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Insight meditation originates in the core teachings of the Buddha. It is derived from the Theravada school, one of the three main schools of the Buddha’s teachings. The Theravada practices are taken directly from the Pali Canon, the earliest surviving record of what the Buddha taught. Insight meditation has been practiced in Asia for the past 2,500 years. Today it is practiced in Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka. The other traditions that have passed on the Buddha’s teachings include the Mahayana (associated primarily with China, Korea and Japan), and the Vajrayana (Tibet, Bhutan). In recent years there has been an emergence of insight meditation communities throughout the West. In the 1960s and 1970s, people such as Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman, returning from Asia where they studied the meditation form, began to teach and set up retreat centers. The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, was established in 1976. Several years later, Jack Kornfield and others founded the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. In 1997, several insight meditation students, including Peter Doobinin, Tamara Engel, Joseph Schmidt, Gina Sharpe and Sandra Weinberg, founded the New York Insight center. In January, 2002, Downtown Meditation Community was formed by Peter Doobinin. In insight meditation, we learn to practice mindfulness. The Buddha’s primary instructions for establishing mindfulness are included in the Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10). By practicing mindfulness, we learn to develop concentration and insight. Cultivating mindfulness of breathing, we develop the ability to put our attention where we want to put it. We develop calmness, ease, well-being. From this place, we are able to cultivate insight. We learn to see clearly, to understand our relationship to our experience of body and mind. We learn to understand our difficulty, stress, anxiety, fear, anger, depression, dissatisfaction. We learn, gradually, to let go of it. We learn to know a greater happiness in our lives. A true happiness. The happiness of the heart. Through the practice of mindfulness, we’re able to relate to ourselves and others with kindness, compassion, joy, serenity, peace. We could say that insight meditation is a practice of training the mind. The Buddha, for his part, said that nothing brings us greater suffering than the untrained mind. And that nothing brings greater happiness than the trained mind.In an effort to train the mind we use certain methods, including sitting meditation and walking meditation. It is equally important to develop mindfulness, to cultivate the skills of concentration and insight, when we’re not practicing formally, when we’re “off the cushion.” As dhamma students, we strive to develop our skill in all the areas of our lives, in our jobs, in our relationships. In all postures; as the Buddha put it, in “walking, standing, sitting, lying down.” Insight meditation is a practice that everyone can learn. It requires developing the skill. And it requires making an effort. But this is something that we can do. We can all learn to practice mindfulness, to develop concentration and insight, to live our lives with greater ease and well-being. We can all learn to find a greater happiness.
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