Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

Experience of Reality
In meditation, we must always be on guard against losing our
way. There are so many different experiences that may
arise during meditation, it is easy to think of certain
experiences as “special” or “advanced”, and give up the
practice in favour of pursuing these states. At the same
time, a newcomer to the practice will be unable to recognize
the right path, since they have not yet followed it to the end.
Like a person lost in the forest, they will be unable to find
their way without proper guidance.
Experiences are not in and of themselves meditation, but
meditation is to be performed on all experience. In insight
meditation our intention is to see and understand reality for
what it is. We try to understand our experience of the world
objectively; to do away with the misconceptions and
misunderstandings that are the cause for all suffering. So, it
is important to be objective about all experience that occurs
during meditation, to see each experience for what it is, as
simply a physical or mental state of feeling, emotion,
knowledge or experience that comes and goes. We must see
for ourselves that there is nothing exceptional about any one
experience; only then will we be able to understand reality
as it is, let things come and go as they will, and be free from
all craving, clinging, and suffering.
Proper meditation practice has to be truly objective. This is
the most difficult aspect of meditation to understand. A
beginner meditator’s mind inclines naturally towards
pleasant, exciting, stimulating experiences and, when these
are absent, will tend to feel that their practice is not
progressing. Indeed, when one’s practice begins to truly
progress, the mind will generally react by rejecting the
experience, even rejecting the meditation practice entirely,
under the belief that these realizations are harmful to
oneself. Those experiences that are actually signs of
progress are often misinterpreted in the beginning as being
negative in this way.
To overcome this problem, it is important to first understand
what we mean by meditation, specifically insight meditation.
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