Dear all,

I am a new practicioner and a new member of this forum. I have been doing an intense research on Buddhism in general for the last 6-7 months. Spending most of my time since then reading and searching, I found out about Mahasi Sayadaw and his noting meditation Vipassana technique.

After having read almost everything (freely available) by Mahasi relevant to his technique, I decided to go deeper and start reading the Manual of Insight.

What I have realized with this book is that it's a resource that someone at my knowledge level needs to study and not just read. For this reason I am looking for additional material on the book, in order to better understand it.

Until now, I have found a book analysis per chapter on reddit, plus a podcast with more than 40 episodes by George Haas (by the way he does not teach a "pure" mahasi vipassana) that covers part of the book.

I have also found the "official" Steve Armstrong's course (that costs 150usd) offered by Wisdom Academy, but I have decided to start by studying freely available resources. In addition to that, I opened a thread on Reddit to ask for some feedback and I was not able to find anyone to at least share a quick impression on that.

The reason I opened this thread is to be able to discuss about any additional material that may help practicioners to better understand the knowledge given by Mahasi in this book.

To be honest, I feel a little bit strange with all this research, because I find myself almost obsessed trying to find all these extra information and I am not sure that this is the right thing to do at this stage, where I don't even do a daily practice. On the other hand I can't believe that trying to better understand Mahasi can be a hindrance on ones path.

By the way, I have created a personal sort of notebook (named MVMR) where I add everything relevant I find, so that others may be also helped by these findings.

Thank you in advance.

P.S. I am not sure that I posted in the correct section of this forum - Feel free to move it somewhere more appropriately (maybe here).

Hi Vladimir!

knowledge is good but wisdom is better!! 

Answering your question I recommend you Daniel's Book, Mastering The Core Teachings of Buddha v2 and The mind illuminated written by John Gates (Culadasa), they are awesome books with a quite diferent approachs in vipassana, Daniel point in more mahasi dry insight style like just sit and start noting!! (at least at the start stages)  and Culadasa is working building samatha and vipassana all togheter. 

These two books are really good and complete you will learn a lot and have a lot of knowledge !! But...What I suggest you is to find a moment and start practicing. The benefits of meditation are really good and is an awesome adventure, but they come with constancy of a solid daily practice. 

Also you say...

Honestly I think it can be, is good to know, but knowing to much sometime can hurt. People usually tend to over analyze they practice, obsesed on where they are on the path and this can be really harmfull. Is better to have less knowlage and use it wisely.

My advice is, just try to understand how noting practice works and how to see the 3 characteristics, that's really all you need if you want to do vipassana. Anyways everyone has his way and needs, if you feel you need to read and study its good, do it and enjoy it!

Hi Jordi,

many thanks for your answer!

MCTB V2 is the next book on my list after I finish with TMOI.




I will need to work on this approach for sure!


Regarding to your last suggestion about noting, I will read it for sure.

Regards,

M