Our coteacher Karla Helbert leads us in a guided vipassana meditation. After watching her introduction to the practice above, please find a comfortable, quiet place to sit and follow along with the guided audio meditation below.

Bhikkhu Bodhi introduces calm abiding (samatha) and insight (vipassanā) and outlines what the Nikāyas say about these two main varieties of Buddhist meditation practice.

Lesson 4d: Pre-vipassana Knowledge of the #1-unique characteristic: in every moment something arises and is known phenomenologically.

Shaila Catherine has been practicing meditation since 1980, with more than eight years of accumulated silent retreat experience. She has taught insight meditation since 1996 in the U.S. and internationally. Shaila has dedicated several years to studying with masters in India, Nepal and Thailand, completed a one-year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhana, and authored Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity. Shaila Catherine has practiced under the guidance of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw since 2006; she authored Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana to help make this traditional approach to meditative training accessible to Western practitioners. She is the founder of Bodhi Courses, an online dhamma classroom, and Insight Meditation South Bay, a Buddhist meditation center in Silicon Valley.