In answer to the title…well, that depends on the practitioner. However, Insight meditation does aspire to it, although perhaps to a different version of it than does the yoga meditation of my last post.

So, to get down to basics, Insight meditation is a contemporary name for Vipassana Meditation, which is a Theravada Buddhist form of meditation often translated as “clear-seeing.” This, of course, doesn’t mean its practitioners possess 20/20 vision, rather they strive to comprehend the true nature of reality. How to accomplish this? Through mindfulness, through seated meditation, and through awareness of the Three Marks of Existence. Namely, they work at liberating themselves from emotional suffering (dukkha), through awareness that there is no real self (anatta) and through awareness that everything is impermanent (anicca).

As Buddhist monk Bhanta Henepola Gunaratana puts it in an online Tricycle article, “Vipassana meditation is a process of retraining the mind. The state you are aiming for is one in which you are totally aware of everything that is happening in your own perceptual universe, exactly the way it happens, exactly when it is happening; total, unbroken awareness in present time.” https://tricycle.org/magazine/vipassana-meditation/

The Role of Dukkha

Insight meditation holds that our minds play an integral role in shaping our experiences into negative ones such as judgmentalism and stress, or into positive ones such as compassion and tranquility. In other words, our reactions to events either promote positive responses that are inherently healthy for us and those around us, or negative responses that encourage dissatisfaction, jealousy, feelings of aggrievement, etc.  In Buddhist terminology this is called dukkha. It’s suffering or dissatisfaction that we ourselves create.

The Role of Anatta

In addition to an understanding that we generate our own feelings of dissatisfaction is the belief, called Anatta, that there’s no permanent self.  It’s believed that our personality evolves from our previous reactions to events, to societal and familiar conditioning, and to habits and addictions from previous lives that continue to crave fulfillment.

The Role of Anicca

Finally, Buddhists hold that all physical and mental events and beings are in a constant state of flux. All come into being and all dissolve. Think, for instance of the human life span. Think of the lifespan of a thought. It is, therefore, a mistake to attempt to cling to anything or anyone.

The Role of Mindfulness

A second element to Insight Meditation is cultivating mindfulness, which means being aware of the present moment rather than floating wherever our thoughts take us. We cultivate awareness of our consciousness itself, rather than upon the thoughts that move about within it.

To paraphrase Buddhist author Domyo Sater Burk, if you wish to be truly happy, you should relax into the flow of life and meet each thing as it comes– without trying to hold on it or to find permanent satisfaction in it. The contentment that one eventually can achieve derives simply from the joy of being alive.

How to do It:

Focus on your breathing as it relates to your body:

-the lengths of your respirations and exhalations, the warmth, the coolness, the areas of the nose, throat, abdomen, etc. that are affected by or connected to breathing. As Gunaratana puts, it, “Make it into something you’re doing with the whole body…Try to release your sense of an I who is separate from the breathing.”

As your practice develops, move to other areas of the body, focusing upon specific areas. Eventually move inward to the organs.

Contemplate one’s emotions:

Notice your emotions coming and going, but try not to be drawn into them. Rather, examine the reason behind them, their root cause. Realize that many strong emotions are sparked by accumulated emotional baggage within yourself. As you become more aware of your negative mental and emotional states, and eventually succeed at eliminating them, work at filling the void with positive ones.

The Net Result

You become the next Buddha!!!

Well, okay…probably not. However, you will learn to temper your emotions, assume more control over your thoughts, and better control how your consciousness experiences reality. At odd moments, moments that increase in frequency, you’ll soon find a sense of peace pervading your being.

As the poet William Ernest Henley put it in his poem, “Invictus”:

…”It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”