Stan Golev’s Reviews > The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation > Status Update

To reach this stage of dissolution (bhaṅga), the meditator need do nothing but develop awareness and equanimity. Just as a scientist can observe more minute phenomena by increasing the magnification of his microscope, so by developing awareness and equanimity one increases the ability to observe subtler realities within.

Wherever we fix the attention within the physical structure, we are aware of nothing but arising and vanishing. Whenever a thought appears in the mind, we are aware of the accompanying physical sensations, arising and passing away. The apparent solidity of body and mind dissolves, and we experience the ultimate reality of matter, mind, and mental formations:nothing but vibrations, oscillations,arising and vanishing

“Whenever a sensation occurs they do not react, but allow it to arise and to pass away. By doing so they allow the old conditioning of the mind to come to the surface and pass away. When conditioning and attachment cease, suffering ceases, and we experience liberation. It is a long task requiring continual application. Benefits appear at every step along the way, but to attain them requires repeated effort.”

“Our suffering arises when we develop attachment to the processes, to what is in fact ephemeral and insubstantial. If we can realize directly the impermanent nature of these processes, our attachment to them passes away. This is the task that meditators undertake: to understand their own transient natures by observing the ever-changing sensations within.

“In your seeing, there should be only seeing; in your hearing nothing but hearing; in your smelling, tasting, touching nothing but smelling, tasting, touching; in your cognizing, nothing but cognizing.” When contact occurs through any of the six bases of sensory experience, there should be no valuation, no conditioned perception.