Corruption of the dhamma

[thomaslaw]

@alaber

When you look at the suttas, vipassanā is not described as a practice. It is a quality that needs to be developed. If you look at the number of suttas where the word vipassanā appears, compare to the number of suttas where the words samatha, jhāna, and samādhi appear, you will see that the word vipassanā appears very rarely and it’s almost all the time associated with samatha or samādhi. For me, samatha and vipassanā are the two sides of the same coin. It is a set of qualities, samatha is peacefulness, tranquillity of body and mind and vipassanā is the insight as a result of that. You don’t ‘do’ vipassanā , you don’t ‘do’ samatha .

The term, vipassana ‘insight’, is a noun form. It combines two elements, vi and the verbal form, passati, in the sense that ‘seeing completely and perfectly’, phenomena as they really are. For the practical meaning of vipassana, you need to look at the verbal form, passati, in the suttas (particularly in SN/SA suttas). Note: passati is always come together with another verb, jaanaati.

Thus, samatha and vipassana are not the same practice.

E.g.:
Page 34 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (69.3 KB)
Page 53 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (87.8 KB)