พระอาจารย์อธิบายว่าการกลับไปรู้ลมหายใจยังคงเป็นกระบวนการสมถะ ไม่ใช่วิปัสสนา วิปัสสนาที่แท้จริงต้องกำหนดรู้กายเวทนาจิตธรรม เพื่อเห็นกลไกที่ธรรมชาติ 3 ฝ่ายผลัดกันเข้าสิงและซ้อนความคิดอารมณ์ของตนลงในใจเราThe teacher explains that returning to the breath is still just the process of samatha, not vipassana. True vipassana requires noting body, feeling, mind, and dhamma, in order to see the mechanism by which the three natures take turns possessing us and overlaying their own thoughts and emotions onto our mind.
One student asked: they had heard that some meditators experience mental calm and from sitting meditation, but their teacher advised not to cling to that happiness — to return instead to noting the breath more subtly and bring back to the present. They wondered why we shouldn't cling to that happiness, which kind of happiness we shouldn't cling to, and which kind of happiness truly represents genuine progress in practice.
Returning to the Breath Is Still Just the Samatha Process
The teacher explained that in this case of not wanting to cling to happiness, we first need to understand that differs from in that vipassana requires actual knowing — but that "knowing" must be teachable: knowing what, and knowing how. Returning to the breath is still samatha as before, and it simply cycles back into the same happiness again, because it stays within the same process of applied thought, sustained thought, joy, happiness, and one-pointedness. Teaching someone to move from samatha into vipassana requires a real path forward — not simply telling them to leave the happiness and go back to the breath, because that's still the process of samatha. Applied and sustained thought remain within the breath; joy, happiness, and one-pointedness still arise according to the very same process.
The True Basis of Vipassana Is Noting Body, Feeling, Mind, and Dhamma
To genuinely teach vipassana, one must enter its true basis: noting body, feeling, mind, and . Because this is where we come to see how a given nature, once it seizes the moment and takes hold, overlays its own body-feeling-mind-dhamma onto ours — its thoughts and feelings appear as our own thoughts and feelings, its body takes control of our body, producing automatic behavior according to what it wants. Whenever unwholesomeness possesses us, behavior deviates in unwholesome directions. Whenever the neutral possesses us, it's neither particularly good nor bad. Whenever wholesomeness possesses us, it overlays a body-feeling-mind-dhamma of higher quality than the ordinary human body, elevating its quality, bringing merit in to fully cleanse the im held within that dimension, so as to liberate us from the coarse dimension into a finer one.
Wholesome Consciousness and Its Mental Factors Appear as Good Thoughts That Feel Like Our Own
The consciousness and s of wholesomeness, acting like a guardian, appear as thoughts and emotions — good thoughts arising in our mind that feel as though we thought of them ourselves. We come to perceive and learn this, seeing the mechanism by which each nature enters and takes possession. This is exactly the basis of vipassana: knowing, according to truth, the nature of the consciousness and mental factors that enter us. Only then do we understand that the 89 (or 121, in expanded form) types of consciousness exist to be used with the human body — the human body's own consciousness and mental factors are really only a single type; all the rest belong to lower or higher natures. We come to see how the lower ones operate, how the higher ones operate, and how merit is drawn in to drive the system. We must come to know this at the level of body-feeling-mind-dhamma — looking anywhere else, we simply won't see it — because the five aggregates of the human body are the battlefield where the three natures compete to seize the moment and take control of the human body.
Note Body, Feeling, Mind, and Mental Factors — Instead of Simply Fleeing to the Breath
Once we see the mechanism by which the three natures operate, we stop grasping at them — but we still need to know them well enough to explain them to others, answer questions, and clarify what's happening. That means noting the body and its behavior, noting feeling — whether happy, painful, or neutral — noting the mind, meaning whose thought this actually is (not ours, but belonging to whichever nature has taken possession), and noting the mental factor, meaning the emotion appearing in our mind. This is what should be taught — not simply leaving happiness behind to sit with the breath, because breath is just breath; it stays still and simply cycles through applied thought, sustained thought, joy, happiness, one-pointedness, and equanimity, circling through the first, second, third, and fourth absorptions. That's as far as it can go — that's simply how it works.