Through meditation, as the mind opens up to us, we gain insight into how we think, react, and feel. These are more psychological insights, and while those can be extremely beneficial, they’re not the type of insight that meditation training is aiming for. In authentic meditation training, insight is about seeing fundamental truths about the nature of mind and reality. Experiencing these truths firsthand helps break us out of the normal ways we see ourself and the world around us. It allows us to begin to see things as they truly are, rather than through the many layers of conditioning that shape our perception.
One of the first insights meditators may experience is seeing that they are not their thoughts. When you can rest as the observer of your experience, stepping back from thoughts, you see they come and go all on their own. There is no “you” creating them, it’s just a mechanism of the mind doing its thing. As you move along the meditation path, these insights unfold in a progressive way, allowing you to see through deeper and more fundamental layers of your experience. It usually starts with deconstructing thoughts and mental activity, but can also include emotions, the body, the sense of self, our perception of space and time, and even awareness itself.
This work can change your experience of yourself and the world in a fundamental and permanent way. As you deconstruct different aspects of the mind, it creates a greater sense of freedom and spaciousness, like dropping a mental weight you didn’t realize you were carrying. Thoughts and emotions no longer have the same pull they once did. When your identity is wrapped up in them, they dominate your experience in each moment. But as your mind grows more spacious and lets go of these concepts and aspects of identity, thoughts and emotions are seen from a much more expansive place. They become a much smaller part of your experience, allowing them to come and go without much reaction.
Emptiness is the understanding that nothing we experience in the world, whether internal or external, has any true independent existence or essence. It’s all the result of an infinitely complex web of causes and conditions coming together to temporarily create an object or experience.
For example, you can think of a tree. What we label a tree is made up of roots, branches, bark, leaves, and those are dependent on soil, sunlight, water, air, and time. There is no individual thing that can be called a tree, it’s just the label we’ve given that collection of constantly shifting elements.
By deeply understanding the “empty” nature of everything, including ourselves, we’re able to let go of our rigid ways of seeing the world and open up to a greater appreciation of the ever unfolding universe.
While emptiness points to the lack of a solid independent existence or essence, dependent origination explains how all things come into existence. Put simply, this appears because of that.
An example would be your experience of reading this page right now. Without me creating this website, and you sitting there looking at the page, this experience can’t exist. To take it a few steps further, consider everything that had to happen for this moment to arise, like the creation of the device you’re using, the internet, and the life experiences that led you to this page. Now combine that with the years of causes and conditions that shaped my ability and interest to write it. What seems like a simple experience of reading is actually a beautifully intricate web of conditions all coming together to create this moment.
Contemplating this in your life helps bring you into the present, and just like with emptiness practice, it can help you appreciate the beauty and complexity of each moment.
The Three Characteristics
This is one of the core Buddhist teachings. The idea is that all three of the characteristics listed below apply to every sensation or experience in life, down to the most subtle levels of perception. By investigating how these apply to our moment to moment experience, we can start to see more clearly into the nature of mind and how it constructs our experience of ourselves and the world around us. Piercing through these illusions allows the mind to let go of its sense of identity with the sensations being observed.
By actively noticing and contemplating these three characteristics, we’re able to see that all of reality is in a constant state of flow and there is no solid separate self that is observing it. There’s nothing permanent anywhere that can be held on to, and it’s the minds attempt to hold on that causes most of our suffering. We try to hold on to our positive emotions, experiences, our aging bodies, fixed ideas of who people are and how they should act, and we create this solid “self” that’s holding on to it all. All things appear for a time and then disappear, including the sensations that make up our sense of self, it’s all just a flow of sensations happening on its own, with no one at the centre of it. The more you can perceive this flowing change, the more you’re able to let go of control and let the universe unfold without resistance.
There is nothing we can point to in the mind or our experience that we could call a solid, stable self. All sensations of the mind and body are constantly changing. As you develop your awareness and stable attention, the scope and subtlety of what you can observe expands, and anything you can observe is not the self.
All sensations, whether they’re thoughts, emotions, or external events, arise for a time and then disappear. Insight work shows you how things that seemed solid and stable are actually made up of many different sensations, all quickly appearing and disappearing in each moment.
Despite the impermanent nature of all things, the mind is almost always trying to hold on to what feels good and push away what feels bad, even in very subtle ways. This creates a constant sense of dissatisfaction with the present moment. Insight practice helps you recognize clearly what it feels like when the mind is subtly grasping at experience. With time you can learn to relax, let go of grasping and craving, and stay present.
Insight Practices & Resources
Working With the Three Characteristics:
Start your seated practice as you normally would, and give the mind some time to settle. Once you’re ready, begin to investigate your experience and notice how these three characteristics apply to anything that is showing up for you. This can be thoughts, emotions, sounds, the breath, or the feeling of your body. You can be flexible and shift between all three characteristics, or focus on only one.
For example, during one sit you could focus on the impermanence of bodily sensations. Notice any tension or pain as it appears. Notice the beginning, middle, and end of the sensation. Is it in a fixed spot or is it moving? Does it have a shape? Is it hot, cold, neutral? Is that shape or temperature changing? Dig in, try to really soak your awareness into the sensations. What at first may have seemed solid, can be seen to be a cloud of constantly changing sensations.
Seeing that Frees - Rob Burbea
Seeing that Frees focuses on a different dimension of practice than most meditation books. It’s packed with “Insight” exercises that help you begin to deconstruct the many ways we grasp at experience and create suffering throughout the day. Whether you’re seated on a meditation cushion, out for a walk, or sitting on a bus, he offers a wide range of practices that you can bring into your daily life.
The practices in this book are designed to disrupt your normal patterns of perception by deconstructing your experience so you can see things as they truly are, rather than seeing through your conditioning. As you shift away from your conditioned ways of seeing the world, your mind begins to hold less tightly to ideas and experiences, allowing it to feel freer and more open as you move through the world.
Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - Daniel Ingram
Daniel Ingram clearly lays out the core Buddhist teachings, the techniques required for deep practice, and the stages a meditator may pass through on the path of awakening. His work has inspired a new generation of practitioners, myself included, who appreciate the transparency that he presents this information with. He speaks openly about the highs and lows of this journey, the transformative power of these practices, and all the strange territory in-between. If you’re interested in taking your practice deeper I highly recommend this book. Daniel lays the entire meditation path out for you, inviting you to walk it and experience everything for yourself.
Daniel Ingram’s Personal Website – Free PDF, E-Reader and Audiobook versions of the book
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