The world can be a stressful place. While everyone seems to want happiness and peace, most of us do many things that make our lives more stressful rather than less, and lasting satisfaction can seem like an impossible fantasy.
2600 years ago in India, a young person named Siddhattha Gotama sought for lasting peace, and when he found it, began to be called the Buddha, or “awakened one.” Many streams of practice have branched out from the Buddha’s original teaching, called "Dharma," (Pāli: Dhamma) bringing comfort and freedom of heart to countless seekers. Our branch of this great tradition is called Insight Meditation and is the origin of mindfulness practice, a style of meditation and attention training that has revolutionized wellness and spiritual practice throughout the world.
In this practice guide, you’ll find an overview of Insight Meditation, with free talks, meditations, and articles from our Library of Dharma teachings. Everything on this page is chosen to introduce you to mindfulness and meditation, and give you a sense of how we practice. For those with more experience in the Insight tradition, Deepening on the Path collects more in-depth teachings and meditations.
Mindfulness & Meditation
Mindfulness is a practice of embodiment, presence, and investigation of our direct experience. So much of our stress comes from distraction, reactivity, and not seeing clearly what’s happening in the moment. With mindfulness, we become more aware of life moment-to-moment, feeling sensations, emotions, and thoughts as they come and go. This simple training helps the heart loosen its grip on constantly changing experience, and allows a new spaciousness and perspective to arise.
Mindfulness is a quality that we can cultivate in every activity we do, and in the Buddhist tradition is the heart of both meditation and practice in ordinary life. As a formal training, it is laid out in a system of meditations and contemplations known as the four foundations of mindfulness. Meditation is a specific exercise in mindfulness, calm, and focus that we practice in stillness and simple forms of movement, like walking. Meditation is commonly practiced sitting, but can also be done lying down or standing. Any posture that supports stillness and steadiness can work for meditation. Walking meditation is also a powerful form of meditation and is a core part of our practice on retreat.
Mindfulness Basics
Mindfulness is a quality of attention we can bring to any situation. Meditation in stillness is one way to develop this quality, inviting attention to settle and focus in the present moment.
Working with Posture & Breath
As we learn to meditate, we encounter the body, with all its pleasures and pains, and the breath coming and going. Awareness of body and breath is at the heart of mindfulness practice, and starts with posture and how we invite the body toward stillness.
Lovingkindness: The Heart Practices
While mindfulness teaches us to be present, lovingkindness, or mettā, teaches us how to meet ourselves and others with friendliness and tolerance. These inner qualities are said to be like the two wings of a bird, together lifting up and opening the heart and mind.
Mettā, literally “friendliness” but also translated “lovingkindness,” is the first of four heart practices known as brahmavihāra, or divine abodes. It is the root from which the other three—compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—grow. These four beautiful states, along with the supporting qualities of forgiveness and gratitude, grow together with mindfulness and wisdom as we deepen in practice.
Self-love & Compassion
Compassion is the heart that learns to stay open in the presence of suffering, whether our own or that of others. As we grow in compassion, we can bear witness to the sorrows of the world, and experience the unconditional love that flowers in response.
Setting Out on the Path
The Buddha called his training a path. It is a set of directions that can lead to freedom from suffering and distress, but each person must walk the path for themself. Walking the path consists of practicing with our actions, our awareness, and our capacity to investigate our experience in order to understand it.
The Buddhist path is traditionally understood to have three main areas of practice: ethics, meditation, and wisdom. These are detailed in the Noble Eightfold Path, which are at the heart of every Buddhist tradition including the Theravāda ("The Way of the Elders"), the root lineage of Insight Meditation.
Nonharming & Wise Action
What we do and say affects others, but it is also the basis for our own experience and feelings, and the first place we begin to understand how stress operates in our lives and relationships. Because of this, practice traditionally begins with an orientation toward caring for ourselves and others with an intention toward non-harming and skillful speech.
Training the Mind
Because most of how we suffer comes from our reactivity and tangled responses to life, training the mind to see and feel more clearly is at the heart of Buddhist practice. There are many kinds of training, including various kinds of meditation, but all of them develop mindfulness, concentration, and inner calm.
Opening to Wisdom
The purpose of meditation and cultivating clear seeing is to understand our life and its difficulties better. As understanding grows, letting go grows alongside. We cling less and are grateful more when we open to the truth of how things are. This is the beginning of liberation.
1979 vipassanā teaching authorization ceremony at Insight Meditation Society with Mahashi Sayadaw (back row center). Front (left to right): Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Jacqueline Schwartz.
Jack Kornfield & the Insight Tradition
Spirit Rock was founded in 1986 by a group of inspired practitioners and teachers led by Jack Kornfield. After studying as a monk in the late 1960s with the great Thai Forest master, Ajahn Chah, Jack returned to the US and co-founded Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA with Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, and Jacqueline Schwartz. Jack moved to California in 1984, and established Spirit Rock with a group of dedicated local teachers and practitioners that included Sylvia Boorstein, Howard Cohn, Julie Wester, and Anna Douglas. Jack has been central to the arrival of Buddhism in the West, and inspired millions to meditate, study the Dharma, and serve justice and well-being around the globe.
Our Founder, Jack Kornfield
Jack’s teachings focus on developing Loving Awareness, a kind of mindfulness that is saturated with lovingkindness and compassion. He has been a pioneer in integrating Buddhism and psychology, and is a beloved storyteller, mentor, and spiritual friend. Here are some talks where the breadth of his offering can be heard.
Our Lineage
Insight Meditation grew out of the Theravāda Buddhist traditions of Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka. We draw on the depth, beauty, and devotion of this powerful lineage in everything we do. Many of our teachers have trained as monks or nuns in South and Southeast Asia. The links here explore the story of Spirit Rock as told by Jack, reflections on the Thai forest saṅgha by Ajahn Pasanno, and Diana Winston writing on Sayādaw U Paṇḍita, one of the most important Burmese teachers in the development of our lineage. Explore our Buddhist lineage and meet some of the most inspiring figures in modern Buddhist history.
Our Buddhist Lineage
The practice we call Insight Meditation (vipassanā) is one of many reinventions in Buddhist history that arose as a result of the teachings coming to new lands, new people, and new cultures. Explore some of the primary streams of practice and innovation that flowed into the global tradition now called Insight Meditation.
Community & Diversity
Community, called saṅgha, is one of the great “jewels” of Buddhist practice, as important as the Buddha himself and the Dharma, the teachings. As the Spirit Rock community has grown, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have become a central part of our practice. In these talks, the founders of our BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and women’s programs discuss the importance of engaging skillfully with the conditions of the world.
Learn to Your Heart's Content
Stream our curated collection of guided meditations and Dharma talks, read articles by our diverse teachers, take self-paced courses, and more.
