What is vipassana meditation and how to do it?

Hello friends!

When I published the text “Don’t take yourself so seriously”, I mentioned vipassana meditation and received several emails asking for more details about what it is and how to do it. In this text, therefore, I will explain better to you what it is about.

The word Vipassanā or vipaśyanā means “insight”, seeing things as they really are. This definition may seem vague at first, but it comes from the truth that we don’t see things as they are, we see things through our thoughts, feelings, sensations, conditioning, culture, language and other factors.

This lack of perception of things as they are varies from person to person, but we can say that we are all a little blind to reality. If we think of specific difficulties such as fear or anxiety, we will soon see the inconsistency between internal experience and external reality.

For example, a person may be afraid of spiders. Just the fact of having a spider around or thinking about a spider or seeing it on television already awakens a series of sensations that, deep down, are unreal. The same is true with anxiety. Roughly speaking, anxiety is the inability to live in the present moment. The mind is constantly “anxious” about the future, about what should happen, what shouldn’t happen, or anxiously waiting for an event to arrive, as when we are about to travel and can’t sleep the night before.

These are simple and even banal examples of situations in which we suffer for nothing. All suffering is useless, for all suffering is ignorance (avydia), all suffering is lack of insight.

Vipassana meditation was taught by Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha. Although we have a view that the Buddha was a god and had supernatural powers such as the ability to see past lives, read thoughts or profound knowledge about life, we must remember that there are different lines of Buddhism, just as we have different developments within Christianity ( Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Lutheran Protestantism, Calvinist, Pentecostal, etc).

I speak here of Buddhism because vipassana meditation came from the teachings of the Buddha. However, I would like to highlight three aspects:

– Psychology as a science of behavior and of the soul (thoughts, feelings and sensations), in its various approaches, is also interested in religious manifestations. Thus, there is an area within psychology called the psychology of religion. Not to be confused with religious psychology, that is, a psychology that is linked to a faith, such as Christian psychology.

With this, we can study religious behaviors and observe the psychic changes that arise as a result of one or another practice. It is for this purpose that I write this article. That is, vipassana meditation is a technique that brings hundreds of effects (proved even in neuroscience laboratory research), such as greater concentration, tranquility, peace, attention, etc.

– Second, vipassana meditation is simple in its procedure and dispenses with the need to believe in the Buddha or Buddhism. You will understand better when you comment below on how to do the meditation.

– Third, Buddhism is very peculiar. In a sense, we can understand Buddhism not as a religion. Of course, everything will depend on what we understand by the concept of religion.

Etymologically, we have two important meanings:

1) Religion as religare: is the most famous concept. It was elaborated by Saint Augustine. Religion is the reconnection (religare) of man with God.

2) Religion as relegere: it is the oldest concept. It was elaborated by Cicero. Religion is the careful observation of certain practices, such as rites, prayers, in short, the constant, disciplined cultivation of activities linked to transcendence. Relegere, in Latin, means to gather again, to collect, to resume, in the sense of entangling again the unwound thread of a skein. Just like retracing a path that has already been taken, reading, pondering, carefully reviewing a text that has already been read.

In other words, while St. Augustine’s conception is interior, Cicero’s idea best describes behaviors that can be observed externally, such as going to church, saying prayers, Yogas, fasting, penance, vows, etc.

Many consider Buddhism as a non-religion because there is no aspect of reconnection with a single God (monotheism) or with several gods (polytheism). Furthermore, the Buddha himself is considered a man who, by his own efforts, managed to reach the state of total absence of suffering, Nirvana, which literally means non-fetter, non-fetter, non-attachment. In this way, Buddhism would not be a religion because the practitioner is not connecting with a God, he is not connecting with the Buddha. By the way, the meaning of the word Buddha is just “The Awakened One”, the one who is awake.

Of course, there are different types of Buddhism like Theravada Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism. With the dissemination of knowledge left by Gautama in India, China, Burma, Thailand, Japan, etc., each place incorporated his teachings with local practices. Tibetan Buddhism has characteristics closer to what we would call here a religion like prayer wheels, the thought that the Buddha is a divine being, a religious leader (the Dalai Lama).

Zen Buddhism, on the other hand, is less like what we would call a religion, although it also gained its local coloring from Shinto. Zen monks like Dogen recommended only sitting meditation, which is just vipassana meditation.

Regardless of the ramifications of Buddhism, vipassana meditation can be practiced by everyone who wants to know themselves better or by those who aim to have more peace, tranquility, emotional balance, concentration, attention.

How to do vipassana meditation?

Sit comfortably with your spine straight. She closes her eyes. Put all your attention on inhaling and exhaling, keeping your concentration on your nose and watching your breath go in and out. Duration: one hour.

Details: Many instructors recommend doing the Lotus position, others say that the Lotus position itself is not important. With this, we can do the meditation on a chair, for example. There is also some controversy as to whether to do it with eyes fully closed or with eyes half-closed.

Well, for those just starting out, it’s recommended to do it with your eyes closed because the vision reduces your attention to breathing in and out. The question of whether to be in the lotus position or not can be resolved as follows: if you can do the lotus position better, if not, sit down comfortably (always with a straight spine) and do it anyway.

Certain Zen Buddhist masters recommend that beginners count the inhalations and exhalations to 10 and then return to counting, starting with 1. It would look like this:

Inspiration 1

Expiration 2

Inspiration 3

Expiration 4

Inspiration 5

Expiration 6

Inspiration 7

Expiration 8

Inspiration 9

Expiration 10

And here, we’re back to the beginning.

Counting helps maintain attention. However, if you can do it right away without counting, that’s also better. Important recommendations:

If during meditation a sensation arises, say it is a sensation and return your attention to the breath.

If during meditation an emotion arises, say it is an emotion and return your attention to the breath.

If during meditation a thought arises, say it is a thought and return your attention to your breath.

Consequences of vipassana meditation

Each person will feel the effects of meditation in a different way. But I think that everyone who starts realizes how the mind doesn’t stop. The mind is like a monkey jumping from branch to branch, from sensation to sensation, from feeling to feeling, from thought to thought. It’s common to notice days when it’s easier to do, when the mind is calmer and days when it’s practically impossible (even so we must persevere and continue until the end).

For me, the most amazing thing about these years of doing meditation was the ability to be silent. It may sound silly, but it is very difficult to be silent and have the ability to hear, see, touch, smell, taste with your mind in total silence. By managing to better control the vittris, the mental turmoil, we achieve a series of benefits such as greater attention, productivity, calmness, ability to listen to other people (really) and so on.

Other people report that when they started doing meditation they started to know each other. They began to understand the entire flow of thoughts and feelings and began to consider meditation the highest point of their days, since, at that time, they were truly dedicating themselves to self-knowledge. Important: self-knowledge here does not mean self-analysis. It does not mean the interpretation of feelings and thoughts, but the ability to recognize their arising, maintenance and disappearance. That is, thoughts and feelings are impermanent and, therefore, we are free to pay – or not – attention to them.

Another relevant report concerns the discernment between pain and suffering. For example, experiencing back pain or other pain is, to some extent, inevitable. Pain is a reflection of an alert situation in the body. However, suffering is optional, that is, when we feel pain, we duplicate the negative sensation with mental suffering, regretting and cursing, getting angry or hurt. Suffering arises from thoughts about pain. By changing the thoughts, we can eliminate suffering, although completely eliminating pain may not be possible every time.

Well, the consequences are always positive. At the very least, we’ve heard from people who’ve done it for a while, who’ve been doing it before bed and the practice has completely wiped out their insomnia. As I said, each one will feel one or more effects. And, from what I’ve seen in myself, in the people I know or descriptions of those who do it around the world, the consequences are always positive.

Questions, suggestions, comments are always welcome! Comment below!

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