The Key Insights of Vipassana Meditation: Part 2
This article is part 2 of my Key Insights of Vipassana Meditation article — do check out Part 1 before you read on.
Let’s continue illuminating the human condition with insights from one of the most powerful and popular meditation systems yet created: Vipassana.
To me, the beauty of Vipassana meditation is its directness. There’s not a lot of belief or superstition. It says: “here’s how we meditate”, “here are the insights this mediation gives us”, “go and discover these for yourself.”
While we won’t cover specific Vipassana instructions — I have in-depth articles on both the Mahasi Sayadaw and the U Ba Khin methods elsewhere — we will extract all the wisdom from the Vipassana tradition and see what it means for our lives.
Let me remind you: this isn’t a philosophical argument or a theological model of mind and body. The point is to verify all of this by diving into your first-person experience through Vipassana practice.
Anatta: egolessness
As we covered in Part 1, the concept of anicca, or impermanence, is key to Vipassana practice. And meditating on anicca eventually leads to the understanding of anatta, or egolessness.
To be sure: in this context, ego means our first-person, experienced sense of self, not necessarily arrogance or inflamed self-importance, though the discovery of anatta might indeed provoke personality changes.
“In one who perceives impermanence… the perception of substantiality is established. And in one who perceives insubstantiality, egotism is destroyed”
Why do we begin to understand egolessness?
As we heighten our awareness of anicca, we then practice perceiving anicc in our self-concept: our mental images, our inner chatter, and our body.
With time, we come to realise that all of the above material — which is what bind together to create our subjective sense of self — is also impermanent and insubstantial. They therefore can’t point to a permanent self.
Instead, we begin to identify with the space, the backdrop, the canvas on which the self is painted, giving rise to a transpersonal awareness.
The Permanent
Though the symbolic self and all its trappings are impermanent, the very realisation of this fact leads us to our permanent self: the empty, qualityless self that defies description.
We can finally give up the never-ending game of selfhood, of maintaining this identity and guarding it against the world with all our might, and rest in this free, personless awareness.
We realise that the game of selfhood was little but a mask we constructed, a self-furnished maze we invented in a fruitless attempt to make something of this self.
Sankhara: What Goes Around Comes Around
And let’s end with the concept of sankhara, also known as karma. Though the common idea of karma is a little simplistic, it does point to deeper truth.
According to Vipassana, it’s not so much that the world is an intelligent game in which negative brings negative and positive attracts positive (I steal from you, your family acts in reprisal. I hold open the door, you thank me and think better of me).
Rather, it’s that in being ourselves and in mistakingly perpetuating our separate identity, we naturally stir up the world around us, creating enemies, building barriers, and acting selfishly.
And the concept of sankhara also captures the reality that life becomes whatever we focus on. We perpetuate our personal realities through choice.
That boss we dislike. That family member we just can’t get on with. That life problem that seems unsolvable. We create and maintain it all with our views, our emotions, our thoughts, and our actions. In fact, since these items define our identity, we love all of it so much, and we simply can’t help perpetuate them.
As you see, the Vipassana concept of sankhara is much deeper and nuanced than our everyday conception of it. And through meditative transformation, we can finally put a stop to our karmic creation and live free.
I hope you loved this dive into Vipassana philosophy, and do subscribe to get my latest posts. Ciao (:
