When I sit and say to myself sitting, I have to do a quick body scan, at least of my legs and spine, in order to really know that I'm indeed sitting.
Isn't that quick body scan somewhat contrary to a one-pointed mind?
Is one label really enough?
You don't really have to do that.
I would say it's not really the object or not exactly proper meditation.
It's much more forceful.
You could in the beginning and you could say that it's at least calming the mind down or focusing the mind.
Because remember, none of that's wrong.
in tranquility meditation.
If your purpose is simply to calm the mind, you can force it, push it, knead it, mold it into shape.
Concentration meditation is not for the purpose of cultivating insight.
So in a sense, we can use that at least in the beginning.
And so a meditator in Vipassana meditation might
calm themselves down by doing these body scans by just knowing that they're sitting but in vipassana meditation the point is not the sitting sitting is a description of those feelings that you have and so the fact that you're aware of the tension in your back or the pressure on the floor
at that moment when you say sitting, that's enough.
You're aware of that experience and you call that experience sitting.
So it's simply important to recognize this is a physical phenomenon.
It's not so important to be aware that this is a sitting posture.
Put your mind on the whole body, the entire body, and say to yourself sitting.
The recognition that that is a sitting posture comes
comes on its own and comes unexpectedly.
It's the sannyā part, the recognition that this is sitting.
Sannyā is impermanent and so what you're seeing that leads you to say that you have to do this, you have to push it in order for it to come, is that it's non-self.
It doesn't come automatically.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes you immediately know that you're sitting.
You recognize, oh, this is a sitting posture.
Sometimes you look and look and then there's no, bing, this is sitting.
You just never are aware that it's sitting.
This is because it's not self.
You can't force yourself to know that's what you're seeing.
And so that is the whole purpose of practicing.
And that's what you're going to find.
You're going to find that
Sometimes you are aware of the feeling, sometimes you're aware of this feeling, sometimes you're aware of that feeling, sometimes you're aware of the recognition of the feeling or putting it together as sitting, sometimes you're not.
And that's the point of the practice, not to perfect it.
You see, this is key, and I did a video on this that I think is most important, one that we should emphasize again and again, that often people, often meditators, very often,
You come to the conclusion that they're practicing incorrectly or they're unable to practice because, specifically because they're seeing what we want them to see.
They're seeing impermanence, they're seeing suffering, they're seeing non-self.
So I would say much more important is the practice than perfecting it.
Perfecting it's not going to happen, not in insight meditation.