What is vipassana meditation?

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The Buddha advocated the three marks of existence: dukkha, or that suffering is inherent to life; anicca, or that life’s sufferings are impermanent; and anatta, or that egolessness can release suffering.

Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is the process of examining mind and matter through silence, breath, and body awareness, helping to develop a deep, experiential understanding of life’s impermanence and the wisdom to cease life’s sufferings. Other meditation practices focus on pacifying and calming the mind.

The Buddha originally taught the vipassana technique nearly twenty-five hundred years ago. Mr. S. N. Goenka, a lesser-known spiritual leader of modern times, has reintroduced the same technique through extensive global retreats and courses.

The practice of vipassana meditation has proliferated worldwide and used with much success in schools, hospitals, mental institutions, corporations, and government offices in India, and in prisons in India and the U.S. There’s even a 2007 documentary titled The Dhamma Brothers that explores the vipassana meditation experiences of the prison inmates at Donaldson Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Alabama. Hundreds of vipassana meditators blog dramatic tales of transformation on the internet and scores have uploaded their experiences to YouTube. I wrote this book.