Shamatha and Vipashyana Support Each Other

Nondual guided meditation by Michael Taft
Shamatha (i.e. calming and focusing) and Vipashyana (special insight) are two different practices that can be used in combination to increase the effectiveness of both. In shamatha practice we are staying with a calm and focused mind. However, this is often interrupted by intrusive thoughts, emotions, and so forth. In order to help ourselves to go deeper, we can then switch to vipasyana on whatever content was interrupting the shamatha.
Let's take intrusive thoughts, for example. We switch to vipashyana, taking the thinking as its object. That is, we do vipashyana on the thinking, noticing its emptiness. This is the "special insight" that we access in vipashyana: to see the emptiness of some apparent object. Once the emptiness of the thoughts is clear, we can then switch back to doing shamatha, and the thoughts will now be much less of a problem. We can do this for any material that is causing unsteadiness in our shamatha. Thus vipashyana supports shamatha.
How does shamatha support vipashyana? As our mind becomes calm and steady, it increases the insight capacity of the vipashyana apace. The more clarity and stability we have in the shamatha, the more penetrating and powerful the vipashyana becomes.
The productive interplay between these two techniques suggests a structure of practice in which we go back and forth between doing shamatha for a while, then vipashyana for a while, then back to shamatha again. Over and over. With each round of this back-and-forth, the depth of the shamatha increases as does the power of the vipashyana. We can think of this as kind of refinement process, which can leads us into the depths of true emptiness and awakening.
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[@prasannainblr]

This was fantastic! Getting into exploring the sense of thoughts, feelings, self arising and being empty was very real. I think the sound effect of "swffffttt" took it up to 11 to blow the bubble of emptiness!
Thank you!

[@sebwest11]

Amazing that so much valuable content is free

[@sanathsambamoorthi4868]

This was so fun! Thanks for keeping things interesting by switching it up a bit. I'm really loving vipassana on thought. Still feeling like thoughts, feelings and sense of self are still pretty fused together, but not so much that I get lost in it during meditation as much, so very exciting right now to continue working on that defusing process.
You the man Michael! Thanks for making the endlessly complex simple, and being a badass teacher.

[@nunoconde1344]

Bringing: "how Carl Sagan would meditate...? 100% on it, with a turtleneck" helped a lot.
The come and go from focusing to investigate and viceversa is amazing, very grateful ⚡

[@wehatethecold]

Thanks Michael! One day I will meditate in person with you and that will also just be an image on the vivid screen hahaha

[@alextes]

You started with asking for dana so I started with a donation 😛.
The analogy with cutting did something for me. Reading about the diamond cutting through illusion is not quite the same as sitting and hearing you go "qwheeeeehst" 😄. Thanks Michael 🙏.

[@LeoCreatini]

Thanks Michael 🙏

[@whitenozze]

One of my faves^

[@Giatros89]

Start @10:16

[@raabyau]

Thank you

[@yakattack95]

Thank you for all the guided meditations!! Have you done any Dzogchen videos in the past on this channel?

[@MichaelTaft108]

The channel is pretty much nothing but dzogchen videos.

[@yakattack95]

@@MichaelTaft108 haha nvm then.

[@BustedBrains]

Where do I find a link to the discord if I am not watching live?

[@MichaelTaft108]

discord.gg/dttvGfrm

[@BustedBrains]

@@MichaelTaft108 Thank you!