least for me um venerable can i make real progress in my vipassana practice in regards to the vipassana nana without being able to establish kanika samadhi if not should i do samatha first
Without being able to establish... How can you not be able to establish kanika samadhi?
I mean, if you killed your parents, probably you couldn't, but otherwise, kanika samadhi, you have to understand, it's a moment.
It's a single moment.
It's actually quite easy to establish
Because it's not established, it's a moment.
Kanika Samadhi is seeing impermanent suffering and non-self.
It's the moment where you see something arise, or you see something cease, or you both see something arise and cease, where you see reality occurring.
And more than just see it, you are clearly aware of it as being that reality.
So, for example, when you say pain, pain, you're in your mind clear that that is pain, nothing more, nothing less.
So I don't quite get the problem you're having.
If you want to do Samatha first, go for it.
It gives you a lot of power of mind and can be quite useful in developing later Kanika Samadhi or Vipassana Samadhi, where you see impermanent suffering and non-self.
So, don't be too discouraged about not getting... One thing is, this is a very prominent theme that runs through all new meditators' courses and a lot of the questions that I get, is this idea that your practice is futile, your practice is not bearing fruit.
And so even today, one meditator who's been here quite a while is still wondering, you know, when is she, or she was wondering whether, she didn't say it, but what she said was that she's wondering whether she should spend some time thinking about impermanent suffering and non-self.
And she's been here for quite a while, for at least two weeks, I think.
And I think her practice is going well.
It looks very clear as though her practice is going quite well, but we started talking about impermanent suffering and non-self, and like most people, she still didn't get the fact that she was actually experiencing impermanent suffering and non-self quite clearly.
And so I asked her, I said, well, let's take a very simple object as the rising and falling of the stomach.
That's the basic object.
So is the rising and the falling of the stomach always constant?
And she said, no, of course it's not.
Is the rising and the falling of the stomach pleasant?
And she said, no, no, actually it's quite suffering a lot of the time.
And can you control it?
Can you keep it stable?
Can you change it?
When it goes out of control, can you bring it back into control?
And she said, no, actually, I can't.
This is really clear because it's something that we tell meditators to watch, watch as their basic object.
So it's an easy set of questions to ask.
And right away she understood the point that she was seeing quite clearly impermanent suffering and non-self and this idea that you have to somehow consider them or look for them or ponder them or apply them to your practice in some way is totally erroneous, totally false.
If you come to me and say that your practice is not going well and you can't get the hang of it and so on, then it's a very good sign to me that you're practicing quite well.
You just don't realize it.
If you come to me and tell me, oh, meditation is so wonderful and I'm just feeling peace and calm all the time and I really have no problems and so on, then I think you're practicing Samatha.
And they say, you know, it's not a problem, but it could be, in some cases could be a problem where you get stuck on something and fixated on something and go flying off into conceptual illusion and can actually go crazy because you cling to things and follow after things rather than seeing them as they are.
So we actually had a long talk about that as well where I was explaining to her that she was asking about images that she saw and I was explaining that
The problem with the image, you know, the image is just seeing, really, that's how we look at it.
But if you ask, she was asking, what is it?
I said, well, you know, in the end we see it just as seeing, but the point being that whatever it is, there is no answer, that you can't find an end answer to what is it, when you see something special.
When you investigate it, you change it.
This Heisenberg's uncertainty principle actually works in reality.
So when you look at the object, you change it.
And so what happens is you investigate and it changes and it proliferates.
It becomes something stronger because you're putting energy into it.
And because it's conceptual, it can just change and alter.
And eventually you develop habits based on it.
And this is how meditators actually go crazy because...
They get totally lost and caught up in something that is conceptual.
The point being that if you feel like your practice is stuck or not going as it should be, then there's a very good chance that you're actually seeing impermanent suffering and non-self and should just be patient and you'll find yourself letting go as a result.
When things don't go the way you want, you will generally tend to let go of them.
You'll stop fussing about them, stop worrying about them.
You'll start to learn that that's the nature of reality, that things do go against your wishes, that things in general are not under your control, and that's the truth of non-self.