Shamatha and Vipassana — Narayan Helen Liebenson
This is an excerpt from a longer Dharma Talk available on tricycle.org/dharmatalks.
Led by meditation teacher Narayan Helen Liebenson, this Dharma Talk investigates how shamatha (calming the mind) and vipassana (inquiring into the true nature of phenomena) fit together. Liebenson also covers some of the methods of practice and teachings from the Anguttara Nikaya.
"Shamatha is translated as calmness or tranquility. Vipassana means to see into conditions as they are, not as they appear to be, how we would prefer them to be, or as we want them to be, but as they actually are. Seeing things as they are means to see into the instability, the impermanence of all conditioned phenomena. Seeing things as they are means to see into the non-solidity, the substanceless nature, the not-self nature, of all conditions.
Seeing things as they are means seeing into the reality that all conditions—no matter how seemingly terrific or wonderful, and many conditions are wonderful, which is to be seen as well—are limited. We see into conditions as a bridge into the unconditioned, the deathless, our own buddhanature, and the buddhanature of every being in this world, despite how things appear to be. This is vipassana.
The direction of this noble path is from impulse to aliveness and spontaneity. It is from ignorance to wisdom. The direction of this path is out of confusion and into clear-seeing, out of agitation and into calmness and tranquility. From tranquility to wisdom, and from wisdom into liberation, liberation of heart, inner liberation. So, as the Buddha says, tranquility (shamatha) and insight (vipassana) lead to inner liberation. Other translations include calmness and wisdom, peacefulness and transformative understanding, silence and illumination.
Now, I have said that with calmness as our foundation, as the basis of wisdom, as the mental chatter begins to calm itself and cease, wisdom has a greater chance of emerging, of thriving, of growing. But I do want to make the point that the opposite is true as well. It is important to be aware whether our minds tend towards curiosity and interest and not so much towards calmness and tranquility. For some of us to move towards wisdom, we can see that wisdom brings tranquility. The two play back and forth, they work with one another, they're interwoven. When we see something more clearly as it is, a greater tranquility and peacefulness comes in. Greater calm is possible in our lives. So they work back and forth, we truly need both shamatha and vipassana."