My
understanding of Vipassana Meditation thus far:
All of us
have 6 sense doors:
- Eyes to See
- Ears to Hear
- Tongue to Taste
- Nose to Smell
- Skin to Touch
- Mind to Think
For
example you hear a pleasant smell of a perfume, a sensation happens on the body
due to the smell (particularly in the nose area), the deeper mind evaluates the
sensation and says “Good, get more of it”!
OR,
you see something unpleasant, let’s say a high beam of light of a car pointing
straight at you in the night while driving, a sensation happens on the eyes and
the body, the deeper mind evaluates the sensation and says “Bad, get away or
throw foul words at the person”.
OR,
someone abuses you, the sensation of anger runs all over the body, the deeper
mind evaluates and unpleasant sensation and says “Bad, how can this man say such
words to me? Retaliate”!
OR,
a thought about something come into your head, a pleasant memory of your
childhood or past, you get a pleasant sensation on the body, the deeper mind
evaluates and says “Good, keep thinking”!
OR,
an unpleasant emotion, an emotion of sadness due to some incident comes, the
body generates sensations due to this sad emotion, the deeper mind evaluates
and says “Bad, yet attractive, remain sad for some more time”.
OR,
you see your roommate, nothing ordinary or extraordinary, just a neutral
sensation on the body, the deeper mind evaluates and says “Neutral, I am
indifferent. Do whatever you wish”!
And
many, many more…
Depending on
the evaluation of these sensations on the body by the unconscious mind, our
conscious mind reacts in a habitual manner. For example if you think deeply,
you will find that you act or rather react to most situations in life in an
automatic, habitual manner. The habit pattern is created and accumulated over
all the sum total of interactions you had in the past. Having given that
background, what we do by Vipassana Meditation is to try to break the old habit
pattern of the mind. Why break it? Because the old habit pattern of the mind
which can be summed up as ‘generating
craving for good bodily sensations and generating aversion for bad bodily
sensations’ leads only to accumulation of misery and nothing else. The more
the craving, the more the aversion the more we are miserable. Think of the last
time you remained sad because you missed someone too much or the last time your
stomach became upset because you ate too much because of craving for tasty food.
Basically the
bodily sensations are the key source where the unconscious mind starts
generating craving or aversion to good or bad sensations. However the truth
about these body sensations is that untimately all these sensations come, stay
for a while and go away. No anger, fear, sadness, lust etc stays forever. All
these sensations that happen on the body come, stay for a while and go away.
And so in
Vipassana we observe sensations happening on the body (and they are happening
on your body even as you read this text because the all sense doors are
functioning continuously).
By observing
the body sensations, the outer mind is made sharper and sharper to be in
continuous contact with these sensations all the times. As a result of continuous
practice, when the time arrives for the mind to react in the same old way, it
stops for a moment, observes the body sensations and says “What the hell, this fear
is only a sensation on the body and all these sensations are temporary, they
just arise and go away. Why react. Let me see how long it lasts.”!
The moment
this starts to happen (and this happens), the mind develops the faculty of
awareness and starts to remain equanimous under all situations. As you already
must be aware of, life is a sine wave, life situations come and go. The mind
learns to stay afloat and not get affected as the waves that go up or down. In
a way with continuous practice, the mind is purified of all its misery
generating habits.
