I just got back from Vipassana
It had been on my bucket list for a decade
I return 10-days later with three insights.
And a feeling that it is incomplete.
Let me explain.
ONE
Buddha observed and realised, they said.
We have sense organs.
We perceive — feel — crave — get attached.
Hence the illusion of permanence.
“Fair enough,” I thought.
TWO
Observe for yourself and realise, they said.
Impermanence of breath — and sensations.
Be acutely aware — yet entirely equanimous.
Break the link.
Perceive — without feeling.
You will stop new cravings.
You will dissolve the old ones too.
And experience reality objectively.
“I see the insight, but perception isn’t objective reality.” I thought.
THREE
You must observe for yourself, the Buddha insisted.
Do not go by oral tradition, nor by lineage.
Nor by hearsay, nor by scripture.
Nor by logical reasoning, nor by inference.
Nor by reflection on appearances.
Nor by agreement through pondering views.
Nor by seeming competence.
Because the insight is:
Visible directly, not inferred.
Immediate and timeless, not promised later.
Open to inspection, not believed.
Leading inward, not outwardly speculative.
To be known and experienced by the wise for themselves.
“Exceptionally beautiful,” I thought.
100 hours of practice later
I came back home. Did some reading.
Vipassana is an accessible start.
You still have an observer and the observed.
A context and it’s contents.
Advait Vedanta, dissolves the duality.
Oneness of consciousness and the universe.
The contents is the context.
Tibetan Dzogchen, dissolves the oneness.
And be left with emptiness.
Existence of something means the absence of another.
Reality is a relativistic illusion arising from non-existence.
The context and contents arise from nothing to give meaning to each other.
“Even more beautiful, yet feels incomplete,” I thought.
I accept the insights
Illusion of permanence, yes.
Illusion of self, yes.
Illusory-ness of reality, yes.
But why does that conclude with renunciation?
Why a life of asceticism or closest to it?
Why condemn all imagined reality?
How can perception reveal objective reality:
Imagine an elephant in a room. this elephant is not the proverbial weighty issue but an actual weighty mammal. Imagine the room is spacious enough to accommodate it; make it a school gym. Now imagine a mouse has scurried in, too. A robin hops alongside it. An owl perches on an overhead beam. A bat hangs upside down from the ceiling. A rattlesnake slithers along the floor. A spider has spun a web in a corner. A mosquito buzzes through the air. A bumblebee sits upon a potted sunflower. Finally, in the midst of this increasingly crowded hypothetical space, add a human. Let’s call her Rebecca. She’s sighted, curious, and (thankfully) fond of animals. Don’t worry about how she got herself into this mess. Never mind what all these animals are doing in a gym. Consider, instead, how Rebecca and the rest of this imaginary menagerie might perceive one another.
The elephant raises its trunk like a periscope, the rattlesnake flicks out its tongue, and the mosquito cuts through the air with its antennae. All three are smelling the space around them, taking in the floating scents. The elephant sniffs nothing of note. The rattlesnake detects the trail of the mouse, and coils its body in ambush. The mosquito smells the alluring carbon dioxide on Rebecca’s breath and the aroma of her skin. It lands on her arm, ready for a meal, but before it can bite, she swats it away— and her slap disturbs the mouse. It squeaks in alarm, at a pitch that is audible to the bat but too high for the elephant to hear. The elephant, meanwhile, unleashes a deep, thunderous rumble too low-pitched for the mouse’s ears or the bat’s but felt by the vibration-sensitive belly of the rattlesnake. Rebecca, who is oblivious to both the ultrasonic mouse squeaks and the infrasonic elephant rumbles, listens instead to the robin, which is singing at frequencies better suited to her ears. But her hearing is too slow to pick out all the complexities that the bird encodes within its tune…..
…. there is a wonderful word for this sensory bubble— Umwelt. It was defined and popularized by the Baltic- German zoologist Jakob von Uexküll in 1909. Umwelt comes from the German word for “en-vironment,” but Uexküll didn’t use it simply to refer to an animal’s surroundings. Instead, an Umwelt is specifically the part of those surroundings that an animal can sense and experience— its perceptual world.
— From An Immense WorldThe illusory imagined reality
Gives us relativity, computing, history, fiction, even this teaching.
Why throw the baby with the bathwater.
More monks use tech than scientists meditate.
There surely is value in imagined realities.
Awareness that all reality is layers of illusions.
From less imagined to more imagined.
Objectivity as a count of independent observations of a layer of reality.
The beauty of science.
Self-defining, correcting nature of the story.
In pursuit of understanding nature of reality.
Not proclaimed by person, scripture, or god.
But in constant evaluation, and revision.
Buddha’s contribution
An accessible and effective method.
To remain aware of illusory-ness.
For anyone to come to the same conclusion.
And have a steady anchor against misery.
I wonder about the other side of the coin.
Of actively imagining fantastical realities.
Pursuing them with persistence and rigour.
Not out of compulsion, but curiosity.
What is an equally accessible and effective method?
Then it would be complete
The serenity to accept what I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
References
Book - The clock of vipassana has struck
Waking Up - Vipassana vs Dzogchen
Waking Up - What is emptiness?
Waking Up - Fundamental Buddhism
Sutta central - Original verse with translation of insight THREE above
Welcome back :) so much food for thought in this one