What is Vipassana meditation and how does it differ from other forms of meditation?
TRUDY GOODMAN: All meditations have something good to offer. That’s important to know. The only bad meditation is the kind you don’t do.
What I appreciate about Vipassana, or Insight Meditation, is its emphasis on subjective awareness, on your own consciousness, as opposed to focusing on the object of meditation. While the object or focus of meditation may be the breath, the emphasis is on what’s happening in your awareness.
Are you liking or disliking what’s happening? Are you spacing out or ignoring it? Understanding your habitual reactions to experience gives you more possibilities for getting to know yourself in a deeper way. This also has implications for recognizing patterned responses and biases in relationship to others.
JACK KORNFIELD: One of the translations of the word Vipassana is “seeing clearly.” So as Trudy was saying, the focus isn’t so much on concentrating on a particular thing, whether it’s the breath or a mantra or an image—all of which are beautiful meditations for quieting the mind—but on establishing a sense of mindful awareness of what’s actually happening within our mind, heart, and body. As we get more deeply present and relaxed in the gracious way that meditation allows, then new understanding comes. A kind of wisdom is invited as we pay attention in this way.
Meditation can be something we think we should do, like we should exercise, take our vitamins, or do yoga. It can be a self-improvement project, or worse—it could be a grim duty. But in fact, meditation is an invitation to well-being and to a kind of inner joy and peace.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily happen right away. The first thing you discover when you start to meditate is how out of control your mind is. You want to put your attention on the breath, but it spins everywhere. But with some kindness and patience, your mind starts to settle down.
The point isn’t to get someplace, but to be present with what’s there, even if it’s feelings of fear or the uprising of conflict in your life. To bring a kindness to that and say, okay, this is here. Can
