spark that got the story going, connect the dots, and it all makes sense again.

There’s not anything specifically special about the mental events that take place during meditation, they are largely the same types of events that take place all day everyday, but they just tend to go unnoticed. So rather than the goal of meditation to experience peace while we are sitting cross-legged in silence, the goal        becomes to be aware of every waking moment of our lives. This is when meditation really becomes a practice and not just an experiment.

Here is an everyday experience that has nothing to do with meditation itself.

Jill is walking down the street. She sees a dog, and even though the dog doesn’t look the same as hers, it reminds her of her dog. Then she realizes she forgot to reschedule the appointment for her dog to see the vet about his foot problem. Feet. My feet hurt, she comes to realize as she walks, these shoes are old, and I should buy new ones. Then she sees an old car and realizes that her car is old too, and that is why she is walking, because it broke down last month. I need to buy a new car, but all of that debt to pay first! And then, last night’s argument over debt with her husband takes the center stage right as Jill is crossing the street and a honking car swerves out of the way at the last second and Jill finally wakes up from her dream.

Isn’t this madness?

Absolutely! But is it random? Not exactly, it’s easy to see how certain conditions were present that caused one train of thought to turn into the next. Not only that, but you can imagine these issues with debt and her problem with her husband are floating around and prone to popping up on a frequent basis.

Going back to the two sides of the observation coin, it is pretty easy to see how Jill sensed the event (the event being the sight of the dog), but wasn’t aware of her reaction to it, which lead to the ever so common chain-reaction. The scary part is that it took Jill almost getting hit by a car to snap out of it. If there wouldn’t have been a car there, and the street was clear, she would have just kept right on going, and 20 steps later, who knows, maybe she was thinking about what she should get her husband for his upcoming birthday, something that won’t break the bank but that will get her on his good side a bit. Of course, there's also the chance the car didn't see her in time and ran her over.

Yes, a lack of mindfulness can get you killed!

This is largely how we go about living out our daily lives--being led around by our minds without realizing it. Having a daily meditation practice, more than anything, just acts as a reminder that this is the state of my life. It hasn’t really changed the mental activity all that much, but has just offered more reminders of how ridiculous it really is. On a good day, I can string these moments of mindfulness together and experience peace and clarity. But not everyday is good and to constantly be reminded of how poorly you are practicing can be dis-heartening.

So that’s where the next step in the process comes into play, acceptance. If observation happens, but the observer cannot or will not accept what is being observed, nothing is gained (insight), or lost (madness), and things quickly go back to the level of unconscious auto-pilot. Chances are, Jill, after being startled by the honking car, was back to her normal unconscious auto-pilot mode within a few seconds of being woken up from it. That’s because the truth of what tends to be realized when we observe things as they are in their environment can be hard to accept, and unless we have some idea of how we can practice acceptance, we probably just won’t. Not only that, but being lost in thought is so normal, that any glimpse into reality can be seen as nothing more than an accident rather than a realization.

The thing about acceptance is that it is very humbling. It tears you down and breaks you apart. It’s like shining the light into the back of the closet to look for something. As soon as we find what we are looking for, we turn the light off and pretend that we never saw just how dirty it was back there. We go back to our routine and the contents of what was revealed are quickly forgotten, but somewhere in the back of our minds we know what is waiting for us, and we know what we have to do.

Acceptance is finally facing that which you know awaits you, but you've been in denial about. Sometimes, for me, it can also result in surrender. When what I have to accept is a big load, the only thing I can do is get down on my hands and knees and cry it out. Not out of sadness, but as a way to finally let go of what I've been holding on to. Those moments have truly been some of the most beautiful moments of my entire life. 

The longer you go without cleaning something, the harder it becomes to make yourself do. Meditation can be a lot of like cleaning. The more often you do it, the easier it is to keep things clean. If you keep putting it off and putting it off, you end up with a huge burden to try to get back to a clean slate. In my experience, I let something go like that when I am not able to admit that it is in fact a reality. At one point in time, I think I had gotten to be an expert at shielding myself from the truth.

Now, it’s a little harder to trick myself, and when I try, I become uneasy.

Just because it’s easier for me to see how my mind plays tricks on me, doesn’t mean I always am willing to accept that that’s what’s happening.

If I had to guess why this is, I’d say it’s probably due my own personal tendency to beat myself up over what I’ve uncovered. Kindness is probably the most important step of the entire process, and although it’s the last, it’s also the only one that can work on it’s own without the others. You can have intention, but without willingness, your intention will quickly fade. You can have willingness, but without observation, you’ll never understand what the point is. You can observe, but if you don’t accept what’s happening, it’s just like turning the lights back off after you've finally found the switch. And if you can accept what you see after the lights are on, but you can’t respond with kindness, love and compassion--for both you and those around you--then it would have been better if you had never found the switch in the first place. If you run around blind your whole life, and never find the switch, but you practice kindness for both yourself and others, you are much closer to enlightenment than the person who can see, but has no love.

Some of the most destructive humans in history have been very great observers and acceptors, but they never found the final step of kindness, and were overcome with desire, greed, and hatred. Again, it would have better if these people never had tapped into the power of mindfulness in the first place.

If you are going to turn on the light, you better be willing to respond with compassion to whatever you see.

If you’re not, maybe the timings not right for you to start looking for the switch. Then again, sometimes kindness ends up being the only logical solution after going through steps 1 through 4. In fact, I’d say that’s how was able to invite kindness into my life. But then again, that was never my intention, and I never knew it was even an option. Maybe I just got lucky.

So now that you know the importance of kindness, you can choose to practice it with every step of the way. When your concentration slips, and you find yourself lost in thought, practice kindness. Don’t be hard on yourself. It happens to everyone!

When you are disappointed in the fact that you caught yourself being hard on yourself for not being able to concentrate, practice kindness.

When you become frustrated after your attempt to practice kindness is consumed with the more powerful fealing of defeat that arose when you weren’t able to refrain from being disappointed because your concentration slipped, and now you’re just disappointed because you can’t even practice kindness correctly, practice kindness.

Do you see what I’m saying?

So I realize now after writing 2,500 words that I still haven’t really offered any sort of tangible definition to what Vipassana Mediation really is, but I think I’m okay with that. It’s not something that you should be able to put your finger on. It’s something that you need to practice, if you want to invite the light of awareness into your life in hopes of being able to effect the change that you wish you see in the world. Sure, there are other practices and other paths--this is just one--but for me, this is the one that seems to fit the best with my analytical type of mind.

My friend finding a moment of peace at Sukhothai Historical Park. 

As much as I liked the ideas surrounding mystical realization from meditation, this practical approach to “waking up” just makes more sense to me. Intention, willingness, observation, acceptance, and kindness can be thought of all the fluids that keep your car going: gas, oil, water, grease, etc. But just because your car is in running condition doesn't mean you won't drive it off a cliff or run over some lady lost in thought. In my next post, I will write a little more about the actual techniques I use to keep me between the lanes, that is, when the conditions are right for me to even be able to do so. 

Please share your thoughts and experiences with meditation in the space for comments below!