Gateway to Dharma
In What Manner Does Meditation Contribute in Dharma practice?
Meditation is a form of mental development for which two main types of practices are introduced at the preliminary stage: Tranquil Meditation and Insight Meditation - the development of concentrated tranquillity and the development of insight knowledge. The goal of Tranquil Meditation is to pacify the mind into a state of concentrated purity undefiled by mental wanderings or fantasised aversions. There are 40 main types of meditative practices leading to the culmination of tranquil concentration which serves as the prerequisite pertaining to insight development. Whoever is mentally concentrated, sees things according to reality.
The goal of Insight Meditation is to develop a state of penetrating knowledge which signifies the realisation of the nature of reality as opposed to the mere intellectual grasp of the theory or the awareness of it as a conceptual pattern of practice. It is not to be confused with that of false insight which is a pronounced state of insupportable illusion whereby one mistook a small piece of subjective understanding for the cognisance of the full picture. True Insight is the result of analytical examination and direct meditative observation of one's own psycho-physical interaction with that of the universal characteristics of existence such as that of the impermanency, the unsatisfactoriness, and the impersonal and insubstantial nature of all corporeal and mental phenomena of existence. There are in total eighteen meditative stages in the development of Insight Knowledge which serves a systematic process of Mental Cleansing.