by Tang Huyen

"And let's not forget the plain serenity in the face of anything, which is as quick a path to awakening as any other method, and it hasn't even any technique to it."

The two main practices of Buddhist meditation
are calming (samatha) and insight-penetration
(vipassanā). Calming includes the standard
four form meditations (jhāna, dhyāna), the four
formless attainments (samāpatti), and the four
Divine Abodes (friendliness, compassion,
sympathetic joy, equanimity). Insight-penetration
is any method that facilitates the understanding
of Buddhist truth, from mindfulness to the
various contemplations that may or may not
be factually true, like the contemplation of
impermanence, suffering and absence of self
(those are traditionally said to be factually true)
and the contemplation of the unclean — for
example, contemplating the whole universe as
a skeleton, which obviously is not factually true.
Returning to the standard four form meditations
and the four formless attainments: whilst they
constitute the core of calming, their culmination,
the cessation attainment (nirodha-samāpatti),
combines both calming and insight-penetration
and bestows full awakening (arhat-ship) if not
already attained.

Traditional Chan practices are also part of
insight-penetration, though of course they also
include calming in them. One well-known Chan
practice is silent contemplation, another is the
wholesale concentration on a public case to
break it and break through delusion, another
is the "sitting only" of Japanese Soto Zen.
Probably silent contemplation and "sitting only"
are Buddhist versions of the Daoist zuo-wang —
"to sit and forget."

And let's not forget the plain serenity in the face
of anything, which is as quick a path to
awakening as any other method, and it hasn't
even any technique to it. It is as much of
insight-penetration as any other method of
insight-penetration.

As to the description of insight (vipassanā) as
"opening one's bare attention to whatever one
is experiencing without adding to the experience":
that is actually mindfulness — or more
precisely one form of mindfulness, and an
advanced one — therefore part of insight, but not
the whole of insight. The spectrum of insight is
quite big, as explained briefly above. Surely
many contemplations, whether factually true or not,
add to the experience and interpret the experience;
for example, that "all compounds are impermanent,
all compounds are suffering, all thing-events are
without self." That triple contemplation constitutes
the three marks of everything, Nirvana included
— Nirvana is without self, though it is blissful
because it is not compounded, not composed,
and that is the fourth mark — and forms the core
of insight-penetration.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 20 November 2006, in a thread on psychedelics and Nirvāṇa, in reply to a long-time practitioner who described insight (vipassanā) simply as "opening one's bare attention to whatever one is experiencing without adding to the experience." Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The post offers the most comprehensive taxonomy of Buddhist meditation in the Tang Huyen corpus: the fourfold structure of calming, insight-penetration, and their combination in the cessation attainment, with Chan practice located within the insight category. The connection of silent contemplation and "sitting only" Zen to the Daoist zuo-wang is a characteristic cross-traditional move. The final observation — that plain serenity without any technique is as direct a path as any method — inverts the entire taxonomy: the quickest way has no way.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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