Vipassana Meditation

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

Everytime something comes in contact with any of these sense doors – Eyes, Ears, Tongue, Nose, Skin or Mind – there is a sensation on the body corresponding to the external action. The sensation happens and is evaluated by the so called unconscious mind (deeper mind) as either good, bad or neutral.

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.