self inquiry

In the Progress of Insight stage of Cause and Effect, the relationships between mental and physical phenomena become very clear and sometimes ratchet-like. There is a cause, such as intention, and then an effect, such as movement. There is a cause, such as a sensation, and there is an effect, namely a mental impression. The […]

The three characteristics of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and no-self become predominant, which is good, as these are the basis for insight, except this stage is one of the hard ones and can really throw people. It becomes more obvious that all the constituents of our experience are quickly arising and passing, somewhat jarring, and not particularly

This fourth insight stage, called the Arising and Passing Away, is also the beginning of the second vipassana jhana. As in the second shamatha jhana, the applied and sustained effort of attention begin to drop away, and meditation seems to take on a life of its own. As this is the second jhana, which has

The clarity and intensity begin to return, but now the stage of Fear can involve all sorts of frightening distortions of perception when sitting, accompanied by intense feelings of unease, paranoia, terror, dread, and/or “the willies”. 😮 It can even sometimes seem that our body is falling in tatters through the floor or that we

The stage of Misery is characterized by intense feelings of sadness, grief, and loss. Again, for some who can appreciate what such emotions teach, there is a redeeming quality to the heartfelt depth of grief and melancholy, but this tends to be greatly overshadowed by their dark and engulfing aspects. In Misery, we are having