So this morning I want to talk a little about the practice that we do together.
What we're doing is establishing awareness.
We're abiding in it together in our sitting practice.
And we're not doing awareness,
You know,
Nowhere in the Buddhist teaching does the Buddhist say,
Do awareness.
Awareness isn't a verb,
Something that we actively do.
But it's something that we establish or kind of allow for.
Something that we live in,
Abide in,
This idea of abiding in something,
Knowing it's there in a very simple way.
And sometimes with awareness there's a kind of effort,
But it's effortless as well.
You know,
If you're just minding your own business and suddenly there's a loud bird whistling,
Like the first hearing of that bird appears without any effort on your part.
Or if I was sitting outside and I felt the coldness go through my body,
That cold feeling is effortless.
It appears,
The knowing of it,
It's just there.
It called attention to itself and my mind knew it.
Effortless effort.
So we're beginning to appreciate as practice deepens,
As it continues and matures,
That there will be times when we can tune into this effortless quality of attention.
It might take some effort to let go enough to allow that to be there.
But with time it becomes the backdrop or the foundation.
Awareness becomes the support for how we go through our lives.
This is because there's a constant awareness of present moment experience as we live it.
We're not getting lost in our thoughts or conversations that we've had or the work that we're doing.
We can do everything wholeheartedly,
But there's a sense,
Kind of a knowing that's almost effortless,
Like,
Oh,
I'm here.
This is where I am.
This is where I'm present.
And why this is useful as we develop awareness is that it's an awareness that automatically,
That does not automatically come with attachment,
With any clinging or with any ill will or aversion.
Things are just allowed to be there without us being for them or against them.
We don't have to accept them.
We don't have to condone them.
We don't even have to criticize them.
Awareness in and of itself isn't involved in being for or against anything.
It's not involved with needing to accept or reject.
It's just there with the experience.
So practicing acceptance is sort of an extra step,
Allowing things to appear in the mind effortlessly might be thought of as kind of an acceptance practice,
But there's no acceptance being done.
It's just that things are arising in our awareness and here we are.
So the first four steps of the Satipa Tana,
The mindfulness instruction,
Is to really experience and know your breathing and to recognize the experience of breathing.
And at first this takes a little bit of effort and then to know and recognize the whole body,
The sensations,
The mind.
That's how it begins.
And this is what we can come back to.
You know,
As we talk about awareness,
You can always go back to just following the breath.
It leads to deep awareness.
Awareness kind of involves a clarity.
Being able to be in this present moment.
And I think that to be in the present moment,
It's often associated,
This ability to be centered in the moment,
Is associated with concentration and focus.
But what often happens with concentration for people is there's this assumption that it's kind of like this laser focus,
A tightening that happens.
But the way that I understand it,
It's more like undistractedness in the present moment.
It's more of a gathering,
Gathering together to be aware here and now without distractions.
One of the qualities that can happen as we get some sense of the real naturalness of awareness,
The effortlessness of awareness,
Is that it's not something that we do.
It's just something that we allow for.
Something that we sort of stay in,
Abide in.
It's like staying in the current of a river and you float down the river.
So floating down the river,
You can stay in the current.
But if it feels like or looks like you're going to veer off into an eddy or onto the side of the river,
You make kind of a small adjustment.
You can adjust a little bit to come back to the current.
And then the river just carries you along.
And that effort at some point is not an effort to be aware,
But an effort to avoid being distracted and being caught in something.
Then the effort is about coming back to be here.
And at some point there starts to be a recognition of that in awareness.
Come back to the current.
And there's a kind of freedom to that.
One of the qualities of awareness is there's an absence of attachment,
Of clinging to fear or anger,
Even desires.
Even healthy desires.
We can still have them.
All these things still exist.
But we start to live in awareness.
We're not taking up residency in our anger or our fear.
We're abiding in the simplicity of awareness.
Allowing for it.
That's what we're doing here.
So we'll continue to explore this a bit more.
Thank you for your kind attention this morning.
