This short talk was originally give as part of the virtual morning meditation that has happened on Zoom every morning on since March 2020.

It also also part of the “Core Teachings” series, featuring 10 talks that capture how I approach Buddhist & meditative practice, inspired largely by my training with Sayadaw U Tejaniya, as well as many years steeped in the greater Buddhist tradition.

 

 

Talk transcript

Note: the following transcript was generated by AI, including the bold text.  Please excuse the typos.

Good morning everyone. Welcome here. It’s nice to gather with you today. So I wanted to continue this week with just a little bit of an overview of the teachings. And while I’ve practiced in a number of modalities and with various teachers the like core offerings here are rooted in the teachings I learned from Sida Utania and I think part of that is he wasn’t so fixed on a particular way of doing things and was more interested in teaching the fundamentals of how things work how meditation works how the mind works it was very much just observe like discover what’s what’s this like?

And so all of these teachings really refer back to that basic framework he laid out. And one question he would ask quite often is do you know what is awareness? In some ways it’s a very simple question. But it’s very easy also to complicate it and try to kind of overthink it, make it really nuanced. And so what I find to be the easiest way to get a feel for this is the moment you realize you were just lost in thought and now you’re back. What is the difference between those two moments? And when you really experience that and you really start to study that like what is that difference you see there is this little spark of lucidity when you return and so Bhikkhu Bohdi I like he translates this word sati not as mindfulness or awareness or presence but as lucid awareness it’s like that spark of lucidity.

But then sometimes I say that And people think well wait a minute I don’t know is my mind lucid you know I’m present but can it cross that threshold and what would say is like too much you’re overthinking it keep it simple this awareness it’s it’s so simple just this basic capacity to know what’s happening as it’s happening here we are the moment is happening the body is happening doubting is happening. And I’m using these words, but it’s it’s beneath the words. When you go outside on a sunny day, you don’t need to say to yourself, “Sunny day is happening.” You just you just know. It’s kind of like that with awareness. So, right now, you’re listening to me talk a little bit. Are you aware? You just relax into, drop into that knowing, that presence.

One very powerful practice I’ve spent quite a lot of time doing is just tracking that awareness across the day. Notice how it comes and goes, often unprompted at random times. I wanted to share I guess we could say a little model of four different modes of awareness.

One mode is when you focus on an object and you ignore everything else. So you have say the breath or a mantra and you focus in and especially when the concentration gets quite strong there can be an almost willful absorbing into the object. and ignoring the periphery. And so that’s one mode.

Another mode is similarly you have an object like the breath, a mantra, whatever, but you just have light awareness. The breath is there, but so is the awareness. So is the periphery. There’s no movement to absorb, to ignore. And so it’s all there. The whole picture is there. Just with this light center point.

A third mode is what’s sometimes called choiceless awareness or open monitoring. It’s where you allow the awareness to shift from one object to another, hanging out with the sounds, hanging out with the knee sensations, hanging out with vision. and then the chest, the sounds. And in that mode, it’s not really you who is deciding to shift, but what you’ll notice is that attention just moves all around all by itself. And so you just follow that. And so that’s another mode.

And a third or a fourth mode we could call natural awareness or just abiding in awareness. ness. It’s just arresting in this receptivity. Just this capacity to totally relax into the moment and just to stay with the lucidity. Nothing needed to do. Just relax.

And so the general thrust of U Tejaniya’s teachings is he’s more interested in the mind that’s aware than in the objects that are being observed. And what that means is let’s say you’re focusing on the breath or a body scan or sound. See, yeah, the objects are there. That’s fine. You you don’t they’re not bad. You don’t get rid of them. But he said more interesting, more worthy of study is keep checking on the awareness. Is there awareness? Is there not? Check on the the attitude of the mind. Is the mind relating to the object with aversion, with craving, with boredom? What is the the view the mind is holding towards the object?

This is a bad object. I should be just abiding in awareness. That’s the superior method. This, you know, this mantra here, this is a lesser method. or this sleepy, groggy, heavy state. This is this is no good. I need to get to that peaceful, calm, sublime state. That’s really good meditation. So he said, “Be aware. Just really start to attune to the views the mind are holding”. And I could go on at length about this, but just on a simple point, more interested in the mind than in the objects.

So that first mode where you focus on an object and ignore everything else. Um he’d say not that it’s like that’s a it’s a different practice. If you want to do the jhanas and the absorptions, you can do that. It’s a tool. But he was much more teaching insight or vipassana practice. And you know by extension that’s largely what I’ve trained in and what I share a mode that really carries over quite well to our daily life. And in that the one of the primary ideas of this style of practice is awareness all the time. An awareness that can hold everything. An awareness that isn’t dependent on sitting still with your eyes closed. 

I sometimes think of this practice. You could describe it as a flexible awareness or adaptable awareness. Not putting a great kind of hierarchy on well there’s this light awareness on an object. There’s the choiceless awareness and there’s the natural awareness. It’s not so much turning one into the better one. It’s more about learning how to be adaptable. I think of it like riding a bicycle. Sometimes you need to kick it into high gear. Wow, this I need to pedal pretty hard here. Sometimes you’re cruising, you kick it into low gear. You don’t really need to do much at all. And so he say right effort is essentially applying just the amount of effort needed to be aware.

And sometimes working with an object focusing you know and sometimes might be for a minute for a year for a decade you know but not usually continuously through say sometimes yeah that’s really helpful work with an object maybe even add some pegs to it some counting or noting or an in story or whatever it is. I went through a phase with him. I was I was just working with all these different anchors like, “Oh, now I’m with hearing. Now I’m observing the gaps in thought. Now I’m observing changing objects. Now I’m just working with seeing and looking”. And he pretty much always just said, “Oh, this is good. Interest is good. Keep going.” There was never this, “Ah, you shouldn’t do that. Do this instead. Yeah. Okay. You’re being aware. Object’s not important”.

And so for some people, just having an anchor kind of a relationship with say the breath works really well. For some people, allowing their attention to move around works really well. It’s just being aware that is the priority. But what we see is that when we extend this beyond sitting, if you only know how to be aware of the breath, your practice is going to fall apart. start really quickly when you go into a conversation or when you’re eating or whenever you’re doing some daily activity. 

So, we want to learn how to be adaptable. Okay, it’s one thing to be aware sitting still with eyes closed. How do I do this in a conversation? How do I do this when doing my work, when going on a walk? And so, we just bring a lot of interest. Although So at the same time, so this is I would say this adaptable awareness tear down the wall of formal practice and daily life just what is the appropriate amount of effort to be aware right now.

He he would also give people a little nudge like if it’s accessible to do this just abiding in awareness say do that because it does open up a little bit more bandwidth for inquiry. to just see the connections of things. It kind of shows you a little bit more deeply just how much you can be aware in any given moment. You don’t need a particular focus, a particular method. You can just be. 

And maybe what’s the the most salient reason is the more you you realize that you don’t actually have to do anything like that meditation isn’t this big project and undertaking, you start to discover some sort of of peacefulness and simplicity that comes from doing less, controlling less, fabricating less, fixing less. It’s like, oh, I don’t actually need to fix this shame, this despair, these chaotic thoughts, this sleepiness. Like, none of this is actually a problem. When I can orient to that, more restful natural mode and just be here now in a simple way.

Some of these teachings really set in a that stuff’s not me. It’s not mine. I don’t need to do anything with it. It’s just there. Just see it. Just notice it. And there is a way that when we can just abide that really starts to come in. Reminds me of one time I was I was with him and my awareness had started to get really quite strong felt like I had crossed some of threshold and I went to him reported oh yeah awareness very strong okay what do I do now what’s next and he kind of gave me this funny look and he said why do you always need to do something just be aware enough okay go practice and you know what he’s pointing to is we turn meditation we turn our life into this project of like okay what do I fix now next? What do I achieve next? And it’s like it’s like the opposite. It’s an undoing. Like, oh, can you just learn to be here now in a simple way? Just settle into your being. You don’t need to fix all your emotional problems. That’s it’s fine. No one’s perfect.

So anyhow, I’m going to wrap up here. But this morning, let us just kind of relax and be aware in whatever way is most most conducive to making that happen. Tear down some of this hierarchy. Even in spite of what I just said, it’s it’s really the most important thing is what actually helps me be aware. And when you start to play with that, you know, if you if you find you can let go of some effort, you know, do that. But the awareness is the most important. The the method is is secondary. So, I’ll see you in a bit.