Vipassana should be attempted immediately after doing Samatha (tranquility/calm) meditations, and ideally after reaching a jhanic level of samadhi (one-pointedness). The minimum level of required samadhi could be seen as where the mind is stable and does not wander, in pre-jhana samadhi, making continued mindfulness and clear comprehension possible. You should maintain mindfulness intelligently, with curiosity the going

1) Nama Rupa

While this meditation can be done in any posture it will be easier to sit down in your normal meditation posture. But with your eyes open this time. Come into the present moment. Let the mind NOT be focused on any ONE thing. But be aware of everything that is does. For example it might hear and sound, see an image, feel a sensation etc. Just let it jump from one to the next naturally, without focusing it on one object. Maintain awareness on everything it is doing, from one thought to the next. Do not get caught into reacting to the sounds or sights, by thinking about them. (Ex: you hear, the telephone and a thought arises ‘who might that be'. What you should be doing is simply being aware that a sound is being heard/sensed). You can be aware (slightly focused) for just a second, until the mind jumps to another sight or sound etc. But do not focus for prolonged periods like you did in anapanasathi.

Do not let strings of thoughts arise. If this happens, become aware of it, then put and end to it. Just go back to being aware of all the stimuli coming in one after the other.

When you start seeing stimuli coming in one after the other, look more deeply into this happening. Can you see the mind moving to the ear and then the sound being heard? Can you see it moving to the eye, then the image appears (* see more later). Similarly this happens to all the five senses and the mind. If you can see the mind separately and the sounds, sights, smells, bodily sensations, and tastes separately, you can understand that there are two components at work here. That is the mind which moves (Nama) and the objects which it picks up (Rupa). It is important to understand that the mind must move to a thought as well for it to be felt. The thought is also a mind (Nama) component.

Also see what type the eye which receives the image, the ear which receive the sound, the skin, tongue, nose etc is.

If you find it difficult to be aware of all stimuli initially, you can pick one of them, like sounds for example, and see this process in that alone initially. But later you must see it in all of them. Smelling and Tasting happens rarely when meditating, but it can be understood in the light of what is happening right now with the other senses, or when you actually experience them when doing something else.

The next important thing to understand is that there is nothing other than these two things at work inside of you.

They form the basis of how we ‘create' reality/our world within our own heads.

To sense the mind moving like this, the mind must be quietened by Samatha meditation. It is a very subtle thing that we are trying to sense here. The mind must act almost like a magnifying glass at this point, showing us the subtle details of its workings. You must look closely to see if the process mentioned above is happening.

*IMPORTANT: Having the theory of all this in the back of your mind can obstruct your progress of Insight. This is very dangerous. You should forget any and all Abhi dhamma (Deep Buddhist teachings of the mind) you might have read previously, and try to understand what you are seeing through Vipassana in a very simple and Real manner, in relationship to yourself and what is happing inside of you right now. Otherwise your knowledge can become a hindrance to seeing things as they really are (Yathabhutha nana). When your teacher confirms that you have understood this fully, it is acceptable at this point to explore how what you observed can be understood in terms of Abhi dhamma, but not before.

* If a person's sensitivity is greater might see/sense something like this:

-Sound is heard, followed by the movement of the mind to the ear, followed by the sound being heard better/identified/given meaning etc. or sensation felt, then the mind/awareness moves to that point in the skin where it is felt, followed by the sensation being felt better/it being identified/given meanind etc.

Stimuli à mind moves to where it comes from à stimuli identified and given meaning

This level of sensitivity must be reached eventually (and much later) during the course of doing Vipassana. The meditator must be able to sense these aspects of the process of sensory perception.

How long a person has to do Nama-Rupa depends on the growth of his insight into phenomena. A person doing an hour of meditation a day might need up to a month to the required level of insight. Another person at an intensive retreat might understand this in half a day. It is very variable, and depends a lot on the person and the level of communication he has with the teacher.

In all meditations and especially Vipassana, honesty with the teacher is critical. Do not expect that you have understood something when you might not have. Be always reserved in your estimations. Report everything you have understood to the teacher. Do not leave anything out. This will help him a lot in his task of helping you. Tell him of any and all problems you might have when doing this. Do not be bored with repeating the same meditation as much as you have to. Sometimes the mist of ignorance is deeply ingrained and it takes hard work to see reality in a different way from what we always have. But it can be done.

This then is the first stage of vipassana in identifying the mind (nama) and matter (rupa) components

THOERY

There is the object the mind picks up. There is the sensory organ by which we feel it (eye, ear, nose etc). Then there is the mind which goes to pick up the sound. sight etc.

Vipassana is the ultimate reality. Nothing can be known further beyond this. It is not possible to say if the object really exists or not in the ‘outside world', because at one pint there is arising of the stimuli. This seems to show that it exists. The next point it ends. Which seems to indicate that it does not exist anymore. It is a meaningless dance of stimuli (sankhara). There is no final answer.

These stimuli, give rise to the mind which goes to the point where the stimuli is detected. The point where it is detected is what could be called the eye, ear or nose etc. These are the sensory organs. These can be said to exist only as long as the mind goes there to pick up a stimuli.

When the mind, the stimuli and the sensory organ meet we begin to hear properly, see properly etc, with understanding, liking disliking etc. In traditional terms there is contact (phassa), and arising of the five aggregates.

The ‘objects' (regardless of whether they truly exist or not) which the mind picks up can be further explored.

All of them are picked up because of the five senses and the mind. That is the pictures, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations seem to arise because of these objects. This is the only evidence that we have of these objects. We cant somehow know of any direct evidence of their existence, other than through this indirect way. It is only through inference that we link up a sensation of an object with its image. We cannot possibly know in ultimate reality if these two are the same. It is through inference that we think that something is continuous when all we have is broken images. This inference is Avijja, or delusion.

The sense of touch can be further differentiated. That is into the sensation of solidity, cohesion (what hold an object together), temperature (be it hot or cold) and movement. Some of these can be detected by vision as well- for example movement and sometimes heat. These are traditionally called Earth element (patavi), Water element (apo), Fire element (Thejo) and Wind element (Wayo), in that order.

I mentioned Sound à mind moving to hear it à Sound hear better

in the training section. This is only a colloquial way of expressing what is sensed in Vipassana. This is mentioned traditionally (and more accurately) as Sankhara à Vinnana à Nama,Rupa

Vinnana has been described as consciousness. Often this is further classified according to which sensory organ it went to. As in Ear-consciousness, Eye-consciousness (Sotha vinnana, Chakku vinnana) etc. Ear-consciosness, the Sound and the Ear will give rise to Contact (phassa) and we hear and identify a fully formed sound.