Will someone clear this up for me?
Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 5:49 am
OK so I'm having some difficulty understanding vipassana. It may be that I'm over thinking it, I don't know. I have been practicing Samatha for a while now and would like to start practicing Vipassana aswell.
So, from my understanding the Mahasi method you sit, observe the abdomen rising and falling(while noting "rising" "falling") and also note any feeling, emotions thoughts etc.. This is where I get confused. If you start to think and then label it "thinking" you are thinking "thinking" which then overrides the previous thought, thus making it so you don't observe the original thought because you just put a new one in its place. I can see how it could work for physical sensations but I don't see how with thoughts.Also, when observing the breath when do you switch focus to something else? Say a pain starts to develop in my back. Do I immediately note "pain" or do you wait until the pain becomes intense enough to disrupt your focus on breath? And also today at the bookstore I was browsing through Mindfulness in Plain English. Now it didn't give specific steps but it seemed to be pretty much the same as Mahasi except that you observe the breath at the nose and simply watch without thinking anything that arises? If so then please refer back to the back pain question above and apply it to this method in terms of when to give it attention.
Will someone help clear this up?
Thanks,
Nick
So, from my understanding the Mahasi method you sit, observe the abdomen rising and falling(while noting "rising" "falling") and also note any feeling, emotions thoughts etc.. This is where I get confused. If you start to think and then label it "thinking" you are thinking "thinking" which then overrides the previous thought, thus making it so you don't observe the original thought because you just put a new one in its place. I can see how it could work for physical sensations but I don't see how with thoughts.Also, when observing the breath when do you switch focus to something else? Say a pain starts to develop in my back. Do I immediately note "pain" or do you wait until the pain becomes intense enough to disrupt your focus on breath? And also today at the bookstore I was browsing through Mindfulness in Plain English. Now it didn't give specific steps but it seemed to be pretty much the same as Mahasi except that you observe the breath at the nose and simply watch without thinking anything that arises? If so then please refer back to the back pain question above and apply it to this method in terms of when to give it attention.
Will someone help clear this up?
Thanks,
Nick