The ways of looking gathered together, the doorway to emptiness named and set aside for another time, insight practice as something meant to challenge you, and the dedication of merit. Chapter 7.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
Releasing the self-sense: through sensation, feeling, thought, and the self-sense, choosing a lens at each level. Chapter 5.
Thirty to forty-five minutes. Posture, the clearing breaths, and the presence anchor are as in chapter 2. Releasing clinging is the default lens here. You can also do the same exploration of layers with impermanence instead, or as well, if it is useful.
Settle, find your presence anchor, and open to the whole body and its felt sense. Set the intention: to bring awareness to more and more of your experience. Read the overall tone, contracted or open, without needing it to be different.
Sensation. Notice what you are seeing, eyes open or closed; then what you are hearing; then the sensations of the body. Allow all sensations to be exactly as they are. Come back to the felt sense and notice what that has done.
Feeling. Notice the feeling tone – pleasant, unpleasant, neutral – or simply the felt energy in the body. There might also be emotion or some kind of complex feeling. Relax the body: open, soften, allow. Let it be, and let it shift.
Thought. Bring attention to where thoughts seem to happen – in the head, in front of or behind the eyes, between the ears. Notice what is there, inner speech or images or a bubbling stream, and release any clinging around it. If there is very little mental activity, enjoy the relative stillness. If a thought is hard to catch as it happens, look back at the last one, even the one that distracted you, and check whether it was heard or seen.
As thought frees up, watching it can become like watching a brook: seeing and hearing the trickle of the stream, without being pulled into any of it. Let all experience come and go, curious but unconcerned.
Then the self-sense. Notice what it is like right now, read in the body. Notice how contraction appears in the body when experience is glued together. If you like, put a number on it, zero to ten.
Look at how it is made. Notice how sensation, feeling, and thought get glued into something that feels solid, something you are identified with. Watch the gluing without trying to undo it. You may see it forming, and then falling apart.
Let it be like a rainbow: vividly appearing, yet insubstantial. Whatever self-sense is there, relax around it, and notice that it changes on its own.
At any point, if you meet a wall – resistance, difficulty, something you seem to be butting up against – bring that in too. Welcome it in, seen clearly, without adding more to it.
Rest in whatever has loosened. When the self-sense thins, notice that something still knows. Rest as that knowing.
As you come out, notice whether the self-sense starts coming back in, and things begin to get glued together again. Watch it reform, with the lens still on.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
14 Question – Gradually Becoming Aware of the Self-sense
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The edge of not-knowing as the method: going to the edge of murkiness and staying there, the thief example, and a contraction at the back of the head. Chapter 5.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
The levels of experience, the self-sense and how it gets glued together, and the 0 to 10 scale for gauging it. Chapter 5.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
Walking with both lenses: the steadiness of the steps, and the change in every one of them. Chapter 6.
Ten to twenty minutes as a formal practice, or the length of any walk you happen to be taking.
Stand for a moment first. Feel the body upright, the contact of the feet with the ground, the weight distributed.
Start walking slowly, along a set path back and forth, or wherever you feel drawn.
Bring attention to the feet. Feel each step: the back foot lifting, swinging, placing down, and the weight shifting across.
For steadying, tune in to the consistency of the steps. Follow the rhythm of walking, and let body and mind become collected in it.
For impermanence, notice that the sensations change with every step. {–No two are the same.–} Let the visual field in: with each step, what you are seeing shifts.
Widen your awareness to the whole body walking, moving through space. Notice the felt sense of that, and how it changes.
If your attention goes, appreciate the moment of noticing, and come back to the feet.
At the end, stand still for a moment and notice what has changed.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
11 Guided Meditation – Looking Through the Lens of Impermanence
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Sounds, breath, body sensations, the edges of solidity, the felt sense, thoughts, and the Diamond Sutra as contemplation. Chapter 4.
Twenty-five to thirty minutes. Posture, the clearing breaths, and the presence anchor are as in chapter 2.
Settle, find your presence anchor, and open to the whole body. Set the intention: to see through the lens of impermanence, and to explore what freedom is available in that.
Begin with sound. Notice sounds come and go, and that even steady sounds fluctuate. Tune in to the beginnings and endings.
Move to the breath: the cycle changing, and the change inside a single inhale – it begins, it changes, it ends.
Then other sensations, including discomfort, and those that feel solid, like the contact where you are sitting. Tune in to the edges. Look for a clean boundary and see whether you can find one.
Then thoughts. Notice a thought begin and end, and the flowing quality of thinking as a whole, like a stream.
Keep widening, to any part of experience. If difficulty arises – sleepiness, resistance, restlessness – look directly at it and notice that it changes too.
Before finishing, notice what you feel in the body as you hold this way of looking. As you come out, notice that you can still tune in to change with your eyes open and the body moving.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
The three characteristics as perceptions, the Dīghāvu Sutta and the six perceptions, three scales of change, care around sadness and grief, and the Diamond Sutra verse. Chapter 4.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
09 Guided Meditation – Sensing and Releasing Clinging
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The core practice: being with, opening and allowing, and relaxing the body around what is here. Chapter 3.
Twenty-five minutes or more. Posture, the clearing breaths, and the presence anchor are as in chapter 2.
Settle, find your presence anchor, and open to the whole body. Set the intention: to come to know clinging and its release in your own experience.
Tune into the felt sense of the whole-body space. Where is there contraction, tightness, solidity? Where is there openness, ease, relief?
As sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise, watch how the mind and body move towards or away from them – holding on to the pleasant, trying to fix or remove the unpleasant. Feel how that movement shows up in the body.
Ask: can I be with this, exactly as it is? If the answer is no, that is fine. Go back to the body or the presence anchor for more grounding, and ask again when there is more ground.
Release in whichever way is available: relax the body, open and allow, see the pull and do not follow it, or relax around what will not let go.
Notice the effect in the body.
Before finishing, notice what has shifted. As you come out of formal practice, notice that there is still a way of looking, still a way you are relating to experience. See if you can feel it.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
08 Talk – Suffering, Fabrication, and the Two Arrows
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The two arrows, papañca, the spectrum of fabrication, the four noble truths, and how all of it shows up in the felt sense, ending with the question of whether unpleasantness is already the mind. Chapter 3.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
A short walking instruction: the feet, each step, zombie pace, and tuning into the steadiness of walking. Chapter 6.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
06 Question – The Difference Between Insight and Thought
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What is the difference between insight and a thought? Insight as a way of relating, as contemplation, and as a moment of realisation. Chapter 1.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
Whole-body steadying: the presence anchor, the part-by-part sweep, the whole body at once, and the felt sense as information. Chapter 2.
The longer practice, twenty minutes or more, to give shifts time to arrive.
Set the posture, take the clearing breaths, and set the intention: what happens when you choose to notice and attune to what is steady?
Find your presence anchor and rest there until something settles. Often the body relaxes on its own.
Let the anchor move into the background and expand to the whole body, part by part if that helps – legs heavy, belly soft, arms heavy, head and jaw relaxed.
Then open to the whole body at once. You might imagine awareness expanding like a bubble or a balloon, larger than the body, with all of it included. Let the mind rest into the body.
When you notice awareness has contracted, appreciate the moment of recognition, then expand to the whole body again. A fork in the road, taken as often as it appears.
Notice what is steady in the whole-body space, and keep returning to that.
Tune into the felt sense of the whole-body space – its texture, its tonality, its energy. What is it telling you? Sleepy or activated, contracted or open, very likely some mix. Before finishing, notice whether anything has shifted since you began.
As you come back to whatever is next – the room, the screen, the people – notice whether your attention is still tuned to what is stable, still picking up on the body. Keep choosing it.
If you use a different meditation object, keep it in the foreground and hold the whole body behind it. The whole-body sensitivity is what the later practices need, so do not drop it entirely.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
A short introduction to whole-body steadying, before the guided meditation that follows. Chapter 2.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
What insight is, looking at experience directly, the loop of exploring, the edge of what is known, a map of the practices, and approaching it all with curiosity and play. Chapter 1.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
Settling, clearing breath, intention, and finding a presence anchor. Chapter 2.
A short practice, one to fifteen minutes. The ground for everything else.
Settle into the posture.
Take three rounds of clearing breath – inhale deeply into the belly, pause at the top, exhale long and smooth. Then let the breath find its own rhythm.
Bring an intention to mind. Your own, or this one: to explore what is possible in your own experience, here and now.
Let your curiosity guide you: what here is stable, grounding, safe? The feeling of sitting, the feet on the floor, the hands, a sound, the breath.
When attention lands somewhere and there is a small settling, rest there. You are here, in the present. Stay with the anchor to borrow its stability.
Let everything else be present as well – sounds, sensations, feelings, thoughts. The anchor is one point of stability inside all of it, without having to get rid of anything.
Allow your presence anchor to stay in the background as you move into the next activity. You can choose to return to this at any point where grounding and stability would help.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
A working definition of insight, Rob Burbea on ways of looking, and an invitation into the practice. Goes with chapter 1 of the field guide.
From the audio companion to Lenses of Insight: A field guide to insight practice, by Kynan Tan. Recorded at a Day of Practice at the Buddhist Library in Sydney on 26 July 2026, and at an online workshop on 6 September 2026.
The field guide has every practice written out, and the understanding that goes with it. Get it free: Lenses of Insight field guide.
