This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Following Awareness; Insight (3) Mindfulness vs Insight. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Good morning and welcome to our meditation.
One of the differences between mindfulness and insight is that mindfulness is the use of attention that prepares the ground to have insight, to have a deep seeing or true seeing, seeing truly or actually how things are. As we sit today in mindfulness meditation, the role of samadhi1 is to be able to sit in the middle of all our capacities for attention and have them unified in some kind of wonderful way, working together.
The attentional capacities we have are recognition, a cognitive knowing of what’s happening. This cognitive knowing may or may not be verbal; it might be a kind of nonverbal knowing. It might also be a kind of visual knowing; some people are visual thinkers. Another attentional faculty is our capacity to sense and to feel with our senses. In Buddhism, the idea of sense experience includes seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and the tactile, which is whatever sensations there are that are born through the body. There’s a kind of sense door that, very simply, in the simplest possible way, knows or senses that we’re thinking. I use both words, knowing and sensing thinking, because thinking sometimes is more than just words and ideas or images. You can also feel the physicality sometimes of thinking—the tension or the pressure, the contraction that comes along with it.
Another attentional capacity is to settle back and observe experience. This is to perceive without being in any way entangled with experience, allowing things to be just as they are. It’s not as intimate as feeling or sensing the experience, and not so cognitive as an act of recognition. It’s observing without recognizing what something is, but observing how it moves and changes and comes and goes and shifts and oscillates and vibrates. It’s like you would sit and observe a river; you don’t know the name of the river, you don’t even have the idea that it’s a river, you’re just watching the flow, the current, or the waves washing against the shore, or a fire on a dark night, an outdoor bonfire.
And then to bring all these together in samadhi is to sit in the general sense of just being present here, all of ourselves included.
To begin very simply, assume a meditation posture, a posture that for you supports attention and presence to the experience of the present moment.
As you sit with your body, notice by what means you are aware of your body. In what way are you aware of your body that’s different than thinking about it or trying to analyze the question, trying to figure it out with your mind? There is nothing to figure out. Rather, when you’re not thinking, in what way are you aware of having a body in the meditation posture?
Is it a knowing, a cognitive recognition? Is it a sensing, sensations? The body maybe is a broad glow or vibration, a diffuse feeling of softness through the body, or particular sensations of contact where the body touches something, maybe where the body touches itself—the hands touching each other or on the thighs.
As you’re aware of your body, allow the awareness to go through your body, wherever the awareness wants to go or wherever the body seems to invite awareness. You’re not directing the awareness, but rather you’re following the awareness where it goes in the body. Maybe you’re following whatever the body seems to call on for you to be with. Sometimes it’s a knowing, sometimes it’s sensing and feeling.
Having your awareness follow and not direct, letting the directing and actively doing mind rest. You aren’t taking the lead, but you’re allowing awareness to join with the body.
If you’re aware of tension in your body, it’s okay. See how simple the awareness can be. And if it’s easy enough, if you feel like it’s the wish the body has, allow for the body to relax. If the body seems to invite you to relax or calm it, then go ahead and allow for a calming, a softening through your body.
Where in your body do you seem to be most aware? Where is it easiest for awareness to rest in the body?
And then, within the body, as part of the body, become aware of breathing. Knowing breathing in a simple, relaxed way. Knowing breathing in as breathing in, breathing out as breathing out. Or perhaps sensing the sensations that come into play as you breathe. Awareness can follow the sensations of breathing as they appear. And the knowing mind can, from time to time, know and recognize some of those sensations of breathing. Knowing the sensations is meant to support staying close to the sensations of breathing.
As you exhale, let go of your thoughts, relaxing the thinking mind and letting go into the body breathing.
To know, to feel and sense, to be aware continuously enough that we find ourselves settled here in the present moment experience. The mind is steadied, thinking has become stiller and quieter.
And then at some point, the capacity to simply observe experience in the present moment, like waves endlessly washing up on the shore, a river flowing. Simply knowing the movement, the appearing and disappearing of things, without needing to know what they are or to feel what they are. Nothing to figure out, nothing to fix, nothing to accomplish. But to settle back with an overview that observes the river of sensations, the river of thoughts and feelings as they flow through. Being careful to not get stuck anywhere, just watching the change.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, to notice again what you’re aware of without any particular effort to be aware, except to be awake, to be here. And how are you aware? Is it a simple knowing, recognizing? A simple sensing? A simple observing? Or is there some kind of indistinct, general sense of being aware that doesn’t quite fit any of those three categories, maybe because it’s a natural blending of all three that keeps you right here?
And then to expand your “here” outward into your room, the building you’re in, the location you’re in. To expand your awareness outwards into the world. Considering how today you can live in a generous way to the people you’ll encounter, to the world itself. How is it that the practice of meditation and awareness can lead you to benefit this world, even in the simplest ways?
May it be that the benefit from our individual practice, our collective practice together, translates to bringing welfare and happiness to this world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Hello and welcome to this third talk introducing the topic of insight. Today I’d like to discuss the difference between mindfulness and insight, mindfulness and Vipassanā.2 The word Vipassanā is what we translate at IMC as insight. Some people who practice mindfulness don’t translate Vipassanā; they just use the Pali word to describe the technique of practice that they do, practicing Vipassanā. Sometimes in our tradition, in using the word insight, we say we’re practicing insight meditation. But originally, back in ancient Buddhism, the word Vipassanā did not refer to a practice. It referred to the results of the practice, the way in which the practice led practitioners to be able to see deeply into their experience. And that deep seeing is the insight that we see, the insight we come to understand, the liberating perspective, orientation, understanding, and perception that comes into play in a way that brings liberation from suffering.
So, mindfulness practice is not the same as insight, but it’s mindfulness practice that leads to the insight. It creates the conditions by which we’re present enough and clear enough in our awareness and perception to be able to see clearly.
This word Vipassanā, as I described on Monday, has a meaning of “clear seeing,” where the prefix vi- is a prefix of emphasis. So it emphasizes seeing, how we see, or strong seeing. So it becomes clear seeing. But the vi- can also be a prefix that distinguishes things, that divides things. And so another way of understanding Vipassanā is that it’s distinctive seeing or distinguishing seeing. It’s seeing with clarity so that we see the particularities of what’s actually happening. And so again, the emphasis is on what is seen, in a sense, not the act of seeing.
So mindfulness is a practice that leads to that. In classic Buddhism, mindfulness is not an end in itself but a means to something. And so how is mindfulness practiced? In the teachings of the Buddha, there are a number of attentional faculties that are engaged that we can call mindfulness practice, leading to a very strong, established sense of awareness. We have a lot of attentional faculties, and all of them are awakened and brought together in order to be established in the present moment clearly enough in order to see distinctly.
So there’s knowing, the simple recognition of experience. There is sensing or feeling experience, experiencing it experientially through the body. And then there is something called sampajañña,3 which is often translated into English as clear recognition or clear understanding. This is the form of practice that’s most often taught in what’s called secular mindfulness, and sometimes in the Buddhist insight meditation tradition as well. It’s knowing, it’s recognizing, but more than just a raw, simple recognition of what’s there. It’s recognizing in a particular way, so it comes along with a greater understanding, perspective, or orientation. It’s knowing without judgment, knowing with kindness, with friendliness, knowing with spaciousness and openness. It’s some kind of understanding of what we are seeing or knowing or feeling, the context of it, the value of it.
In Buddhism, this clear understanding of things is a very important part of mindfulness training because as we understand the experience in some simple way, it can guide us more deeply into our experience. One of the very clear distinctions for clear comprehension or clear understanding is to understand whether what we’re doing—the mental activity, the practices we’re doing—is helpful or not helpful. Is it wholesome, is it nourishing, or is it not? Is it onward-leading to greater stability, greater presence, being more rooted here in the present moment, or is it not? So we’re monitoring ourselves a little bit as we practice so we can adjust how we are, adjust how we’re practicing, so that we begin enjoying it more. It’s not a strain, it’s not hard work. We’re learning the art of being present in a supportive way that welcomes attention, welcomes us to be present. We want to be present. So clear comprehension of what’s happening in the present moment is an aspect of mindfulness practice.
So there’s knowing, there’s sensing, there’s clear comprehension. And then the last one that’s mentioned in the Buddhist teachings on mindfulness practice is to feel the whole body, and as we are feeling it, to relax the tensions and the holdings in the body. So there is emphasis on calming the body as we meditate. That’s a handful of things to hold together, but in practicing these in an easygoing, relaxed way, what we’re looking for is coming into a place where awareness, attention, is now stabilized, established, at ease, resting here in the present moment in our direct experience. It takes a while for the thinking mind to calm down. It takes a while to understand and see the dynamics of what’s happening within us to be able to settle and relax and to be rooted here in the present moment. For people who practice samadhi, that’s meant to be a great support for this stabilizing of attention in the present moment.
At some point, when it’s stable, being present and being aware is not work. It’s almost as if it’s just how we are. And so as we just are, then the next attentional faculty we have, our ability to be aware, comes into play. And this is what the Buddha calls observing, anupassanā.4 It has the same root word as in Vipassanā. The prefix anu- means “toward” something, to settle back and just be able to observe.
The observing of experience has some wonderful qualities. Sometimes when people teach mindfulness, this is what they’re emphasizing. Observing is a little bit quieter in the mind than it would be with simple knowing of the experience. There doesn’t have to be a knowing in observing. And it’s not as intimate, it’s not as connected as when we’re sensing. Sensations and the act of sensing are one and the same; they can’t really be separated. A moment of sensing comes with sensation. The sensations we have come with the sensing of the sensations. If there’s no sensing of the sensations, are there sensations at all? It’s like if there’s no one in the forest and a tree falls, is there a sound?
So observing is a little bit removed, but not so removed that it’s detached or distant or aloof. There’s a kind of wonderful delight, a wonderful ease, maybe a kind of intimacy or belonging or presence that’s comparable to resting on the beach, maybe for hours, and just being absorbed in watching the waves wash up on the shore and wash back, coming and going. There’s something about the mind watching very simple motion and the shifts and the changes that relaxes and settles the mind. Watching a river flow can do that. Watching a fire in the fireplace or outdoors, people can watch it for a long time. Sometimes just being outdoors in the natural world, at ease on a bench in a park, and just gazing at the leaves, the greenery, the scenery—there’s something about just watching. We’re not necessarily actively recognizing every little thing, we’re not actually touching anything, but there’s something about observing that can be very, very satisfying. It’s like everything is… nothing needs to happen, nothing needs to be done, nothing needs to be fixed, just to observe.
So these are the attentional faculties that are considered part of mindfulness practice: recognition (knowing), sensing (feeling), clear comprehension (a higher-order level of understanding that helps us to relax and be simpler and present for our experience in a useful way), relaxing to some degree, and observing. When those are supported by samadhi, it’s a lot easier for all of those to keep us here, rooted in the present moment in a full way, where all our attentional faculties are awake and present. Samadhi, well-practiced, not only supports us to be here but supports us to be here with all these attentional faculties operating naturally, maybe coordinated in some kind of holistic way that lends itself to a generalized feeling of being aware, a field of awareness that’s a combination of all these things operating together.
And then the mind, our heart, is ready for insight—for what we see in our experience. So that’ll be coming up. Mindfulness practice is a practice that leads to insight. Mindfulness practice supported by samadhi helps that capacity for insight to come alive in a full way.
Thank you, and I look forward to continuing tomorrow.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of meditative concentration or collectedness of mind. ↩
Vipassanā: A Pali word that literally means “clear-seeing” or “special-seeing.” It refers to insight into the true nature of reality, specifically the three marks of existence: impermanence (anicca), suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and non-self (anattā). ↩
Sampajañña: A Pali term for “clear comprehension” or “clear knowing.” It refers to an alert, discerning awareness of what is happening in the present moment. The original transcript said “sajana,” which has been corrected based on the context of “clear recognition or clear understanding.” ↩
Anupassanā: A Pali term meaning “to observe repeatedly” or “to contemplate.” It is the practice of sustained observation of phenomena as they arise and pass away. The original transcript said “auasana,” which has been corrected based on the speaker’s explanation of the prefix “anu.” ↩