What Is the Vipassana Meditation?

Meditation is key to the Royal Way life, and the vipassana meditation, as taught by master spiritual teacher Michael Gottlieb, is an essential meditation with many life-enhancing benefits. In a fast-paced, busy life, with a million items constantly rotating on our to-do list, it’s common for our brains to feel overloaded with an endless stream of thoughts. This can rob us of serenity, distract us from being in the present, and even keep us awake at night. How to quiet the mind? How to find peace?

The Significance of Vipassana

Vipassana is an ancient meditation that was discovered by Gautama Buddha more than 2,500 years ago. Michael Gottlieb, founder of Royal Way, explains the rich significance of that fact:

“There are hundreds of methods of meditation, but vipassana has a unique status. There have been thousands of mystics, but Gautama Buddha was a uniqueness of his own. In many ways, he is incomparable. He has done more for humanity than anybody else. His search for truth was more sincere, more authentic, than anybody else’s. And vipassana is the meditation through which Gautama Buddha became enlightened.”The aim of vipassana meditation was, and is, to see things as they really are. Vipassana, to this day, is the perfect antidote to the hectic nature of modern life. And when practiced fully and deeply, vipassana can lead us to the experience of the divine. We can find God.

The Essence of Vipassana

“The literal meaning of the word ‘vipassana’ is ‘to look,’” Michael writes. “And the metaphorical meaning is to watch, to witness.”  Witnessing is an essential practice in the life of a seeker—that is, anyone who wishes to connect with their higher being, their divinity. It is, as Michael Gottlieb writes, “our most pressing and precious goal. This is a true state of meditation: an ongoing alertness and awareness, which separates us from identifying from the ego-mind.”

The practice of witnessing, which blossoms in vipassana meditation, brings a deeper relationship with existence, as well as with the mystery of the divine.

Michael said, “Gautama Buddha has chosen a meditation that can be called the essential meditation. All other meditations are different forms of witnessing. But witnessing is present in every kind of meditation as an essential part. It cannot be avoided. Buddha has deleted everything else and kept only the essential part: to witness.”

How Royal Way Practices Vipassana

One of the beauties of vipassana is its accessibility and simplicity. The instruction is simple: start by watching the breath and then expand to the entire body.

“When the breath touches your nostrils, feel it there,” Michael writes. “Feel the breath caressing the nostrils and then let the breath move in, and move with the breath fully conscious. Don’t miss a single beat. Don’t go ahead of the breath, don’t follow behind, just go with it.”

As we witness the breath, levels of stress drop away, and a deeper relaxation arises. Thoughts that normally fill our minds, all our endless to-do lists, drift away. All will be accomplished in due time. As we watch our breath, the weight of the to-do list is lighter, pressures are lessened, the breathing slows, and a deep calm emerges and prevails.

The Royal Way community practices vipassana regularly, both individually and collectively. But we don’t actually need to be sitting in meditation; we can witness ourselves walking, moving, raising an arm, moving a leg, feeling the heart beating. While drinking coffee, we can witness the hand reaching for the cup, the arm lifting the cup, the cup touching our lips, the warmth of the hot liquid in the throat as we swallow.

This sounds simple, but the experience can be profound. Michael Gottlieb says, “When witnessing the body, you will be amazed with new experiences. When you move your hand with witnessing, watchfulness, alertness, and consciousness, you will feel a certain grace and a certain silence.”

The second step in witnessing is watching thoughts without judgment or entanglement. Watch thoughts like clouds passing in the sky. “Do not become a participant, Michael says, “either by appraising, evaluating, or condemning. Do not take an attitude about what is passing in your mind. Simply watch your thoughts as if clouds are passing in the sky.” As those clouds drift by, there will be a space for silence, for calm, for awareness, and mindfulness. The daily practice of it, the constancy of it, is rejuvenating, because the alternative—constant entanglement with an endless stream of thoughts—can be as exhausting as running 10 marathons.

The third step in witnessing is to move to more subtle areas: emotions, feelings, and moods. Observing the emotions, we are less apt to become caught up in them, or worse, to be a slave to those emotions and moods. Emotions and moods are in such constant flux that they can make life a roller coaster. We can still experience authentic emotions, but we don’t need to be overwhelmed by them. In fact, by watching them come up, we can watch them go away: “The surprise will be,” Michael says, “that most of the emotions, feelings, and moods that possess you will disappear.”

The Benefits of Vipassana

As so many in Royal Way have experienced, the practice of vipassana brings a new quality to life, a new sense of freedom—freedom from constant mental noise, freedom from obsessive review or replaying of the past and nonstop planning for the future. Vipassana is one of the most effective ways to learn to enjoy the present moment.

Life is more joyous and blissful when we achieve, through vipassana, a dialing down of mental noise. Michael describes the state of witnessing this way: “For the first time, you taste something of mastering. You are no longer a slave to be pushed and pulled this way and that way where any emotion and feeling, or anybody, can disturb you for any trivia. When you become a witness of the third step, you become for the first time a master.”

It is an empowering accomplishment. Vipassana is beneficial in so many ways. It brings light and ease to day-to-day life. We can make decisions from a place of clarity. We can achieve ongoing serenity, mindfulness, relaxation, and joy.  This meditation has been described as the “universal remedy.” It is such a gift.

Conclusion

By practicing the three steps of vipassana, Michael says, “Nothing disturbs you. Nothing overpowers you. Everything remains far away, deep below—and you are on a hilltop.”

Vipassana, Michael teaches, can lead us to a divine state: “You can call it self-realization. You can call it enlightenment. You can call it ultimate liberation.” He adds, “As you reach to the ultimate point of your being … you find God—not as a person, but as life, as consciousness, as truth, as beauty, as all that man has been dreaming of for centuries.”