vipassana (Pali, ‘insight’, ‘discernment’), Indian Buddhist term used to describe both a particular kind of meditational practice and the states of consciousness produced by it. The meditational practice is aimed at getting the practitioner to perceive and cognize in accord with the major categories of Buddhist metaphysics. Since that metaphysics is constitutively deconstructive, being concerned with parts rather than wholes, the method too is analytic and deconstructive. The practitioner is encouraged to analyze the perceived solidities and continuities of her everyday experience into transitory events, and so to cultivate the perception of such events until she experiences the world no longer in terms of medium-sized physical objects that endure through time, but solely in terms of transitory events. Arriving at such a condition is called the attainment of vipassana. P.J.G.