Ven. Mahāsi Sayādaw, Fundamentals of Vipassanā Meditation, Maung Tha Noe (trans.) via palikanon.com; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
What do we meditate on [to] develop insight?
This is a very important question. There are two kinds of Buddhist meditation -- meditating to develop calm and meditating to
develop insight.
Meditating on the ten meditative devices only gives rise to calm rather than
insight. Meditating on the ten foul things (i.e., an unsightly swollen corpse), too,
only gives rise to calm, not insight.
The Ten Recollections, like remembering
the Buddha, the Dharma, and others, too, can develop calm but not insight.
Meditating on the 32 parts of the body -- like hair, nails, teeth, skin --
these too are not insight. They develop only calm concentration.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness (sati) of breathing is also concentration-developing, but one can
develop insight from it as well. The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), however, includes it in the
concentration subjects, so we will call it as such here.
Then there are the Four Divine Abidings (brahma-viharas) -- love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and
equanimity -- and the Four Formless States leading to formless meditative absorptions (jhānas).
Then, there is
the meditation on the loathsomeness of food. All of these are subjects for
concentration-meditation.
Both
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| Venerable Burmese scholar-monk Mahasi Sayadaw |
When one meditates on the Four Elements inside the body, it is called the
"analysis of the Four Elements." Although this is a concentration-meditation, it
helps develop insight as well.
All of these 40 subjects of meditation are subjects for developing
concentration. Only mindfulness of breathing and analysis of the Four Elements have to do with
insight.
The others will not give rise to insight. If one wants insight, one will
have to work further.
To come back to the question, How do we develop insight? The answer is that we
develop insight by meditating on the Five Aggregates of Clinging.
The mental and
material ("name-and-form," nama-rupa) qualities inside beings are aggregates of clinging. They may be grasped
with delight by craving, in which case it is called "grasping of the sense
objects" -- or they may be grasped wrongly by wrong views -- in which case it is
called "clinging through wrong views."
One has to meditate on them and see them
as they truly are. If one does not, one will grasp them with craving and wrong
views.
Once we see them as they truly are, we will no longer cling to them them. In this way one
develops insight. We will discuss the Five Aggregates of Clinging in detail. More
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