Inner Peace Conference (Amsterdam 2019)
Most people think of meditation as a practice to calm the mind, increase concentration and decrease anxiety and stress. And it certainly does do all of those things.
Yet the Buddha’s path of mind-training offers us all of the above and so much more. The Buddha spoke and taught about freedom from suffering, ethics, governance of countries, spousal relationships, household life, ecology and environmental stewardship.
His wisdom was all-encompassing, directed towards the well-being of all sentient beings for the betterment of society and carries with it the potential for social evolution through individual awakening.
The ancient path of Buddhist mind-training is designed to lead us towards the cessation of suffering and unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). Through unceasing practice empirical knowledge and wisdom arises, awakening the mind from its conditioned misperceptions and concomitant suffering.
Whit Hornsberger has been studying and practicing various forms of Buddhist meditation from different lineages for a decade and a half. His teaching method stems from the revered vipassanā lineage of Burmese meditation master, Mahāsi Sayadaw. By incorporating knowledge from his degree in primatology and over 15 years of dedicated practice and teaching, Whit has developed a unique approach to the understanding of the human condition and transmits the teachings in an accessible way to students at every stage of the path.
We invite you, as the Buddha did over 2500 years ago, to “come and see for yourself” what meditation is all about.
VIPASSANA
INSIGHT MEDITATION
Whereas the practice of samatha leads us to deep states of concentration and the arising of peaceful tranquility, samatha it is said, cannot lead us to the insight and wisdom necessary to arrive at the cessation of suffering. Nonetheless samatha is an incredibly powerful tool and often a prerequisite for the practice of vipassanā or insight meditation.
Insight meditation is the effort put forth by the meditator to truly understand the ultimate reality of the psycho-physical phenomena that compose one's embodied existence. It is said that our suffering arises out of a misperception and the concomitant misunderstanding of our embodied experience (mind and matter). Vipassanā practice offers the practitioner tools to develop one's own empirical understanding of this gift of life, rectifying the misperceptions and misunderstandings, resulting in the cessation of suffering.
In vipassanā meditation there are an infinite number of meditation objects. Anything arising at the six sense doors: eyes (sights), ears (sounds), nose (smells), tongue (tastes), body (sensations), mind (mind states) is a potential object for contemplation and it is these phenomena that are of interest to the practitioner, probing scientifically into the true nature of these sensory experiences.
From the refuge of witness consciousness, vipassanā enables the practitioner to observe how all psychophysical phenomena behave when unadulterated by the conditioned mind. It is from this perspective that true understanding and wisdom arises, replacing the conditioned misperceptions of the mind and resulting in the cessation or at the least the diminishing of suffering and unsatisfactoriness.
METTA
LOVING-KINDNESS MEDITATION
The practice of loving-kindness (metta) meditation cultivates deep levels of concentration and opens the heart-mind, cleansing our embodiment from the defilements of anger, hatred and aversion. Metta practice is the training of the mind to not dwell in aversion towards the physical and mental challenges we experience in this life, both on the cushion and off. From painful mind states to aches and pains within the body, developing the heart-mind through metta meditation enables each of us to rest with greater equanimity in the face of discomfort, no longer compounding our suffering by way of aversion.
GUIDED AUDIO METTA (LOVING-KINDNESS) MEDITATION
SAMATHA
TRANQUILITY MEDITATION
Samatha or calm-abiding/tranquility meditation is applied for the purpose of cultivating deep states of concentrative absorption referred to as the jhānas. In the practice of samatha the practitioner focuses attention upon one object, be it the breath, a mantra or an image within the mind. Repeatedly bringing the mind back to this object when it wanders will eventually lead to a mental state referred to as samādhi or simply, concentration. From this refuge of mental stability, peace and equanimity arise and the power of the concentrated mind can now be applied to all realms of our lives, including the development of insight through the practice of vipassanā.