Sensation, The Key to Satipatthāna
by S N Goenka
Whatever truth is outside can be found within as well; whatever is within also exists outside. We may accept truth out of devotion or intellectual conviction, but in order to apprehend it directly we must explore within, to experience truth within ourselves. By thus coming face to face with truth, we can develop experiential wisdom that will make a real change in our lives.
The meditator starts investigation from a superficial level at which gross, solidified truths appear. But as one observes the apparent truth objectively, one starts penetrating from gross to subtler truths and finally witnesses ultimate truth. This ultimate truth can be experienced only only by exploring reality within oneself.
The exploration of the truth within is Vipassana meditation. In the course of this exploration the meditator must investigate two fields, two aspects of reality: matter and mind. Investigation of the physical reality is called in Pāli kāyānupassanā. Investigation of the mental reality is called cittānupassanā. In fact, however, matter and mind cannot be experienced separately from each other because they are interdependent, interconnected.
Exploring one is bound to involve an exploration of the other. Neither can be fully understood without the other.
The field of matter: kāyānupassanā and vedanānupassanā
The physical reality of oneself must be invwestigated by direct experience; it will not help merely to imagine or speculate about it. How then to experience this truth, the reality of one”s own body
If in the names of kāyānupassanā one sits with closed eyesand simply names or imagines the different parts of the body, such a person is far away from correct practice of Vipassanā, from the direct exploration of truth. We actually experience our bodies by feeling them - that is, by means of our bodily sensations. Therefore awareness of physical sensation is indispensable to the practice of kāyānupassanā. Sensations exists, of one type or another, at every part, every atom of the body.
Thus the investigation of the truth of body is bound to involve the exploration of bodily sensations - in Pāli, vedanānupassanā. Sensations can be experienced only within one”s body, and the reality of body can be experienced only by means of sensations.
But though sensation is always based on the body, the truth of vedanā is not exclusively physical in nature; it is also one of the four mental aggregates. Sensation overlaps the two fields of mind and matter. For this reason observations of sensation, as we shall see, is a way to explore the mental-physical phenomenon in its entirety.
In the practice of kāyānupassanā, observation of sensations will enable the meditator to experience directly the changing nature of the physical structure. By examining every part of the body in turn, one realizes that all sensations arise and pass away. As one repeats this practice, eventually a stage comes in which one experiences the instantaneous dissolution of every particle of the body. In this very subtle stage the meditator observes directly that the entire material structure is dissolving every moment; this experience is called in Pāli bhaṇga-ñāṇa, the realization of the truth of dissolution.
Through observing sensations as well, one can experience that the body is composed of four basic elements: earth, or solidity; water, or fluidity; air, or gaseousness; and fire, or temperature. Particles arise with the predominance of one or more elements, giving rise to the infinite variety of sensations. They arise to pass away. Ultimately the body is merely wavelets arising and passing away, constant dissolving. The apparently solid material structure is in reality nothing but ripples, vibrations, osc…
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