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Our practice is cultivating a continuity of awareness to understand the processes at work in our minds, in particular the processes that create dukkha – distress, dissatisfaction, struggle, or suffering. The simplicity of noticing experience and cultivating continuity of awareness, coupled with the intention to understand suffering, allows wholesome qualities to begin to grow: qualities such as confidence, patience, love, equanimity, concentration, mindfulness, and wisdom.  The development of liberating wisdom is one of the fruits of practice. While we may have wisdom about many things, the wisdom that comes with practice is more specifically connected to understanding dukkha. When dukkha is understood, a release can follow. This kind of wisdom is freeing, liberating; wisdom is the understanding of dukkha that releases dukkha. We cannot decide, I’m going to release dukkha. When liberating wisdom arises, dukkha is released. Suffering, stress, and dissatisfaction, are released. So we cultivate the conditions for the arising of wisdom, and let wisdom do its work. We need to be patient while continuing the practice of awareness, knowing when we need to make personal effort to be aware, and when we can simply be present and aware. Liberating wisdom is a wholesome quality that functions in the present moment and can be recognized and directly known in the present moment. Just as recognizing other wholesome qualities supports their development, so too, recognizing the arising of wisdom is a condition that supports the further arising of wisdom. There are many ways that liberating wisdom can be experienced and recognized. There are probably too many ways to name, so I’ll just offer a few. You may recognize some of them. When we are observing something challenging, being aware of a of struggle, we might recognize, even for a few moments: This is struggle happening, this is just something happening in the present moment. With that recognition there can be a shift, a sense of space around the struggle, and it is okay to be with that experience, even for just a few moments. Wisdom arising allows that shift to happen. We can recognize this shift as wisdom at work. We might understand how causes and conditions come together in the moment. You might recognize, for instance, a memory arising, notice the memory triggering a chain of thought, and how that chain of thought leads to the arising of an emotion. Seeing this directly, as a sequence of events, we can understand the conditioned nature of this whole unfolding process. Understanding the conditioned nature of all aspects of our experience is wisdom at work. We might recognize that reactivity is directly felt as suffering in the present moment. This may be a little harder to recognize as wisdom at work! And yet the direct recognition of This is suffering is an insight. We might not feel a shift that gives us space around reactivity, yet still we might recognize: This reactivity is suffering right now in this body, in this mind. This is suffering. A shift of perspective is needed to recognize reactivity as suffering. Early in my practice, it came as a shock to me to notice how painful the experience of anger was. In the moment before, I had been involved in the story of anger, thinking about how miserable it would make the other person for me to be angry with them, and I was unaware that it was painful in this body and mind, right here, right now. Wisdom creates a shift of perspective that allows us to recognize that reactive emotions, states of mind based in greed and aversion, and delusion, are suffering in the moment. Liberating wisdom at work. We might notice a sense of self arising based on causes and conditions: A sense of self might arise out of a thought, an image, or a change in our external environment. For example, you might be doing walking meditation in solitude and then somebody walks in to the room. That change of conditions can create the sense of self arising: the feeling of being seen and observed by another is a powerful condition for the arising of a sense of self! Noticing the arising of the sense of self as dependent on conditions is wisdom at work—wisdom understanding that the sense of self is a conditioned phenomenon. We might recognize that reactivity is not actually directly arising from something in our external environment, but is based on an idea. On one retreat, I was doing walking meditation and experienced aversion when someone started walking close by. Understanding that aversion is usually a response to something unpleasant, I began to be curious about where the unpleasant experience was arising. Checking each of the sense doors, the experiences of smell, taste, touch and sound didn’t seem to be involved. Seeing the person close by triggered a bit of unpleasant experience, but the seeing itself really wasn’t unpleasant. So I began to be curious about what was happening in the mind. After a few more passes of walking, I saw a thought: “They’re weird,” and felt a little bit of fear. In that moment I was a bit startled. The aversion was a result of something that the mind had simply made up! Seeing that clearly, the aversion vanished and there was immediately a sense of loving kindness towards the person. So, sometimes we can see that we are reacting to something that our own mind has constructed, and wisdom sees how useless that is. Wisdom starts the letting go of that reactivity; there is a feeling of release. Again, wisdom at work. Wisdom often has a flavor of releasing some form of suffering. Feeling those shifts, feeling the experience of release can be a hallmark of wisdom at work. The experience of release gives a kind of feedback: we directly experience why it is helpful to cultivate wisdom, why it is helpful to practice. We understand: this is a way that the heart and mind be can more at ease, at peace, have more well-being. This understanding is not abstract, but

When we go on a residential retreat, we often hope that our meditation will result in a deepening of concentration: a quality of composure, collectedness, of settled attention. But unfortunately, we can’t force concentration to happen! We can, however, support the conditions that allow it to arise. This simple fact has been really helpful for me to remember. In our meditation practice, we often bring along the cultural baggage of an “I’m going to do this” mentality, and sometimes that attitude can get in our way. Concentration arises when awareness becomes continuous, whether continuous on a single experience like the breathing, or continuous on a flow of changing experience. We can’t force this continuity. We can, for short periods of time, forcefully hold our attention to experience, but this kind of attention usually results in brittle concentration that’s easily broken. So a useful support for our practice is learning how to create a container that allows concentration to develop without being forced. This tends to result in a more stable concentration. Relaxation is one of the important aspects of that container. Relaxation is actually one of the main supports for concentration! When I first started meditating, I thought that you had to force the mind to focus. The idea that one could relax to facilitate concentration did not penetrate my mind for quite a while. But relaxation is quite important. Relaxation in meditation does not mean spacing out! The mind can be both relaxed and alert. Relaxation can take time. Different people need different amounts of time to allow the body and mind to relax in meditation. Relaxation of the body and relaxation of the mind are mutually supportive; when the body is relaxed, it’s much easier for the mind to relax. We all need to find our own way to relax in meditation. For some people, starting with a relaxing body scan can be very helpful: consciously relaxing the muscles of the body in a systematic way. Once the body is relaxed, we see if we can relax the thinking mind. For others, meditating on ambient sounds can be helpful. Since we don’t control these sounds, turning our attention to them can sometimes allow the body and mind to relax very naturally. Setting up a container of relaxed attention is an important framework for the meditation. Once you find a balance of relaxation and alertness, you can learn how to open this relaxed attention to experience: Either directing attention to a particular experience like the breathing, or becoming aware of a flow of experience: of seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting, touching, and emotions and thoughts. When we can learn how to attend to our experience and not lose the relaxation, the mind becomes malleable, and we can skillfully choose to direct the attention to support a deepening of concentration. At other times, we can get out of our own way, and allow the meditation to take its own course very naturally. I encourage you to take the time to explore what it means for you to have a relaxed attention: first of all to learn simply how to relax the body and mind, and then to learn what it means to apply this relaxation to an alert attending to your experience.

One of the great blessings of retreat practice is that we make space to set aside our usual worldly activities. On retreat our main work is to cultivate mindfulness and to practice meditation. We can engage with practice throughout the day, not only in formal sitting and walking periods, but also in the “in between times”: during meals, in our work meditations and sangha service, in having a cup of tea, while brushing our teeth, getting dressed, or even going to the toilet. All day long we have the luxury to explore: “How can I be mindful of this?” Cultivating mindfulness in all our activities supports a steadiness of mind, which creates the conditions for concentration to develop. Not cultivating mindfulness during the “in between times” on retreat is akin to putting a kettle on and off the stove; it takes much longer for the water to boil. With a steadiness of connection to each present experience, the mind is less likely to react to sights, sounds, smells, sensations, thoughts, or emotions, and instead can become interested in the experience itself. Understanding the value of continuity of mindfulness, we have to make some effort to support it. This effort needs the quality of gentle persistence to cultivate a moment-to-moment attention. The idea of practicing mindfulness all day can feel overwhelming, and it’s possible to wear ourselves out through over-efforting or gearing up to try to stay present for long stretches at a time. Effort that supports continuity of mindfulness has a light touch; just enough effort to be present for this moment. It doesn’t take much effort to experience half a breath, to feel the contact points of your hands, to notice a sight, a sound, or a sensation. We make just enough effort to connect with a moment of experience. And then we do it again, and again, and again. Supportive effort lies in connecting over and over again, rather than trying to hold our attention on experience. This kind of effort is analogous to riding a child’s kick scooter. To start you need to put your foot down and push lightly against the ground; just a gentle tap. You probably have to make several light taps to get the scooter going, but as momentum starts to build, you learn what it feels like for the momentum to carry you. You learn to recognize when you can ride for a while without tapping. Then, as the scooter starts to get a little wobbly, you make a few taps again to stabilize the momentum. The effort towards continuity of mindfulness is like that. We gently connect to experience: What is here now? And now? And now? This light touch of effort supports a momentum of mindfulness and we become familiar with the experience of this momentum. We begin to recognize when we can back off of a conscious effort to stay present, and allow the momentum of established mindfulness to simply receive experience: to know a breath, a sight, a sound, an emotion, a sensation. We also begin to recognize when the mindfulness gets “wobbly,” and can gently re-engage with the effort to actively connect with experience. This kind of gentle, persistent effort allows continuity of mindfulness to develop very naturally, without leading to exhaustion. As mindfulness becomes more continuous, we begin naturally to investigate and be interested in experience, and start to more deeply understand the relationships between different aspects of experience. For example, while cleaning a toilet, we might see the arising of a thought, see an emotion connected to that thought, and see how both impact the body. We naturally begin to understand that there is a cause and effect relationship between mind and body, and that there is a difference between a thought, an emotion and the body. In fact, as mindfulness becomes more continuous, deep understanding and insight can happen at any time, not just in the formal sitting and walking practice. Because the retreat schedule emphasizes formal sitting and walking practice, we might believe they are the most important of the retreat and that it is less important to be attentive throughout the day. Yet we miss a valuable opportunity that retreats offer if we don’t explore the gentle persistent cultivation of continuous mindfulness.

Buddhism teaches us that suffering and unskillful states of mind arise out of three basic roots: greed, aversion and delusion. While greed and aversion are often fairly easy to recognize in our experience, delusion is much harder to recognize! Learning about some of the different ways that delusion happens can help us recognize it. One form of delusion happens when we are disconnected from experience; we could say this kind is an absence of mindfulness. We might experience this as being lost in thought, or caught by sleepiness or restlessness. One of the easiest ways to get familiar with this form of delusion is in the moment mindfulness returns after the mind has wandered. In that moment there can be a lingering sense of what it was like a moment before, when the mind was disconnected, caught, or absorbed in its world of thought. This lingering sense gives us a little taste of what this form of delusion feels like. Many different states of mind can have this disconnected quality:  sleepiness, restlessness, dullness, spacing out, or daydreaming, to name a few.  But because it is possible to recognize these states with mindfulness,  they are not fundamentally delusional.  We could say we are habitually disconnected in these states. In becoming mindful of sleepiness or spacing out there is no longer disconnection! Another form of delusion happens when we are unaware of views, beliefs, opinions, agendas, or biases. Many of these unseen biases are based on personal conditioning, familial conditioning, social or cultural conditioning. We all have views about the world, other people, and ourselves. Often they are completely subconscious; we may not even know we have a view: we simply believe the view to be true. In this form of delusion, we can be aware even as we are unaware of biases that influence awareness.  We often meet experience through an unseen perspective that influences what we take in to experience, and how we take it in.  One form of this kind of delusion relates to what psychologists call selective attention. Our minds have the capacity to focus selectively on something and ignore other experience. This is a useful function of our minds, helping our minds stay on the task at hand. Yet quite often when we are focused we are unaware that our minds are ignoring other experience, and believe that our senses are accurately taking in what is happening around us. In one study on selective attention, participants were asked to watch a video in which people tossed a basketball to each other; they were asked to count the number of times the ball passed between the players in white jerseys. Most could do this accurately. However, most participants did not see a person in a gorilla suit walk through the basketball players. This not-seeing is form of selective attention, and is a natural function of our minds. However, when told about the person in a gorilla suit, and shown the video again, some participants denied that it was the same video!  This is delusion, the belief that our senses take in the world in an accurate way. Some beliefs or agendas, if made conscious, are easy enough to see through. For example, once participants are told there is a gorilla in the video, it is hard to not see the gorilla! But some of our views are so deeply entrenched that it is hard to see them as views, and it is difficult to see evidence to the contrary. Deeply entrenched views like this can create real suffering in the world.  For example, a pervasive view in American culture is “America is the land of opportunity. If you work hard enough you can achieve your goals.” This view denies differences of circumstance, opportunity and of oppression. It leads to a delusion in the dominant white culture that can’t see the way cultural systems give invisible advantages to white people, and corresponding disadvantages to people of color.  This view creates deep suffering in our society. Due to views, beliefs, biases, or agendas, our minds take in certain experiences and not others. We may not be able to prevent this, and yet we can become aware that our minds are influenced by such views. One way to open to this is through curiosity about beliefs, especially when we are struggling. We can ask ourselves: “What is being believed right now?” This simple practice can begin to expose subconscious views. Only when views become conscious can we begin to recognize ways they might be biasing our experience. A third form of delusion could be called human delusion:  deeply held views that human beings share. This form of delusion manifests as three basic misunderstandings:  we tend to take what is impermanent to be permanent, to take what is unreliable as a reliable place to find happiness, and to take what is not self to be self.  This is the most insidious form of delusion: it is especially hard to see through because largely we all share these views.   As with personally conditioned views, we can be aware and mindful, and still completely unaware that these views are distorting how we meet and relate to our experience. Meeting experience through these powerful filters we do not even question the beliefs that underlie them. Mindfulness can help us explore these human delusions:  but rather than trying to adopt a view of experience as impermanent, unreliable, and not self, instead be curious about what seems to be permanent or stable, explore what seems to be reliable, and investigate what feels like “I”, “me” or “mine.” Investigating in that way, the underlying distorted perspectives start to reveal themselves.  The more curious we are about how delusion works, the more we can actually recognize delusion, in the moment, as it happens, particularly as we become aware of belief. Seeing delusion working begins to free us from delusion. Andrea offered a recent multi-week series on the topic of delusion. It is available at: http://www.audiodharma.org/series/2/talk/7928/

In mindfulness practice, we often emphasize accepting experience as it is, simply observing what is happening, without holding on to or pushing away experience. Yet, sometimes unseen beliefs or views can creep into “accepting”. So it can be useful to explore subtle, perhaps hidden beliefs even within the practice of accepting. Accepting is the possibility of opening to things as they are. To things as they already are. So often we want to get rid of, to change, or to fix, or to hold on to experience. When we like something, we want it to continue. When we don’t like something, we want to get rid of it. In my own practice, particularly being mindful of challenging or unpleasant experience and aware that I don’t like it, I’ve sometimes seen a subtle belief that an accepting attitude means that not-liking should be replaced by liking. That is, a belief that when there isn’t not-liking, liking will be present, and vice versa. An example from my daily life practice from a few years ago: I didn’t particularly enjoy going to the gym, yet I understood it was helpful, so I went. While working out, I sometimes found a part of my mind trying to convince myself that I liked going to the gym! “I like being here, this is good for me, it’s making my body healthy.” Accepting is not about either liking or not-liking. Our minds don’t usually orient towards this middle ground: what does it mean to neither like nor not-like an experience? We might begin to get a taste of that middle ground if we are simply willing to be with the experience of not-liking itself. Patiently aware of the experience of not-liking, we might have the opportunity to notice the ending of not-liking. At the gym, seeing the mind trying to trying to change not-liking into liking, the mind let go of trying to convince itself that it liked being at the gym, and simply noticed what was happening: “At the gym, and not-liking is happening.” And for a few moments, not-liking vanished. There was simply the activity of being. The ending of not-liking wasn’t the arising of liking! This is a middle ground that we don’t usually orient to: neither liking nor not-liking, experience simply unfolding. Another subtle belief that can be hidden within our idea of acceptance is that acceptance, or allowing, means non-action. So many of our actions come out of liking, not-liking, greed, aversion, confusion or delusion. When those mind states are active, they cannot fathom that action can come from any other place. It can be hard to understand that there are other sources of action. We might believe that allowing means sitting back and not taking action. We might think: if the mind allows or accepts what is, why would I ever do anything? Yet, opening to that middle ground opens a new possibility that is hard for us to conceive of. Wholesome action, equanimous action, compassionate action, wise action: these are a natural response of the heart that not contracted. From the middle ground of neither liking nor not-liking, wisdom acts, compassion acts. It’s a very different place of response. When the uncontracted heart sees suffering or injustice, the natural response is to respond, to take action to alleviate that suffering, without a hint of aversion or greed. Exploring the possibility of this middle ground of neither liking nor not-liking, perhaps we can appreciate that the teachings of the Buddha are not pointing us to creating anything or accumulating anything, but rather, endlessly letting go. Letting go, letting go, letting go.

One of the great things about mindfulness practice is that there are no inherent distractions. Whatever we think is a distraction is simply something else to notice. At the beginning of a retreat, we often offer the instruction to settle the attention on the breathing to collect and quiet the mind. With that instruction, people sometimes have the idea that if anything pulls them away from the breath, it is a problem. The instructions that we offer are actually more inclusive: if we’re paying attention to the breathing and some other experience is pulling us, or it feels like there is a conflict around being with the breath, then we don’t need to stay with the breath, instead we can bring our attention to the very thing we think is the distraction. The sense of being distracted from the breath can happen different ways. For instance, we might be attending to the breath, and a sudden sound happens: someone coughs or sneezes, or a car door slams outside; the attention very naturally leaps to the sound and then the sound ends just as suddenly. People often say that such sounds distract them from their meditation. But what actually happened in that situation? First, the mind was paying attention to the breathing, and then a sudden sound arose and the mind paid attention to that. Often, right after the sound ends we start thinking: “Who made that sound that disturbed my meditation? I need to get back to the breath. I was so settled before that sound happened.” The sound is long gone, yet the thoughts continue. The thing actually disturbing us in that situation is the thoughts! If we can simply recognize that sound is happening, just for a moment, then when the sound ends, we can just notice the next experience: perhaps a body sensation, or an emotion. Or we might choose to reconnect with the experience of breathing, without adding any fanfare about how distracting the sound was. Another way we might experience a sense of being distracted from the breath: we are paying attention to the breath while another experience is happening simultaneously: a body sensation, a pain or an itch. We might notice the experience, consciously let it go, and come back to the breath. Yet the experience pulls us again, and again, making it difficult to stay with the breath. At times it might be possible to stay with the breath, but it feels like we’re forcing the attention on the breath. If there is a feeling of conflict between the breath and another experience, it might be time to turn our mind ful awareness towards that experience, what ever it is, and simply let go of trying to stay with the breath. Aside from assorted “distractions” at our senses, we sometimes feel disturbed by states of mind, like restlessness, dullness, sleepiness, or anxiety. We might have the idea: “I can’t meditate with the mind in this state.” We might think we have to change the state of the mind in order to meditate, or just give up the meditation altogether and wait for another time when the mind is less sleepy or anxious. If this happens, we might be holding to some idea of what meditation is: we might think meditation means being able to choose to pay attention to the breath and to stay with the breath. That is one form of meditation, but sometimes our mind is not in a state to be able to direct the attention in that way. For instance, if you have the thought “I’m too sleepy to meditate,” I’d like to suggest that you might have enough awareness to turn your attention to the sleepiness itself! Mindfulness is like a mirror; it reflects whatever comes in its path. A mirror is not impacted by what it reflects, it simply reflects; beautiful things, ugly things, large things, small things. Sometimes a mirror is coated with steam, and we might have the view that the mirror isn’t reflecting very well. In that situation, the mirror is not reflecting what we would like it to reflect; yet if we think about what is actually happening, the mirror is doing its job perfectly. It is perfectly reflecting every drop of water on the surface of the mirror; it is just not doing what we want it to do. Certain states of mind, like dullness or sleepiness are like the mirror coated with steam. Sometimes we can rouse some energy, which might shift the mind into a brighter state, which might be like opening the bathroom door to allow steam to clear from the mirror. At other times there is very little we can do about a sluggish dull mind, and it may not be possible to direct the attention to a particular experience, such as the breath. Yet it is possible, more often than we might think, to actually recognize the mind is dull or foggy. Mindfulness can clearly know dullness, much as the mirror perfectly reflects the steam. Does it feel like something is disturbing your meditation? Perhaps that very disturbance is asking for attention.

At the end of a recent residential retreat, someone asked me for a simple practice to engage with in daily life. I offered the practice of becoming familiar with what it is like to be aware and mindful. When we more readily recognize the sense of being mindful, the many moments when we are spontaneously mindful start to stand out to us. At times throughout the day, mindfulness happens effortlessly, often for just a moment. This occurs more than we realize, but we rarely notice it. Typically, there is a moment of knowing what is happening, and then we are pulled into thinking, planning, or reacting to it, or we are distracted by something unrelated. We see a snack and next discover we are eating it. A friend says something and we rush in with an opinion. We hear water dripping in the sink, so we shut the faucet off. We notice a stain the linoleum, so we stoop to clean it. In all these examples an initial recognition is overshadowed by a reaction, or even simply by a natural response to the situation. We rarely appreciate the mindfulness required for this recognition. The Buddha understood the value of mindfulness. Mindfulness is not esoteric or mystical; it is simply an ordinary aspect of the way our minds work. The brilliance of the Buddha was to notice it, to highlight it, and to say: this quality is worth cultivating. As we become familiar with the experience of being aware, spontaneous moments of mindfulness become more apparent to us. We then have a chance to appreciate these effortless moments of recognition. By becoming familiar with the act of mindfulness itself, we can recognize that we are mindful more often than we realized. One of the best times to explore what it is like to be present, aware, mindful, is the moment when we recognize we have not been aware of what is happening. In sitting meditation, this moment happens over and over again. We intend to be present for our experience, and then notice we have been lost in thought. The moment we notice we have been lost in thought is a moment of mindfulness; the simple recognition that we are now aware is a way to appreciate the sense of being mindful. In our daily lives, we can also become aware of this moment of remembering. For example, we might be in the midst of reaching for a glass when mindfulness arises. We can then simply pick up the glass mindfully. The act of being aware can become at least as important as what we are doing or thinking. Noticing when we have just been lost in thought, whether in sitting practice or in daily life, is a valuable opportunity to appreciate what the noticing itself is like. We can explore the difference between the mind that was lost in thought and the mind that is present and aware. We can’t really know what it feels like to be lost while we are lost, but when mindfulness returns, there can be a lingering memory of what it felt like to be lost: confused, spinning in thoughts, hazy, or disconnected. When mindfulness returns there is a clarity and brightness to the mind, which is pretty obvious once we start recognizing it. Once we start seeing this clarity, it becomes ever more apparent to us. While we seldom notice awareness itself, it is not something foreign to us. Because it is a natural part of our experience, something within us is familiar with it. If you know you are reading this article, then awareness is already there in your experience. Don’t look too hard for it. Just explore how your experience feels when you know you are aware. Over time, the experience of being aware can become as clear as what we are aware of. As you become familiar with the experience of mindfulness, you will notice yourself coming back into mindfulness many, many times throughout the day. In the midst of an activity, you will suddenly recognize that you are aware of what is happening. You might be reaching for something, walking across the street, finishing a meal, or driving the car. Appreciating these moments creates the conditions for you to recognize these moments even more frequently. You don’t have to wait; you start now.

As we settle into a retreat, from time to time we might experience states of calm, peace, happiness, and joy. Leaving retreat and returning to our daily lives, we sometimes feel that these states are very far from our experience. In your daily life, let yourself be open to the possibility that this kind of mind state does happen throughout your day, perhaps in small ways. We can start to realize that beautiful mind states are more present than we thought they were. Noticing even small moments of happiness and calm will start to have a cumulative effect. That’s the way mindfulness works—in being mindful of small moments of happiness, conditions are created that encourage such states of mind to arise more and more frequently.

In every moment of experience our minds are attending to something. Attention is an interesting factor of mind, partly because it is amenable to conscious control as well as resulting from causes and conditions. In a way, it is like the breath: we can consciously control the breath, or we can settle back and let the breath breathe itself. Similarly, we can consciously direct the attention — for example, we can choose to pay attention to our hand, our foot, our breath, and so on. It is also possible for the object of our attention to be the result of causes and conditions, rather than being consciously chosen. We could say that when we are not consciously choosing what to pay attention to, our habits and conditioning are choosing for us. To illustrate this, when we first learn to drive, we have to consciously pay attention to many things: seeing all the other cars on the road, checking the rear-view mirrors, reading the road signs. Over time those choices become more automatic, and we don’t have to consciously think about them anymore. The forces of training, habit and conditioning direct the attention for us. This is a natural and very helpful part of the way our minds work, especially for learning a skill. The mind can attend to things much more efficiently and quickly when we don’t have to consciously think about them. The more we train in a skill, the more natural and effortless it can feel. Training allows attention to flow without the intervention of conscious choice. Yet the mind is still attending to many things while doing that skill, whether or not we have consciously chosen the object of attention. The factor of attention is quite important in our meditation practice. Often, we train our minds by choosing to direct the attention to an experience such as the breathing. When we notice our attention has wandered off of the breathing, we choose to connect the attention with the breathing again. In this way we gain some mastery over our often unruly minds. In this practice the factor of attention is highlighted, and the meditation unfolds by using attention consciously. In fact, sometimes people assume that meditation means choosing what to pay attention to. In the practice of open awareness, rather than choosing what to pay attention to, we settle back and observe–or receive–what the mind is already attending to. We sometimes call the practice of open awareness “choiceless awareness” because we are not consciously choosing an object of attention. Instead, we watch the unfolding of causes and conditions that draw the mind to one experience over another. So many things happen in every moment, and the mind makes choices about what to notice. When we settle back and allow a receptive awareness, part of what we see is that our mind is drawn to some things and not to others. For instance, when I first started practicing open awareness, pretty much every experience that I noticed was unpleasant. It was an interesting lesson to see how strongly my mind oriented towards unpleasant experience. I said to my teacher, “This can’t be a completely choiceless awareness! Surely if it were really choiceless, the attention would be drawn to pleasant experience sometimes.” Withthatveryfirstexerciseinopenawareness,Icouldseethatmymindhada strong bias. I wasn’t consciously choosing to notice unpleasant experience, but the habits and conditioning of my mind were orienting the attention towards the unpleasant. So, in open awareness, rather than directing the attention with conscious choice, we settle back and watch what the mind chooses to pay attention to. This reveals to us that many processes in the mind are operating automatically, based on habits, causes and conditions. That can lead to a deepening understanding of how our minds work. In our practice, it is helpful to become familiar with both ways of relating to attention, directed and receptive. At different times in our practice, either directed or receptive attention may be what supports us. Sometimes the most helpful and skillful way to settle our minds down is by choosing an object of attention. And sometimes the mind is more relaxed and present simply watching the unfolding flow of experience. Both will teach us a great deal about ourselves!

In our meditation practice we often emphasize exploring our inner, personal experience. Through our practice we begin to open to the personal suffering that each of us experiences based on the conditioned patterns of our lives. Yet as our exploration of our personal suffering deepens, a question can naturally arise: “How can this practice help me deal with the broader suffering of the world?”  Can we use this same practice to meet and explore suffering that is happening on a larger scale?  With racism, war, famine, global warming, religious persecution?   There is, of course, a lot of personal suffering in conjunction with these events, but there is also what we could call a collective suffering, which is broader than the suffering of a single individual.  Can our practice help us to transform such collective suffering? I would like to offer some reflections about how our practice might support transformation around one issue that has been prominent in the news recently, that of racism.  For many people of color in our country, the suffering of racism is a daily experience.  For many white people in our country, the suffering of racism may seem abstract, not relevant to their personal experience, invisible or easy to ignore.   And becoming aware of what we typically don’t see is one of the functions of mindfulness.  In meditation practice, as we explore personal suffering our eyes start to open to the depths of ignorance and delusion that perpetuate that suffering.  For example, before I started mindfulness practice, I considered myself so capable and healthy, I never expected to find a thread of self-hatred in my mind. After I began meditating I started to see this pattern of self-hatred, and it surprised me how much ignorance and delusion had obscured it in the past.   As we open to and begin to be aware of parts of ourselves that we have ignored or repressed, we might think that mindfulness practice is making things worse!  But opening to experience that has been repressed paves the way toward transformation.  Our first response might be confusion, anger or fear: we don’t like it, and we don’t want to experience it.  We might even think that mindfulness is causing the problem.  Yet if we stick with the exploration, we see instead that we are opening to something that has been operating subconsciously.  Now that we are aware of it,  delusion can no longer run the show, and the wisdom that grows through awareness helps to heal and transform what has been repressed. Analogously, in our collective community we can also explore separation, ignorance, and repression. One aspect of the collective suffering around racism is a separation into us and them.  For some, this separation creates a distance that allows them to feel what is happening to “those other people” is not important for themselves, a sense that “it is their problem, not mine.”   For example, those not living in Ferguson might feel the events there don’t have a direct impact on their lives.  Such separation and distance allow people to ignore the issues of others, keeping those issues at a comfortable remove. In exploring collective suffering, I think the first thing we need to recognize is that some people in our communities feel or express the suffering more clearly than others.  When there are divisions into us and them, one group is usually more dominant: having more power and privilege than the other group.  For those in a dominant group, the advantages of their position are often invisible.  For example, many white people would not be afraid if approached by a police officer while filling up their car at a gas station. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even notice the lack of fear. On the other hand, an African-American may feel unsafe in the same situation, given the recent shootings of African-Americans at gas stations. The lack of fear that white people may have in such a situation can be considered an invisible advantage.  Many such invisible advantages and disadvantages delineate the racial divide, creating stark differences in the experience between people.  Those in an advantaged group often don’t actively feel the collective suffering, while those without power or privilege feel the full brunt of the suffering of oppression. Much as the ignorance of unawareness fuels repression of parts of our own psyche , the dynamic of racial separation and oppression is also fueled by ignorance.  Those who are not experiencing the collective suffering are in what we might call a state of collective ignorance.  This ignorance is a form of delusion, which is all the more powerful because it is shared ignorance: people tend to spend time with others who share their world view, creating the illusion that this world view is reality, rather than cultural construction. As we turn towards the racial divides that exist in our communities, those associated with the dominant group may think that noticing the divisions somehow creates them.  Similar to the process of recognizing the repression and division in our own psyches, at first we may wonder why it is helpful to be aware of the collective divides.  One result of becoming aware of the divisions is that those with power and privilege start to feel the suffering of the separation.  Awareness of the separation does not create this suffering.  Rather it reveals suffering that is already present in the community as a whole. Recognizing the suffering of the racial divide can give rise to many reactions.  We may experience confusion, anger, shame, or denial.  Instead of retreating back into the ignorance of separation, right here we can use our practice to explore those reactions. There is something for each of us to work with, personally.   So the collective and the personal integrate and inform each other. As more people open to the suffering of the racial divide, there seems be an interesting dynamic at work.  When more people in our communities hold this collective suffering, the suffering tends to decrease for those who

What is the mind doing, right now? Is it thinking? Is it being aware? Is it searching? Is  there ease or struggle? Whatever is happening in the mind, it can be known. Is it noticing  body experience? Is it noticing feelings, emotions? Any experience, every experience can  be known. No experience any more or less useful for wisdom to arise than any other.  We practice awareness with whatever arises. Sometimes we experience an easeful kind of  awareness, continuity and momentum, when less personal effort needed. It can feel  almost like awareness is doing itself. We like this. We can easily get attached to this  easeful experience of awareness simply happening, and if we’re attached to it, we might resist making the personal effort when it would actually be helpful.  Different kinds of effort may be called for at different times. Sometimes we can settle  back and let awareness do its thing, but often some level of personal effort is needed. The  most basic kind of personal effort is just reminding ourselves: Am I aware? What’s  Obvious? This kind of effort is helpful when the mind is not so settled, when it is  agitated or pulled away in thoughts or ideas. We also might even intentionally connect to  a particular experience such as to breath or body sensation, just to ground the attention if  it’s really scattered, if it’s not connecting easily with experience.  This is our basic practice, reminding ourselves to be aware. The level of effort is  connected to how frequently we remind ourselves. We can tune this level of effort also: a  slightly lighter touch to the effort is simply checking in: Aware? Is there awareness  already? Aware. Not trying to do anything additional about connecting to objects in  particular, but trusting that they are already known in awareness. Sometimes this level of  effort is sufficient. Aware? Perhaps: already aware, as a simple recognition of  awareness that is already happening.  Another support for effort is engaging the sense of curiosity, by using questions. What  am I missing? What else is here? What purpose is this thing that is arising  serving? When the mind is curious about experience, the awareness can be less effortful,  because the curiosity naturally motivates effort.  Sometimes we simply can remind ourselves of wisdom, acknowledging the wisdom that  may be relevant for whatever’s happening. This is impermanent. This is dukkha. It’s just  an experience, it’s just an object. These are just conditions unfolding. This is  nature. When we reminding ourselves of the wisdom, sometimes a natural effort arises, a  more easeful effort. Sometime effort comes along for the ride as we touch into wisdom.  Sometimes wisdom combined with confidence supports effort. When we are confident  that it is possible to meet anything that arises, this can also support a natural, easeful  effort. And even when the mind feels scattered, confused, searching or exhausted or  frustrated, if there’s a moment of not resisting that truth of the moment’s experience, the  mind can relax and a natural effort again can arise supported by confidence and wisdom. Sometimes we think we have to make the effort for wisdom to arise. It sometimes  happens that way, but other times when we stop resisting the truth, when the mind can  fully recognize: This is what’s actually happening, the mind can relax and understand  more naturally. Resistance to experience ties up our energy, and when the resistance  releases energy is freed up, and a very natural continuity can happen, if even only for a  few moments.  What kind of effort is helpful? Is personal effort helpful right now? Reminding ourselves  to be aware? Is curiosity helpful right now? Is wisdom helpful right now? Understanding  the level of effort that is appropriate requires honesty with ourselves, because we do  prefer some kinds of effort over others. Honestly opening to experience right now, not  resisting the truth of this moment’s experience, and not resisting the truth of the level of  effort that would be most helpful.

As mindfulness becomes steadier, we can begin to see the impulses that move and motivate us: mental urges to take action. Every action of body, speech, or mind is preceded by a such an impulse, which is subtle, yet can be noticed. We can know we’re going to move before we move. We can know we’re going to speak before we speak. We can even know we’re going to think before we think.  We sometimes call this impulse an intention; yet this intention is not necessarily a conscious choice. It may be connected to a conscious choice in the moment but it also might simply be conditioned with no connection to a conscious thought. For example, we might sit for a while and thirst arises, conditioning the desire to relieve thirst, conditioning the intention get up and get some water. In this process a conscious choice to get up might have happened, or it might not!  Sometimes we can see that intentions simply arise; it’s just a process unfolding. As mindfulness becomes more steady and more simple, we can see this conditioned process.  In meditation, intention may be easiest to see in relation to body movements like lifting a hand or straightening the spine. Before the movement happens, it’s possible to recognize a subtle impulse: you know you’re going to move before you move. Sometimes we can also see an intention connected to not moving: an intention to keep our eyes closed or hold our bodies still.  The impulse is a subtle aspect of mind that can be noticed, yet often it is not something to try to see: in fact, trying to see it might get in the way of the seeing!   Intentions don’t arise randomly. They are conditioned, and they arise with a motivation: a reason we want to act. Sometimes a motivation can be based in greed, aversion, or delusion. How many times do we move with complete unawareness, delusion perhaps participating in the motivation? How many times do we move out of aversion, wanting to get away from an unpleasant experience? How many times do we move out of greed, wanting to have a pleasant experience? Wholesome mind states can also motivate action: wisdom motivates, love motivates, compassion motivates.  When we become aware of an intention to act before we act, sometimes we also become aware of the motivation accompanying the intention.  If the motivation is based in greed, aversion or delusion, the awareness of it might allow us to simply witness the reactive motivation: open to it, relax, observe, allow, and learn about that motivation, without actually following through on it, simply watching it arise and pass. The mind observes this arising and passing and learns from it, which in turn strengthens intentions for mindfulness and wisdom. Intention and motivation are intertwined with the cause and effect cycle of our experience, shaping our experience in each moment. We often strongly identify with intention. It feels like, “I am the one choosing, I am the one deciding, I am the one acting.” As we become aware of the arising of an intention and the arising of the motivation accompanying the intention, we can begin to understand these choices are not-self, because we can see that no one decided for an intention to arise, it simply arose based on causes and conditions.  As awareness becomes steadier, it can become possible to notice intention and motivation, but it’s not necessarily something to try to notice. Just continue practicing with a relaxed, allowing awareness, which can naturally begin to notice subtler experience such as intention.

Thoughts are a natural function of our mind. Another function of the mind is to be aware. The mind does its job of producing thoughts and emotions, and the mind also can know thoughts and emotions. Since the mind both produces thoughts and is aware, sometimes we might think both those things can’t happen simultaneously, believing thatif I’m thinking, I can’t be mindful. But it ispossible to be mindful while thinking.  We usually cannot simply choose to stop thinking. Thinking is a conditioned phenomenon. Yet we can cultivate conditions that will reduce the number of thoughts in the mind, and meditation is one of those conditions. And even when thoughts continue to arise, we can learn to be mindful of them. Awareness of thinking is particularly supportive for daily life. If we have the idea that we cannot be mindful while thinking, huge chunks of our daily life are out of bounds for mindfulness. So the first thing to recognize, when we notice that we’re thinking, is: this is the mind doing its job.A thought is just a thought. We can very simply be aware that thinking is happening.With this simple recognition, we are becoming aware of the natural functioning of the mind: the mind is thinking.  Thoughts arise in the present moment. Thoughts of the past are not actually in the past. They are happening right now, in the present moment. Thoughts of the future are not in the future, they are arising now, in the present moment. Sometimes we can recognize a thought is just a presently arising phenomenon,  but it’s easy to be seduced by the content of thoughts. Thoughts seem to create their own little world, and then we move into that world and inhabit it. It’s a little bubble of delusion. We have a habit of moving into that thought bubble and losing mindfulness. But it is not necessary to lose mindfulness while thinking.  We can be aware of thinking and at the same time know the content of thinking. When we are meditating we sometimes have the option to set aside the content, to just let it go. Yet, there are times in our day when we need to think; this is part of how we function as human beings! So at times it can be helpful to acknowledge the content of thinking. My teacher Sayadaw U Tejaniya gives a suggestion for exploring awareness of thinking in daily life: let 50% of the attention be connected to the content of the thought and what is happening in connection to that content, and 50% of the attention be connected to how the thoughts are affecting us. There’s a thought, and there’s the effect that it has; we can be aware of both. In meditation practice, we might be able to disengage from the content of thoughts and set them aside, yet sometimes we don’t have much control over setting them aside and they continue anyway. If that’s happening, rather than getting frustrated and trying to force the thoughts to stop, we can be curious about how the thoughts are affecting us, right now. We can ask ourselves, how is thinking affecting the heart, mind, and body? Is it creating tension? Are there bodily sensations? Are there emotions arising? Investigating how thoughts affect us is a broadening of awareness; not pushing the thoughts away, but rather checking in more widely with our experience:How are these thoughts affecting me?  Sometimes thoughts can be very powerful, and we might find it impossible to be mindful of them or even of how they affect us. If you find when trying to be mindful of thinking that you are caught by the content and lose mindfulness, that’s a good time to try putting your attention elsewhere, perhaps on some clear and obvious physical experience that is somewhat easy to stay mindful of.  If the thoughts are very emotionally charged, it might not be helpful to turn to awareness of breathing. Since the breath is often affected by strong emotions, attending to the breath when emotions are very strong might simply pull you back to being caught by the emotions and thoughts.  Choose a different physical experience instead. Connection with awareness of seeing or hearing can be helpful, or perhaps with awareness of an obvious body sensation away from the visceral part of the body, such as contact of the hands or feet.  If the content of thought is not so strong, one helpful way of being aware of thinking is to noticehowthinking is happening, rather than connecting with the content. I sometimes call this noticing the “modality” of the thoughts. There are many different ways that the mind thinks: it may think with images, or as if one is speaking to oneself, or as if things are being heard, like listening to radio. Thinking can also happen through a kinesthetic sense in the body.  At times I find it useful to use a quiet mental note around the modality. For example, if thoughts are happening as images, I use the note seeing. I know I’m not actually visually seeing, but it is a way of acknowledging how the mind is aware of thoughts. Seeing is happening. Or hearing is happening. Using a note that acknowledges the modality rather than the content can help us to be aware of thinking more easily.  Keep a playful attitude about experimenting and exploring whether it’s possible to be mindful of thoughts, before you assume it is not possible! More often than we think, we can be aware of thinking. 

As we become more familiar with meditation, we might think we know how practice should unfold. We can begin to carry hidden agendas into our practice. One such agenda is that the mind needs to be in a certain state in order to meditate. There might be a belief such as “good meditation has a certain clarity or precision.”  Such a belief might be based on familiarity with some of the states that come with meditation.   On one retreat, after doing walking meditation, I was headed towards my room for sitting practice and noticed the mind trying to create a state without thought in order to put itself into a meditative state. Noticing that, immediately there was a recognition: “What is wrong with this state?  Why not be mindful of this?!”  And I discovered I had already become effortlessly mindful as I was aware of the experience.  Recognizing this easeful mindfulness was enough; nothin more had to happen. Sometimes we associate mindfulness with directing the attention, believing that if we can’t choose an object for our meditation, there is a problem. Difficulty choosing an experience to attend to can happen when the mind is in a low energy or dull state, when it might feel like a real struggle to direct the attention.  On another retreat, my mind was in a very low energy state. I was aware of the low energy, yet was still trying to direct attention to particular aspects of experience. It was a struggle. At some point, I recognized a natural awareness of sounds and sights was present without any attempt  to “do” it. Without choosing what to pay attention to, a very easy mindfulness was already happening.  At times, we may believe that “I’m too dull, or too sleepy, or too restless to meditate.”  It may be hard to direct the attention to a particular object when the mind is in these states, yet perhaps it is possible to be aware of restlessness or dullness itself.  A familiar analogy describes mindfulness being like a mirror that reflects experience. In the analogy, the reflecting power of the mirror is not changed by what it reflects, does not depend on what it reflects. Similarly, the quality of mindfulness is not changed by what it is mindful of, does not depend on what it is mindful of. To carry the analogy one step further, think about that mirror in a room full of steam. When we look in the mirror to try to see ourselves, the image is fuzzy and obscured because of steam on the mirror. We might take a towel to clean the mirror so it can do its job—or more accurately, so the mirror can fulfill our agenda for it!  The mirror is actually doing its job perfectly: it’s reflecting every drop of water on its surface. It’s just not doing the job that we want it to do, not reflecting what we want it to reflect. Similarly in certain states of mind, whether dullness or restlessness, mindfulness may not be meeting the experience that we would like it to meet, yet can still meet the experience of dullness or restlessness itself. Another agenda around practice can be related to the way mindfulness and attention work together to explore our experience. There are so many different ways that these two work together, but perhaps we limit ourselves to familiar ways of being mindful. We might have an agenda that we need to keep the attention steady on one object. That is one way for the mind to attend to experience, but mindfulness and attention can also be felt as a steady flow from one experience to another. Or, it is possible that the attention might feel jumpy: it picks up on one experience, and then another experience bursts in. Attention and mindfulness can be panoramic and broad, taking in a wide range of experience, or microscopic and narrow, taking in a specific experience.   In certain states of meditation we might feel separated from an experience, as if we are looking at it from a distance, and in that separation there can be a sense of balance and freedom, of not being bound up in the experience. As a result of experiencing this balance, we might try to create a similar sense of separation, associating it with the sense of balance, and as a result believing “separation from experience is what meditation is supposed to feel like!” Yet there are times when the mind is balanced and attentive, and we don’t feel separated from the experience; we can feel that we are right inside of the experience. Our assumptions and agendas about what “good” practice is might keep us from recognizing a new way of being with experience.  Sometimes we can choose how mindfulness and attention are working, and sometimes we can’t. If there is struggle with the practice itself, and you have a sense that “I can’t meditate with this; I must be doing this wrong,” it might be interesting to recognize that an agenda or belief is functioning in the moment. If you are consciously aware of those agendas or beliefs, you probably have enough awareness to be mindful, in a simple way, of whatever is already happening! There might be the possibility of simply being with what is already unfolding, as it is. 

Reflections on an evening question from a recent retreat :Given impermanence, unreliability, and not-self, where do we find trust?This is a deep question – an important question for us.  From our usual, everyday perspective we think things are trustable when we can take a stand on them. Yet the teachings point us in a different direction around trust.  Sometimes the deepest freedom and peace is called unshakeability of mind, which seems to convey an image of stability. Yet, as I reflect on this image, the way unshakeability feels to me is not like something solid, rather it is unshakeable because it’s not landing on anything, there is nothing to shake. The trust that develops as we practice is explored not in terms of “where can I land,” or “where can I find stability,” but rather in terms of what leads towards freedom from suffering. That trust is not about being anywhere or being anyone or having anything. Rather it is a trust that whatever is happening in this moment can be known, even as it is changing, even as it is slipping through. We open to a deep trust as we realize we cannot know what the next moment will be. At one point in my practice, the experience of impermanence and unreliability was quite strong, and there was a lot of fear: “What is there to land on, with things changing so rapidly?”  As I kept practicing with this, I realized that the fear was about the idea of the unknown.  During one walking meditation, I determined to face this fear of the unknown. And yet, every single moment was known. Then that moment fell apart, and in the next moment, everything was known. An image came to mind of standing on the edge of a cliff – it was like I was being asked to step into the abyss with each moment. I had no idea of what the next moment would be. It was a bit frightening. As I took the step into the abyss, in the next moment, there I was, standing on the edge of the abyss. Each moment. Step. Everything was known. Each moment. Step. Always at the edge of the abyss. So, we learn to trust that this moment can be known and non-clinging in this moment leads to freedom in this moment. We’re not looking to trust a particular outcome. We’re trusting non-clinging. We’re trusting freedom.

Our mindfulness practice asks us to open to all aspects of our experience: both our joys and our struggles. It can be challenging to open to suffering: to the frustration of wanting things we cannot have; to the fear that the things we have will go away; to anxiety about the health and happiness of ourselves and our loved ones; to confusion. Yet every time we experience a flavor of suffering, it is an opportunity to grow in both wisdom and love—when we meet it with mindfulness.  Much of our suffering happens when we struggle against the very nature of life: its changing uncertain nature, so often out of our control. At the same time, our suffering also seems to be connected to a deep inner wish to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe. We wish that for ourselves, for our loved ones, for the world—and at times these wishes seem out of reach. The wishes of love, of kindness, of caring are very human wishes. What happens when these deep wishes meet the vicissitudes of life? At times, the wish for well-being and happiness collides with the impermanent, uncertain nature of life, and reactivity, greed, aversion, and confusion result. We have a deep wish for safety. As we also recognize vulnerability, uncertainty, and impermanence, fear is born, anxiety is born.  As we learn to bring mindfulness to that anxiety or fear, we sometimes try to orient to wisdom, perhaps telling ourselves, “Vulnerability—that is just the way it is.” And this can be helpful. Yet sometimes as we orient towards wisdom in this way, we can subtly deny the deep wish for safety. It is as if we believe that when things are impermanent and out of control, the wish for safety, happiness and ease is invalid, that it’s not the right wish. In a subtle way our minds can use our understanding of the teachings to deny those deep wishes, which are actually an expression of metta, of love, of compassion. They are wholesome wishes. Yet our relationship to these wholesome wishes often includes craving or a belief that if I were doing things “right,” these wishes would be fulfilled. This craving around our wholesome wishes creates a collision when our experience is impermanent and uncertain. The hidden demand that these wishes be so creates anxiety, fear or reactivity. The expectation, the craving for a particular outcome around these wishes—that is what wisdom asks us to let go of. Wisdom doesn’t ask us to let go of the wishes themselves. In fact, I think that wisdom asks us to embrace those wishes. Wisdom understands that these deep wishes are wholesome, natural, human wishes. It asks us to simultaneously open to the nature of things as they are and to open to love, without clinging.  Whenever we are suffering, not only is there a doorway to aligning to the nature of life, there is also a doorway asking us to open to love without clinging to love—to truly have an open heart. Wisdom asks the heart to stretch and hold both, without resistance, without fear, without expectation.

How do you stay in the present moment when it’s physically painful (not a posture issue)? Andrea Fella responds: One reason it’s hard to stay in the present moment when there is physical pain is that we are reactive to the pain.  We react with fear, confusion, aversion, the feeling of being out of control. The reactivity is what tends to keep us from staying present. So we need to start by distinguishing the reactivity to pain from the actual physical pain itself, and then explore whether we can be present for the reactivity.  One of my teachers, Sayadaw U Tejaniya, suggests if you are reactive to pain, it’s not helpful to try to pay attention to the pain itself, because it is being experienced through a lens of reactivity, which usually exacerbates the pain. So, instead of trying to be with it, turn towards the relationship you have with the pain, the emotional reactivity: what does it feel like to be fearful, confused, angry, out of control? Sometimes when physical pain is quite strong, even if we are trying to turn towards the reactivity, the pain pulls the attention, almost with a magnetic force. It’s as if the attention narrows down and pain becomes the entire universe of our experience.  In that kind of situation, I have found it helpful to consciously try to expand the field of attention to include the many other things that are happening at the same time: this can be a simple recognition: “yes, there is physical pain” and then consciously acknowledging “…and seeing is happening, and hearing is happening, and other body sensations are happening.”  There are so many things happening in the present moment; if we can expand our field of attention, that helps the mind recognize that pain is not all there is in the world!  This can help the mind to relax around the pain, and stay present.  And then sometimes it’s helpful to turn the attention to something else entirely. Attending to pain for long periods of time can weary the mind. So, we can explore it for a little while, perhaps in the ways that I’ve suggested, but at some point it may be helpful to redirect the attention to give the mind a break from the pain, if that is possible.  For example, take a walk in nature and let the attention take in a whole different perspective.  Or turn the attention to an area of experience where there is no pain: perhaps the sensations of the hands, the feet contacting the floor, or the experience of hearing. 

Patience supports mindfulness practice when it is joined with gentle persistence and active exploration.  Such patience allows for our practice to simply unfold, neither discouraged about nor anxious for results.  As the Indian Vipassana teacher Munindra-ji said, “When the fruit is ripe, it will fall from the tree.”  For me, this image has been very helpful when it seemed nothing much was happening in my practice.  Sometimes an apple looks red and ready to pick, and yet it doesn’t release easily from the tree.  The ripening, the sweetening of the apple takes its own time and isn’t always apparent from the outside.  Yet it releases from the tree in an instant. Similarly, the path of practice has a gradual nature, though freedom may come in an unexpected moment.  We can think that freedom is the only thing that is important, yet it would never happen without the many, many subtle moments of “sweetening” that came before it.  The nature of fruit is to sweeten, given good conditions for the tree it grows on.  Cultivating good conditions requires patience and gentle persistence, and in our practice we patiently cultivate conditions that support the deepening of mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.  As wisdom ripens, we experience the fruits of practice. The Thai teacher Ajahn Thate talked about the patience of a farmer.  This patience is the sort that knows you can’t plant a crop one day and expect to have yield the next.  A farmer tends his fields and knows that certain tasks need to be done promptly when the time is right.   When nothing is needed, the farmer simply lets the crop grow on its own, sometimes imperceptibly.  But when the crop ripens, a farmer can’t delay the work of harvest.   The patience of a farmer is not about being slow or casual.  It is about taking time, paying careful attention, and doing the work that needs to be done, when it needs to be done. This is the patience of our practice.  It isn’t simply settling back and waiting for something to happen. Rather we practice like a farmer, doing what needs to be done, knowing that we don’t have control over the ripening of the practice, and allowing the path to mature in its own time.   Often, we don’t even really know what the fruit of practice will be.  Both the fruit of our practice and the time of its ripening depend on conditions:  the conditions of our mind, the conditions from our past, the conditions of how we meet this moment.   The suttas offer another analogy about the gradual nature of the path.  This analogy speaks to what we let go of in the course of practice:“Suppose there were a seafaring ship bound with rigging, that had been worn out in the water for six months.  It would be hauled up on dry land during the cold season and its rigging would be further attacked by wind and sun.  Inundated by rain from a rain cloud, the rigging would easily collapse and wear away.  So, too, when one develops and cultivates the Noble Eightfold Path, one’s fetters easily collapse and wear away.”                                                            Samyutta Nikaya 22.101        The images of the gradual ripening of fruit and of rigging slowly wearing away speak to me, since much of my own practice has unfolded gradually.  Sometimes a sweet quality of mind ripens in its own time; sometimes a clinging wears away in its time.   Each day the fruit ripens a bit and a bit of the rope wears away, but we can’t see it happening.  Yet months later the fruit comes off the tree easily, or you try to pick up the rope and it simply falls apart in your hands.  Our practice unfolds in a similar way, as a gradual, slow maturing of good qualities and wearing away of the habits and patterns that hook us and cause our struggles. We have small recognitions of release, of space, of equanimity.   We get tastes of the fruits of the path.  And yet the unfolding is happening as we apply ourselves to the practice, whether we are aware of it or not. Burmese Buddhists have a saying:  “Patience is the road to Nibbana.”  Practice requires patience of us because we don’t have control over the results, because the results happen in their own time.  Settling in to this truth supports us in practice.  Recognizing the quality of patience itself also supports us.  On one retreat I was experiencing a particularly painful contraction around my heart. I explored the experience in meditation; opening to and allowing the painful contraction, and yet not noticing much change.  The thought that popped into my mind during this time was a bit of wisdom, as I look back at it:  “At least I’m cultivating patience.”  There was a sense of willingness to persist with this difficulty, and a recognition that the beautiful quality of patience supported my ability to meet the difficulty.  As patience deepens, a sense of allowing and acceptance permeates our experience. We recognize the very thing we are struggling with is actually the doorway to wisdom and freedom.  Acceptance does not mean passivity.  It means understanding that the experience of this moment is the natural outcome of causes and conditions. The patient application of energy and mindfulness cultivates skillful conditions for both the present moment and the future.  We can make a skillful choice in this moment.  But we cannot rush the process of change.

In every moment of experience our minds are attending to something.  Attention is an interesting factor of mind, partly because it is amenable to conscious control as well as resulting from causes and conditions.  In a way, it is like the breath:  we can consciously control the breath, or we can settle back and let the breath breathe itself.  Similarly, we can consciously direct the attention–for example, we can choose to pay attention to our hand, our foot, our breath, and so on.  It is also possible for the object of our attention to be the result of causes and conditions, rather than being consciously chosen.  We could say that when we are not consciously choosing what to pay attention to, our habits and conditioning are choosing for us. To illustrate this, when first learn to drive, we have to consciously pay attention to many things: seeing all the other cars on the road, checking the rear-view mirrors, reading the road signs.  Over time those choices become more automatic, and we don’t have to consciously think about them anymore.  The forces of training, habit and conditioning direct the attention for us.   This is a natural and very helpful part of the way our minds work, especially for learning a skill. The mind can attend to things much more efficiently and quickly when we don’t have to consciously think about them.  The more we train in a skill, the more natural and effortless it can feel. Training allows attention to flow without the intervention of conscious choice.  Yet the mind is still attending to many things while doing that skill, whether or not we have consciously chosen the object of attention. The factor of attention is quite important in our meditation practice.  Often, we train our minds by choosing to direct the attention to an experience such as the breathing.  When we notice our attention has wandered off of the breathing, we choose to connect the attention with the breathing again.  In this way we gain some mastery over our often unruly minds.  In this practice the factor of attention is highlighted, and the meditation unfolds by using attention consciously. In fact, sometimes people assume that meditation means choosing what to pay attention to. In the practice of open awareness, rather than choosing what to pay attention to, we settle back and observe–or receive–what the mind is already attending to.  We sometimes call the practice of open awareness “choiceless awareness” because we are not consciously choosing an object of attention.  Instead, we watch the unfolding of causes and conditions that draw the mind to one experience over another. So many things happen in every moment, and the mind makes choices about what to notice.  When we settle back and allow a receptive awareness, part of what we see is that our mind is drawn to some things and not to others.  For instance, when I first started practicing open awareness, pretty much every experience that I noticed was unpleasant.  It was an interesting lesson to see how strongly my mind oriented towards unpleasant experience.  I said to my teacher, “This can’t be a completely choiceless awareness! Surely if it were really choiceless, the attention would be drawn to pleasant experience sometimes.”   With that very first exercise in open awareness, I could see that my mind had a strong bias.  I wasn’t consciously choosing to notice unpleasant experience, but the habits and conditioning of my mind were orienting the attention towards the unpleasant.   So, in open awareness, rather than directing the attention with conscious choice, we settle back and watch what the mind chooses to pay attention to. This reveals to us that many processes in the mind are operating automatically, based on habits, causes and conditions. That can lead to a deepening understanding of how our minds work. In our practice, it is helpful to become familiar with both ways of relating to attention, directed and receptive.  At different times in our practice, either directed or receptive attention may be what supports us. Sometimes the most helpful and skillful way to settle our minds down is by choosing an object of attention.  And sometimes the mind is more relaxed and present simply watching the unfolding flow of experience.  Both will teach us a great deal about ourselves!

One of the great things about mindfulness practice is that there are no inherent distractions. Whatever we think is a distraction is simply something else to notice. At the beginning of a retreat, we often offer the instruction to settle the attention on the breathing to collect and quiet the mind. With that instruction, people sometimes have the idea that if anything pulls them away from the breath, it is a problem. The instructions that we offer are actually more inclusive:  if we’re paying attention to the breathing and some other experience is pulling us, or it feels like there is a conflict around being with the breath, then we don’t need to stay with the breath, instead we can bring our attention to the very thing we think is the distraction.   The sense of being distracted from the breath can happen different ways. For instance, we might be attending to the breath, and a sudden sound happens:  someone coughs or sneezes, or a car door slams outside; the attention very naturally leaps to the sound and then the sound ends just as suddenly.  People often say that such sounds distract them from their meditation. But what actually happened in that situation? First, the mind was paying attention to the breathing, and then a sudden sound arose and the mind paid attention to that. Often, right after the sound ends we start thinking: “Who made that sound that disturbed my meditation? I need to get back to the breath. I was so settled before that sound happened.” The sound is long gone, yet the thoughts continue. The thing actually disturbing us in that situation is the thoughts! If we can simply recognize that sound is happening, just for a moment, then when the sound ends, we can just notice the next experience: perhaps a body sensation, or an emotion.  Or we might choose to reconnect with the experience of breathing, without adding any fanfare about how distracting the sound was. Another way we might experience a sense of being distracted from the breath: we are paying attention to the breath while another experience is happening simultaneously: a body sensation, a pain or an itch.  We might notice the experience, consciously let it go, and come back to the breath. Yet the experience pulls us again, and again, making it difficult to stay with the breath. At times it might be possible to stay with the breath, but it feels like we’re forcing the attention on the breath.  If there is a feeling of conflict between the breath and another experience, it might be time to turn our mindful awareness towards that experience, what ever it is, and simply let go of trying to stay with the breath. Aside from assorted “distractions” at our senses, we sometimes feel disturbed by states of mind, like restlessness, dullness, sleepiness, or anxiety.  We might have the idea: “I can’t meditate with the mind in this state.” We might think we have to change the state of the mind in order to meditate, or just give up the meditation altogether and wait for another time when the mind is less sleepy or anxious.  If this happens, we might be holding to some idea of what meditation is: we might think meditation means being able to choose to pay attention to the breath and to stay with the breath. That is one form of meditation, but sometimes our mind is not in a state to be able to direct the attention in that way. For instance, if you have the thought “I’m too sleepy to meditate,” I’d like to suggest that you might have enough awareness to turn your attention to the sleepiness itself! Mindfulness is like a mirror; it reflects whatever comes in its path.  A mirror is not impacted by what it reflects, it simply reflects; beautiful things, ugly things, large things, small things.  Sometimes a mirror is coated with steam, and we might have the view that the mirror isn’t reflecting very well.  In that situation, the mirror is not reflecting what we would like it to reflect; yet if we think about what is actually happening, the mirror is doing its job perfectly.  It is perfectly reflecting every drop of water on the surface of the mirror; it is just not doing what we want it to do.   Certain states of mind, like dullness or sleepiness are like the mirror coated with steam.  Sometimes we can rouse some energy, which might shift the mind into a brighter state, which might be like opening the bathroom door to allow steam to clear from the mirror. At other times there is very little we can do about a sluggish dull mind, and it may not be possible to direct the attention to a particular experience, such as the breath. Yet it is possible, more often than we might think, to actually recognize the mind is dull or foggy.  Mindfulness can clearly know dullness, much as the mirror perfectly reflects the steam. Does it feel like something is disturbing your meditation? Perhaps that very disturbance is asking for attention.~ Morning instructions from a recent retreat.

At the end of a recent residential retreat, someone asked me for a simple practice to engage with in daily life. I offered the practice of becoming familiar with what it is like to be aware and mindful. When we more readily recognize the sense of being mindful, the many moments when we are spontaneously mindful start to stand out to us. At times throughout the day, mindfulness happens effortlessly, often for just a moment. This occurs more than we realize, but we rarely notice it. Typically, there is a moment of knowing what is happening, and then we are pulled into thinking, planning, or reacting to it, or we are distracted by something unrelated. We see a snack and next discover we are eating it. A friend says something and we rush in with an opinion. We hear water dripping in the sink, so we shut the faucet off.  We notice a stain the linoleum, so we stoop to clean it. In all these examples an initial recognition is overshadowed by a reaction, or even simply by a natural response to the situation. We rarely appreciate the mindfulness required for this recognition. The Buddha understood the value of mindfulness. Mindfulness is not esoteric or mystical; it is simply an ordinary aspect of the way our minds work. The brilliance of the Buddha was to notice it, to highlight it, and to say: this quality is worth cultivating. As we become familiar with the experience of being aware, spontaneous moments of mindfulness become more apparent to us. We then have a chance to appreciate these effortless moments of recognition. By becoming familiar with the act of mindfulness itself, we can recognize that we are mindful more often than we realized. One of the best times to explore what it is like to be present, aware, mindful, is the moment when we recognize we have not been aware of what is happening. In sitting meditation, this moment happens over and over again. We intend to be present for our experience, and then notice we have been lost in thought. The moment we notice we have been lost in thought is a moment of mindfulness; the simple recognition that we are now aware is a way to appreciate the sense of being mindful. In our daily lives, we can also become aware of this moment of remembering. For example, we might be in the midst of reaching for a glass when mindfulness arises. We can then simply pick up the glass mindfully. The act of being aware can become at least as important as what we are doing or thinking. Noticing when we have just been lost in thought, whether in sitting practice or in daily life, is a valuable opportunity to appreciate what the noticing itself is like. We can explore the difference between the mind that was lost in thought and the mind that is present and aware. We can’t really know what it feels like to be lost while we are lost, but when mindfulness returns, there can be a lingering memory of what it felt like to be lost: confused, spinning in thoughts, hazy, or disconnected. When mindfulness returns there is a clarity and brightness to the mind, which is pretty obvious once we start recognizing it. Once we start seeing this clarity, it becomes ever more apparent to us. While we seldom notice awareness itself, it is not something foreign to us. Because it is a natural part of our experience, something within us is familiar with it. If you know you are reading this article, then awareness is already there in your experience. Don’t look too hard for it. Just explore how your experience feels when you know you are aware. Over time, the experience of being aware can become as clear as what we are aware of. As you become familiar with the experience of mindfulness, you will notice yourself coming back into mindfulness many, many times throughout the day. In the midst of an activity, you will suddenly recognize that you are aware of what is happening. You might be reaching for something, walking across the street, finishing a meal, or driving the car. Appreciating these moments creates the conditions for you to recognize these moments even more frequently. You don’t have to wait; you start now.