Philosophy of Vipassana Meditation: Appreciating the Rational Basis of the Insightful Meditation

Abstract

Sceptical modem scholarship has so far ignored the philosophical significance of Vipassana. Suspecting it as just another form of mystical religious practice, and therefore lacking any academic value, the academic world often consciously steers dear of vipassana. In this paper however, I intend to make a bold claim that vipassana has a solid philosophical and phenomenological foundation. So the aim of this paper is to demystifying the vipassana by showing the ways in which the principles of vipassana support my claim that it has a profound philosophical foundation. The paper is simply an invitation to anyone, the sceptics and the faithful alike, to consider the strengths and the weaknesses of the arguments presented here. The arguments in the paper unfold progressively, they are drawn upon the delineation and the discussion of some of the key concepts of the vipassana. Beginning with the epistemological argument of panna(insightful awareness), the paper defends its claim, by way of exploring the phenomenological argument of vedana(experience), the psychological argument of tanha (craving), the soteriological argument of shaking off the tanha (craving), the epistemological argument of sampajanna (correctly and wholly understanding the reality), the methodological argument of satipatthana (foundations of mindfulness); and the paper concludes with some practical remarks on the significance of catching the moment as a way of applying vipassana in daily life.