Vipassana Quotes

Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind and soul.

Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements.

Self-observation is the first step of inner unfolding.

We all are so deeply interconnected; we have no option but to love all. Be kind and do good for any one and that will be reflected. The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessings of the Universe.

Yoga is the art work of awareness on the canvas of body, mind, and soul.

Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance.

We all are so deeply interconnected; we have no option but to love all.

Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements.

Yoga is not just repetation of few postures - it is more about the exploration and discovery of the subtle energies of life.

Meditate, Visualize and Create your own reality and the universe will simply reflect back to you.

Vipassana meditation is an ongoing creative purification process. Observation of the moment-to-moment experience cleanses the mental layers, one after another.

Searching outside of you is Samsara (the world). Searching within you leads to Nirvana.

Concentration attracts luck factor.

Micro meditations should be performed with very little activity. These practices should not be associated with any goal, concept or belief.

Science of happiness lies in our understanding. The secrets of happiness lie in our capacity to expand our heart.

Anything that arises in the mind will manifest itself as a sensation on the body; if you observe this sensation you are observing both the mind as well as matter.

Learning to look at each second as if it were the first and only second in the universe is essential in vipassana meditation.

There are two types of empathy: the positive empathy and the negative empathy. When we are fully carried away by the unaware activities of the mirror neurons, we are under the trap of negative empathy. The negative empathy generates attachments. Out of these attachments suffering follows. Negative empathy is a kind of reaction to a situation, whereas positive empathy is internal response of peace love and tranquility.... In positive empathy, your deep tranquility, joy and peace activates the mirror neurons of the others, whereas in negative empathy your mirror neurons are activated by the disturbance of others.

Samadhi is the journey from individual to collective consciousness. The steps of Samadhi are the steps towards reaching the collective consciousness. In meditation, the more we radiate love, compassion, peace, harmony and tranquility, the more is our contribution towards the collective consciousness. The more we positively contribute towards the collective consciousness the more is our progress in Samadhi.

The study of modern mindfulness meditation and emotional intelligence is deeply rooted in the ancient Vipassana meditation techniques.

Vipassana meditation is not an intellectual journey but an experiential awakening.

Vipassan meditation is the best way to unlearn old habits of basal ganglia and amygdala, and strengthen the neocortex of the brain.

Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists.

Yoga talks about cat-pose, dog-pose, camel-pose, monkey-pose, bird-pose etc. Why there are so many animal poses? Animals release their emotions and tensions by movements based on their body sensations. But our amygdala in the brain is carrying the “fight or flight response”; it has forgotten the art of releasing the tensions. As human beings, when we are aware about the sensations, we can release that by aware, slow movements. If you do not give movements to the body parts, energy will be stuck and blood circulation will be disturbed. Gradually, that creates chronic physical and mental health problems.

Meditation gives clear understanding about body and brain interface with consciousness

When we are aware about our body’s sensations, we can release physical pain, tensions or stress through slow movements.

The ripples of the kind heart are the highest blessings of the Universe.

Vipassana proponents always stress that if you are insulted by someone and get angry, the result is not the abuser’s fault. It is your fault because you choose to react.

Vipassana meditation is a process by which that concept is dissolved. Little by little, you chip away at it, just by observing it.

The meditation technique called vipassana (insight) that was introduced by the Buddha about twenty-five centuries ago is a set of mental activities specifically aimed at experiencing a state of uninterrupted mindfulness.

One should never try to imagine or create sensations,

Whatever necessities you require, work to get them. If you fail to get something, then smile and try again in a different way. If you succeed, then enjoy what you get, but without attachment.

My friend Joseph Goldstein, one of the finest vipassana teachers I know, likens this shift in awareness to the experience of being fully immersed in a film and then suddenly realizing that you are sitting in a theater watching a mere play of light on a wall.

VIPASSANA MEDITATION is something of a mental balancing act. You are going to be cultivating two separate qualities of the mind—mindfulness and concentration.

Buddhist mindfulness meditation called vipassana, which means “to see clearly

If you don't have the treasure of Noble truth, you are still poor even if you have loads of money and wealth. Because external wealth are belongs to this world. You have to leave them here.

By the second day, the song lyrics had faded, but in their place came darker irritations. Gradually, I started to become aware of a young man sitting just behind me and to the left. I had noticed him when he first entered the mediation hall, and had felt a flash of annoyance at the time: something about him, especially his beard, had struck me as too calculatedly dishevelled, as if he were trying to make a statement. Now his audible breathing was starting to irritate me, too. It seemed studied, unnatural, somehow theatrical. My irritation slowly intensified - a reaction that struck me as entirely reasonable and proportionate at the time. It was all beginning to feel like a personal attack. How much contempt must the bearded meditator have for me, I seethed silently, deliberately to decide to ruin the serenity of my meditation by behaving so obnoxiously? Experienced retreat-goers, it turns out, have a term for this phenomenon. The call it 'vipassana vendetta'. In the stillness tiny irritations become magnified into full-blown hate campaigns; the mind is so conditioned to attaching to storylines that it seizes upon whatever's available. Being on retreat had temporarily separated me from all the real causes of distress in my life, and so, apparently, I was inventing new ones. As I shuffled to my narrow bed that evening, I was still smarting about the loud-breathing man. I did let go of the vendetta eventually - but only because I'd fallen into an exhausted and dreamless sleep

We attach to anything or anybody because we think that they make us happy. We attach to the happiness so much. On the other hand we can say that we only attach to the happiness. Not to anything else or anybody else.

Whom do I love? I love someone because I expect something from that person. I expect him to behave in a way that I like. The moment he starts to behave in a different way, all my love is gone. Then do I really love this person or myself?

We love them those who shown their care to us, We Love them who respect us. We Love them, who help us. But if we don't give all these to them how will they love us, how will they care us. Lets start loving people, respect people, protect them. Help people if need

The quality of mind cultivated in vipassana is almost always referred to as “mindfulness,” and the literature on its psychological benefits is now substantial. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.12

In the case of Vipassanā meditation, since the effort is invested in sharpening the instrument of observation (i.e., attention) and focusing it on physical sensations, while nurturing a realistic and unbiased attitude towards them, the process takes place to a large degree in ways that bypass the intellect.

The advantages of developing absorption concentration are not only that it provides a stable and receptive state of mind for the practice of insight meditation. The experience of absorption is one of intense pleasure and happiness, brought about by purely mental means, which thereby automatically eclipses any pleasure arising in dependence on material objects. Thus absorption functions as a powerful antidote to sensual desires by divesting them of their former attraction.

Dualism will shatter, facade will fade; When thee truly want to know thyself, Truth shall not evade.

COURTESY We never talk ill of a departed soul; our world would be a much nicer place if we extended the same courtesy to those who are yet to depart.

BE HAPPY 90% of our worries are about things that may never happen; the remaining 10% are about things that have already happened.

When you do good, let it be good in line with nature. Don't latch onto the thought that you're good. If you get attached to the idea that you're good, it will give rise to lots of other attachments.

I do not carry anyone on my shoulders to take him to the final goal. Nobody can carry anyone else on his shoulders to the final goal. At most, with love and compassion one can say, ‘Well, this is the path, and this is how I have walked on it. You also work, you also walk, and you will reach the final goal.’ But each person has to walk himself, has to take every step on the path himself. He who has taken one step on the path is one step nearer the goal. He who has taken a hundred steps is a hundred steps nearer the goal. He who has taken all the steps on the path has reached the final goal. You have to walk on the path yourself.”9

Look upon friend and foe with equal regard, be not lifted up by praise or cast down by blame, regard heat and cold, pleasure and pain, honor and dishonor with the same quiet inner eye in harmony with all creation.

Developing awareness, the ability to pay attention, and equanimity—the ability of non-reactivity—are a necessary condition for extrication from blind circular dynamics, which, in their absence, functions as a default option.

Someone who remains satisfied with the superficial pleasures of life is ignorant of the agitation deep within the mind. He is under the illusion that he is a happy person, but his pleasures are not lasting, and the tensions generated in the unconscious keep increasing, to appear sooner or later at the conscious level of the mind. When they do, this so-called happy person becomes miserable. So why not start working here and now to avert that situation?

The only way to experience truth directly is to look within, to observe oneself. All our lives we have been accustomed to look outward. We have always been interested in what is happening outside, what others are doing. We have rarely, if ever, tried to examine ourselves, our own mental and physical structure, our own actions, our own reality. Therefore we remain unknown to ourselves. We do not realize how harmful this ignorance is, how much we remain the slaves of forces within ourselves of which we are unaware.

The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time. In my case I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living. An increasing part of living, at my age, is mere bodily maintenance, which is tiresome. But I cannot find anywhere in my life a time, or a kind of time, that is unoccupied. I am free, but my time is not. My time is fully and vitally occupied with sleep, with daydreaming, with doing business and writing friends and family on email, with reading, with writing poetry, with writing prose, with thinking, with forgetting, with embroidering, with cooking and eating a meal and cleaning up the kitchen, with construing Virgil, with meeting friends, with talking with my husband, with going out to shop for groceries, with walking if I can walk and traveling if we are traveling, with sitting Vipassana sometimes, with watching a movie sometimes, with doing the Eight Precious Chinese exercises when I can, with lying down for an afternoon rest with a volume of Krazy Kat to read and my own slightly crazy cat occupying the region between my upper thighs and mid-calves, where he arranges himself and goes instantly and deeply to sleep. None of this is spare time. I can’t spare it. What is Harvard thinking of? I am going to be eighty-one next week. I have no time to spare.

When you’re worried about something,” said Henry abruptly, “have you ever tried thinking in a different language?” “What?” “It slows you down. Keeps your thoughts from running wild. A good discipline in any circumstance. Or you might try doing what the Buddhists do.” “What?” “In the practice of Zen there is an exercise called zazen—similar, I think, to the Theravadic practice of vipassana. One sits facing a blank wall. No matter the emotion one feels, no matter how strong or violent, one remains motionless. Facing the wall. The discipline, of course, is in continuing to sit.” There was a silence, during which I struggled for language to adequately express what I thought of this goofball advice.

And what causes these reactions? Observing at the deepest level of reality, he understood that reaction occurs because of ignorance. We are unaware of the fact that we react, and unaware of the real nature of what we react to. We are ignorant of the im-permanent, impersonal nature of our existence and ignorant that attachment to it brings nothing but suffering. Not knowing our real nature, we react blindly. Not even knowing that we have reacted, we persist in our blind reactions and allow them to intensify. Thus we become imprisoned in the habit of reacting, because of ignorance. This is how the Wheel of Suffering starts turning: If ignorance arises, reaction occurs; if reaction arises, consciousness occurs; if consciousness arises, mind-and-matter occur; if mind-and-matter arise, the six senses occur; if the six senses arise, contact occurs; if contact arises, sensation occurs; if sensation arises, craving and aversion occur; if craving and aversion arise, attachment occurs; if attachment arises, the process of becoming occurs; if the process of becoming arises, birth occurs; if birth arises, decay and death occur, together with sorrow, lamentation, physical and mental suffering, and tribulations. Thus arises this entire mass of suffering.

Many years passed before I learned of other ways to access the healthy and limitless part of my mind that psychedelic drugs had opened in my youth. In 2001, deep into a Vipassana course, a few days into silence and ten hours a day of meditation, I found myself in a psychedelic state. My body had become nothing but light, I was one with the universe and anything I could imagine was possible. I was a rock in an Alaskan stream purified by the freezing water rushing over me as a massive beautiful brown bear lumbered by. I looked up to see an intricate geometric pattern of shapes in motion in the air above; changing and unfolding, the most beautiful vivid and sharp color combinations to make Josef Albers cry with joy. I realized a profound simplicity of purpose, my focus crystal clear, I saw the beauty in all, and was overwhelmed with love and gratitude for all the joy and pain in my life. In that moment, I learned that no drug was ever necessary for a mind-opening experience.

Every day, whatever you do, you trade a day of your life for it.

To deepen his meditation practice, Mr. Keledjian took a 10-day retreat of guided meditation in complete silence at the Southwest Vipassana Meditation Center in Kaufman, Texas, in 2012. Watching television, reading and even eye contact was forbidden. "I came out of that completely transformed," he says.

Find a sitting position that allows you to be alert—spine erect but not rigid—and also relaxed. Close your eyes and rest your hands in an easy, effortless way. Allow your awareness to scan through your body and, wherever possible, soften and release obvious areas of physical tension.      Because we so easily get lost in thoughts, vipassana begins with attention to the breath. Using the breath as a

Vipassana is a practice done with the specific intention of facing reality, to fully experience life just as it is and to cope with exactly what you find. It allows you to blow aside the illusions and free yourself from all the polite little lies you tell yourself all the time.

There is a short ragged breath and there is a deep long one. I wonder what’s next?” No, that is not vipassana. That is thinking.

The Pali term for insight meditation is vipassana bhavana. Bhavana comes from the root bhu, which means to grow or to become. Therefore bhavana means to cultivate, and the word is always used in reference to the mind; bhavana means mental cultivation.

vipassana,

vipassana, una técnica de meditación budista ul traortodoxa, simple pero intensa. Consiste en sentarse, sencillamente. Un curso de preparación para la meditación vipassana dura diez días y consiste en sentarse durante diez horas al día en tramos de silencio de entre dos y tres horas. Es el «deporte de riesgo» de la trascendencia. El maestro de vipassana ni siquiera te da un mantra, porque eso se considera una especie de trampa. La meditación vipassana es la práctica de la contemplación pura; consiste en observarte la mente y examinar exhaustivamente elmecanismo de tu pensamiento sin levantarte de tu sitio en ningún momento.

Lucky people find their own unique ways to tame their minds. Hence they are better able to deal with situations in their lives. Vipassana proponents always stress that if you are insulted by someone and get angry, the result is not the abuser’s fault. It is your fault because you choose to react. In similar vein, self-help author Wayne Dyer said, ‘How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

Vipassana, by definition, is the cultivation of mindfulness or awareness. If you find that you are becoming unconscious in meditation, then you aren’t meditating, according to the definition of that word as used in the vipassana system.

In the practice of meditation you become sensitive to the actual experience of living, to how things actually feel. You do not sit around developing sublime thoughts about living. You live. Vipassana meditation, more than anything else, is learning to live.

As you stop resisting the fact that some things are pleasurable and other things are painful and cease diverting energy by trying to accumulate pleasant experiences and avoid unpleasant ones, you will discover an untapped potential to make significant change in your life.

Religions are like a ladder. If you cling to them, you cannot progress further. Religious organizations have their hidden agenda. They heavily rely on the past. They want to drag you towards the past. But you have to stand on your own. You have to work for your own liberation. Liberation is a state of mind and that is achievable right in this moment. It all depends on your choice. The moment you take the decision, you are free from the past; you are free from the thoughts.

All traditions of Buddhism stress the importance of first practicing calm abiding meditation (shamatha) and then insight meditation (vipassana).

We’re accompanied by an internal play-by-play announcer who is forever proclaiming the way things supposedly are and should be in our game of life. This announcer believes it’s being helpful, but it doesn’t realize the commentaries are ruining the game. Not only is it covering over the real action, but it’s setting us up for disappointment, since the game itself rarely matches what’s supposed to be happening.

Though not often discussed, there is a split of sorts in the meditating world—namely, between concentration and mindfulness techniques.

Mindfulness meditation, the main vehicle of Vipassana, is a good way to study the human mind. At least, it’s a good way to study one human’s mind: yours. You sit down, let the mental dust settle, and then watch your mind work.

Vipassana is a practice done with the specific intention of facing reality, to fully experience life just as it is and to cope with exactly what you find. It allows you to blow aside the illusions and free yourself from all the polite little lies you tell yourself all the time. What is there is there. You are who you are, and lying to yourself about your own weaknesses and motivations only binds you tighter to them. Vipassana meditation is not an attempt to forget yourself or to cover up your troubles. It is learning to look at yourself exactly as you are to see what is there and accept it fully. Only then can you change it.

you may have noticed a couple of unnerving things about the relationship between your thoughts and the truth: first, you can’t always believe what comes out of your own mouth, and second you can’t even always trust what you think. Our capacity and creativity for psychological avoidance, rationalization, and self-deception is awesome. Even the sharpest intellects are often way off when it comes to insight into their own psyche and motivations. In fact, sometimes the more clever you are, the more ingenious your rationalizations are.

Reality is all around us but we don’t live there. We’ve barely even been there for a visit.

Try to meditate as you would engage in a good conversation: maintain a sense of openness, without judgment or anticipating what is going to be said next. As I already noted (but almost can’t emphasize too much), having an agenda prevents you from observing objectively and accepting things as they are. When you first sit down to meditate, briefly check in with yourself. Don’t engage in a long monologue about your state of mind; just see how you feel, literally. There’s a good chance, especially if you’re new to this, you’ll find an uneasiness that comes from wanting to do something else or from hoping you’ll get some kind of payoff from meditating. Observe what that wanting feels like without trying to change it. Just accept that this feeling or feelings is reality for you at this moment, and that’s okay—this too will pass. If you’re finding you’re having a lot of difficulty concentrating, it can be helpful to check in this way again.

when people ask me what I believe now, I don’t want to weigh them down with “I’m a Unitarian Universalist Neo-Pagan scientific pantheist humanist who practices Buddhist insight meditation (Vipassana),” even though that’s the truth. Sometimes, however, I have the personal need to privately unpack these labels which usually blend seamlessly in my daily life in order to get a better sense of who I am and where I’m going on this spiritual journey.

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

drop the stories, find a physical object like the breath or body or pain or pleasure or whatever, and look into the Three Characteristics precisely and consistently! Drop to the level of bare sensations! This is vipassana, insight meditation, or whatever you want to call it. It is the way of the Buddhas. All

Vipassana

Meditation is a method-less act – an act of contemplation – an act of being. And this contemplation or this being is not a buddhist thing, a hindu thing or a jewish thing – it is simply a human thing. No pranayama, vipassana or kabala has any kind of exclusive authority over meditation whatsoever. All these ways are merely the means of the novice to begin the journey. But the means is not the real act itself. Seeing the method of meditation as meditation itself, is like confusing the menu for the meal. The real journey takes place when there is no means whatsoever – when the self does not need to make efforts to be the self – that’s real meditation – the meditation where you simply are who you are and do not seek methods to attain a superficial state of mind.

Never forget to your parents, If there is anyone who loves you really more than theirself its Only parents. Respect their feelings and emotion. They are most well wisher of their child.

Knowing ownself is better than to knowing others.

WOMEN If you want to imagine the world without women, imagine a world without love and light.

IT'S-A NEW DAY Every new day is a bonus; wages were earned last night when we went to sleep.

FANTASIES It’s not a problem to build castles in the air; it becomes a problem when we start living in them.

ACCEPTANCE Acceptance is a big energy saver. It consumes a fraction of energy but lights up our whole world.

WORK Work is never hard or soft; it becomes hard when we have no heart in it.

The sound of silence was beginning to get louder, and familiar. And I was deeply in love with it. Not only does it not involve religious practices, it makes you shed all religious affiliations for ten days. What you are left with is your bare breath. That becomes the only thing you focus on – your personal rosary. There are no pictures of gurus, or even of the Buddha himself. There are no personalised gods or its dubious derivates – dogmas, or godmen – to prostrate before. No hugs, kisses, threads, amulets, satins or holy ash. No holy ‘trap’ of devices designed for an instant osmosis of blessings. No grand trickery that makes life here a hell in promise of a heaven there. It shows us the same arduous path that some of the enlightened men have walked. Men who can only show the path and are not the destination; where they communed with their truth, or, for lack of a better word, their God, in silence. The choice is left to us, to walk, stroll, stray, or squat on that path. [Many men; Ab to Za, all those alphabets and all the other men in between… Same grand truth, revealed in parts… Same path, seemingly different… Same destination…. No single path.] But Vipassana does not offer us the easier path of pleading, coaxing, extorting or seducing such men for easy blessings. It nudges you to start walking. To be your own blessing. To create your own miracles.

The sound of silence was beginning to get louder, and familiar. And I was deeply in love with it. I stopped being mute, and became dumb again. There are no pictures of gurus, or even of the Buddha himself. There are no personalised gods or its dubious derivates – dogmas, or godmen – to prostrate before. No hugs, kisses, threads, amulets, satins or holy ash. No grand trickery that makes life here a hell in promise of a heaven there. It shows us the same arduous path that some of the enlightened men have walked. Men who can only show the path and are not the destination; where they communed with their truth, or, for lack of a better word, their God, in silence. The choice is left to us, to walk, stroll, stray, or squat on that path. [Many men; Ab to Za, all those letters of alphabets and all the other men in between… Same grand truth, revealed in parts… Same path, seemingly different… Same destination…. No single path.] But Vipassana does not offer us the easier path of pleading, coaxing, extorting or seducing such men for easy blessings. It nudges you to start walking. To be your own blessing. To create your own miracles.

The mindfulness meditation I’ve done has been within a particular school of meditation known as Vipassana (pronounced vih PAW suh nuh). Vipassana is an ancient word that denotes clear vision and is usually translated as “insight.

Every moment the subatomic particles of which the body is composed arise and pass away. Every moment the mental functions appear and disappear, one after another. Everything inside oneself, physical and mental, just as in the world outside, is changing every moment. Previously, we may have known that this was true; we may have understood it intellectually. Now, however, by the practice of vipassanā-bhāvanā, we experience the reality of impermanence directly within the framework of the body. The direct experience of the transitory sensations proves to us our ephemeral nature.

I do not carry anyone on my shoulders to take him to the final goal. Nobody can carry anyone else on his shoulders to the final goal. At most, with love and compassion one can say, ‘Well, this is the path, and this is how I have walked on it. You also work, you also walk, and you will reach the final goal.’ But each person has to walk himself, has to take every step on the path himself. He who has taken one step on the path is one step nearer the goal. He who has taken a hundred steps is a hundred steps nearer the goal. He who has taken all the steps on the path has reached the final goal. You have to walk on the path yourself.

Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek instead a place of eternal presence form which may regard yourself and your surrounding with poise. it's all god in disguise but they yogis believe a human life is a very special opportunity because only in alumni from and only with a special opportunity because only in a human form and only with a human mind can God realization ever occur. is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen. a great yogi is anyone who has achieved the permanent state of enlightened bliss. A guru is a great yogi who can actually pass that state on to theirs. mantravirya the potency of the Enlighted consciousness capable of conscious inquiry a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. living spiritual master when I was nine, I couldn't do a thing with it except cry later over these years my hypersensitive awareness of times s led me to push myself to experience life at a maximum pace if I were going to have such a short visit on earth, I had to do everything possible e to experience it now hence all the traveling all the romances all the ambition all the pasta. On the other the Zen masters always say that you cannot see your reflection in running water only in still Ater so something was telling me it would be spiritually negligent to run off now then so much was happening right here in this small, cloistered place where every minute of the day is organized to facilitate self-exploration and devotional practice. vipassana mediation teaches that grief and nuisance are inevitable in this life but if you can plant yourself in stillness long enough you will in time experience the truth that everything. (both uncomfortable and lovely) does eventually pass. Man is neither entirely ap upper off the god and is not entirely the captain of his own destiny he is a little of both. But when they do show up again i can just send them back here back to this rooftop of memory back to the care of those two cool blue souls who already and always understand everything This is what rituals are for we do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place of our most complicated feeling of joy or trauma so that we don't have to have those feelings around with us forever weight us down. we have hands we can stand on them if we want to that's our privilege that is the joy of a moral body and that is because God needs us because God loves to feel things through our hands.

Metacognition and the closely related mindfulness allow us to step outside of our software and analyze it, and vipassana meditation is one of the best methods for cultivating these qualities.

As a psychological practice, this Way allows you to break negative states into small manageable pieces, thus loosening their power over you. By “negative states” I mean things like difficult emotions, limiting beliefs, judgments, urges leading to unproductive behaviors, and so forth. By “manageable pieces” I mean individual images, individual self-talk phrases, and specific body locations where the emotional sensations are arising. Learning to focus on just one of these at a given moment will reduce your sense of overwhelm. You stop being like a ping-pong ball pummeled about by words in your head, emotions in your body and pictures on your mental screen.

Sayadaw U Pandita, one of the foremost recent masters of vipassana meditation, was a Burmese master skilled in the “noting practice” of Mahasi Sayadaw. The practitioner focuses attention on psychophysical phenomena by observing them and noting “seeing, seeing,” “hearing, hearing,” and so forth. During a silent retreat, U Pandita was meeting with a student who was complaining, in a mild way, of some of the mental and physical hardships she was experiencing. The Sayadaw responded, “What do you want, different objects to note?” The Sayadaw wanted the student to understand that mindfulness, like buddha nature, does not care what objects the sense consciousness reveals. What is important is the awareness or mindfulness itself.

as the intentional, learned skill of optimizing self-awareness and self-regulation of both the body and mind. In this way, meditation can facilitate better balance, self-restoration and preparedness for present and future flourishing. Meditation is the intentional practice of healthy rest, healthy preparedness, self-aware “eudaemonia,” welfare or prosperity.

Vipassana involves genuinely looking at who and what you are, actually seeing the real self instead of the one we imagine ourselves to be. It means facing every fear, every unsated desire, every area where we just don’t know a part of ourselves, and then releasing any claim on them. It’s been shown to be effective in treating depression, anxiety, panic, just about every emotional disorder there is, and it does so by removing the importance of our emotions from our lives.