Cultivating Insight

Insight doesn’t fit into any particular tradition, although it’s a word you’ll hear repeatedly in Buddhist circles. In Pali, Vipassana is the word for insight or clear seeing– as the mind quite literally starts to see more clearly through investigation.

While we can have smaller a-ha moments that feel freeing, we can also experience seismic shifts that help unbind us from the illusory self. When these insights land, they start to change our mode of perception.

Unfortunately, we’re not whisked away on a purple carpet with the heavens parting– we still have to brush our teeth and pay the bills, or as Jack Kornfield put it, after the ecstasy comes the laundry. But we can experience a spaciousness awareness that changes how we react and relate to the world.