Bhante, is it useful to have prior knowledge about the sixteen vipassana jnana when doing vipassana, or is it better to discover them accidentally as you meditate?
By accident.
Not exactly by accident, but I know what you mean.
It's the goal, the real reason for practicing, so it wouldn't be by accident, but it would be spontaneously.
In fact teachers in our tradition, my teacher being one of them,
discourage strongly the idea of learning about the sixteen vipassana jnanas before you practice that it can actually be a strong hindrance in your practice because you tend to expect and anticipate and identify every experience with some jnana or other or you you anticipate and wait for and become agitated and worried and paranoid and
And rightly so, because your mind is still a mess in the beginning.
And so it latches onto anything and it makes connections when they're not there.
And it can be a real hindrance if you know too much about the jnanas, about the 16 vipassana, 16 stages of insight.
So not something you want to delve deeply in.
Simply knowing about them isn't a big deal, but certainly it should be kept in mind that when you undertake a meditation course, the best thing is to put it all aside, forget about it.
Even for advanced meditators, it's best to leave yourself under the guidance of the teacher and focus your own...
efforts on the Four Satipatthanas.
So we separate meditation into two aspects, the practice and the goals.
The Sixteen Vipassana Jnanas are not the practice, they are the goals.
They are the attainments.
They come from the practice.
So that's an incredible, a crucial distinction.
You don't practice the goals.
You don't practice insight.
So we talk about practicing vipassana meditation.
We're not actually practicing vipassana.
We're practicing mindfulness based on the five aggregates, based on ultimate reality for the arising of insight as the goal, as the...
the reason for practicing.
If you can make that distinction and set yourself on the four foundations of mindfulness and watching the five aggregates, then I don't think it matters what you know.
When you have the realization, when you're aware of something, you just know that you're aware of it, knowing, knowing, thinking, thinking, so on.
Remind yourself and let it go.