We use Vedantic Vipassana meditation to achieve the following objectives.
- To train ourselves to be open, receptive and reverential towards all that is here, acknowledging that all that is here is a manifestation of Ishwara’s all-knowledge. Therefore it is all in order. It is all as it is meant to be at this time and place. So I can allow myself to let go of my resistance to what is and be open and receptive to whatever is manifesting as every moment of experience. Going a step further I can enjoy a certain reverence towards whatever is knowing it to be not separate from Ishwara.
- To recognise or rather to assimilate the nature of all that is objectified, to be impermanent and dependent ....on many factors, as well as the observer
- To recognise and assimilate the ever-presence of the self-revealing simple conscious being in whose presence all this is objectified, is revealed, to be the Sakshi chaitanya or witness-consciousness who is unaffected by whatever is illumined in it's presence.
These objectives presuppose a study of Vedanta.
What is Vedantic Vipassana meditation?
As human beings we are endowed with a great power and that is the power of attention. Our attention can be directed towards the stories our mind is concocting about ourselves and the world around, which can lead to a great deal of conflict restlessness and distraction of the mind. We can endlessly occupy our mind with a egoic thinking about the past or future leading to a great deal of sorrow and anxiety. We can also occupy our mind with a lot of creative thinking in the present which is good. Or we can occupy our mind in the present, with a lot of practical problems that we need to solve or all the little things that don't matter, like the many little irritations in our current life.
So when our attention is occupied thus, what happens is we simply do not have the space or leisure to discover the nature of life or the true nature of ourselves.
So what we need to do, is prayerfully disengage our attention from these kinds of preoccupations and re-engage our attention during meditation, in a mind that is open, receptive, friendly, accepting, in repeatedly observing our moment to moment experiences of bodily sensations, sounds, perceptions, aromas, breath. We have disengaged our mind from it's habitual preoccupation with past memories, futuristic thinking, creative planning or dissatisfactions with the present.
As a result, fairly soon, the mind becomes free of restlessness ...it becomes peaceful and we become aware of our own spacious conscious presence, in whose presence all the changing momentary sensory experiences of bodily sensations, sounds, perceptions of shadows and light against our closed eyes, aromas and breath takes place. One assimilates that whole of life is impermanent in nature and dependent on many local factors, as well as the conscious observer. And that experiences of life, simply keeps taking place in accordance with the vast Order of cause-effect relationships that I as an individual did not create. Out of that appreciation automatically a mantra of surrender ‘Om Namah Shivaya Gurave’ arises and subsides repeatedly.
This peaceful mind can be used to recognize and assimilate several truths revealed by our Vedanta studies.
As one repeats this vipassana meditation again and again, it begins to dawn on oneself, that as the observer of these momentary experiences of bodily sensations, sounds, perceptions, aromas and breath, in reality, one is a silent,vast, spaciousness, a self-revealing conscious presence ..and the consciousness presence that one is, is unaffected by anything revealed in ones presence. In fact one is svatantra is assimilated. One has arrived home ...recognizing and assimilating that I am Sakshi chaitanyam ...svatantram...independent of all that observed.
All that one studied in Vedanta is validated in one's own assimilation. The Sakshi chaitanyam I am is ever-unchanging.Freed from one’s perpetual preoccupations with past, present and future one has the space to assimilate the truth of impermanence of life, and the permanence and non-conceptual reality of it's observer, oneself.