Vipashyanâ meditation and bodily experience

International audienceMy presentation will focus on a particular mode of vipashyanâ ("insight" or "mindfulness") Buddhist meditation*, both simple and difficult, which consists in paying sustained, precise and receptive attention to the bodily sensations which arise instant after instant. This training enables the practitioner to become aware of increasingly precocious and subtle phases of the process of emergence of a sensation. He then discovers with amazement that the characteristics of perceptive experience he used to take for granted - for example the distinction between an "internal" and an "external" space, between a perceiving subject and a perceived object far from being givens, are the result of a complex process of co-determination. At the same time, this process quietens down fades by itself: these distinctions become more and more permeable and finally vanish. In the Buddhist perspective, this meditation technique does not aim to elicit an extraordinary experience, but enables the practitioner to recognize the true nature of his ordinary experience