INSIGHT MEDITATION

Insight Meditation

Insight Meditation

Introduction

The Buddha, also known as Siddhartha Gautama, was an Indian prince who resided in North India in the sixth century BC. After living a life of luxury and ease within the confines of his palace walls, he confronted suffering of the world and took it upon himself to find freedom from it.

Over the course of 6 years, he engaged in various forms of meditation and ascetic regimens, to attain liberation from suffering. With these efforts ultimately failing to provide the freedom he sought, he forged an individual path free from the influences of the authoritarian traditions. Upon achieving enlightenment, now called “The Buddha,” meaning “The Awakened One,” he provided discourses for the remainder of his life. He has become a seminal figure in world history, having created an institution with over 500 million followers, and his teachings dispersed on a global scale (Roemer and Orsillo 2002).

At the core of Buddhist knowledge and philosophy are the Four Noble Truths. The Noble Truths were spoken during his first sermon after achieving nirvana. These Four Noble Truths serve as the corpus of Buddhist thought and practice. The first three Truths outline the doctrine of Buddhist thought, while the fourth Truth provides the practical and concrete means of attaining the goal of Nirvana.

The eight components of the eightfold path are right speech, right action, right livelihood, right exertion, right attentiveness, right concentration, right aspiration, and right understanding. The path can be divided into three components: sila (morality), samadhi (concentration), and panna (wisdom). The practices of right speech, action, and livelihood are practices related to sila. Right exertion, attentiveness, and concentration relate to samadhi, and right aspiration and understanding relate to the development of wisdom and insight. All three components mutually support. Conscious conduct through the practice of morality creates a mind infused with order, clarity, and a sense of calm. The aforementioned mind states serve the development of concentration and uninterrupted mindfulness. Through meditative concentration and mindfulness an individual gains liberating insight into the nature of reality (Roemer and Orsillo 2002).

The Two Types of Meditation

Meditation as practiced in the Buddhist tradition harbors the goal of leading the practitioner to a pristine state of mental health, ease, and ultimately, peace. The highest aim of the practitioner is to find freedom from suffering through liberating insight into the nature of reality. Within the Theravadan tradition of Buddhism, there is a vast array of subjects for meditation. Despite the diversity of subjects for meditation, in general, all of the meditation techniques can be bifurcated and categorized into two interrelated systems of meditation (Roemer and Orsillo 2002). The two systems refer to the cultivation of serenity/tranquility, and the cultivation of insight, respectively. Gunaratana (1999) succinctly describes the two systems:

The practice of serenity-meditation aims at developing a calm, concentrated, unified state of consciousness as a means of experiencing inner peace and generating wisdom. The practice of insight-meditation aims at gaining direct understanding of the real nature of the phenomenon (Roemer and Orsillo ...