"Triśikṣā": Concentration vs Insight meditation

[lmfao]

There is the "three-fold training" in Buddhism. Morality, concentration and insight. 

As Daniel Ingram describes it, "insight meditation" involves paying attention to how sensations arise and vanish. You are instructed to notice sensations in your experience at a high rate, 1-10 sensations per second. This high rate is very important. 

Through insight meditation, you're building an awareness of impermanence through seeing your sensation to not be solid. You look at sensations as they expand and contract, rise and fall, and their general flux. 

This is distinct from concentration meditation. Concentration meditation on the other hand almost looks like it's trying to build a solidity/continuity to experience. You pick a singular object to be aware of continuously. 

[The0Self]

Yep. I can add a bit:

Samatha is about harmonization and treating experience like a warm bubble bath that you really get “in to” by taking all the stops out and just going all-in on enjoying the moment as much as you *possibly* can, like it’s your job and your life depends on it.

Vipassana is about playing with perception and penetrating sensations down to their true nature. 4 common ways to do this are by seeing all experience through one of 4 lenses that change what you seem to view: impermanence, dukkha, not-self, and emptiness.

The beauty of these is that when you’re advanced enough, you can mix & match, doing Samatha and Vipassana at the same time. This can lead to jhanas beyond the first 8, called the pure land jhanas, of which 5 have been discovered as of yet. Also insight and Samatha are needed together to have a cessation/nirvana event — concentration or insight alone will never do it.