Should the four foundations of mindfulness and the five jhana factors of concentration and absorption be learned before vipassana meditation can be correctly used?
Okay, well there are two
paths of practice that should be clear.
The first path of practice is to start with tranquility meditation and then go on with vipassana.
So the way that works is you cultivate pure concentration and or you cultivate tranquility and then
your wisdom, your knowledge comes.
And when they meet in a peak, when you have both the two of them, then there's the spark.
And because of the focused knowledge or insight,
There's the attainment of nibbana.
Now the other way is to build up both concentration and insight together until the last moment and there's the spark.
So a person who practices the five jhana factors of concentration and absorption is someone who goes the first way.
First tranquilizing the mind, then cultivating insight based on that.
Now it can be stronger, it's certainly more full because it gives you the opportunity to explore the conceptual world because the reason it's calm without insight is because it's focused on a concept and because it allows you, you're in the conceptual world, you can play with it and you can actually cultivate magical powers like reading people's minds, remembering past lives, all sorts of
neat phenomena that are in the conceptual world.
You can't get that from cultivating the two together, not very easily anyway.
But it seems to take longer.
The time you're spending in cultivating first concentration could have been used in cultivating insight.
So it seems like it probably takes a little bit longer because if you just do pure insight and concentration,
you seem to be able to get pretty good results in a few weeks or at most a month whereas if you do tranquility first it can take months to get the same result even years depending on whether you ever get around to insight meditation afterwards some people will just stick to the calm and and not realize that they have to add insight or never get instruction and how to cultivate insight
So, the question of whether you have to learn them, now the question you hear, your question is, should they be learned?
Now, I'm not sure whether that means study or practice.
If you just mean, do you have to study about these things, then...
Well, first of all, you don't have to practice them first, so you don't have to learn how to, or you don't have to cultivate the five jhana factors, but first if you just want to do them both together.
And so you obviously in that case don't have to study them.
either.
But if you want to do it the Samatha first way, the tranquility first way, then you have to both learn and practice them first.
Study and practice them.
As for the four foundations of mindfulness,
If the question is, do you have to practice them first, so you have to undertake to practice them before practicing insight meditation, then this is a confusion about what is meant by insight meditation, because vipassana insight meditation is the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness.
You practice the four foundations of mindfulness to cultivate insight.
You can use certain aspects of the four foundations of mindfulness to cultivate tranquility, but in its most bare form, it's a type of insight meditation practice.
Now the question, do you have to study the four foundations first?
Obviously, certainly you don't have to study them in detail, but obviously you have to know about them because they are the practice that you're undertaking.
Knowing about and understanding how to practice in regards to each of the four foundations.
at least on a basic level, is essential.
Because obviously without understanding what it is you're going to practice, you can't be expected to practice.
But certainly important to study them.
But the question of whether you should practice them first doesn't arise because once you begin to practice them,
That's the practice of vipassana, insight meditation, unless you're focusing on the specific parts that can lead to tranquility first, like mindfulness of the breath or the cemetery contemplations, loathsomeness, that kind of thing, the 32 parts of the body, for example.
Okay?