How Mindfulness Leads to Special Insights

Within Buddhist meditation practices for eliminating suffering and achieving enlightenment, there are generally two main categories of training: mindfulness
and special insight. Shamatha and Vipassana are the Sanskrit terms for these two categories of meditation. Success in both will bring great benefits in eliminating mental and emotional suffering and will also help reveal the true nature of yourself and the world. The union of the two is the path to complete enlightenment.

First, Buddhist tranquility or mindfulness meditation consists primarily of learning the skill of letting go of clinging to thoughts and stabilizing attention in the present moment in a non-judgmental way. The method is to let go of the last thought and be fully present, especially to let go of thoughts of hatred and guilt and rest in a peaceful way.

Another part of mindfulness meditation is relaxing physical tension so that you can be completely at ease in the here and now with a clear mind and an open heart. This can be done sitting on the meditation cushion, focusing on a particular object such as the breath, or in everyday life, focusing on the current situation in a more general way.

Mindfully staying calm in the present moment keeps you mentally flexible and helps prevent you from being plagued by negative thoughts and disruptive emotions. Your mind becomes flexible or pliable in the sense that you can gain control over what you focus on.

Mindfulness expands your consciousness by opening new dimensions of experience. Modern mindfulness guru Jon Kabit Zinn says mindfulness opens the door to a whole new relationship with life. This is because more of your consciousness is freed from entanglement in thoughts and available to notice more of the reality of the present moment. This is how insights begin to emerge.

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The second major category of Buddhist meditation is special insight meditation. This is a form of direct knowledge that is ‘seen’ in mindfulness meditation. It is special
because it has the power to ultimately eliminate all disturbing emotions and ignorance about your true nature. It is the disturbing emotions and ignorance of your full potential that are the root cause of the suffering of being human and exactly what mindfulness and special insight purify over time.

Once your mind is stable and calm through mindfulness practices, realizations and insights will naturally arise. Initially, you start with general realizations and move on to the most subtle and profound ones. Because you have refined your focus and clarity, the moment you put your mind on something, its nature begins to reveal itself.

I often tell people that one of the first insights of meditation training is that you learn how crazy your mind is, that you are constantly and obsessively following an old thought and constantly distracted without any power to concentrate. This is the moment when people may give up, but this is an important realization, this is the beginning of meditation training and the beginning of recovering our untamed mind and lack of inner freedom. This understanding of how crazy your mind is will ultimately lead to the deepest wisdom and ultimately enlightenment.

After you have tamed your mind and can concentrate steadily and easily on your breathing during meditation or simply on the current situation in daily life, one of the first special insights that emerge is the wisdom of knowing intimately that everything is changing. In view of the constantly changing thoughts, emotions and physical sensations, we immediately understand that nothing stays the same.

This kind of wisdom realizes the fleeting nature of experiences. It helps to realize that everything is energy and there is no permanent self. The body and mind that we normally use as a basis for ourselves are experienced as the ever-changing composition that it is.

An even subtler kind of wisdom understands that things appear as an illusion. In other words: appearances are naturally deceiving. For example, we are often misled into thinking that our perspective is the only perspective, but that is not the case. There can be many ways to view a situation or event among different people, not to mention the differences in the way animals perceive their environment.

Robert Anton Wilson says that:

“We see nothing really as it is, but as we are.”

We communicate and navigate the world using preconceived projections and fail to see the world as it really is. With a clear and objective view through stabilizing mindfulness meditation, we can clearly see that our perspectives and opinions are only relative, can change at any time, and are ultimately not real. Our experience of the world is actually completely mental. We never really touch the outside world, we just create a mental representation of it and live our lives believing that the representation is really what exists.

After all these insights have been expressed, the next surprising realization arises: the extraordinary insight of discovering that there is no independent self. Now that we have seen the changing nature of things and the deceptive nature of appearances, we see at once that there is no separate permanent ego. If we examine ourselves with steady and clear attention, we cannot find such a fictitious ego entity. When you introspect, all you can seemingly find is an ever-changing body/mind and an ever-present boundless clear consciousness that notices it all. There is no fixed, separate or definable ego person to be found.

Buddha taught that it is the combination of mindfulness and special insights that has the power to create perfect enlightenment. The power of the union of mindfulness and the subtlest special insight removes the blocks and obscurations to reveal an enlightened essence that has always been there.

The union of calm abiding and special insight is the union of stable, clear attention with the simultaneous wisdom of recognizing phenomena as changeable, illusory and without self. It is the power of this union that can eliminate the ego, destroy clinging and reveal an inner divine nature.

The highest realization and the ultimate meditation
is the stable and direct realization that our nature is actually an ever-present empty clarity that has an unconditional sensitivity to the suffering of others and the ability to intuitively know how to act appropriately, for the benefit of ourselves and others. In other words, your pure consciousness is fully endowed with perfect love and wisdom of its own. Resting effortlessly in the recognition of an enlightened luminous essence is actually considered the highest and most powerful of insight meditations.

The highest unity is expressed in the meditation instructions: There is nothing to meditate on, but don’t be distracted.

Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation and has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who lived in a retreat hut for six years and studied and practiced meditation full-time. He now has over twenty years of experience teaching meditation. Chad likes regularly
Meditation retreats on the Sunshine Coast, Australia
Online meditation coachingprovides three online programs – The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to gradually guide people from the basic principles of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of consciousness.
Breathwork to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and
The bliss of inner fire This is a Buddhist tantric method to clear energy blockages and connect with the clear light of bliss. You can also get Chad’s free ebook now Insights on the go.