Some thoughts on exploring the practice of insight

I hadn’t worked with any particular method of insight, when realizations broke through my ordinary way of seeing and experiencing the world. It actually started on the first meditation lunch time class I attended at the LBC.  When as the bell sounded my mind just seemed to know what to do, which also freaked me out a bit, as I had come along for what I thought would be some relaxation! This opened the whole of the Buddhist world with  sound, lights, many visionary encounters and tasks or understandings I needed to make. This continues nearly 30 years later.

So it means it’s difficult to cite a particular method or methods of initial  insight practice that worked or not for me. So I’ve approached this question by looking at a few aspects of practice that I’ve learnt on the way around this question of what has worked or not in my practice.

1. Believe in your experiences, realizations, insights or understandings. I use all these terms because we may not know which one to apply ourselves to events arising out of our practice, which may also be outside meditation. We are actually trying to develop our inner guru, or perhaps find our inner guru.

We are the only ones who can know our own mind, despite others who may say they know us better. We need to be able to trust ourselves and find confidence in what we find in experience and any realizations or insights we may have.

We usually need to build on early foundations of insight.  For instance if we have had a sudden quite surprising realization in investigating  one of our thoughts that usually causes some unwanted reaction, and we can’t find any substance to it, or any link it has to any other sensation - value, don’t dismiss, your findings.

Or  we may be looking at a tree or flower and suddenly the distance between us sort of vanishes and we don’t know if the tree or flower is inside or outside of us anymore. Explore what’s happening, keep being curious.

Maybe when practicing our sadhana, that connection with our yidam this time, may seem too close for comfort or not something that I am constructing at all , we may just try to down play these  realizations, maybe thinking it can’t be that important or simple. When actually they are really important.

We need to be curious about these new realizations, take our investigations further,  check out with those who we think might understand what this means.  There are no separate insights, no disconnected insights if you like, they are all taking us further in the direction of awakening.  And importantly, when you start to shift these foundational layers, the top layers of ourselves will change too.

So this way of working of investigation, believing in the realizations you’ve had, building on the questions or using the pointing out instructions as they can be called, leads to deeper and deeper insights and the stabilization that we need in the practice.

The mind often loves the idea of emptiness deconstructing everything we find in our practice.  Here we can also use ideas like sunyata - or our friends can, responding to our experiences - leading to our thinking that none of the things we experience are important or valuable, because they are all empty.

I questioned my practice.  The word insight wasn’t even allowed back then, even though I had no doubt that it occurred. I heard constantly things like ‘don’t dwell on your experience’ or ‘don’t even think about them, they are all empty’ or ‘it’s your ego appropriating things, that’s not meditation’ and so on.  And I think some of this still happens today.  But I knew that the realizations I had were important to my practice. I was experiencing things I’d later read about, for instance.  

Fortunately I was able to see Sangharakshita who believed, understood and could talk about my experiences with me. It can be hard to find people with the understanding to know what we are experiencing and even take us further, but that is one of the things The Mandala of Insight Group is trying to support in these Order discussion forums.

2. Any practice can be a vehicle for insight. 
All my mystical, insightful realizations for the first few years arose from my just doing the metta bhavana and mindfulness of breathing. The understanding I take from that includes adding my particular approach, which was a dimension not explicitly taught: that of a naturally enquiring mind.

I had questions arising out of my study or practice and I’d take them into my meditation and meditate on them. I also had a drive to understand the nature of mind and the meditations themselves, and out of this practice deeper realizations arose by themselves as it were.

Without specific instructions (for instance the Satipatthana sutta wasn’t being used then generally) it was difficult at times, so I was pushed into a deeper relationship with my inner compass or guru, which continues.  We do need to make our practices our own; only we know if they are working or not, and I do think is a very important part of insight work.

I am lucky too that I had/have in my body heart and bones a connection to Padmasambhava who provided the early key teachings I still reflect on. This, and later connections to other teachers and beings arising out of reflection and meditation, showed me that it was possible to put yourself in the current of spiritual energy, as I called it, and open to new ways of seeing and understanding.  Maybe there was/is something about the depth of those connections - a faith perhaps, or knowing that transformation was actually inevitable with these connections to the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and teachers - and letting that be so. I would also say that the basis of the Dharma, the heart of Buddhism, is about awakening, so that spirit is there potentially in all practices and we can bring that out more specifically if we choose to, or when it is appropriate for ourself or others.

3.  Deconstruction and the whole.
An important part of deeper practice leading to insights can be the deconstruction of self, body mind and world. And although originally methods like the fetters, or Order Insight Inquiry, were not around at the time for me, I was using my investigations to look at the nature of these things as it seemed  like the natural thing to do. This was a hit and miss affair for quite a long time. I think it would have been vastly more helpful for me to have known about the fetters approach for instance, or how to use the 6 element practice as an insight practice. Because as it happened, my first introduction to the 6 element practice at a general class led to the extinguishment of myself momentarily at the final stage.  That was a bit of a shock, as it was not something spoken about as a possibility at the time. I remember sitting on in the shrine room afterwards slightly shaking with a mixture of awe and not quite knowing what was going on!

In this area of insight when using methods of deconstruction, it means also attending to the whole and having, or understanding what it means to have - or make - a sacred space. The whole in this sense is something about not just identifying with or focussing on the fragmentary experiences we have, or on the notion of emptiness, but also knowing or understanding that our Buddha nature, or awakened heart, or connection to our yidam, or the mandala of awakening, is also always present.  We look at things in isolation as a method for our practice, but know it can’t really be isolated.

This way of deconstruction, though really important and valuable and generally necessary when working with insight practices, can lead to some very strange and strong experiences (fortunately, usually short lived.) These can include things such as losing connection with parts of the body, or having changes in vision and spatial awareness, losing 3D vision, seeing normally static objects move, experiences, apparently, such as being on acid (though that’s not something I’ve taken) and so on. I’ve often thought we need a ‘do not drive or operate heavy machinery’ warning when using these practices.

For me during some of these experiences it was quite difficult to go about my normal working life. Which is why I also say you might need to consider if this is a good time in your life to embark on deeper insight work. That’s if you have a choice in the matter, which I did not. Fortunately I was working at the LBC a lot of the time and had some people I could share what particular weird stuff was happening with me that day.

Although these methods might seem a world away from sadhana for instance, what I found most important was to see these methods as intensive yogic practices and site them in a mandala or sacred space and call in, usually, Padmasambhava or Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche - someone who had my back. Trusting the wholeness inherent  in buddha nature, awakened heart, or bodhicitta, my yidam carried the blueprint so to speak of who I am on this level.

So in a nutshell what I’ve learnt is: 
That insight is possible in any method of practice.  I’d go further now and say insight is an integral part of the universe, but it works better, and it’s kinder perhaps, to develop methods that draw out that insight aspect for others.
That I needed to develop and trust my inner knowing: my inner guru. Only we know what works or doesn’t work for us. And that way of understanding best is developed best in a culture that promotes it.
That I needed be aware that all methods are part of a whole that comes back to awakening and a non conceptual way of knowing.  That is represented, for me, by Padmasambhava. And this knowing and connection has real energy and powers, and protects me as your connections will do for you.