Previous chapter: 6.1 Conditioning and deconditioning
6.2 Vipassana Meditation
If the patient is generally capable of maintaining equilibrium, relaxation and tranquillity in his daily life, he will be able to establish a fundamental feeling of security and protection against harmful conditioning. After achieving this equanimity he may be able to replace reflex-type reactions to external stimuli by adequate actions optimally adapted to the prevailing situation.
How can a person develop this stable tranquillity, relaxation and equanimity, and maintain it in everyday life?
This question was already addressed 2500 years ago within the framework of Buddhist meditation techniques (ref. 17). The result is the Vipassana Meditation technique, which originated from yoga and has been passed on, effectively unchanged, for 2500 years.(ref. 4 - 6) The single historical aim is very pragmatic: to ensure happiness and avoid misery. In pursuing this aim the technique is devoted specifically to the problem of inappropriate (unwholesome) emotional reflexes described above and the tendency to establish such reflexes.
We recall: Emotional tensions (wishes, desires or aversions) are the vehicles used by external or internal stimuli to cause unconscious, reflex-type conditioning. Often the emotional tensions are uncontrollably reinforced each time the reflex occurs, so that they finally grow out of all proportion to the initial cause. A condition arises in which desires or aversions do not correspond to what is perceived in the prevailing situation (internal or external), namely stress. This discrepancy between perception and expectation leads to over-reaction (stress responses; Buddhist "suffering").
The examination and comparison between the emotional tensions and the reality, which potentially may be completely contrary to them, occurs - abstractly speaking - between the mind and the physical sensations, because inner and outer reality can be experienced only via the senses (the wasp is seen and heard; the coolness and flavour of the vanilla ice cream is felt and tasted, etc.)
It is exactly this process which is made accessible to the consciousness by the traditional form of the Vipassana technique that is currently taught e.g. by S.N. Goenka (ref. 4 - 6, 17). First, a person's attention is concentrated on his breathing. Breathing represents the interface between outside and inside and between conscious and unconscious. The conscious observation of this function, which of itself occurs unconsciously, enables access to the unconscious. Observation of breathing trains the faculty to observe sensations acutely and objectively and the feelings which they provoke. Subsequently, in a process of "body sweeping", attention is directed to each and every sensation. These can be experienced as pleasant or unpleasant, and so easily form the basis for emotional conditioning.
While the memories stored in the body are aroused by this "body scan", strict attention is paid simultaneously to a stable, concentrated and tranquil underlying attitude. Equanimity in the face of the aroused feelings and being aware of their changeability and transience (pain subsides) cause experience and imprinting to be relativised and weakened. In effect, the process of physical overreaction to psychological stimuli (e.g. cramping muscles and cold sweats accompanying anxiety) is reversed.
The student of Vipassana should also observe certain ethical principles in daily life which encourage the development of inner tranquillity. In this aspect, the technique is similar to the deconditioning techniques mentioned above which are known from behavioural psychotherapy or as relaxation exercises. However, the Vipassana technique not only trains awareness of and thus finally protection against conditioning processes, it also tames the conditioning process itself. How does this happen? The answer appears to be unspectacular:
Observation and experience of the transience of sensations leads to recognition that emotional clinging to, striving after or mental defence against a pleasant or unpleasant sensation is simply inappropriate because of its transience.
In other words: The Vipassana technique leads to the deeply rooted conviction and experience that it is good for the soul to allow each moment in which sensations interact with emotional life to be experienced afresh and with equanimity, and to encounter each such moment consciously and individually. However, the ability to perceive and become aware of the prevailing sensations and interactions is the pre-condition for such conscious action.
Equable and tranquil does not at all imply indifference or transcendence. It means accepting each new moment with exactly the same state of mind and then letting it go again. Sentiments will still be encountered, feelings of happiness, wishes, desires and aversions. However, it will also be possible to remain conscious of them and thus meet them with sovereignty and eventually let them go again, in a way which is completely appropriate to each situation, thus not allowingconditioning mechanisms to take control. A person knows from experience: a moment from now, this sentiment in exactly this form and constellation will already be in the past. I can never catch it again. I prefer to keep my head free for the immediate present.
With time, many of the wishes, desires and aversions and the associated emotional conditioning are not only not further reinforced but are attenuated to the appropriate measure. This is not a matter of reflex-type deconditioning of originally conditioned processes, because the change is enabled and initiated by conscious experience.
The approach of Vipassana Meditation is not simple. For most people (particularly in Western industrialised countries) it is unfamiliar and new. Occupation with oneself is often discredited and ridiculed in Western society as "navel-gazing". This misses the fact that the external "reality", which is held to be absolute, is perceived exclusively via this "navel" and thus exists only subjectively. This makes it worth bothering to study this window to "reality" more closely and possibly also to "clean" it.
Learning the Vipassana technique
The Vipassana technique is taught in a very efficient traditional manner for instance by S.N. Goenka. in special centres around the world. (see ref. 6) The ten-day courses demand sitting for about nine hours each day. Thus, these courses may not be suitable for patients who are physically weakened or suffer pain. For these patients and other people who were discouraged by the Buddhist terminology, Jon Kabat-Zinn and colleagues opened access to Vipassana about 25 years ago by developing the MBSR Programme ("Mindfulness-based stress reduction"), which employs the awareness training of Vipassana technique together with other elements. Jon Kabat-Zinn established the MBSR Programme at the "Stress reduction clinic" in Worcester, Massachusetts (ref. 7, 8). Nowadays MBSR courses are offered in about 300 clinics and health centres in the USA.
MBSR courses have also been offered in Germany for some years now (ref. 9).
Next chapter: 6.3 Examples of the physiological and biochemical effects of meditation: