Understanding true Vipassana.

Whatever arises passes away, and is not 'you'. It is only a thought, a mood, a feeling, an emotion. It's just a cloud passing through the vast empty sky of mind.

It's not more than that.

However, our tendency is to want to make it more, to make it special, to make it important, often to make it a spiritual event, but in the end it's just mind, it's just your old story, your old habits arising and passing away.

You come to my room and tell me that your experience is real and incredibly important, and I smile compassionately and tell you that it isn't. It's just a feeling, relax, allow it to show itself fully, and let go of your attachment to it as being who and what you are. In this moment you are already free.

Before true understanding arises you cannot imagine what this means. After understanding it is as though you awaken from a deep sleep.

This is the essence of Dhamma. To be with the mind but not identify with it as being 'me' and so, 'what I am'.

The mind presents the conditions for your absolute freedom, but you have to stop this old habit of identifying with it. It's a process of thinking, rationalising, planning, speculating, protecting and all the rest, but in the end it's just a flow conditioning subtle sensations in the body. It is then our moment to moment relationship to them that makes our own unique world.

And then, when these sensations become apparent through our practice of awareness, I ask you to simply stop identifying them. To know them completely and directly, but to stop giving them an independent identity.

Every time you label something you give it a life, you create a history and a story.

When you speak about the things that you are experiencing in your meditation you are just putting labels on sensations. But the sensation is not the label and the label is not the sensation! The sensation is the sensation and the label is the label. They are never the same thing. This is very important to understand. The moment you let go of the label there is only the sensation. You don't have fear any more, you just have a sensation. Do you understand?

The moment you say that you are afraid, you have created a whole story, something to resolve and come to terms with, but actually it's just sensation. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, and without realising it we build our whole life around our attachment and identification to these ever changing sensations.....

May all beings be happy.