From an article on Vipassana written by Thanissaro Bhikkhu:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/onetool.html
...The Sabbasava Sutta expands on
this point by listing seven approaches to take in developing
dispassion. Vipassana, as a quality of mind, is related to all
seven, but most directly with the first: "seeing," i.e., seeing
events in terms of the four noble truths and the duties appropriate
to them. The remaining six approaches cover ways of carrying out
those duties: restraining the mind from focusing on sense data that
would provoke unskillful states of mind; reflecting on the
appropriate reasons for using the requisites of food, clothing,
shelter, and medicine; tolerating painful sensations; avoiding
obvious dangers and inappropriate companions; destroying thoughts
of sensual desire, ill will, harmfulness, and other unskillful
states; and developing the seven factors for Awakening:
mindfulness, analysis of qualities, persistence, rapture, serenity,
concentration, and equanimity.
Each of these approaches covers a wide subset of approaches. Under
"destroying," for instance, one may eliminate an unskillful mental
state by replacing it with a skillful one, focusing on its
drawbacks, turning one's attention away from it, relaxing the
process of thought-fabrication that formed it, or suppressing it
with the brute power of one's will (MN 20). Many similar examples
could be drawn from other discourses as well. The overall point is
that the ways of the mind are varied and complex. Different
fermentations can come bubbling up in different guises and respond
to different approaches. One's skill as a meditator lies in
mastering a variety of approaches and developing the sensitivity to
know which approach will work best in which situation.
On a more basic level, however, one needs strong motivation
to master these skills in the first place. Because appropriate
attention requires abandoning dichotomies that are so basic to the
thought patterns of all people "being/not being" and "me/not me"
meditators need strong reasons for adopting it. This is why the
Sabbasava Sutta insists that anyone developing appropriate
attention must first must hold the noble ones (here meaning the
Buddha and his awakened disciples) in high regard. In other words,
one must see that those who have followed the path are truly
exemplary. One must also be well-versed in their teaching and
discipline. According to MN 117, "being well-versed in their
teaching" begins with having conviction in their teachings about
karma and rebirth, which provide intellectual and emotional context
for adopting the four noble truths as the basic categories of
experience. Being well-versed in the discipline of the noble ones
would include, in addition to observing the precepts, having some
skill in the seven approaches mentioned above for abandoning the
fermentations.
Without this sort of background, meditators might bring the wrong
attitudes and questions to the practice of watching arising and
passing away in the present moment. For instance, they might be
looking for a "true self" and end up identifying consciously or
unconsciously with the vast, open sense of awareness that
embraces all change, from which it all seems to come and to which
it all seems to return. Or they might long for a sense of
connectedness with the vast interplay of the universe, convinced
that as all things are changing any desire for changelessness
is neurotic and life-denying. For people with agendas like these,
the simple experience of events arising and passing away in the
present won't lead to fivefold knowledge of things as they are.
They'll resist recognizing that the ideas they hold to are a
fermentation of views, or that the experiences of calm that seem to
verify those ideas are simply a fermentation in the form of a state
of being. As a result, they won't be willing to apply the four
noble truths to those ideas and experiences. Only a person willing
to see those fermentations as such, and convinced of the need to
transcend them, will be in a position to apply the principles of
appropriate attention to them and thus get beyond
them...
