Vipassana Meditation or Insight Meditation is a Mindful Meditation which awakened your inner consciousness for the present moment. Mindfulness is a process to fully realized the internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment. There are many factors in mindfulness which are explained in this article to understand the concept of Mindfulness.
Clarity Of Mind
The first factor is clarity of the mind. It is a mind that is clear and pure—clear from all greed, anger, dullness, delusion and hallucination. When there is greed or craving, anger or hatred, delusion or dullness, the mind is not clear. For example, when a person is intoxicated with alcohol, would you say that his mind is clear? His mind is not clear but muddled. All he wants is to drink more alcohol and drown his sorrows. Another example is when a person is angry, loses his temper, is very sad or depressed. Would you think his mind is clear? No, his mind is not clear. His mind is heavy, dark, agitated, dull, and stupid. So, mindfulness is a state of mind when you are very alert, then the mind is clear and undisturbed—this is called clarity of mind—it is like clear water; it is like the clear sky.
Stability & Calmness
The second factor of the nature of mindfulness is stability, calmness, and peace. Let us compare the opposites; when a person’s
mind is experiencing anger—it is agitated, not calm, not stable. It is disturbed like agitated or boiling water. When the mind is
experiencing the craving, it is excited and disturbed, not calm and steady.
When the mind is not calm, peaceful, and steady, it is in a confused state, it is dull. The mind which is calm, peaceful, and steady, is just like when we first come out from a good meditation or a good sleep— we have no worries. It is just like when we are strolling by the beach or when we sit at home with a good book. Our mind then is calm and steady although it is not to the level that we would get in meditation. When we are already in a state of calmness, steadiness, and peacefulness, should someone scold us, we remain calm and not disturbed? When this happens, the state of mindfulness is peaceful, happy and stress-free. It is the nature of mindfulness that when clarity of mind, stability, calmness and peace have been achieved, a third factor may come into play.
Alertness
The third factor is alertness of the mind. The mind becomes sensitive, not in a bad way, but sensitive in a good way. Being sensitive in a bad way is when somebody says something that is annoying and we become disturbed. Being sensitive in a good way is a person who is very calm, alert and stable but very perceptive about what is going on. One knows exactly in detail and in great clarity what is actually happening. Please bear in mind this quality of mindfulness.
Think about how the state of mindfulness is like when you are having it. When we are able to know that this quality is in the mind, we can safely say that we are mindful.
Awareness
There is another type of mindfulness with similar qualities that are found in insight meditation. This is like a light, like an awareness that is concentrated within ourselves, into our own mind and body processes. The main aim of insight meditation is to look within and discover our own natures. Because we do not understand what our own natures are, defilements such as greed, anger, and delusion, and all suffering arise.
There are certain special qualities connected with mindfulness in insight meditation. First, it is not thinking. We do not think, we just observe. It does not mean that during a retreat, we do not think at all. We still think, but we are mindful of the thinking. However, in the actual meditation exercise, the thinking is put aside, and the mind with concentrated awareness observes without thinking. Secondly, when we are without thinking, the mind is kept to the present or present occurrences. We do not go to the past or the future.
We keep the mind in the so-called present and know what is happening to our meditation object. When we can do that, then our mindfulness is concentrated precisely on what is happening to our meditation object.
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