I presented a paper on Vipassana long back at Delhi University, and at that time, a professor there asked me a question: "Who realises the temporality of the sensations when we practice Vipassana: the mind or something else?" That question stayed with me. I told him about my experience in Estonia. Once, I went on an office tour in Estonia, where it was extremely cold at around -15 degrees. I walked outdoors for quite a long time and developed severe stomach pain. With no medicines available to me and no doctor to visit, I sat in Vipassana and began observing sensations. After about an hour of observation, the pain disappeared. I told him that I don't know whether that was a realisation of the mind or something else, but the same brain that experienced pain some time back had no pain after some time.
The question is who was feeling the pain and where that pain disappeared after observation. When we sit in Vipassana, our minds are full of so many thoughts. Usually, our minds will keep moving from one thought to another. If we sit idle for an hour, we will probably think about our past, present, and future. Within an hour, we will have thousands of thoughts. We don't have much awareness of our bodies. On the other hand, when we sit in Vipassana, we first become aware of our breath and then different sensations in different parts of our bodies. Those sensations exist even when we don't sit in Vipassana, but we are so immersed in our thoughts that we are hardly aware of those sensations.
That brings us to a very important point: so many things keep happening within our bodies and around us, but we are "too focused" on a few of them and lose awareness of the rest. The brain selectively ignores some of these sensations and pays overattention to others. I read a book written by an American neurosurgeon in 2025, "It doesn't have to Hurt". The book is about patients' perceptions of pain before and after surgery. He says that the same amount of pain is perceived differently by different people. That's why the patient's mental readiness for surgery is key to managing pain. Basically, the brain can reduce or amplify pain. Pain is a signal that the brain perceives as a threat, and the human brain has been wired to give attention to that part of the body, or if it is a psychological pain, to that thought which is perceived as a threat, so that we get rid of that threat. If we have a tiff with the boss, the same thought will nag our mind for some time. Basically, the brain wants to return to equilibrium and feel that relations are normal, or to logically conclude that the tiff is normal and there is no threat. Similarly, when we experience physical pain, the brain perceives a threat and becomes attentive to the body's needs. If the brain is prepared to anticipate the right amount of pain, it will not overreact during the surgery.
What is Vipassana in this background? When we sit in Vipassana, we come out of the fixation with thoughts and prominent sensations. When we sit down, the mind tries to chase different thoughts, and we bring attention to the breath. When we sit continuously for hours, our body pains, and the brain becomes sensitive to that pain. The moment we close our eyes, our attention naturally goes to that part of the body, be it the back or the legs. However, we bring our attention back to the breath and observe the whole body sequentially. We become aware of sensations in every part of the body that we were previously unaware of. That means we distribute attention equally across the whole body.
The brain amplifies pain or gets trapped in a loop of thoughts because every thought interacts with the unconscious memories stored in our body. If we see an enemy, memories of that enemy surface, and we feel threatened. If we meet a friend, memories of the good times we shared surface, and we feel happy. The cycle does not end here. The conscious brain processed that threat. It calculates why that enemy has come; he must have come here to take revenge or do some further damage. It tries to anticipate, and in that phase, it makes many mental stories. The more it repeats, the more sure it gets of those stories. It sends signals to the unconscious mind, further strengthening the hatred stored there. The next time we see that enemy again, our reaction will be stronger.
Thus, we become overattentive to certain events or sensations. We retrieve the memory from the unconscious mind. Create mental stories about the threats and give feedback to the unconscious mind, which reacts more strongly the next time we encounter the same event. Similarly, we go to a social gathering and take pleasure in the tasty food, the nice music, the dancing, and light conversation with friends. Our brain feels good. The unconscious mind stores the experience and categorises it as pleasant. The next time we receive an invitation to the gathering, the unconscious mind retrieves the memory of the last one and urges us to go. The mental stories of pleasantness grow stronger with each such experience. If we have to make a decision between meditating and social gathering, the unconscious mind will naturally drive us towards social gathering without us ever realising it. We will feel that we have taken that decision, but actually, that decision is coming from a different land.
While sitting in Vipassana, we observe all these memories. Not at the level of thought, but at the level of sensations in different parts of the body. Because the interaction between the conscious and the unconscious takes place at the level of sensations. When we don't give overattention to a sensation and instead observe the whole body sequentially, from head to toe and from toe to head, our attention span increases significantly. We become aware that the pleasant sensation we get while attending the social gathering is just one of the millions of sensations already present in our bodies that we were not aware of. That awareness of the larger helps us overcome the addiction to a narrow band of sensations. When we consider the full range of sensations across the body, we also realise that they change quickly. As if the quantum particles are taking birth from the field underlying the world of matter and merging back into that. That brings awareness of the field underlying these sensations. I don't know whether that awareness is an attribute of the mind or beyond that. I am still looking forward to that answer.
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