There is a case where a meditator develops tranquillity in tandem with insight. As they develop tranquillity in tandem with insight, the path is born. They follow that path, developing, pursuing it. As they follow that path, their fetters are abandoned, their obsessions destroyed." Yuganaddha Sutta
MIDL is an acronym for Mindfulness in Daily Life. MIDL is also a play on words and points towards the middle balance or ‘Middle Way’ (MIDL Way) as discussed by the Buddha, which is found by integrating all parts of the Noble Eightfold Path: Panna (insight), Sila (morality) and Samadhi (unification of mind).
MIDL is a donation-based Buddhist Insight Meditation Course designed to be integrated into daily life by Stephen Procter. MIDL employs a gentle approach to insight meditation, where meditators begin by learning to relax through slow, gentle breathing. This approach to meditation is known as softening. It allows meditators to experience benefits such as greater relaxation in their body, lower stress and the experience of anxiety with a few weeks of practice. MIDL is practised by following instructions in an in-depth insight meditation course designed for family and work life. MIDL also integrates into a free-flowing retreat practice based on developing calm for insight.
The attitude behind MIDL is: "Everything can improve a little bit, and success comes from celebrating these accumulating little successes."
The MIDL Insight Meditator seeks to rest in the middle balance, or 'Middle Way', by developing insight into creating the conditions for harmony of heart and mind through the development of skills in calmness, insight, and morality within daily life. As a MIDL Insight Meditator, you will learn to find the middle way by neither suppressing nor avoiding any experience but rather by observing and softening/relaxing your relationship with whatever you are experiencing and letting it be.
MIDL develops samatha calm in mindfulness of the body as a foundation from which to build vipassana insight into anything that hinders samatha during mindfulness of breathing. This way of practising develops a natural mindfulness of the body throughout the day and a heightened sensitivity to sila morality. This process of calm and insight yoked together rewards the mind with the enjoyment of letting go and teaches it to incline towards this enjoyment in daily life. By practising traditional Buddhist Insight Meditation in this way, desire and aversion are weakened in daily life, and any cycles of self-created suffering come to an end.
The main consideration for MIDL is: What is the best way to develop momentum on the path in daily life, outside of a controlled retreat environment, since a retreat environment and daily life are different?
Things to be considered here are:
These are the considerations in designing a meditation system that works in daily life.
Developing a momentum of samadhi on the perception of anicca works well in a retreat environment. Still, it is much more difficult in daily life because of the decay rate of samadhi. It isolates the meditator from other people and develops a lot of dukkha experience.
While the perception of dukkha through anicca develops disenchantment, which works well on a retreat, it does not work well when the meditator is embedded in family life because the meditator's mind risks becoming adverse toward everyone around them. The perception of anatta, if developed skillfully, does not produce the same level of dukkha if paired with softening, but it does produce the same level of disenchantment.
The message of insight and wisdom into anicca, dukkha, and anatta is always: "let go." If the mind develops disenchantment and tries to let go and has no safe place to do so, then it will become scared and produce dukkha. With this insight-based fear, the mind will produce fear and dread as it tries to find solid ground and is unable to. Any resistance from the meditator at this point will just enhance the dukkha experience.
If the insight meditator pairs samatha-based calm with vipassana insight, and the message of both matches, then the amount of dukkha the mind produces with the perception of anicca and anatta is low. By matching message, I mean that deepening of both samatha and vipassana needs to give one instruction: "let go". To match these messages, samatha needs to be developed through letting go of rather than by controlling attention. If samatha is developed by control, then the message between insight and calm will not match. The mind turning away from its experience will seek to control, suppress block it out, because that is how it was trained.
In MIDL, the insight meditator develops samatha calm, by relaxing and letting go with clear comprehension of the process, while training their mind to perceive pleasure in letting go. When samatha is developed this way, it still leads to jhana, but it also carried the instruction within it: "Calm and safety is accessed through letting go". The mind training in this way, when developing insight into anicca, dukkha and anatta, develops disenchantment, hears the message, and begins to let go. When it lets go it does not feel threatened, or dukkha-based fear and dread, because it understands where to go to, it has a place of safety within samatha and knows how to find pleasure rather than fear in letting go of control.
So, my question was, how can I take advantage of these difficulties as an insight meditator in the midst of day life that addresses the above problems.
Based on the above criteria: