What is Insight Meditation?
Insight meditation generally refers to a range of meditation practices drawn from the Buddhist traditions but does not require one to formally be a Buddhist. The only conversion required is the conversion from the path of suffering to the path of peace.
It involves applying a sustained, curious, and caring attention to our moment-to-moment experience.
We may start with a close attention on the body and the the process of breathing before opening to the broad field of experience including bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts and sounds. As our restless minds settle down somewhat - a gradual process requiring patience, we can encounter a sense of clarity, ease, and insight into life. We can learn to not identify and take personally what arises in our experience.
Like the sun breaking through the clouds, the light of wisdom and love, among other wonderful qualities, can dawn on us.
Althought it is common to encounter difficulties such as restlessness, wandering mind, lethargy etc... with patience and a relaxed and sincere dedication this practice is not beyond any of us.
In the Buddha's teachings there is emphasis on attuning to three liberating perceptions:
1) impermanence, uncertainty - that every experience is subject to change
2) unsatisfactoriness, imperfection - that no "thing" can ultimately and permanently satisfy us
3) not-personal, not-self - life is not personal, not to be taken as conclusively "I", "me" or "mine"
The practice of dis-entanglement culminates in the realisation of our unconditioned, timeless, birthless, deathless nature, what in the Buddha's teachings is called nirvana, ultimate peace.
This timeless freedom is ever-present, ever-available, offering itself freely to us. The way of the heart is to our render ourselves available and open to this blessing.
I have been practicing in this way for almost 25 years and continue to be struck by the quiet beauty of the practice.
The meditations and talk below give a sense of the approach that I follow.