But here's one about meditation particularly.
I know the difference between vipassana and samatha, but not in the following situation.
Sometimes in vipassana you can stay with your breath for a while.
Are you practicing samatha then?
Because you're staying with one object then.
You're still aware of the rising and falling.
I understand that when you are too deep in breath and you're in absorption, then you are practicing samatha.
No, this isn't the difference between what we call Samatha meditation and Vipassana meditation in the sense that they are two different meditations.
It's possible to say that at that moment you have Samatha because your mind is tranquil.
At that moment your mind is not distracted, so you can say, well, that's Samatha.
But based on the Visuddhimagga, based on the commentaries, based on even, I think, the Patisambhidhamagga, Samatha is when you're focusing on a concept.
It doesn't matter how long you're with the object, it matters what the object is.
If the object is a concept and you're creating mindfulness about the object, you're clearly seeing the object as being what it is, like the Buddha or color or even the breath, seeing the breath as a concept going in and going out, because we know that's not the actual experience of it, then that's Samatha.
So if you're still aware of the rising and the falling, at the moment when you're aware of the rising,
or the falling, you have the potential to develop vipassana meditation.
It doesn't mean that you are practicing vipassana.
But if you see it clearly as rising, or you see it clearly as falling, you're cultivating the four satipatthana.
And the four satipatthana allow the arising of insight, the arising of vipassana.
So that's considered vipassana meditation.
If you're focusing on something else, outside of the five aggregates, so a concept, then it's samatha.
Are you deriving this from, like, the Vasudi Maga?
Yep.
And the commentaries.
Okay.