Conventional wisdom says that quick fixes don’t work. The Buddhist perspective is similar in that the Buddha frequently encouraged us to develop patience as a means to achieving complete liberation from the bonds of greed, anger and delusion. However, the Buddha was also clear that present moment awareness can give us some immediate relief even in this very moment. Perhaps a more appropriate though less succinct way of saying it would be that the right quick fix works if you repeat it.
There is a paradox that arises from the reality of the way the mind works. If we bring the mind into the present moment then we can see that this moment is good enough and that we do not need to obsess over the past or the future. But, despite this profound intellectual realization, the mind will continue to stray from the present moment and become distracted with past and future again. The entirety of the Buddha’s teaching was aimed at solving this problem.
The central feature of the Buddha’s realization was that, we are not really in control of the mind in the way that we think we are. This very subtle understanding accounts for the gap between our intellectual grasp of the problem and our practical execution of the solution. We might know some of the answer in an intellectual sense, but because we lack full control over the mind, we are unable to put it into practice. We cannot simply command through will power that the mind do as we desire.
When a person realizes for herself the central truth that we are not in control of the mind the way we think that we are, this kind of knowledge is called Vipassana in the Pali language, which is the language that we believe the Buddha actually spoke. The literal translation of the word Vipassana is seeing clearly (Vi – clearly, specially, into, through + passana – seeing). A person who understands that the mind is not fully under our control is said to see clearly, through or into the true nature of reality. Such a person experiences immediate relief because he knows that he no longer has to waste time and effort on the wrong endeavors. He becomes immediately free of them so that he can devote more energy to the underlying long-term problem.
But the positive result doesn’t end there. With this understanding, the long-term solution to our problems also becomes clear. To overcome this lack of control, rather than trying to overpower the problem with our will, we have to skillfully train the mind through mental exercises, known in pali as “Kammatthana”. The exercises are based on four foundations: mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of the mind and mindfulness of the mind objects. These four foundations of mindfulness are known in the Pali language as “Satipatthana” (sati– mindfulness + pattana– base or foundation). When we combine the words Satipatthana Vipassana Kammatthana and translate them into English, we get “insight meditation based on the four foundations of mindfulness.” We can see therefore that depending on the context, Vipassana can mean a state of immediate relief due to understanding and a process of training the mind, through patient repetition, to a more peaceful way of living.