Chapter 7— Criteria indicating whether you are a Vipassana practitioner yet or not
This Vipassana 101 book points out that a good Vipassana must start with an establishment of a solid foundation for mindfulness, i.e., through embedding mindfulness with the ongoing continuous breath. Yet, we remain deluded and unaware for eons.
Then, it points out that a fruitful and encouraging Vipassana should be able to solve your own problems, e.g. if you are stressful, worried, and distracted, you will feel better, think less, be able to stop distraction as you wish, and see no reason to secure the thought or uselessly lock it up in your head.
Finally, it points out that if one can observe all mental reactivities according to their nature of arising, sustaining, and vanishing as a norm—nothing as a self-entity that one should cling to. The ultimate truth is the absolute emptiness, arising and vanishing, arising and vanishing, arising and vanishing all the time. Whenever you have experienced as such, you have already started practicing Vipassana fully.
Some may think that this book is for beginners in Vipassana practice. Therefore it is impossible to fully practice Vipassana. But in fact whether you are a beginner or an advanced Vipassana practitioner, it is not based on how many times you read this book, or how many books you have sought out to read. The decisive criterion is in your mind whether you see your body and mind as they truly are or not. If you can see them moment to moment continuously that everything in this body and mind arises and then vanishes as a norm. You are not attached to any of them, either ‘form’ [physical phenomena] or ‘name’ [mental phenomena], as a self-existing entity, with less and less clinging to things, in proclaiming that this is yours, and that is yours. These are the decisive factors pointing out that you are already a fully Vipassana practitioner.
However, before reaching that point, the following guidelines can be used to investigate yourself whether your behavior will lead you to be a Vipassana practitioner or not. For convenience and avoiding doubt whether you have practiced on the right or wrong path, please use such evidences for reassurance, the more answers as ‘yes’, the closer you are to your goal.
1) When you have free time, e.g., waiting for someone for hours, you are not absent minded or day-dreaming, thinking about something of the past which is gone already, or pondering about something of the future which is still farther ahead, but instead you only think about your breath. You are inspired with your breath because it makes you happy in the present, not because of forcing yourself to do it in order to be a Vipassana practitioner.
2) When someone makes you angry, you are aware of it truthfully that you are angry. But instead of staring at him or her with an angry look, you look at your own anger within your mind instead with neutrality. That is you do not think about him/her or you as being right or wrong. You are only concerned with your mind in anger, in order to see the true nature that anger is like a flashing flame expressing its impermanence for you to see once again.
3) As time passes, you begin to realize that you are monitoring and aware of every movement, every state of mind, in order to see that all of those things are impermanent, uncontrollable as you wish, even while you are urinating!
Such guidelines of self-observation would indicate that you have started practicing Vipassana. The followings are the minor details, which you may find occurring spontaneously after practicing Vipassana for a while.
1) When looking up to the sky, seeing cloud or stars, instead of having romantic imagination, you simply see the steady state of mental serenity, without clinging to the taste of happiness, arisen from such state of serenity.
2) When your ego and conceit arisen as ‘you’ or ‘I’, with a strong sense of discrimination, you would hate what is going on within your mind, analogous to a person with keen eyes seeing innumerable dog ticks or fleas attached to one’s body.
3) When you see your own mistakes arisen from thinking, speaking or doing anything, and then realize that your mind has a nature of being unwholesome, such as being indignant, feeling gloomy, being manic, anxious, etc., then you become mindful and remorseful in a new way. That is you do not feel sad, or keep blaming yourself. Instead you realize that unwholesomeness is simply a dark shadow casting on your mind. Simply realize that such dark shadow is not you yourself, once it arises, it will have to disintegrate as a norm, and you would gain the sense of voidness instead.
4) When you persistently continue to be a Vipassana practitioner, as days pass, voidness would expand itself exponentially. That is seeing any mental phenomenon vanishing, it is like your mind continuously gains more ground of emptiness and you have constantly gained more genuine happiness.
5) When stopping your habit of thinking that you know more than others and know how other people are, but instead you look at yourself and realize that you do not truly know much about yourself, until finally a new habit is gradually being cultivated. That is you investigate yourself more than prying into other people’s matter.
6) When fear arises, you realize that fear is simply another mental phenomenon that lures you to think that ‘you yourself’ is being the unfortunate person. Yet when closely observed through Vipassana, you realize instead that there is only fear left, there is no such unfortunate person to be found anywhere.
7) When you realize that the extreme foible is absentmindedness or unawareness.
8) When you feel that the past is simply a memory, and you also feel that memory is like a candle light, that slowly dims into darkness.
9) When you notice that some of your behavior have changed, i.e., from being used to talk to yourself frequently, or even up to fighting a heavy war of words in your head, to resting quietly with the inner peace instead.
10) When someone told you that you are luminous, you feel that he or she is talking about the state of luminosity, not talking about you yourself.
11) When you are truly aware that you differ from other surrounding people who do not practice Vipassana, yet you do not see yourself different from them. Because everyone by nature is the same, that is everything that arises, eventually must vanish.
12) When someone introduces you to other people as a ‘Vipassana practitioner,’ your mind simply denies it and does not feel proud, does not think that it is an honor, and realizes that even ‘being a Vipassana practitioner’ is not you yourself at all.
Conclusion
The best dharma is what is clearly appearing in front of mindfulness at this very moment.
Anything demonstrating that once it arises, it must eventually vanish as a norm. Once realized, it relinquishes the mind from clinging.
Such thing is more interesting to see than all of the world wonders combined.
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