Page 157 - Dhamma Practice

natural conditions that emerge and ask ourselves—what is the purpose of our vipassana practice? What is the result of our practice? Does it give us good feelings? The thing that we call good—why is it good? What is the benefit of our unburdened mind? What is the benefit of contemplating the emergence-cessation phenomenon? How dhamma is important to our lives?
These questions are all important. We are Buddhists. We are followers of the Buddha. Practicing vipassana in order to attain nibbana requires us to use wisdom to contemplate well, to have a clear intention or objective in doing it. We do not practice vipassana just for the sake of practicing, or just to follow others. We need to answer to ourselves why we practice vipassana.
Our goal in practicing vipassana is to detach, so that we could lessen our suffering. We practice vipassana in order to reduce our greed, our anger, our delusion, our attachment to the Five Aggregates of ourselves and others. See whether our vipassana practice lead us towards these goals. If we are less attached to various conscious phenomena, if our conscious phenomena cannot exist for too long, if our sufferings are lessened—then, we are moving in the right direction. The only thing that remains is to have the diligence to practice consistently.
If we want to completely detach, we need to have the diligence to practice consistently—not do it irregularly. This is like a turtle whose head moves in and
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