ชีวิตเราถูกชี้นำด้วยจิตกับเจตสิก ซึ่งเจตสิกแบ่งเป็นสองประเภทคืออารมณ์และปัญญา สมถะเป็นเครื่องมือปรุงอารมณ์ให้ละเอียดขึ้น ส่วนวิปัสสนาช่วยให้เข้าใจเหตุและผลตามความเป็นจริง ทั้งสองล้วนต้องอาศัยการกำหนดจึงจะได้ผลOur life is guided by mind and mental factor, and mental factor splits into two kinds — emotion and wisdom. Samatha is the tool that refines emotion into something subtler, while vipassanā develops understanding of cause and effect according to reality. Both require deliberate intention to bear fruit.
A student asked the teacher to elaborate on something said a few days earlier — that (calm-abiding meditation) helps with emotion, while vipassanā () helps with tapa (spiritual heat/austerity). Since our life is driven by both emotion and reason — sometimes emotion dominates, sometimes reason dominates, such as buying things sometimes on impulse and sometimes on reasoned judgment, and the same is true in business — both of these are key factors.
The teacher explained that we are guided by mind and . Mind is the guiding "voice," while mental factor divides into two kinds: the mental factor of emotion, and the mental factor of wisdom, which pertains to reason. So there are two things — emotion and reason — that anchor our mind and heart.
Samatha is the tool used to refine emotion into something subtler and more delicate; it develops the emotional dimension of feeling. Vipassanā, on the other hand, helps with cause and effect, understanding things as they truly are. Even samatha, in truth, involves cause and effect, but its reasoning serves to understand the working principle that elevates the mind toward liberation at each level through liberation-of-mind (ceto-vimutti). Vipassanā, meanwhile, develops understanding of the cause and effect of nature itself, leading toward liberation-through-wisdom (paññā-vimutti) — liberation through knowing and understanding cause and effect, understanding how the mechanism actually works, relying primarily on cause, effect, , and understanding. Samatha, too, relies on knowledge, but it is knowledge and understanding that develops the emotional dimension, making it increasingly subtle and delicate.
The teacher recounted that a practitioner once asked him: practicing in the tradition of the Great Elder Teacher, the kaya method, simply stilling and stopping continuously, doesn't seem to produce much knowing or understanding — to gain that, one apparently needs to practice in a different tradition that involves reflecting on and examining various s more directly. This person asked why the Great Elder Teacher's tradition seemed to be only samatha.
The teacher answered that it depends on what we set our intention toward — whether we want to know, or whether we want to still the mind. If we want stillness and don't seek to know, we get stillness alone. But if we want to know and understand, we must set our intention on what we want to know and understand — specifying the topic we need to grasp. The knower belonging to each particular field will then come to convey that knowledge to us. When we want stillness, the quality of practice refines and corrects us so we can achieve it; during the time we're establishing the cause for stillness, the knower will not come to disturb us, precisely because we want that stillness. So gaining knowledge and understanding requires setting the intention that we want to know and understand. Wholesomeness works only when we set that intention — whatever we set our intention on, the mind is placed into that very thing; whatever subject we set our intention on, the mind is directed into that subject. So whatever we want to know or understand, we must specify it precisely.
As for samatha, its very name indicates its connection with emotion — the noble path of relates to emotion being dominant, and so it's able to make emotion more refined, elevating our mind and heart to something higher, moving toward finer emotional states. This allows coarse emotions — such as sensual lust or other emotions — to be let go of. Samatha allows us to release lust and emotional attachment to this thing or that, because the mind goes on to experience something subtler and more refined instead; coarse emotion can then be released — moving from coarse emotion toward something finer and more refined.
Vipassanā, on the other hand, requires knowledge and understanding. The teacher gave an example: imagine parents telling a child to wake up, gather their bedding, take it out to air and wash it, and keep their room clean. The child sometimes listens, sometimes doesn't. One day the parents enlist a teacher's help, and the teacher shows the child videos about germs, viruses, bacteria, and tiny dust mites — letting the child see how these tiny organisms actually form. Seeing this, the child becomes afraid and understands, and from then on takes care of these things without needing to be told, because previously they hadn't done it since they didn't see the danger — but afterward they did it because they saw the suffering, danger, and benefit clearly. This is exactly what vipassanā means: seeing clearly, knowing clearly — the knowledge and understanding that can resolve problems, arising from this very clear seeing and clear knowing.