By Ledi Sayadaw Mahathera
Translated by U Ñana Mahathera
Contents
Publisher’s Foreword to the Second BPS Edition
Vipassana Dipani - The Exposition of Insight
The Three Hallucinations – The Simile of the Wild Deer – The Simile of the Magician – The Simile of the Man who has lost his Way – The Three Fantasies (maññana) – The Two Dogmatic Beliefs (abhinivesa) – The Two Stages (bhumi) – The Two Destinations (gati) – Nakhasikha Sutta (The Sutta on the Fingernail) – Kanakacchapa Sutta (The Sutta on the Blind Turtle) – Explanation of the Two Destinations – The Two Truths (sacca) – Material Phenomena – Four Great Essentials (mahabhuta)
Derived Materiality (upada-rupa)
The Six Bases (vatthu) – The Two Sexes (bhava) – The Vital Force (jivita-rupa) – Material Nutrition (ahara-rupa) – The Four Sense Fields (gocara-rupa) – The Element of Space (akasa-dhatu) – The Two Modes of Communications (viññatti-rupa) – The Three Plasticities (vikara-rupa) – The Four Salient Features (lakkhana-rupa) – The Four Producers of Material Phenomena
Mental Phenomena
Consciousness – Cetasikas or Mental Properties – The Common Properties – The Particular Properties – The Immoral Properties – The Moral Properties – Nibbana – Causes I – Causes II – The Two Abhiññanas or Super-Knowledges – The Three Pariññas or Profound Knowledges – The Growth, Decay, and Death of the Material Aggregates – The Growth, Decay, and Death of the Mental Phenomena
The Exposition of Tirana-pariñña
The Mark of Impermanence in Matter – The Mark of Impermanence in Mental Phenomena – The Mark of Ill – The Eleven Marks of Ill – The Mark of No-soul – How the Marks of Impermanence and Ill become Marks of No-soul – The Three Knowledges pertaining to Insight of the Three Marks
The Exposition of Pahana-pariñña
The Five Kinds of Dispelling – The Practice of Insight Meditation
Conclusion
A Life Sketch of the Venerable Ledi Sayadaw
Publisher’s Foreword to the Second BPS Edition
The Venerable Ledi Sayadaw’s The Manual of Insight was first published in book form by The Society for Promoting Buddhism in Foreign Countries, which was centred in Mandalay, Burma. It was later serialised in the journal The Light of the Dhamma (Rangoon), Vols. I and II. The full text appeared in a collection of Ledi Sayadaw’s treatises, The Manuals of Buddhism, (Rangoon: Union of Burma Buddha Sasana Council. 1965).
The first BPS edition of The Manual of Insight introduced a few minor changes in style and terminology, and replaced a large number of the abundant Pali words by their English equivalents. This second edition carries through the same editorial policy which guided the work on the first edition. For the benefit of modern readers, the style has been simplified and streamlined, archaic and quaint expressions replaced by more contemporary ones, and the substitution of English for Pali executed more thoroughly. It is hoped that these revisions will make this valuable and illuminating treatise easier reading, and a useful and practical guide in achieving the purpose for which it was originally written: the development of meditative insight.
Vipassana Dipani - The Exposition of Insight
The Three Hallucinations
Vipallasa means hallucination, delusion, erroneous observation, [1] or taking that which is true as false and that which is false as true.
There are three kinds of hallucination:
- Sañña-vipallasa: hallucination of perception
- Citta-vipallasa: hallucination of thought
- Ditthi-vipallasa: hallucination of views
Of those three, hallucination of perception is fourfold. It erroneously perceives:
- Impermanence as permanence
- Impurity as purity
- Suffering as happiness
- No-soul as soul
The same holds good with regard to the remaining two hallucinations, those of thinking and views. All these classifications come under the category of “This is mine! This is my self or living soul!” and will be made clear later. The three hallucinations may be illustrated respectively by the similes of the wild deer, the magician, and a man who has lost his way.
The Simile of the Wild Deer
This is the simile of the wild deer to illustrate the hallucination of perception.
In the middle of a great forest a certain husbandman cultivated a piece of paddy land. While the cultivator was away, wild deer were in the habit of coming to the field and eating the young sprouts of growing grain. So the cultivator put some straw together into the shape of a man and set it up in the middle of the field in order to frighten the deer away. He tied the straw together with fibres into the semblance of a body, with head, hands, and legs; and with white lime painting on a pot the lineaments of a human face, he set it on the top of the body. He also covered the artificial man with some old clothes such as a coat, and so forth, and put a bow and arrow into his hands. Now the deer came as usual to eat the young paddy; but approaching it and catching sight of the artificial man, they took it for a real one, were frightened, and ran away.
In this illustration, the wild deer had seen men before and retained in their memory the perception of the shape and form of men. In accordance with their present perception, they took the straw man for a real man. Thus their perception was an erroneous perception. The hallucination of perception is as here shown in this allegory of the wild deer. It is very clear and easy to understand.
This particular hallucination is also illustrated by the case of a bewildered man who has lost his way and cannot make out the cardinal points, east and west, in the locality in which he is, although the rising and setting of the sun may be distinctly perceived by anyone with open eyes. If the error has once been made, it establishes itself very firmly, and can be removed only with great difficulty. There are many things within ourselves which we always apprehend erroneously and in a sense that is the reverse of the truth as regards impermanence and no-soul. Thus through the hallucination of perception we apprehend things erroneously in exactly the same way that the wild deer take the straw man to be a real man, even with their eyes wide open.
