The Key to Understanding Meditation

Vipassana roughly translates to seeing clearly, and is often called Insight Meditation or Mindfulness Meditation. This is the core technique that the Buddha taught for liberation.

Its core principle lies in the transformative power of awareness. It is through the careful observation of our experience that we see and ultimately dissolve unhelpful patterns, greatly reducing our suffering and leading to a sense of inner freedom, a fullness and richness of ordinary experience, and a sense of unconditional wellbeing.

Vipassana is amazing because it can be practiced without any cultural baggage. The practice can be simple and is customizable. It’s really about learning to pay attention in a way that we see things more clearly and suffer less as a result.

The idea of Tantra is that anything and everything could be an avenue towards transformation and liberation. It was radically inclusive, creative, and utilized all the senses and countless techniques to invoke and cultivate transformative energies.

While many spiritual traditions had become renunciative, doing away with distraction so one can focus exclusively and practice and awakening, Tantra was all embracing; using everything from art and music to sex and love as avenues of transformation.

Non-Dual practices are at the pinnacle of meditation techniques. This is what it’s all about. While Shamatha stabilizes the mind, Vipassana and Trantra purify the mind, Non-Dual practices attempt to realize ultimate truth directly.

Non-Dual practices are an investigation of the nature of the self and reality. Sometimes the method is Self-Inquiry, sometimes there’s a “pointing out” instruction, sometimes it’s a contemplation like a Zen Koan, sometimes it’s an investigation of subtle phenomena, and sometimes it’s a very refined method of expanding one’s awareness to expand beyond it’s normal limitations