Awareness in Action: A Practitioner's Guide to Mahasati Insight Meditation

Our thoughts trap us in anxiety, sadness, and anger. Of course, we need thought to live our lives, so we can't just stop thinking. Fortunately thought itself is not the problem, but rather it is our identification with thought and the feelings it produces, that imprisons us in suffering. The twentieth-century Thai meditation master, Luangpor Teean, clearly articulated the role thought plays in our daily unhappiness and showed how it also blocks us from the realization of our true nature which is beyond suffering. He taught a form of vipassana, or insight meditation, that does not require sitting still, closing off the senses, or shutting down the mind, but rather uses direct awareness of the movement of the body as a path to a new relationship with thought and ultimately to the realization of the Buddha's promise of awakening. Since this form of insight meditation is done with the body moving and the eyes open, it is more easily brought into daily life and so makes possible a continuity of practice that can be difficult in the modern world.

Though somewhat new in the West, this form of insight meditation, now known as Mahasati insight meditation, is well-known in Southeast Asia. In this book, psychologist and longtime practitioner, Michael Bresnan, now offers an introduction to, and explanation of, this approach to insight meditation. Michael has broken the book into two parts. The first part introduces the reader to the practice itself and discusses its application to the removal of stress in daily life. In the second part, Michael challenges the reader to go deeper as he explains how this practice can serve, not only as a method for stress reduction, but as a clear and direct path to the awakening promised by the Buddha.

The teaching associated with this lineage of practice was developed by Luangpor Teean after attaining enlightenment in 1957 while practicing insight meditation using an old Burmese meditative hand movement as an anchor for his meditation. His teaching attracted many followers due to its fresh approach and simplicity. Aside from the use of the moving body as an anchor, his approach to teaching insight meditation was somewhat unique in the way that he articulated the stages of awakening and the role played by conceptual thought in both the sustaining of suffering and in keeping us in the "dark." Therefore, this book may be of interest to practitioners of other Buddhist meditative paths as they may find that these teachings enrich their understanding of insight meditation more broadly.

Michael Bresnan is a licensed psychologist and Buddhist teacher. Following some years of Zen practice, he began practicing Mahasati insight meditation intensively in 1991 when this vipassana lineage was first brought to America. He has been instrumental in helping Mahasati practice become established in the United States and founded the Centers for Mindfulness & Insight Meditation in both Redding, Connecticut, and Wenham, Massachusetts, where he continues to teach.