Abstract

This Thesis has three objectives; to study the distortion in Theravada Buddhist scriptures, to study of insight meditation practice and to study abandonment of distortion (Vipalāsa) by Vipassanābhāvanā practice. Clarified data are taken from the Theravada Buddhist scriptures and other related documents. The texts are collected, summarized, analyzed composed, explained in details then verified by Buddhist scholars. From the study it found that;

The distortion or Vipalāsa was perversion from the truth which happened by powers of wrong understanding, wrong thought, wrong views regarding what is impermanent as permanent, what is painful as pleasant, what is non-self as a self. These powers of wrong views caused of all unwholesomeness, cycling in birth and death, shuck in hindrance, falling away from right view, delusion due to five hindrances, sensual pleasure, no contemplation of suffering, attachment, without analytical reflection. This distortion was able to overpower Arahanta (Perfected One) but never for the other one.

Insight meditation practice was the way of practice for realizing the truth by wisdom. It helped to see the state of three common characteristics as they really are for the purpose of abandon all defilements and cankers. Insight meditators must observe morality and purification as the base before entering to insight. This insight practice was divided into three types; 1) insight practice with tranquility as its base,
2) insight practice with tranquility as its end and 3) insight practice with tranquility together. Insight meditator, however, must follow Successive Stages of Knowledge (Vipassanābhūmi) or objects of insight investigation called as Mind and Metter (Nāma-rūpa) which fall into three common characteristics in order to gain insight knowledge. There were six insight bases; 1) five aggregates, 2) twelve sensual bases, 3) eighteen elements, 4) twenty-two faculties, 5) four noble truth and 6) dependent origination. The benefit of insight practice was gaining true knowledge as beginning, continuity of true teaching of Buddha as middle and abandoning all defilements and cankers as the end.

Abandoning all distortion by insight development found that by following the principle of four foundations of mindfulness, insight practitioners will abandon beauty distortion by contemplation of body such as perception of foulness and nine corpses, the distortion of happiness by contemplation of feeling, the distortion of permanence by contemplation of mind and distortion of self by contemplation of mental objects. In practical aspect of these four foundations of mindfulness, insight meditators must choose the only one dominant foundation for contemplation because it was impossible to contemplate all at once, and they must continue to contemplate on that foundations until the mind realizes the true nature of all formations as they really are.

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