Is "insight" more important than "serenity"?

Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary, Ajahn Chah talk, Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Isn't insight meditation or vipassana more important than serenity meditation or jhana (right-samadhi)?

The question is misguided, as Ajahn Chah points out, for there can be no insight without a foundation of right "concentration" (samma samadhi = the jhanas or neighborhood access concentration, but samadhi really means coherence or unification of mind, not the straining effort to focus or pay attention).

AJHAN CHAH: We sit in meditation to establish peacefulness and cultivate mental energy. We don’t do it in order to play around at anything special.

Insight meditation (vipassana) is sitting in samādhi [absorbed concentration, mental purity resulting from singlepointedness, unification or "all-together coherence" of mind] itself.

In some places they say, "Now we are going to sit in samādhi [serenity, tranquility]. After that we’ll do vipassana [insight-meditation]." Don’t divide them like this!

Tranquility is the base that gives rise to wisdom; wisdom is the fruit of tranquility. To say that "now we are going to do calm meditation and later we’ll do insight meditation," you can’t do that!

You can only divide them in speech. It's just like a knife. The blade is on one side, and the back of the blade is on the other. You can’t divide them. If you pick up either, you get both. Tranquility gives rise to wisdom like this. Source

• [Editor's note: One could practice tranquility or samatha meditation, with all its blissful states and rebirths in celestial deva worlds of wonder, for eternities and never gain insight, the special contribution of a supremely awakened teacher (samma-sam-buddha). But for insight to arise, some measure of tranquility is necessary.]

What is insight?

Vipassanā or "insight" is the intuitive understanding flashing forth like light to expose the threefold truth of the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal nature of all mental and bodily phenomena of existence (namely, the Five Aggregates clung to as "self").

The true nature of phenomena or things is that they are ultimately transitory, disappointing, and not self. It is insight-wisdom (vipassanā-paññā or prajna) that is the decisive liberating factor in Buddhism, which has to be developed along with the two other trainings of virtue (morality, sila) and serenity or unification of mind (concentration, samadhi).

The culmination and fulfillment of insight practice (see visuddhi VI) leads directly to the stages of enlightenment (see visuddhi VII).

Insight is not the result of mere intellectualizing, or hammering things out by mere reasoning. Real understanding with the power to liberate must be penetrating, intuitive, and directly experienced.

Insight is realized or won through direct meditative observation of one's own bodily and mental processes, those being the five we cling to as "self":

1. form (corporeal phenomena, the Four Elements)
2. feelings (sensations)
3. perceptions (cognitions, recognitions, apperceptions)
4. mental formations (like emotions, volitions, etc.)
5. consciousness (the impersonal process or stream of mind-moments and concomitant mental factors, cittas and cetasikas).

In the commentaries and the comprehensive meditation manual called the Path of Purification (Vis.M., Visuddhimagga), the sequence in developing insight-meditation is given as follows, namely the discernment of:

1. the corporeal (rūpa, form),
2. the mental (nāma, name),
3. contemplation of both (nāmarūpa, i.e., of their pair wise occurrence in actual events and their interdependence),
4. both viewed as conditioned (dependently arisen, which is realized by applying of the practice of Dependent Origination or paticcasamuppāda),
5. application of the Three Characteristics of Existence (impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, not self) to all mind-and-body conditions.

Intensive sitting meditation is a good start.

The stages of gradually growing insight are described in the nine insight-knowledges (vipassanā-ñāna), constituting the sixth stage of purification beginning with the "knowledge of rise and fall" and ending with the "adaptation to Truth."

For details, see visuddhi VI and the Path of Purification (Vis.M. XXI). Eighteen chief kinds of insight-knowledge (or great insights, mahā-vipassanā) are listed and described in the Path of Purification (Vis.M. XXII, 113):

• (1) contemplation of impermanence (aniccānupassanā),
• (2) of unsatisfactoriness (dukkhānupassanā),
• (3) of not self (anattānupnupassanā),
• (4) of aversion (nibbidānupassanā).
• (5) of detachment (virāgānupassanā),
• (6) of extinction (nirodhānupassanā),
• (7) of abandoning (patinissaggānupassanā),
• (8) of waning (khayānupassanā),
• (9) of vanishing (vayānupassanā),
• (10) of change (viparināmānupassanā),
• (11) of the unconditioned (or signless, animittānupassanā),
• (12) of desirelessness (apanihitānupassanā),
• (13) of emptiness (suññatāupassanā),
• (14) insight into phenomena that is higher wisdom (adhipaññā-dhamma-vipassanā),
• (15) knowing and seeing according to reality (yathā-bhūta-ñānadassana),
• (16) contemplation of misery (or the danger inherent in things, ādīnavānupassanā),
• (17) reflecting contemplation (patisankhānupassanā),
• (18) contemplation of turning away (vivattanānupassanā).

Through these 18, wrong views and adverse ideas are finally overcome, for which reason this way of overcoming is called "overcoming by the opposite" (tadanga-pahāna, overcoming this factor by that). 

Therefore (1) dispels the idea or illusion of permanence, (2) the illusion of satisfactoriness, (3) the illusion of self, (4) lust, (5) greed, (6) origination, (7) grasping, (8) the illusion of compactness [the persistent idea that things are units rather than composites], (9) karma-accumulation, (10) the illusion of lastingness, (11) the conditions, (12) delight, (13) adherence, (14) grasping and adherence to the illusion of substance, (15) attachment and adherence, (17) thoughtlessness, (18) dispels entanglement and clinging.

Insight may be either mundane (lokiya) or supermundane (lokuttara). Supermundane insight is of three kinds:

1. joined with one of the four supermundane paths (stages of enlightenment),
2. joined with one of the fruitions of these paths,
3. regarding the extinction, or rather suspension, of consciousness (see nirodha-samāpatti).

See samatha-vipassanā or calm-and-insight meditation (visuddhi, III-VII).

Further reading

• Manual of Insight by Ledi Sayadaw (Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel 31/32)
• Practical Insight Meditation and Progress of Insight by Mahāsi Sayadaw (BPS.lk)
• The Experience of Insight by Joseph Goldstein (BPS.lk)