When to do what type of meditating?

Greetings, friends! I am rather new to this path, and am unsure of when exactly to do samatha and when to do vipassana. And then the whole concept of noting is very confusing to me. From what I've gathered, one must first perform samatha to get centered, and then at that point move to noting (which IS vipassana?)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated; I have NO idea where to begin.

Namaste, and happy new year!

Hello, ZanSage. Welcome.

I spent the first several years of my practice doing both vipassana and samatha. 30 minutes of vipassana in the morning, 30 minutes of samatha at night. It worked pretty well for me.

I have been doing samatha, mainly because I do not understand vipassana very well. Before performing vipassana, do you stabalize your mind? Or is concentration not as important as simply noting?

Noting is a form of vipassana. I did not practice noting in the way Kenneth Folks now prescribes it, so I would defer to someone here who has ion regard to noting. When I did vipassana (investigation) practice I would take some time to rest the mind first. It's not a matter of getting a completely quiet mind as that would leave little or nothing to investigate. It's just letting the mind run on for a while until it tired of its own yammering, which does happen after a few minutes especially if you employ the counter-intuitiver practice of actually trying to keep thinking.

The form of vipassana I did was that described in Daniel Ingram's "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha." If you don't have that book you should get it and read it. You'll see it referenced here and elsewhere as "MCTB."

I am reading that book now, actually!

Your words were very much appreciated. Thank you :}

Daniel also has some bare bones instructions for Vipassana here - www.interactivebuddha.com/Insight%20Prac...s%20Legal%20size.pdf

I also recommend this guided meditation by Bhante Bodhidhamma, an British monk in the Mahasi tradition, which is a pretty good intro to Vipassana noting: www.satipanya.org.uk/audio/Guided%20Medi...ded%20Meditation.mp3

Kenneth's bare bones vipassana instructions: kennethfolkdharma.wetpaint.com/page/Basi...itation+Instructions

Ron Crouch, a member of this forum who has been asked to teach by Kenneth, also has some good basic instructions: alohadharma.wordpress.com/how-to-meditate/

As for when and what, I'd agree with Chris that a combination is good. I spend a quarter to a third of my sits on samatha, and then I switch to vipassana. You can use a timer, or a meditation app if you have a smartphone, or just make the switch when you feel you've stablised your attention a bit.

Good luck! Let us know how you get on