Vipassana Meditation: Day 4 - Morning Discourse

Vipassana is the most powerful ancient technique for attaining mastery of the mind. Taught by the Buddha, Vipassana meditation is arguably the most famous & effective form of meditation. Retreats are held in cities and towns all over the world & have been instrumental in the transformation & healing of countless millions of people.

During the retreat, you will be guided to practice the foundational techniques of Vipassana, and follow the core principles of the philosophy.

Transcript

Today's a big day for us.

The day that I learned Vipassana changed my life forever.

And it's not an understatement to say that it's probably the most important day in my life except for maybe the day I was born.

Otherwise none of it could have happened.

Transformed everything.

And today we're going to start learning Vipassana.

We've been getting ourselves ready for it up until now.

And now we're going to apply all the skills we've been learning.

Like we talked about yesterday,

This big internal revolution of thought that the Buddha came up with is this switch from thinking that we're living in a world of objects to living in a world of sensations.

And the more we integrate this,

The more we can start to engage with it.

And we start to see it with everything.

There are objects,

There are things that we come in contact with,

But until we come in contact with them and they produce sensation in us,

They stimulate one of our sense doors,

We don't have direct experience of them.

And it's this reactivity to sensation that produces our complexes,

That produces our habit patterns,

Our unconscious conditioning.

And we've been making this for a long time.

And today we're going to access it and find out what it is.

So far we've gathered our awareness,

We've started to gain some clarity and learn how to be able to sharpen our minds and to not react to things we feel.

The reason we've been doing this is because these are the essential skills we need to practice for Pashna.

We're about to go into our internal world and to start to go over every aspect of it.

But there's no point doing that if we can't go there with a clear mind.

If we go there with a scattered mind,

Then all we're doing is bringing disorder to our internal world.

And we're going to produce more reactivity,

More unconscious programming.

So one,

We need to be able to distinctly feel sensation before we start digging into the internal world,

Because otherwise we're just engaging in another idea.

We're engaging in the idea of moving through our body,

Our system,

As opposed to actually feeling sensation,

Actually accessing the reality.

Two,

We need to be in a clear non-reactive state of mind,

Because otherwise we're feeling sensation and we're reacting to it.

So we're simply continuing to do what we normally do.

So we're going to learn Pashna today.

But it should be remembered,

The main reason we're here is to master our mind.

And so if we haven't got that clear mind,

We haven't got that stable,

Focused mind,

Then there's no point taking that to the body.

It's good to learn the skill so we know it's there.

But to practice it effectively,

We need to have that clear,

Stable,

Focused mind.

And then we can start to go to sensation.

Then we can start to work with sensation.

Can start to work with our internal world,

Which is really the thing that creates our external world.

Our internal world is like a record in both senses of the word.

So far,

We've been sharpening our needle and we're about to put it on the record and listen to it play.

Everyone here has created different grooves.

Everyone here has a different song that's about to play,

But it's exactly the same activity.

And today we're going to start to access that.

We're going to find out what the grooves are that we've created,

What the song is that we're consistently singing to ourselves.

Everything we're going to experience is a part of our internal world.

It's good to remember that because we might bring some things up that are quite difficult to deal with.

Most people here have probably experienced some form of tragedy,

Trauma,

Something that has marks on them,

And even if you haven't,

Then you still have this unconscious conditioning that's constantly sapping the energy away.

And what we do when we start to play the record is we're going to re-experience this.

And eventually it gets to the point where you re-experience everything.

So get ready to be able to look at your life again.

Get ready to be able to feel the sensations that we've stored that have kept a record of who we are and how we've lived.

Because that's what happens when we start to play the record and we start to go deeper and deeper into what we've catalogued.

Up until now,

We've been fighting this battle with one hand tied behind our backs.

Because we've been focusing and working on pure focus.

And we've been aware that there's something tugging our mind away from our focus,

But we haven't been able to address it directly.

We've simply been focusing and as something starts to pull our awareness away,

We've been pulling it back.

We've been feeling that there is unconscious conditioning that moves our mind against our will but we haven't been able to address it.

As we start to go into the body and the sensations,

We're going to feel that what's been pulling our awareness away are these unconscious patterns.

Are these patterns of sensation that we've created and stored within the body.

These little closed loops of activity.

And when we go through the body,

We can feel them all.

We can slowly start to feel them individually and to learn to not react to any of them.

Just like that sparrow that we discussed with the hundred ants covering it.

We may not have one big thing that's a trauma or tragedy in our lives.

It's the thing that's weighing us down.

But we're being weighed down by these consistent little unconscious loops that we've got playing that are taking our energy away.

And now we can actually go to them,

Feel them directly and learn to be non-reactive to each of them individually.

Each of them individually might feel like nothing.

And it might not even feel like we've made a big change.

But as we slowly start to loosen them one by one,

We start to accumulate more energy and get a freer,

Clearer mind.

In my life,

I remember feeling weighed down by this unconscious load I was carrying.

Like I said,

When I was 14,

I started to work through all of this.

When I started to experience that I was the one who created all of this and put this load on myself.

I became obsessed with finding out how I could get through it and how other people before me had got through it as well.

I started reading about psychology,

Religion,

Different practices,

Applying them within my life,

Integrating all these practices.

And they worked.

A lot of them helped me to be able to deal with the complexes and deal with the load I was carrying.

So by the time I was 21,

My life looked a lot better.

Everything was much more even and I lived a relatively good life.

But I still was carrying this internal load and I didn't know how to let go of it.

I didn't know how to directly access it so that I could put it down.

I could do things that gave me the ability to be able to deal with it and gave me the ability to be able to momentarily face it and to be able to enjoy life.

But I didn't know how to address each of the little bits of trauma that I'd experienced when I was younger and to be able to let go of the conditioning that kept them present within me.

And it was Vipassana that taught me how to do this.

Before Vipassana,

I practiced a lot of things.

Mantra,

Zen,

Qigong,

Shadow Work,

Tantric Yoga.

A lot of different things.

Shadow Work,

Different forms of psychoanalysis.

And they all did have some use.

And they all did help,

Actually.

And I started to be able to go into these momentary bliss states.

They would just come as I was practicing all this other stuff.

This clear,

Bright mind that we're talking about.

This ability to be able to access a deeper state of consciousness.

But then I would consistently snap back and I would still be carrying the same load.

I was still exactly the same.

And then somehow,

Through the chance of all these different thoughts,

Experiments I was going through,

I experienced the unconditioned state.

For the first time,

I experienced a state that was completely free from this web of conditioning that was this weight that was holding me down.

And I got to get a glimpse of it.

And I knew that this was the answer to this thing that I'd been seeking.

For the first time,

It was clear.

It was a more real state than my reality.

And this time when I came back,

My life had changed.

It did lighten the load a little bit.

There was a layer of fear and tension and doubt that just disappeared.

I was a different person.

My body shape started to change without me changing any of my habits.

Little things started to change.

Something had become better.

But I didn't know how I'd got there.

I didn't know a reliable way to get from A to Z.

Was it the tantric yoga?

Or was it the ringing a bell while I was saying a mantra 108 times,

Walking around in a circle around a Buddhist monument?

There was all these jumble of things I was doing that were producing results.

But they weren't reliable results.

They were mystical techniques to access mystical states,

Which did work.

But they weren't doing what the Buddha gave us,

Which is doing something extraordinary in an ordinary way.

He gives us a way to get to this unconditioned state reliably,

Step by step.

The only thing in the way of us doing it is us.

It's our willingness to be able to go through the steps.

And the only thing that can create that unwillingness for us to go through those steps is our lack of a desire to face the reality within.

If we're willing to truly go into the reality within and re-experience all of it again,

Then we can loosen these complexes.

Two years later,

I found Vipassana.

And I knew the first day I practiced it that this was the technique I was looking for.

These were the steps towards magic that I'd experienced before but didn't know how to get back to.

And it reliably produced that experience again.

And more importantly,

It reliably produced that transformation again,

Where every time you unwind a complex,

You come back lighter,

You come back without a layer.

It doesn't mean you're going to be enlightened the first time.

But what it means is that every time you come back from unwinding one of these webs of conditioning,

You're going to come back a different person with a more free consciousness.

It's an internal journey.

You may not look perfect to anyone else,

But you'll know that you're a little bit better than you were the time before,

A little bit more free,

A little bit lighter.

Like we talked about yesterday,

There might be some serious things that we have internally that we might not be willing to face yet.

And that's not a problem because we're going to do this step by step and no one's going to take you into yourself except yourself.

So you need to grade your own journey into yourself.

If you start to come up against something extremely uncomfortable,

Then just beware that's what's happening.

If you need to come back to gain more clarity,

More focus,

More stability,

Then come back and do that.

And then grade your own journey inwards.

This is why we work on awareness and equanimity at the same time.

Because the awareness is going to bring up the sensations and the equanimity is going to give us the ability to be able to deal with them,

To be able to simply feel them and not react to them.

So as we start to bring up different sensations and we bring up the stories,

The experiences,

The memories that they're attached to,

We need to be able to experience that sensation and focus on it without being caught in a loop of the story.

This is why we've been working on this ability to be able to maintain our pure focus and our pure state without getting dragged away.

So we can do this when we encounter our complexes directly.

It may mean re-experiencing something uncomfortable,

Living through something that's left a mark on us.

But if we live through it and we learn to not react to it,

Then the weight of it slowly starts to lessen.

And then we realize something wonderful as well,

Is that we're not dealing with the past,

We're only ever dealing with the present.

Because what we're experiencing right now,

Even if it is a memory,

Isn't the past.

It's the activity that we're taking in the present that ties a sensation within us,

That ties reactivity to a sensation within us.

So as we start to go through the body,

We start to realize that this isn't our history,

This isn't our past.

These are the stories that we're telling right now.

These are the reactive cycles that we're repeating right now that keep that story alive,

That keep that record alive.

We can feel everything again and we can respond to it entirely differently.

And there are three things that are dictating that.

One is past action.

And here action includes both conscious action and reactivity,

Unconscious action.

That's left an imprint on us.

Action we've taken in the past.

Two is present action.

What we're doing right now,

As we walk around,

Where is our mind going?

What stories are we telling ourselves?

What are we experiencing?

Do we sit here perfectly in meditation and then as soon as we get up,

We get caught up in loops of thought and cycles of what we normally do?

They're complexes that we're feeding.

They're cycles that we're making stronger every time we do that.

They could just be our day-to-day details that we regularly go through that we think aren't a problem,

But they're still building in cycles of thought if we're not maintaining a present and focused mind.

And the third thing is the quality of the focus that we bring to the moment.

So depending upon those three things,

We're going to experience a different internal reality.

We're going to enhance this skill over the next few days,

But this is the core central skill.

This is the thing that brings the practice together.

So we're going to continue to work this.

And over the next few days,

We're going to continue to go deeper into ourselves,

Sharpen our awareness,

And become more and more familiar with our internal world.

And it just depends how deep you want to go into your internal reality,

Into the story that we've logged here.

It's everyone's choice.

Everyone's choice how deep they want to go,

What they want to experience.

Because now that we have the ability to come back to focus,

Come back to clarity,

We can always stay at that level.

And then we continue to move when it feels more comfortable.

But eventually,

If we want to get to liberation,

We've got to take down the demons that are in the way of that.

The meaning of the word Arahant,

One meaning of the word Arahant,

Is one who has defeated all the enemies.

And if we're going to defeat the enemies,

We have to be willing to have a showdown every now and then.

We have to be willing to face up against our complexes,

See which sensations they produce within us,

And not react to them.

Let the story play.

Let the sensations be produced and simply feel,

Just feel,

Feel sensation as sensation.

Don't add anything to that.

The skill we're learning today is one of non-reactive movement of awareness.

We're putting all the skills together,

The non-reactivity,

The awareness,

And now movement.

Traveling around the body and not just into the body.

How we're going to do that is we're going to move from the area we've been focusing on and we're going to move around the central nervous system and then feel everything associated with it,

Every body part associated with it.

So we're going to move up to different points and then we're going to stop.

When we stop on the top of the head,

We're gonna feel everything associated with the top of the head.

When we stop at the back of the head,

We'll feel everything associated with the back of the head.

When we stop at the base of the neck,

We'll start to feel the shoulders and the arms and and all the sensations associated with them,

And then we're going to come down,

Move down the spine,

Up and around and back up again.

But as we go,

We're not just feeling the central channel,

We're feeling all the sensations around the body associated with them,

And we're moving through the same cycle continuously.

There are many cycles that were given to do this.

Different teachers,

Different traditions change it slightly.

The Buddha's original cycle,

Starting from the feet and going up the body.

That's the one that's taught in the sutras.

It doesn't really matter where you start,

It matters that we cover the whole body and we do it consistently without missing pieces.

Non-reactivity in two ways.

Non-reactivity and consistency of movement,

So we're not thrown off by sensations in different part of the body.

So for example,

If we're moving and we're on the top of the head and we start to feel a sharp sensation,

A strong sensation in our knee,

We don't jump to the sensation in our knee.

We continue to move.

We continue to move in a structured way so that we don't allow a sensation,

A complex,

To manipulate our movement.

We're doing it steadily and we're doing it in an ordered fashion.

Non-reactivity in another way is that as we move,

We don't treat any sensation differently.

Whichever sensations that we feel,

We simply feel them and we don't react.

It's as simple as that.

What we learned yesterday continues to be true throughout the whole process.

The only way we choose between sensations is we move towards the subtle,

Towards the indistinct and away from the gross,

Away from the obvious.

That way,

As we move,

We can continue to sharpen our awareness at the same time.

Continue to untrain the mind from moving towards the gross and away from the subtle.

This helps us to unwind our programming and it helps us to go deeper and deeper into our internal reality.

If anyone hits a point where they feel like they've started to lose their awareness and they're just moving through the body with their mind without distinctly feeling the sensation,

Then just come back to the practice of focusing on the breath and focusing on the sensation here.

Sharpen that mind again.

Make sure we have a sharp mind before we dig into the body.

And if anyone comes to a point where they hit anything where they feel like they can't deal with,

It's emotionally too much for them,

It's too much sensation for them to be able to deal with,

Then do the same thing.

Simply come back,

Sharpen the awareness,

Focus on the breath,

Work on clarity.

We also now have the different postures to go through.

If we want to sit in Bushman for a minute,

Let our bodies adjust,

Let our sensations even out and our back recover,

We can do that.

If we want to get up and stand meditating,

We can do that too.

If we want to go walk and remain,

Keep this consistent awareness through the transitions.

Keep this unbroken awareness,

Then we can do that too.

But in this next session,

While we practice for Pashna,

Let's just practice it sitting so that we can learn the whole cycle and we can start to train it into our bodies.

This becomes like a program that we can run automatically.

We start to run through the body with our conscious awareness,

Moving over every part of the body,

Feeling every inch,

Every sensation so that we can access every aspect of our internal reality.

So we're going to practice for an hour and a half.

We're going to go through this technique step by step.

So if anyone needs to take a break to loosen their legs up,

Go to the bathroom,

Now is the time to do it.

Good luck with the practice.

Reviews

This was the real stuff. Woah. This is amazing

🙏🙏

All your discourses are wonderfully clear. Thank you for them🙏

I’m super impressed with David Hans Barker’s clear, relevant explanations- incorporating understanding about trauma and other aspects which Goenka doesn’t go into. Highly recommended!

Thank you so much! ☸️

This is by far the clearest description and teaching I have come accross. Thank you.