In identifying major forms of practice we can add to our “inner diet”, my teachers sometimes mention three quintessential components of contemplative training—“quintessential” in terms of helping us establish the long-lasting, profound wellbeing of eudaemonia, or genuine flourishing. These would ideally be all present in our contemplative toolbox, but very rarely enter our life at the same time.
For many of us, our exploration would begin with just one of these three categories: (1) practices for attentional stability, centered around the different methods of shamatha; (2) methods for cultivating kindness and compassion, and (3) practices for cultivating insight into the true nature of reality. Quite often, it is categories 1 or 2 that speak to many people in the modern world—especially in the popular mindfulness movement—more than anything else.
Unsurprisingly, the third category has its own fans as well. Those who are led to a contemplative life by their desire to experience mystical union, or find satori, or reach irreversible freedom (or even a temporary alleviation of inner pain) are often strongly propelled into the world of insight.
On occasion, they would even experience the results of insight without (seemingly) much effort—which is said to happen to those who have a certain natural giftedness, or appropriate karmic propensity.
At the same time, there is also no shortage of people who somehow resist insight practices, feeling more at home in the world of attention training and heart cultivation, but not daring to engage in practices that seem quite brainy and potentially dangerous to our familiar perception of reality.
One of the reasons for this resistance is the very nature of insight methods. Their job, from a Buddhist point of view, is to challenge and untie some of the knots in our habitual patterns of perception, establishing freedom where there was previously cognitive (and emotional) constriction.
Our grasping at permanence is to be released, being gradually replaced by a clear understanding of mutability; grasping at independent existence is to be supplanted by a profound feeling of interdependence.
The various—and, in a way, numerous—practice techniques used to achieve this goal of liberation are insight practice, and the “enemy” they are meant to defeat is primarily our tendency to reify: to ascribe greater reality and stability to something that is mercurial, unstable, and is barely existent at all. (The way things actually do exist is also something to be ascertained through practice).
Buddhist insight practices—commonly known as vipaśyanā (in Sanskrit) and vipassana (in Pali)—can be categorised in various ways, both in terms of their primary emphasis and their historical origins. A quintessential system of such practices was originally presented by the Buddha himself and is known as the four applications (establishments, foundations) of mindfulness.
The name implies that that we apply our faculty of mindfulness, trained and perfected through attention-cultivating techniques, to the true nature of our experiences, divided into four major dimensions:
1) Body (which includes any type of materiality)
2) Feelings (pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral)
3) Mind
4) Phenomena (that is, all cognizable phenomena taken together or divided into major categories)
The act of applying mindfulness is done in the spirit of curious inquiry, and is supported by both attention-training and heart-cultivation—and, in return, supports those practices as well.
The simple insights we might gain from doing entry-level vipaśyanā practices are to be fed into the systems supporting our kindness, compassion, and overall wellbeing.
At the same time, these insights are experienced as a great source of joy in themselves—while not necessarily dramatic, they still allow us to feel a greater sense of easy and resilience, therefore strengthening our ability to move through life gracefully and with greater skill.
To try out some of the practices from this category, check out the meditations in this playlist