2007-01-15 10:32:42 · 6 answers · asked by Mary L 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Vipassana is "insight meditation". You watch your thoughts and feelings and analytically study them. Most lamas, teachers, etc. recommend one uses both shamatha WITH vipassana because Shamatha teaches you to CALM your mind first, then you can start penetrating deeper with vipassana.
The most basic way of declaring "help" by these methods is that you learn how to notice that your thoughts are as fleeting as the clouds on the sky, that all thoughts, emotions and such are empty of inherent existence (i.e. come into being due to causes and conditions). You start letting go of your incorrect thinking and attachments and aversions to such thoughts and life starts, by default, improving. YOU DO NOT FORCE yourself along the path, you must let it come... things will happen for the better by default.
_()_
2007-01-15 11:36:08 · answer #1 · answered by vinslave 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hello =)
It is an "awareness training" making your mind aware of your present surroundings in the present moment. It can help calm your mind, if you are prone to dwelling in the past, or worrying about the future.
As a Mahayana Buddhist, I have had a few waking "visions" while doing Vipassana meditation. Very insightful...
Namaste,
--Tom
2007-01-15 10:38:58 · answer #2 · answered by glassnegman 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Also called Zazen, in the practice of Zen there is an exercise called zazen – similar, I think, to the Theravedic 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.
2007-01-15 10:39:00 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
It is very basically, watching your thoughts pass by. It helps one to be mindful that we are not our thoughts and need not be controlled by them.
2007-01-15 10:38:25 · answer #4 · answered by Honest Opinion 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
http://users.pandora.be/dhammakaya/meditation_h.html
Being in the center, allows your consciousness to be as it is. Free of mental energies, projecting itself into your consciousness, claiming to be your consciousness, claiming to be who you are.
In this state of being, you are you in your highest form.
2007-01-15 12:58:41 · answer #5 · answered by indigolight 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
you go with the flow
2007-01-15 10:35:55 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋