Toward a Theory of the Relation Between Tranquility and Insight

The Relation Between Tranquility and Insight Meditation

There are two main branches of Buddhist meditation techniques: insight meditation and tranquility meditation. Insight meditation is aimed at cultivating wisdom; tranquility meditation is aimed at cultivating calmness. Tradition generally considers the first to have been a new form of meditation invented by the historical Buddha and the second to have been highly developed by Indian practitioners by the time of the Buddha's life. The most common story is that the Buddha learned all that his meditation teachers had to offer and, still unsatisfied, developed his own type of meditation: vipassana. After he developed this insight meditation, he achieved nirvana and transcended suffering (dukkha). I find it useful to categorize scholars who have written on the relationship between vipassana and samatha into two groups: one group that considers vipassana to be essential and samatha to be inessential in the pursuit of nirvana, and a second group that views both samatha and vipassana to be essential.