Vipassana

Dear Venerable,
Once the capacity for concentration has been developed from the inner gaze, how can we develop the penetrating vision of Vipassana, which reveals the knowledge that two phenomena – internal or external – never manifest simultaneously, but always one after the other?
With my deep respects.

Venerable Nyanadharo: Concentration is sufficiently developed when one notes that access to the inner world opens as soon as the intention to plunge into it occurs. Thoughts instantly subside and may even disappear. The information coming from its interiority is sufficiently dense and consistent so that the mind no longer feels the imperious need to fill the absence of perceptions with new thoughts or other habitual distractions.

Even if the half-open eyes still capture the outside world through a panoramic look focused on nothing, we no longer grant interest to this information to privilege the inner world. This is then expressed through several channels: visual, auditory, sensory, even olfactory. However, even if this state and its various expressions may seem "interesting" and pleasant, gradually we do not and we should not give more interest to it than to external phenomena thanks to the establishment of an internal panoramic view, which does not privilege any of these perceptions. The intuitive knowledge inherent in insight can then be expressed.

As long as one differentiates the two worlds (inner and outer), one is still in the mind. The middle path is neither inside nor outside, it is the state of balance between the two worlds, inner and outer. Everything is present, but nothing is perceived.

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