Vipassana meditation focuses upon bodily sensations to see the nature of the mind. This article explains how this is supposed to take place.
From the reading:
Before the time of the Buddha, little if any importance was given to bodily sensation. In fact, it was the centrality of bodily sensation that was the Buddha’s great discovery in his quest to determine the root cause of sufferingand the means to its cessation. Before the Buddha, India’s spiritual masters emphasized teachings that encouraged people to turn away from sensory objects and ignore the sensations that contact with them engenders.
But the Buddha, a real scientist, examined sensation more closely. He discovered that when we come into contact with a sense-object through one of the six sense doors (ears, eyes, nose, tongue, body, mind), we cling to the sensation it creates, giving rise to tanha (wanting it to stay and to increase) and aversion (wanting it to cease). The mind then reacts with thoughts of either “I want” or “I do not want.” Buddha discovered that everything that arises in the mind arises with the sensations on the body and that these sensations are the material we have to work with.
If interested, check the one comment rebuttal that follows the article.
Interesting article, thanks @_Barry
I received teachings with similar context and it matches my own observations.
The rebuttal seems a bit odd to me: even if it might be true that this interconnection between sense input and aversion/grasping would not be found in the pali canon (I don’t know), that does not mean that it is not a buddhist practice. It is, at least in Mahayana.
When the rebuttal-writer states:
„As seen here in the proper context, chasing after insight within impermanent physical sensations can only continue ignorance of Four Noble Truths.“
then I would ask him what he thinks dream yoga is?
Is a dream yoga practitioner not practicing vipashyana with the impermanent sensations of the mind/energy/body?
Is the price to gain not understanding of the empty nature of sensory phenomena?
Actually, the rebuttal is good because it leads to contemplation, which in itself helps us go deeper into our beliefs and sort of teases out the finer areas of understanding and acceptance—and practice too. I love it when there is a rebuttal or clarification or extension of thought so that I can respond to that as well as the original propositions of the author.
Sure, a rebuttal is always interesting and bears the potential to go deeper into the subject.
What I found faulty in this rebuttal was that the author tried to refute the original author by only referring to scripture of the first turning of the wheel of dharma (Pali canon) but at the same time ignoring teachings from the third turning of the wheel of dharma (e.g. Asanga and others).
So, just because one doesn’t find something in the Pali Canon, then this doesn’t mean that it is not buddhist.
A couple of things…first, this from “The Mahamudra Transmission from Tilopa to Naropa”:
The followers of Tantra, the Prajnaparamita , The Vinaya, the Sutras, and other religions- All these, by their texts and philosophical dogmas, Will not see the luminous mahamudra.
…and…
I have been working toward an understanding of the Trikaya and it becomes increasingly clear that all of the forms (Physical, Vajra, Clear Light), as presentations in emptiness, are inherently impermanent. Where, then, would one look for insight if it could not be gained through these basic modes of being?
