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Today we will talk about the Vipassana meditation and how to start incorporating it in your life. A small disclaimer.
This five-minute video is not a replacement for the 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat that I highly, highly recommend everybody does. You can read more about it in my blog. But today we’ll just give a little bit of a theoretical construct on what Vipassana is and give you a simple technique to start practicing it in your life.
What is Vipassana?
To understand Vipassana you have to understand that there are two broad categories of meditation. The first is more concentration-based meditation and the second is more awareness or insight-based meditation. In concentration-based meditation, you are training your mind to focus on one thought with the exclusion of everything else. So that you can stop the natural nature of the mind which is to be dissipated and restless. And get into a position of concentration or ‘Ekagrah‘. And that’s why you do that via images, mantras, etc. Insight or awareness-based meditation which is where Vipassana belongs is a slightly more organic form of meditation in which you’re not training or consciously training your mind to do anything.
You are just observing the nature of reality, as is. That’s why the word Vipassana in Sanskrit also means observing reality, as is. So what…what is that reality and how does that help? So the most simple form of Vipassana meditation for instance is observing your breath. So you observe that this is how the breath is emerging from within my abdomen. This is a long breath, this is a short breath. You just observe it without judgment or reaction. It is the nature of breath to arise and then to disappear. As you start doing more of it you start realizing that your thoughts follow a similar pattern. They come and then they go. They come and then they go.
Why Is That Helpful?
Because if you look at why there is so much worry, anxiety, frustration, anger in everybody’s lives, it’s because they are following every thought that comes your mind to its full conclusion. So for instance, if you’re thinking this person said that to me. Instead of just letting it go, you follow that whole thought process. You’re like, oh, this person said that so that means they think that. So that’s when this would happen to me, that’s why I don’t like them’. You start creating a full story behind it. For instance, if something is happening at your work and your boss is being unfair to you. You have the thought that the boss is being unfair. And then instead of just observing that thought you take it to its full conclusion, this is what it means for me and this is what I should say to him or her.
This is what the future would look like if I do this and this is what will happen and this is what’s going to happen to my career. You kind of take that play of thought and you take it to its full conclusion and you’re doing it again and again to every thought that emerges. As a result, there is so much anxiety and worry. Now, when you start doing Vipassana you start to train your mind to realize that it’s just the nature of the mind to keep generating thoughts. And like the waves in the sea, a wave will come, and then the next wave will come. And then the next wave will come and then the waves will go away. And the more you start to realize this you start to realize the impermanence of this whole thought construct And you don’t get attached and fixated on it. Which obviously leads to more peace and silence in your life because you become an observer versus a– versus judging and reacting to every thought.
How Do You Incorporate Vipassana Meditation In Your Life?
Again, very simple as I have taught in my previous courses. You do 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at night. You find a place to sit comfortably. Ideally, with your back erect so that you are in a pose of attention. Your eyes are closed and you start to just observe your breath. You’re not paying very close attention to it, just observing it very simply. You see that it’s arising in my abdomen and now it’s going away once again. Or if you want a little bit more focus you can look at the space between your upper lip and the tip of your nostril and you can feel the breath coming in and then the breath going out. Very simply, that all you are doing is you’re just sitting with your eyes closed and observing the movement of the breath, up and down. And slowly you’ll also start to observe your thoughts.
There will be one thought about this, there’ll be thought about something somebody said and there’ll be another thought about something somebody said. And all you’re doing is you’re observing. Oh! There is this thought. But you’re not taking it to its conclusion. You’re not trying to create a story around it. You’re just observing the thought and then letting that thought pass away. And that’s all. That is Vipassana. You’re just observing the breath, thoughts come and then the breath and thoughts go away. And hopefully, then you start doing it over a period of time. You start to have a very, very deep sense of silence in your life. Because… in everyday life you become extremely conscious that this is a thought which is coming in my mind and it’s not permanent.
It is impermanent because it’s the nature of the mind to keep creating these thoughts which will eventually pass away. Or as the famous saying in Buddhism goes, the nature of desire is desire itself or the nature of thought is thought itself. It’s just the nature of the mind to keep generating thoughts. And what you have to do is to learn to not engage in them but just to observe them. So that’s Vipassana in a nutshell. Just observing the nature of reality, as is. And I hope you can start your Vipassana meditation practice today because you’ll see a tremendous effect in your life with that.
Good luck and I’ll see you again next week. Thank you.
This is Karan Bajaj and I want to offer you my free meditation video course today.
Subscribe to my channel for your free startup and meditation course and 3-5x weekly videos on startups, success models and writing, https://www.youtube.
