Vipassana Meditation : Lectures On Insight Meditation by Venerable

thinks about your work, your family or your relatives, you must leave theabdominal movement a lone and observe the wandering thoughts, making amental note 'thinking, thinking'. You should be careful at this point. When youobserve any mental state or emotional state, your noting mind must beenergetic, attentive, precise and somewhat quick so that it becomescontinuous, uninterrupted and constant. When the noting mind becomespowerful, the thought or idea, or the thinking mind 'stops' by itself. Then thenoting mind no longer has the object to note. It naturally returns to theabdominal movement, which should be noted as usual.Walking MeditationThe Buddha said that mindfulness must be applied to the four postures of thebody, i.e. walking, standing, sitting and lying down.· While you are walking, you must be mindful of it as it is-· While you are standing, you must be mindful of it as it is-· While you are sitting, you must be mindful of it as it is-· While you are lying down, you must be mindful of it as it is-So, in every posture, there must be mindfulness.We instruct meditators to practice walking and sitting meditationalternately so that they can concentrate more easily and hence attain insightinto the walking and sitting processes. Every session of sitting must bepreceded by walking because in walking meditation, the movement of the footis more distinct than the abdominal movement when sitting. When yourmeditation practice matures, you may then need sitting meditation for a longerperiod than walking. When you have reached the sixth stage of insightknowledge, you may practice sitting meditation longer than walking you maysit for two or three hours and walk one hour. At that stage, your concentrationis good, deep and strong enough to realize the dissolution of Nama and rupa(mental and physical phenomena). But in the beginning of the practice, youneed walking meditation longer than sitting because you are not yet able to sitfor long but can walk longer. You can attain some degree of concentrationmore easily in walking than in sitting.So first of all, you should practice walking meditation by being aware ofstepping. When you make a left step, note it as 'left'. When you make a rightstep, note it as 'right'. In this way, note 'left, right, left, right', or just 'stepping,stepping'. Labeling or naming is not so important as the mind that observes themovement of the foot. You should lay stress on awareness, sharp awareness ofthe movement of the foot.14