~Insight meditation: A review

Insight (vipassana) meditation is the moment-to-moment examination of the body and mind with calm and focused attention.

This practice brings us directly in touch with our experience.
It helps us live more fully in the present instead of being lost in thoughts, images, regrets, and fears about the past and future.

As our minds become less distracted, we begin to see things more clearly.

We begin to see that the bare experience of sight, sound, sensation, and thought is one thing, and what we make out of that bare experience is another.

We begin to see that our happiness and suffering do not lie "out there" in the experience but are found instead within our own minds, in how we relate to experience.

We begin to see the truth that "all things are changing" in a much deeper way, so that we stop trying to hold onto things.

We see we are not who we thought we were. Our sense of separateness begins to dissolve.
Loving kindness meditation, practiced alongside vipassana, develops this new sense of connection into a powerful force for healing and well-being.

As it becomes easier to let go, to let life "live itself," we gain abiding happiness and peace.
Our wisdom leads to spontaneous compassion for the relief of all suffering beings, including ourselves.