Insight Technique Explained: A Vipassana Alternative To Self Enquiry

[ardacigin]

In this post, I'll share a powerful insight practice that is similar to self-inquiry. It is the vipassana version of self-inquiry because it leads to the same insight: no-self

And before you ask, this is not the gone technique Shinzen teaches. He gives that as a self-inquiry alternative in vipassana. Even though that is a powerful impermanence related insight practice, it doesn't quite correspond to self-inquiry intentions which is to realize there is no experiencer, self and knower.

I've realized this while I was meditating and reading books. It came off as an elegant systematic practice I could do every day both in daily life and formal sits. With this version, you can actually maintain it in daily life with Samatha rather than constantly asking the question 'Who am I?' It is also compatible with TMI.

As always, this is not a beginner-friendly technique. Stage 6 in TMI mastery as a bare minimum is recommended. So subtle distractions and dullness must be overcome to a moderate degree so that the mind is sharp, focused, aware and is energized. Whole-body awareness must be strong for the technique to be effective. So if you have problems feeling the whole body with awareness, this will probably not work.

The most common issue is negative emotional sensations. That is the whole point of jhanic factors like happiness and equanimity. So get started on these as soon as possible. They are not only enabling the application of these sorts of insight practices but they are intrinsically rewarding themselves because you are reducing craving with jhana factors.

I call the technique: The Known, Knowing and Knower

There is a 3 step process to it.

1- The Known: A person, a self is made up of sequences of mental and physical sensations that arise and pass away moment by moment. In your direct experience, there are only changing conscious experiences. In the first phase, you notice and bring awareness to each of these conscious experiences.

You realize that there are 2 discernable components in each experience. The object of consciousness and conscious awareness that knows that object. 

Each sensation first appears in awareness before attention goes there. Attention is creating mentally constructed scopes called 'objects' and awareness knows the arising and passing away of these objects and guides attention with intentions.

Spend some time in whole body awareness, investigating the momentarily changing experience. Get to a jhana state. Watch the joy and happiness momentarily arising constantly. Realize that there are always very subtle changes in conscious experience regardless of how stable something might feel. Try to just tune in to that changing-ness while still maintaining joy and happiness.

2- The Knowing: This is awareness. You drop the attentional investigation of sensory experience and just realize that what you think of as a self is just the conscious awareness of knowing the object.

There actually is no knower. There is only the awareness of knowing an object. 

In this phase, the attention turns into the fact of knowing the objects.

This is the crux of the technique. So, if you can't contact this part of the instruction in direct experience, the technique won't work.

Again, just observe at this stage that there are 2 main components to this changing experience.

- The objects of consciousness - The Known

( In TMI terms: Momentary attentional investigation similar to noting with awareness / Whole Body Breathing)

- The knowing of those objects - The Knowing

(In TMI terms: The fusing of attention and awareness with an emphasis on metacognitive awareness)

- But there is no knower, experiencer, sef and agent.

3- The Absence of Knower: This is the final phase where you really contrast the last insight realized in the prior stage.

- The objects of consciousness - The Known 

- The knowing of those objects - The Knowing 

- But there is no knower, experiencer, sef and agent.

You focus on how there is no knower.

You realize that you have been confusing the knowing of objects as the knower and experiencer.

By constantly examining the object and knowing dynamic, you have an insight into how the self is a mind-made add on to conscious experience for the ease of survival purposes. It is a pervasive illusion that also creates the feeling of being a seperate self.

The objects and the consciousness of those objects can never be separated

Yes, we infer the continued existence of certain objects when we are no longer conscious of them, but when you think deeply about it, ultimately that’s nothing but an unverifiable assumption. For all we really know, the object ceases to exist between the time we stop being conscious of it and the next time we become conscious of it again.

And as for consciousness existing apart from one of the two kinds of objects – sensations or mental objects – this is also totally absent from experience. Put more simply, there is no consciousness other than “consciousness of…”

Furthermore, not only is there no possible separation of the object from the mental process of knowing it, neither is there any separate “knower” that can be identified. The knower, the knowing, and the known all arise in total dependence upon one another, but only the knowing and the known are experienced directly.

The knower is totally absent from experience, it is something added by the mind itself, and is a mere idea.

In other words, there are only sensations and mental objects, and a mental process of knowing these objects, and apart from these objects and the knowing of them, there is no separate person.

In the final phase, you re-observe this experiential understanding over and over again until the insight into no-self arises.

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And as always, practice in a state of relaxation, joy and diligence.

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Edited December 28, 2019 by ardacigin

[Consilience]

Interesting read. I don’t necessarily disagree with anything posted here but I wonder, if you were to explain this to a teacher such as Mooji and he asked you at the end, who is the one that is aware of this absence of knower, how would you respond?

Im basically curious as to what your perspective is between the distinction of the True Self in Advaita Vedanta vs. the No Self in Buddhism.

Overall this sounds like a powerful practice. Tbh it almost feels like the more mindful and stable attention becomes in meditation, the more I contemplate in the background what the hell is going on in my daily life. Its as if mindfulness and stable attention has become the contemplation itself, a steady noticing of direct experience and what it really is all about. Thank you for this post ??

[ardacigin]

5 hours ago, Consilience said:

if you were to explain this to a teacher such as Mooji and he asked you at the end, who is the one that is aware of this absence of knower, how would you respond?

@ConsilienceI didn't want to give the sense that there is something that is aware of the absence of knower. The probable cessation experience prior to awakening doesn't constitute any subject or object. There is zero thing-ness.

So from a subjective point of view, this is how you see the absence of knower. By actually reducing the overwhelming sense of being a self who is in control and is separate from the object. This is the aim of this insight practice.

I'd respond as there is no fixated self that is aware of a knower at the moment of realization. But until then, one will continue to feel like a self. That is the delusion we are trying to overcome.

There is no distinction between true self and no self. So what Mooji calls as true self arises when the 'self' as a thing that exists in time and space disappears.

So when you realize the no-self sufficiently with the other insights like emptiness, impermanence, suffering, causal dependency, oneness etc. you also realize true-self. 

True self basically means you are infinite and everything. But that also means you are no longer a personal self because you can't be located in time and space.

Actually, the true 'self' in that phrase is inaccurate. Self is so expanded that there actually is no self in the normal sense of the word.

 Both are god realization.

So there is no contradiction. 

 

Edited December 29, 2019 by ardacigin