This book presents a selection of passages from the early Buddhist discourses that provide perspectives on the cultivation of liberating insight into vedana, "sensation," "feeling," or "feeling tone." For meditators, such passages can be of considerable help as a reference point for deepening insight.

A metaphor that can offer considerable help when facing vedanas describes bubbles arising on the surface of a pond during rain...they arise and soon enough burst and disappear. Contemplation of the changing nature of vedana provides a firm foundation for the growth of insight into not self. Such insight proceeds through successive layers of the mind's ingrained habit of self-referentiality. Based on relinquishing the explicit view of affirming the existence of a permanent self, increasingly subtler traces of conceit and possessiveness need to be successively overcome until with full awakening all selfing in any form will be removed for good.

Deepening Insight is based on textual sources that reflect "early Buddhism," which stands for the development of thought and practices during roughly the first two centuries in the history of Buddhism, from about the fifth to the third century BCE. These sources are the Pali discourses and their parallels, mostly extant in Chinese translation, which go back to instructions and teachings given orally by the Buddha and his disciples. In those times in India, writing was not employed for such purposes, and for centuries these teachings were transmitted orally. The final results of such oral transmission are available to us nowadays in the form of written texts. Bhikkhu Analayo's presentation is meant to provide direct access, through the medium of translation, to the Chinese Agama parallels to relevant Pali discourses. In commenting on such passages, his chief concern throughout is to bring out practical aspects that are relevant to actual insight meditation.

Deepening Insight: Teachings on Vedana in the Early Buddhist Discourses, Bhikkhu Analayo, Pariyatti Press, Paperback, 118 pages, $9.95

Bhikkhu Analayo was ordained in Sri Lanka where he completed his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies. His thesis was published as Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization. With over 400 academic publications, Ven. Analyayo is a leading scholar in research on Early Buddhism with a special interest in the topics of the position of Women in Buddhism and Buddhist meditation. Recently retired from his position as a university professor in Germany, he is now a resident scholar at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in MA, USA, and spends most of his time in meditation.

CONTENTS: Deepening Insight
Dedication	v
Acknowledgement	vi
Contents	vii
Introduction	1
Water Bubbles	3
The Six Senses	6
Who Feels?	8
Dependence on Contact	10
Three Perceptions	12
The Underlying Tendencies	14
The Abyss of Pain	17
The Dart	19
Winds in the Sky	23
The Guesthouse	25
The Import of dukkha	27
Insight in a Nutshell	31
True Renunciants	34
Worldly and Unworldly	36
Many Types	40
Karma	46
The Pain of Disease	48
Mindful Eating	50
Dependent Arising	52
Not Self	58
The Genesis of Views	69
Attachment and Joy	73
Commendable Joy	76
Counterparts	79
Contemplation of vedana	83
Conclusion	90
Abbreviations	95
Bibliography	96
Notes	101