How does “Insight” fit into the meditation systems

Q&A: How does Vipassana fit into the stages of meditation?

Master Culadasa explains the path of insight from its beginnings to the ultimate awakening. This is a continuation of the question on what happens after the nine levels. He goes on to give more details on the experience of awakening.

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Culadasa: Let's just talk about how insight is achieve what that, what the nature of that insight is relatively important insight and how that culminates. And so I think that I think the most important thing that is necessary before insight connect. Is essentially stagnated. It's so many things and that through the download, we look at it and the beginning and the end of the same thing where there are different degrees of the same thing, but Benny, the beginning of any path or insight is a change and the way a person regards themselves and.

And of course the final stage that culmination of one side is that same thing that a much deeper level, but the first is which you can understand to intellectual reflection that although I think of myself as a, an of being living and a universe made up of many other separate and discreet answers.

Which I ended rat. If I reflect, I realize that is all and imprints are storytelling by the mine there as what my entire existence has consisted of is a series of experiences. It Buddha the Buddhist, the quarter of the Buddhist teaching, kind of Janney, as they pointed out that Dean and experience are Imam.

And then all of this good chains of being, and any other terms are just so sorry, is that the mind makes up what your entire life has consisted of is a sequence of experiences and what those experiences consist out is consciousness. And whatever is being taken as the object of consciousness in that experience in that moment.

So the beginning of insight is, and this kind of comes spontaneously. If you sit down and just meditate for long enough, and you're watching your graph and you're watching this and you're watching that, eventually it will Dawn on you that all that's happening here. I'm conscious that this object and then it passes away and something else rises up the minute passes away and something else by itself.

And then you notice that yeah, on there, connectedly charting the sensation of the fly landing, unmarked border head triggers. The next object of consciousness, which is the perception of the fly, which is followed by the next , which is the feeling of annoyance, which is followed by the next outfits of consciousness, which is the urge to brush it away.

And then if you actually performed an action, the object of consciousness is an intention. And then the next thing that follows is not any self doing anything, but right. Sensations of correspond to the body, pairing out action. So one approach to repasado is just tell somebody to sit down long enough.

They'll eventually they start to figure this out, but the shark of is finished this note in the beginning that, every reflect that your life is a series of experiences that they're causally connected to. There's both immediate causality, one moment for the next, but also there is a longer term pause, Alec, how you may react in this moment may be determined by experiences that you had.

And sometime in the past last week, last year on your two years old, who knows, but it doesn't matter attack. When you reflect even more, are you really. All of these experiences and the past and some bigger and other are influencing the experiences and you have in the present moment. And the reaction of your mind would present experiences is the south outed, which together with the past video, a little bit a part of the whole thing where it determines what you're experiencing, like future date.

So at that point you have attained with purification or. You retained the right view, but it allows you to began to penetrate more deeply in terms of the cultivation or insight. So usually traditionally it said that the insights that your actor are the inside of answer, the three characteristics that all phenomena, which you have to understand phenomena and and booted out.

Is, are these mental events, right? But by which you experience thing, whether it's the idea of something that you think exists, or whether it's a sensory experience, all of these are phenomenon and that the characteristic of all phenomenon is that they are in permanent and that they are empty.

As you said, in meditation. Once you have the right view when you began to realize that for example, you'll notice that sensations just come and go a constant flux and there is no permanent empathy in those sensations that all qualities of stinkiness where they're St before.

Some sort of temporal temporarily enduring substance or thing or object that is identified and associated with particular qualities, that this is all something that is actually projected by the mind to explain the sequence of sensations that are paying. And of course your line does a beautiful job of creating a coherent explanation based on all of your past experience.

And so at some point you will realize that everything is impermanent and that everything is mine, V8, that whatever the source views, all the sensations that you experienced. That near my out of those sensations manufacturers, the reality. And then this insight, when you carry it over into all the rest of your experiences, you, you realize that's why different people experience different things in their ways.

Every one of us, every person is doing the same thing that I am doing. Their mine is creating a reality to account for sensitive. At the level of, at the most basic level, all of our minds are very similar. So all of our minds and struck things that are very similar. So in terms of the most fundamental characteristics by which read this.

Our projected and external world, which is actually internal world. There's a lot of conventional reality because we can talk about an object like this, and we can agree on all kinds of its characteristic. And we compare our experiences, but

reality and forces far more elaborate than the description of individual objects. Certainly. And as soon as we knew to site and more complex level of reality, we re we just started were outside of the realm of conventional reality. There is no conventional reality back the level of values and judgments that we all have different values and judgment.

Part of. Our experience or our conventional reality includes those sayings. So they're not shared. And so if you get into one review, where that be video of that, we realize that things are not only is our mind and God pain with you over the universe. If we stick to just simple objects and the fact that we all see them in the same way, we might think that.

Our mind, you must be doing a really good job in producing a very accurate version of what's out there. And so therefore there must be an out there that corresponds per my vision and here, but when we look at it beyond just the most, very simple level, we discovered that's not true, that everyone is living in a different world than in reality.

The same thing happens to two people and then experience in very bad. Sorry, we've discovered that it is empty. The discovery of impermanence is not that there are gearing things that are come into existence last little while and then disappear is that everything was in blocks. If we begin to examine our minds, first we noticed that all sensation, Hans knowledge.

And we observed the sensation of your breath or the rise and fall of your abdomen or anything. And you'll see that all sensations are consents continually in flux. And the closest there is to any thickness Islam and in them is that there are certain patterns that your mind was capable of recognizing them that recur, but otherwise sensation, but realm of form is not been good.

And then when we began to reflect introspectively and we watch our mind, as our mind is constantly generating reality. we see the same thing that these metal objects that were, that I account for everything, the same thing that they are continuously changing. If we turn this from the external world for the examination of.

And we look for the self. We think we are the self that we think we are. There's that sense that it's permanent and it's men and I'm as long as I can remember, and I expect it to continue being there. So I have a sense of the software has permanent. And I also think of this cell that I have, or that are.

As being separate and distinct independent that myself, the one that my thing is really player as a whatever, and myself, it is separate and distinct from those things that are not solved, but very much defined this the way it is a separate. And the other thing is that this self is unitary, that there is just one of the.

And in terms of the permanence, it's always been the same one of me. So if we examine our sense of self, we find that, and then we say to ourselves okay, this is the self that I believe that I am and not, I feel like I am, and what is its function? The self is the experiencer and the self is the doer.

So in the next stage of. It's easier to sit. It's easy comparatively to see that the world is actually empty. And the sense that we have does not have a nature from its own side of the self existent nature of being the way, our mind projected activity that we can see. And if we practice a lot, then we can see it more and more often.

But as it is, magnitudes are zippered all the more difficult. You get past this feeling that we are a permanent unitary and separate cell, that is the experiencer of all of these sayings. And who's the decision maker and intender and initiator of our activity. So this is the really difficult one for us to work on, but when we examine it, would you say.

Observe what's taking place and our mind moment by moment while meditating not motivated. And of course we can supplement this with various kinds of analysis, but we have to do analysis and observation. We go in search are the permanent, separate and changings and pertinent, separate and unitary.

Everywhere. We look, it's not there because we find that the description of self we come up with is constantly changing. But we are at different self at different times and different circumstances and at best, whatever it is, that these five aggregates is constantly modifying and chain being changed.

Things external to it and buck hangs in smell it. And what you do discover is that there is a continuity and B in the sequence of experiences that makes us up there is caught. There is positive continuity, but we find that the aspect of permanence dissolves and disappears, and there is only a causal or Heimlich auth.

And here the two is as we go into it more deeply. One of the things that we will discover through direct observation is that there is no experiencer that when we look, we'll see, there are all those instances where we are seeing whether there's no sear, we're thinking that there's no thinker we're hearing, but there's no.

And we will notice that the hearer, that the cell, the idea of who we are is actually a separate mental object that arises independently of me saying, and painting, and is taken as an object. And that our mind creates a story that this, that, that makes us self when, to the peer or the seer and the thinker.

And so it's very important when we discovered. Likewise. When we examined carefully, we looked at pretty arising intentions and we see that the intentions are rise from a seemingly from nowhere is any attention and tension arises. And pers we look at that and we find that the source of that intentional museum that we called that chain of causality that leads to the present.

And the interpretation of the present experience on the basis of past gives rise, Shannon attention. What happens then is a sense of self or rises and appropriates the intention and says this as, as well. This happened to me, I feel this way about it. So I'm going to do such and such. And you can see that happening when you see that happening and you see you at the cell is just another netball object, another mental projection that is not always there.

It's only sometimes there is generated that sort of time. All of a sudden you have really deep insight and to the emptiness itself. And the other insight that needs to come with theories is recognizing that In a world and emptiness occupied by nothing but a mind projected cell, the self is empty and the world is empty that if the mine cleans for anything, it's trying to be like clinging to a clinging, to a branch per raising the glaze or playing to a burning firebrand.

It's only been only POS pain. And. All of these desires and fears and hopes and intentions that are based around a cell that doesn't really have a substantial existence of itself. Likewise can only lead to disappointment, frustration after pain and suffering. So this is in the prospect progress of insight.

We've come to recognize the impermanence of. And the mama of Manville Audra, we've come to recognize the emptiness of the apparent external reality and of yourself. And you've come to realize the inevitability of suffering. If you have a mind that grasp and thanks to these things and generates desire and aversion out of that, now insight comes in different at different levels.

This is profound insight. You can understand this intellectually and very. The second level is a Yukon. Why repeatedly bringing yourself into awareness of this and applying your intellectual, understanding over and over again, to rare experience, then this begins to change your intuitive view of reality.

So then now Assad, just an intellectual plane, but you intuitively recognize the acting assets things in may emptiness. But there is still nevertheless, there is still this working of your mind that still believes in itself, even though it sees that things are empty, both Amul actually theoretically would and generates emotions and emotional reactions from that very weak place, including desire and version held a man assertions of favor.

So the culmination of pants. Is when you have a direct experience of one finder and neither that basically penetrates to this fleet, this level at a erratic pace, the attachment to the self view and eradicates the attachment sort of view of things as being self resistant. And that is the primary factor that is eliminated going in first time or cheeks.

And terms of any of these paths, we're going to go through the same process. So a combination of analysis and observation, we are going to refine our view and then we're going to move and we find our understanding of the three characteristics. And then we are going to apply that whichever we'd bring the mind for a place that can undergo this profound change and fascinating.


Added at Sept. 26, 2020
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