About MIDL

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 Insight Meditation is a donation-based Systematic Insight Meditation Course designed for meditators who wish to practice traditional Buddhist Insight Meditation (satipatthana vipassana) in their daily lives. MIDL is a wisdom-based samatha-vipassana (calm-insight) meditation practice that gradually teaches the heart & mind to let go, expressing as calm, insight, and harmony.

The MIDL Insight Meditator seeks to rest in the middle balance, or ‘Middle Way’ (MIDL Way), as the Buddha (SN 56:11) taught in the Noble Eightfold Path. Their aim is to cultivate the conditions for harmony of heart & mind through developed skill in calm, insight, and morality within the Noble Eightfold path, in the context of 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 to gently let it be.

MIDL Insight Meditators use the development of samatha relaxation and calm during mindfulness of breathing as a foundation for vipassana insight into the hindrances to relaxation & calm. By taking an interest in anything that hinders their ability to experience relaxation and calm during mindfulness of breathing, they develop insight into the anicca (impermanent) and anatta (autonomous) nature of their mind and body, thereby training their heart & mind to let go. 

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, attraction 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:

1. Daily life continuously challenges sila; in a retreat environment, sila is controlled.
2. Daily life is full of sensory stimulation; in a retreat environment, this stimulation is controlled.
3. Daily life is the playground for the hindrances, in a retreat environment the conditions for hindrances to arise is controlled.
4. Due to all of the above, samadhi (unification of mind) has a very high decay rate in daily life. In a retreat environment, the conditions to lower the decay rate of samadhi are controlled.
5. In daily life, the meditator needs to maintain a healthy relationship with themselves, family, friends, work, and the world. In a retreat environment, the need to maintain this healthy relationship, beyond sila, is controlled.

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:

1. Use sila not as a set of rules but rather as a morality line from which to highlight the kusala (wholesome/skilful) and akusala (unwholesome/unskillful).
2. Train the mind to soften and relax interest in sensory stimulation.
3. Use the hindrances, stirred up in daily life, as a path of insight.
4. Develop stability of samadhi through insight into the hindrances in terms of their anatta nature and the conditions for them to arise and cease to significantly weaken them in the meditator's mind. This weakening of hindrances, by making them the object of insight, allows the meditator to develop samatha jhana in daily life. Jhana developed through khanika samadhi is more difficult because of the continuity of noting that is needed in daily life to support the stability of samadhi necessary for vipassana jhana.
5. The MIDL meditator uses their relationships with themselves, family, friends, work, and the world in a way that highlights sila, weakens the akusala (unwholesome/unskillful), cultivates the kusala (wholesome/skillful), and leads to harmony or harmonising.

• YouTube: Talk by Stephen Procter on Insight Meditation in Daily Life (MIDL).