Key Points About the Way to Nibbāna

1. Nibbāna is the cessation of craving, so the way to it opposes defilements. The purpose of insight meditation is not to get ‘blissed out,’ though one will experience plenty of joy and bliss if one practises energetically. At the higher stages of insight one must become thoroughly weary of the mental and physical processes. Only such world weariness can lead to nibbāna.
2. The Middle Way is not the easy way. Progress may be relatively pain free for an individual with very little attachment, and it may be swift for someone of keen intellect, but for the average person it will require prolonged and strenuous effort. One should expect to encounter difficulties on the way.  Be wary of teachers who claim that it there is an easy route.
3. Insight meditation must focus on realities that can be known in the present moment. All mental and physical phenomena must be investigated as soon as they occur within one’s mind to realise their true nature.
4. Thinking and theory are far away from direct insight knowledge. Thinking must be observed with bare awareness to realise its true nature. Reading and listening to discourses are only an aid to practice.
5. All conditioned things are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self. If meditation does not reveal these three characteristics, it is not insight meditation, and does not lead to nibbāna.
6. In the discourse on the Eight Thoughts of a Great Man to Venerable Anuruddha, the Buddha said, ”This Dhamma [Nibbāna] is for one who wants little, not for one who wants much; for the contented, not for the discontented; for the secluded, not for one fond of society; for the energetic, not for the lazy; for the mindful, not for the unmindful; for the composed, not for the flustered; for the wise, not for the unwise; for one who is precise and who delights in precision, not for the vague or for one who delights in diffuseness.” (A. iv. 227)http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Pesala/Nibbana/nibbana.html