Perceptions are necessary as long as we think that we are living in this world with such and such gender, food preferences, hopes, fears, and self-identity. We share this conditioning with trillions of other beings on Earth. Meditation – on and off the cushion – is designed to clue us into the inner processes of thought, emotion, and perception. In so doing, a natural erosion begins of the seeming solidity of perceptions, ideas, thought processes, the sense of self, and other factors of a dualistic reality.
As said in the introduction to the meditation, When we engage a vipashyana practice, we are attempting to a) expand our range of perceptions, b) increase our understanding of the mechanisms within or of perception, and c) expand what we consider and participate in. Over all, d) is awareness/Awareness.
- By expanding what we are currently perceiving, we become more aware. A then produces C in some measure.
- By understanding the mechanisms of perception, both A and C are accomplished and B is increased.
- If one could simply make the leap to Awareness (d), then all three would be not only accomplished but would be increased simultaneously.
It’s hard for us to make such leaps, but there are those that have. They have left centuries and even millennia-worth of instructions, spiritual poetry and songs of realization, oral instructions, and descriptions of what Awareness – freed of the feed-back loop of perception and self is. We, too, can experience Awareness, which is why we practice a true vipashyana practice.
