Here's a letter I'd written some years back to a friend explaining the scientific nature of the Buddha's teaching -- Vipassana meditation:

>>I looked at you web page www.dhamma.org for meditation. Looks very interesting. I

>have practiced Transcendental meditation on and off for 20 years,
>How does this differ, or does it?

It sure is a lot different. I've not practiced the other types of meditations but I think that most of them deal with concentrating & sharpening the mind or stilling the mind with the help of a mantra and/or breath or focusing the mind on an image of a deity/god or light between the eyes etc. In short, to go into 'samadhi'. This does empower the mind & with it come all sorts of supernatural powers or ‘siddhi’s as we call it in India.

But in Vipassana, the aim is to come out of all our suffering, to purify the mind. Vipassana means 'seeing with insight', seeing things as they actually are, not as they appear to be. It is the eight-fold Noble Path re-discovered by Gottama when he became the Buddha. Buddha means one who has got 'bodhi' or enlightenment, who has reached the final goal, to come out of all suffering. When he became a Buddha his pure mind, which is always filled with love & compassion, made him teach others how he had come out of all suffering, so that they too would become fully liberated, or Buddha’s. And during his time thousands of people became fully liberated using the technique, Vipassana or Dhamma or the 8 fold noble path. Unfortunately the technique got lost in India within the next 5 centuries or so & also in all the other countries where it had spread, except in Burma where a few monks maintained it in its pristine purity. Now it is spreading all over the world, & is helping lots of people come out of their sufferings. It is taught in many of the jails in India, USA & UK too. Recently I saw a vedio on it being taught at the North County half-way house in Seattle Washington, to a bunch of female, most of whom were addicts. It was very touching. Try & order it from the www.dhamma.org site. Also the book 'Art of Living' by William Hart, there, will explain to you Vipassana in details.

Vipassana has to be learnt at a 10-day course. The technique is divided into 3 parts. 'Shila' or morality, 'samadhi' or sharpening the mind, i.e. being master of the mind rather that being a slave of the mind, and 'pannya' or wisdom, to purify the mind. On the first 3 days with the base of morality, i.e. no killing, stealing, lying, intoxication nor sexual abuse, we are trained to develop our samadhi by keeping our attention around the nostrils on our breathing, and maintaining it there for as long as possible. And to keep on getting it back to the breath when we become aware that our mind's wandered away. Suffering i.e. anger hatred, fear, passion etc. are a universal malady and so the remedy should also be universal. Hence no words/mantra or images etc. are to be used while developing 'samadhi'. The whole process is based on the truth or reality as it is. When we sit & close our eyes, the most obvious reality we become aware of is the breath. So we use this to develop our samadhi. There is another reason too, that our mind is closely related to our breaths. Whenever any negativity arises in our minds we notice that the breath looses it's normality. It becomes a bit faster or harder. Also as we realize it on the 3rd day, that the breath is the door that separates the conscious from the so-called unconscious or subconscious mind. On the 3rd day we are asked to feel the sensations on the nose & below it, above the upper lips. And because the mind has become sharper by the practice of samadhi for 3 days, we start feeling all sort of sensations there. They were always there but our conscious mind was too gross to feel them till then. Only the subconscious was feeling them & reacting to them, till then. Now that the barrier to the sub-conscious mind has been pierced, on the 4th day we are taught 'pannya'/wisdom or the actual technique of Vipassana. At an hour an a half sitting with the teacher, he guides us how to do it. He guides us to take our awareness from our nose to the top of the head & asks us to feel the sensations there, whatever they are, as it is. Gross or subtle, throbbing or tingling, heat or cold whatever they are as they are right now. Then he guides us from the top of the head to the whole head, forehead, eyes, ears, cheeks, nose, lips, chin, then down one hand down the other, then the front & back body, & down the legs, slowly, part by part feeling sensations on each part. And on feeling the sensations we are asked to remain equanimous to them, i.e. not to react with craving if they are pleasant sensations & nor with aversion (or go away, go away,) if they are unpleasant sensations. We are told to remain aware that these sensations are always impermanent & are going to change any way.”This too shall pass”. So it is pointless reacting with craving for something that is impermanent, for when it goes away we'll only suffer. So we feel the sensations part by part and as soon as we get sensations there, without reacting to them, knowing this too shall change, we move on to the next part. Observe, without reacting & move on. This way we keep on moving from head to feet & feet to head in order, not missing out any part of the body. It is very essential not to react to these sensations, for when we react we tie the mind with knots/'karma'/'sankhara's & the mind becomes impure. And when we don’t react we purify the mind. (Vipassana to me, is the constant practice of the line “We can only change the way we react and the way we see ourselves.” from our Basic Text.)

Initially we can only feel gross sensations with subtle sensations here & there. As we continue, the mind becomes purer & sharper & can start feeling subtle sensations on many parts of the body, by the 6th or 7th day. Later on we can feel subtle sensations flowing through-out the body. But we have to remain equanimous always and not get into the madness of playing sensation-games, else it only ties you up & doesn't free us as it's supposed to. Vipassana is a very scientific technique. The Universal Law which we call Dhamma or Dharma is just that, universal. It applies equally to each one of us. Whenever we develop any negativity in our mind it is bound to tie us down & whenever we develop love & good-will it is bound to free us. Our 3 enemies are craving, aversion & ignorance. The trouble with us is that most of us are ignorant because we don’t know that our so called sub/un-conscious mind is always conscious to these sensations & is constantly reacting with craving or aversion to these sensations. Even when we're asleep, if a mosquito bites us we slap it, if we feel the weight unbearable after sleeping on 1 side for too long, we turn over. All the sages/religions/etc. over the centuries have told us that we should not crave nor have hatred, not get angry, be afraid, etc.. But how not to? Buddha showed us the way to do that.

The apparent reality is that we crave/hate worldly things. He said that we are not reacting to outside things but to the sensations within. The outside world becomes a reality for us only when it comes in contact with our 6 sense doors (the 6th being the mind -- connected with thoughts & feelings). Whenever anything comes in contact with any of our sense doors what happens in the mind is this. (He divided the mind into 4 parts.) The 1st part of the mind 'vinyana' or consciousness, becomes aware that something has happened at this sense door, say the ear-sense. Then the 2nd part, 'sannya' or evaluation giver, gives an evaluation, good or bad (depending on our past conditioning), good/pleasing word or bad/threatening words. The 3rd part is 'vedana' or sensations. Depending on the evaluation, the mind starts generating 'asavaas' or a bio-chemical flow which causes sensations all over the body. If the evaluation is good then we start feeling pleasant sensations, and if it is bad we start feeling gross, dirty/painful sensations. Till this moment no harm has been done. But then the 4th part 'sankhara'(sanskara) or reactions starts raising it's head, & reacts to these sensations, with craving if it's a good sensation & aversion if bad. And as it starts reacting the flow of 'asavaa'sstarts increasing and it reacts more & more till it finally forces our body to react. And it's the mental reaction of the 4th part of our mind that plants seeds of 'karma' in us which ties us down. But if we don’t react we don’t add to our stock of ‘karma’s or snskaras.

Vipassana gives us a way out. For now, we can feel all the sensations, that previously only our sub-conscious mind could feel. And, by not reacting to these sensations when we sit for our daily meditation, we have started training our sub-conscious mind to not react. Also when we sit for our Vipassana sittings and are not reacting & adding to our stock of ‘karma’s, then the old seeds of Karma that we had planted in the past start giving their fruits & they come up as sensations. If the seeds were that of aversion, their fruits come up as gross/unpleasant sensations & the craving seeds come up as pleasant sensations. If then we don't react to these sensations then the karma seeds are removed & we’re free from them & the mind becomes purer to that extent. Thus we wipe away our past conditioning/karma and our mind becomes purer & purer & we start becoming more loving people. Buddha in his days, when he used to find people wanting it come out of their miseries used to say to them "Then give me seven days of your life. Just seven days of your life. I am not here to make you my deciple. I am not here to snatch you from your old 'guru' or religion. I am not interested in that. I am not here to tell you that you must believe what I say. I am not interested in that. Give a trial and see what you get. Give a trial"

So, may you too give the Vipassana course a trial and be Happy, Joyous & FREE

For more info. & course-dates check: http://www.dhamma.org