Mindfulness, Insight, Liberation

A study examining the meanings of terms like mindfulness (sati), bare attention, and appropriate attention (yoniso manasikara); and of their roles in a path truly capable of liberation.

So tonight I would like to kind of offer a conceptual framework a little bit to explore the way mindfulness works in the path and what we mean by this word, 'mindfulness,' and how it kind of functions to free us from suffering. I hope it's okay to give a kind of conceptual framework talk on the last night. I guess it is, because it's happening. [laughter] I was trying to remember exactly when it was, but about thirteen or fourteen years ago, I was living in America, and I was part of a class that met weekly at a local meditation centre. It was for experienced insight meditators who had been meditating for a number of years. One week, the teacher said -- it was just a little thing -- she said, "Okay, let's go round in a circle, and everyone say in less than a sentence, or a sentence or less, what mindfulness means to you." There must have been thirty-something people in the class, all experienced meditators. And what was interesting was that there were thirty different answers, or however many people there were different answers, experienced meditators. And some very beautiful answers about honouring the moment and accepting what is. Very beautiful.

What's interesting, even more than that, is if one looks within Asian Buddhism, within the sources themselves, you also find quite a huge range of what this word means, and what it's taken to imply, and its emphases, etc. -- even within particular schools. The Theravāda school, sort of South East Asian, big range. Even within strands of that Theravādan tradition, like the Thai Forest school, still a big range. So to me this is very interesting, these different interpretations of the word 'mindfulness' and what it means and what it does. We can say, okay, it's a wide and it's a rich word, and that's true. So we have to ask ourselves: am I narrowing it down? In my view, when I practise, am I narrowing down the meaning of the word 'mindfulness' for myself? Or is there, within this breadth and richness of what it means, am I emphasizing one particular strand of that or one particular side of that? To be aware of this. Remember, the Buddha's promise is that this path leads to liberation, a really radical liberation. And so we have to check: is my understanding of mindfulness, is it conducive to the fullness of that possibility?

So within the different spiritual traditions, Asian or Western now, one of the sort of equations that can be made, "mindfulness equals this," or one of the emphases, will be with bare attention. An equation or an emphasizing of the aspect, the approach of bare attention, the concept of bare attention as being what mindfulness is. Remember, we've talked a few times on the retreat so far about bare attention. It's this kind of endeavour to meet reality as it is, raw, naked, underneath the labels, beneath the veils of preconceptions, judgments, proliferation, etc., and meet the naked, basic reality of life, of the moment, of what is. It may not be that someone uses that phrase, bare attention; they might use 'being with what is,' or something like that, or 'staying at contact,' staying at the contact point without proliferating from it, etc., without adding anything to contact. So that's one particular sort of strand that gets emphasized. Another is acceptance, mindfulness as acceptance, or emphasizing that particular aspect. Now, it's true, it's very true to a degree, that both bare attention and acceptance bring with them a letting go. They bring with them a letting go. They bring with them a simplicity. They lead to simplicity, to a kind of unentangling, to a calming and to a clarity. That's true, definitely, absolutely. Both those -- whether they're mixed or one each, they bring that.

But only to a degree. There's a limit here. And something more needs to get explored. I hope I get to it. The notion of 'being with,' the notion of 'simple presence with,' can be, so to speak, very romantic for us. It can have a romantic appeal: "I'm being with what is. I'm being with life. I'm being with everything. I'm simply present." It has a pull on the heartstrings. Unfortunately, beautiful as that is, things are not quite so simple. That equation or that emphasis may hide or mask certain assumptions about the very nature of experience, the very nature of things and of reality. And those assumptions will block the path to a deeper liberation, will block the path, will kind of limit the degree of suffering that can be let go of. Now, it's interesting. In Pali -- remember, the suttas come from this Pali language -- in about a shelf-load of discourses of the Buddha, there's not one instance of him using the word 'bare attention.' There's no word in Pali, in the discourses, for bare attention. It turns out that if we really investigate, "What is this thing that I'm feeling like is a bare attention?", it seems so simple, but when I look at it, I realize that the actual act of attention -- it seems so simple: I'm listening, I'm seeing, whatever it is -- actually, it's anything but bare. It's actually being shaped, attention is being shaped, by views and by delusions. And these, when they're there, they increase suffering or at least perpetuate suffering.

So attention is being coloured, shaped (distorted, you could say -- that's not quite [right]; that gives a different message), in terms of its what? Its how and its why. What we pay attention to is being coloured by views and delusions, how we pay attention to it, and why we pay attention to it. The what, the how, and the why are being shaped. A lot of it is underneath the radar. A lot of this is very, very subtle. That subtlety eventually is something that we need to explore, and I'm going to touch on it at the end of the talk. It's not irrelevant. It's absolutely not irrelevant that this is the case, and it's also not abstract.

Rather than this word 'bare attention,' the Buddha uses a phrase called yoniso manasikāra, which is a mouthful. It has different translations. I'm going to come back to this concept. One is 'appropriate attention.' So when the attention is so-called 'appropriate,' it becomes a factor in the awakening. So he talks about mindfulness, and he talks about this yoniso manasikāra as two separate things that feed each other.

However -- and this came up earlier in a group today -- I think we still need, as practitioners, and certainly as we're developing practice in the early years, really, we need to fall in love with bare attention. We need to fall in love with the whole idea of being with what is and being open to what is and the idea of being simply present to life. I think it's absolutely beautiful, and it can compel us and grab the sort of heart's imagination. I remember also in my practice the sense of what it offered, and the simplicity it brought, and the opening it brought, and the sense of connection it brought. I think most people, that will be a period of years that they're falling in love with that, falling in love with the new texture it opens and the lightness it brings. I feel that's really, really important. But there are dangers here. And sometimes there's a danger even in a week retreat like this. We say a lot, and it can somehow sound as if it's almost too complicated, and in the end -- I don't think that's happened this week, I hope -- but in the end, it just sounds like, "Just be with everything." [laughter] And a person thinks, "Okay, I can get that."

[10:03] Sometimes what you might read or come across is something like, "A moment of mindfulness is a moment of awakening." It sounds beautiful, and everything sounds very accessible then, very simple. The Buddha never said that. He never said that. Again, it would be a mistake. It would be a mistake. One of my teachers said, "If you say something like that, what you're doing is taking a factor on the path to awakening and deciding to call that awakening itself." Which is like someone walking down the road, trying to get somewhere, and then deciding, "This is it," and lying down in the middle of the road. Then what happens? Ageing, illness, death come along, and they basically run over them. So the deeper reasons mindfulness is important, is really central as a factor, are not because it's putting us in touch with reality, so to speak. It's not because it's connecting us to life -- although it is, and that's beautiful. It's not because it puts us in touch with the bare actuality of things. It's not that it enables us to live fully. Those are not the more important reasons why mindfulness is so central. And actually, it turns out that all of those notions -- in touch with reality, connecting to life, being with the bare actuality of things, living fully -- they all involve a kind of, you could say they're based on a kind of fundamental delusion about the nature of reality.

Rather, mindfulness is in the service of the whole of the path, and the path involves a lot of different factors. So we talk about generosity, we talk about compassion, and active compassion -- actually doing. We talk about, as Christina [said] this morning, reflection, the thinking mind. Many, many factors make up the path, and mindfulness is one of those factors. And it's in the service of a whole path that leads somewhere -- it leads to understanding. And understanding means not intellectual; it means an understanding that brings awakening, it brings liberation.

So it's important, at a certain point, to kind of not glorify mindfulness too much. I'm speaking now, again, of the whole range of both Western and Eastern traditions, okay? It might be even outside of the Buddhist traditions -- might give it a different name, Presence or Awareness or whatever it is. But it's actually important not to over-glorify it. The Buddha talks about an eightfold path: Right View, Right Intention, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Speech, Right Effort (we talked about the other day), Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration. Eightfold path. Other factors too. But sometimes he makes that eightfold path -- he says it spirals around on itself, it goes around so that all the factors begin feeding and empowering each other and sort of whirling up this energy that moves towards liberation. Then it, so to speak, evolves or bursts out into a tenfold path. The two extra factors are Right Understanding and Right Release. In other words, you bring these elements, the eightfold elements, to a pitch where they're reinforcing each other, and it brings with it understanding, and that understanding brings a very deep release of the whole consciousness.

That's quite different from saying something like, "Really being with what is and being present so that my action can be spontaneous, or so that action will be spontaneous." Something quite different is being pointed to there. What does understanding mean? We've touched on this, Christina last night, and also in the talk I gave on Right Effort, and John has touched on it too. Understanding is manifold. One level is understanding what to cultivate, what to develop, which qualities will -- as we've been saying -- will be helpful, will lead to less suffering, will lead to peace; and what to abandon; and then how to cultivate and how to abandon. That's one aspect of understanding. But a whole other level of it, and the level that brings release, you could say, is understanding how it is that suffering arises. Understanding how it is that suffering arises so well that it doesn't arise. We say understanding the dependent arising of suffering. But even more than that, understanding the dependent arising, how it is that experience or our whole perception of reality arises. It's quite an in-depth, tall order. That's the understanding that brings release.

I don't know when it was -- about a year ago -- I saw this remarkable film about an amazing man. Some of you may have seen it. It's called Man on Wire. Has anyone seen that? So this guy, a French guy, was a tightrope walker and a sort of juggler, all this kind of stuff. And it was right in the seventies when the World Trade Center was built with the Twin Towers (obviously no longer standing). He saw a picture of that, and he said, "I'm going to put a tightrope between those two towers and do my acrobatic routine on the tightrope." This he did, and it was filmed. It was quite amazing. And then you see him practising. He's practising on a tightrope that's, you know, this high, four foot, six foot high. And you get a close-up of his face, and the level of mindfulness and concentration is extraordinary. I mean, it's so unshakeable and so rock-like in the focus. Is that moving towards liberation? No. Absolutely not. [laughter] Absolutely not. No question about it. And, you know, you had interviews with him and he was very charismatic and everything, but he was obviously a long way from liberation. [laughter] Actually he was a little way ... [laughter] Anyway.

Sometimes people say, "Oh, dancing is my path. I really get into the zone." Or a sport, "I get into the zone when I'm jogging or when I'm playing football or frisbee" or whatever it is. Again, in the zone, no thinking, completely present, no self, blah blah blah -- is it leading to liberation? No, it's not. Mindfulness has an agenda. It has an agenda. Mindfulness has an agenda. What's the agenda? The cultivation that we've been talking about -- the agenda is to cultivate what's helpful, and also to bring insight, and the insight brings liberation. When we talk about liberation, we can mean very deep sort of classical stages of realization -- the whole nature of reality changes. We can also talk about liberating this suffering that's happening right now. So in both those senses.

Being mindful does bring with it kind of organically a certain, as I said before, collectedness of mind, a certain settling, a certain letting go -- to a degree -- of the complication and the entanglement, a certain energy. It brings energy. It brings lightness. All of these are conducive to well-being. That's part of what we want. We want to gather that sense of well-being slowly in the path. It's a resource.

But it's also, in a way, mindfulness for instance is involved in mettā practice. You do the mettā practice and you think, "This is not mindfulness practice." It is. I'm paying attention. I'm bringing mindfulness there. I'm learning what works. And to learn any skill, as I think I said the other night, takes mindfulness. To learn anything takes mindfulness. So one aspect of the agenda of mindfulness is kind of developing our cultivation, learning how to cultivate. Interestingly, in this shelf-load of discourses of the Buddha, there are a few different versions of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, or at least references to the four foundations of mindfulness is a better way of saying it. And some of them, they go through the four foundations of mindfulness, and they go, "And this leads to this deep state of concentration." It's actually seen as a cultivation on the way to a state of concentration. That's not the version we usually hear, but that's there.

And if we take the version that we usually get, which is the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta -- and we talked the other morning about the first foundation, body -- if you look at all the different practices that the Buddha's kind of offering there, he's clearly offering a sense of using mindfulness of the body to develop a resource of calm and pleasure in the body. That's definitely there in the sutta in terms of the way he's approaching the breathing. So that's one whole part of the agenda of mindfulness.

[19:24] But also learning to see -- let's stay with the body -- learning to see the body in terms that bring a letting go in relationship to the body. As I said when I gave the body instructions, usually we don't let go much in relation to the body; there's a lot of suffering there. But what we're doing, if you follow the instructions in the sutta, is learning to see in terms that bring a letting go. It's a way of looking that's being honed, that's being practised. Learning to see in a way that brings letting go in relationship to the body, but also learning to use the body as a kind of frame of reference for letting go generally or in the mind. So that's there too. That's the function of mindfulness in the way of bringing insight and so liberation.

What's happening in these four foundations of mindfulness in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, one of the things -- actually, a lot is happening; it's quite dense, in a way. One of the things happening is the Buddha is kind of delineating categories to sort of -- again, it doesn't sound very glamorous, but ways of categorizing our experience (so this is body, and this is vedanā) in a way that we wouldn't usually do. We wouldn't usually categorize, for example, vedanā (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral). So learning to categorize experience in a certain way, and also learning ways of looking at experience. Certain categories of looking and certain ways of looking at experience. That is much, much more than saying, "Just be with experience alertly. Be with all experience as alertly as possible." It's much more. It's something much more kind of subtle and skilful going on there.

For example, in the mindfulness of the body section, one of the -- it's quite a long piece of it -- is, imagine that you're in a cremation ground or a cemetery. In those days, the bodies were left out to sort of rot in the open or be burned. Either go to a place like that or imagine as if you're seeing a corpse. So again, this 'as if' is an imagination; it's away from a 'being with what is.' It's actually using the imagination for the sake of letting go in relationship to the body, for the sake of transforming the relationship with the body. Imagining a corpse or seeing a corpse, seeing a skeleton -- we've got one here. Not depressing, not depressing. It doesn't have to be depressing. It can actually bring freedom with it. And if one has the courage to dwell with that practice, it brings a lot of joy, a lot of freedom, a lot of compassion. That's a way of looking, a way of considering the body. Or he talks about considering the impermanence, considering things from the lens of impermanence. Or, as we talked about, seeing the body as the body, seeing it not in terms of self. These are ways of looking.

Just to paraphrase: the agenda of mindfulness as cultivation, and ways of looking at experience that bring freedom (through looking in terms of certain categories that we otherwise wouldn't look in terms of, and certain ways of looking). The word sati, translated as mindfulness, is related to the word sarati. Sarati means 'remembering,' 'to remember.' And the implication from this is 'holding something in mind,' 'keeping something in mind.' That's one of the sort of strands of what mindfulness means, to hold something in mind, to keep it in mind. What am I keeping in mind? These categories of experience, this way I'm framing experience and these ways of looking at experience. So Satipaṭṭhāna -- paṭṭhāna can mean 'station' or 'stationing.' It's from the Sanskrit root sta. Sta can mean 'stand' (so 'foundation,' the usual translation). But it can also mean 'stay' or 'remain' or 'stop.' The implication is stationing one's mindfulness in one of these categories, in one of these ways of looking. Stationing and keeping it there. So, for example, stationing it on vedanā and looking at vedanā in a certain way, just honing in on that and honing in on that and honing in on that. The Buddha says when we do this, then "the fever subsides." It's a lovely phrase. The fever subsides.

So mindfulness has an agenda. Part of that agenda is bringing insight, which brings liberation, meaning less suffering. Part of that is the way that the eightfold path, the mindfulness kind of spirals around, all the factors spiral around so that mindfulness -- being the seventh factor of the eightfold path -- then moves into the other factors, comes back round to the first factor, which is Right View, and informs the view we have of things. So the agenda of mindfulness is wrapped up with view, with how we are seeing things.

Quite an important, I feel, practice point: when we're mindful, when there's something difficult going on and when we're mindful, I'm bringing awareness to it -- it might be a sadness; it might be an anger; it might be a pain in the body; it might be anything. Something difficult and I'm bringing the mindfulness to it. A part of the mindfulness actually needs to be monitoring, to kind of be noticing if the mindfulness is helping, if the being with is helping. So I'm not just with the object; I'm also noticing, is this helping? Is the way I'm being with helping? That's actually really, really important, and it's often overlooked.

If, in my being with, the problem feels like it's getting more, the dukkha, the suffering feels like it's increasing, then the way I'm with it is not helping. If it's just seeming to stay stuck, it's not helping. If, though, it seems like either the thing itself (the pain or the anger or the sadness, whatever), if it seems like it's getting a little bit less, or at least if it seems like, so to speak, the space around it is easing -- maybe the thing stays the same, but the space around it is easing -- or sometimes it just feels like it feels good to connect with it. Difficult as it is, it feels good to connect with it, this sadness, this grief, whatever it is. It feels good. Then you get a sense that it's helping and you're on the right track.

Sometimes people have the opposite notion of this whole practice, and it's almost as if the more suffering, the better, because it shows that you must be going really deep in terms of uncovering suffering. If we're with something difficult and it's getting more intense, the sense of, "Wow, I'm really getting somewhere now!" That's, again, in the different traditions and different streams of teaching, that can be quite common. But to me, this really, really needs looking at, because it's hiding a lot of assumptions.

It's like sometimes people say, "We need to sit in the fire. We need to burn everything out. You need to sit in there and feel the heat of it and give yourself to the fire. Sit in the centre of the fire. Sit in the centre of the suffering." And again, it sounds good, and if you're up for it, it has this pull to it in the heart. But it's a bit like finding someone and they are on fire, and you ask them, "What are you doing?" And they say, "I need to sit in this fire. I need to sit right in the middle of it." "Why?" "Because it's what's real and it's what's deeply real." And then you look at them and you see they're holding a little Bunsen burner or a lighter underneath their bum. [laughter] They're holding it there, and their jeans or skirt or whatever it is is on fire. Is it real, or is there something in the way that I'm looking at it that's actually propagating this, prolonging this, perpetuating this, instigating this?

We have to ask, what's with the mindfulness? What's with the mindfulness when I'm looking? Because mindfulness is never pure. It's a weird thing. We would wish that there is such a thing as pure mindfulness. Actually there isn't. Mindfulness is always with something. There's always something wrapped up with that attention, wrapped up with the looking. Consciously or not, whether we're conscious or not, with awareness or mindfulness there's always an agenda. There's always an agenda with any moment of awareness or mindfulness. So awareness, mindfulness, a moment of knowing anything -- there's always an agenda and there's always a way that it's forming its object. There's always a way that it's forming this sight, this sound. That's always there. It's always got an angle on what's going on. It's always kind of giving a context to what appears, to any experience. And then the question is, is this angle, is this context, is the way that I'm looking at it helpful or is it not helpful? So again, I can be bringing in the past. I could be bringing in the past and the future and not even realize I'm doing it. I could be identifying with something. Just to say "this is my pain," or not even to think it but just to feel that this is my pain, that's bringing a context and a colouring to the mindfulness. A lot of this gets very subtle. Just to say "this moment" is already a colouring and a context.

We're always looking somehow. We're always looking somehow or other. And unfortunately, usually we're not looking in a way that brings unentangling, brings unbinding, or brings a decrease in suffering. Or, even if we are, there is that, maybe the way we're looking, and often the way we're looking, is bringing it only to a limited degree. So it's not that I'm able to be with something, that I'm mindful of something, that I'm aware, that I know this or that is going on. It's not that I know what's going on, it's how, how is the mindfulness. To me, one way of kind of summing up insight meditation is learning ways of looking that bring freedom. To me, that's -- I mean, it's an oversimplification, but that's kind of what we're doing here. So I begin learning to look -- for instance, contemplating impermanence in my looking, in the very attention itself. It brings a letting go, if I can find a way of doing it. If I learn to look in terms of non-identification, not identifying with the body, with the emotions, with the thoughts, with the mind, with the awareness even, I practise doing that, they are ways of looking that bring freedom.

[31:43] So maybe to say mindfulness has an agenda, I don't know, maybe for some people that doesn't sound so romantic. But the mindfulness is embedded in Right View, which means it's embedded in the Four Noble Truths. I can't go into this too much, but the Four Noble Truths means there's suffering, there are causes for suffering, the end of suffering is possible, and then there's the way that that end is brought about or allowed.

What does it mean? Just to fill that out a bit, what does it mean to say that mindfulness is embedded in the Four Noble Truths? Here's this moment of suffering, here's this moment of tightness, of pain, of discontent, anguish in some way or other. The shorthand version of the Four Noble Truths means one's approaching that moment with a sense of possibility, an awareness of possibility that the suffering here can decrease, can get less or even be extinguished. So that's there if mindfulness is properly embedded in the right way of viewing, in Right View. That's there in the way of looking. There's a sense, "Okay, yes, there's suffering, and there's somehow a possibility that it can be allowed to drain away somewhat." So (A) a sense of possibility that the suffering here can decrease, (B) a prioritizing of that, a prioritizing of that possibility that suffering can decrease. In other words, we're looking with, again, the agenda of decreasing the suffering. We're prioritizing. That's the most important thing in the looking. The suffering can decrease, and that freedom can increase. In a way, we're searching for that.

Now, this doesn't have to be very heavy-handed and very pressured, but it's woven into what we could call Right Mindfulness, what the Buddha calls Right Mindfulness. So third one, (C) in that, part of the agenda of mindfulness in this embedding in the Four Noble Truths is the unhooking, the releasing of clinging (because it's clinging that brings suffering). How? Well, it could be just an energetic sense of clinging to something and one releases that. It could be that there's clinging in terms of thinking, belief, assumptions, views. It could be that there's clinging in terms of identification. Many forms of clinging. But again, the agenda is to, so to speak, ferret out the clinging and release it.

Earlier I said mindfulness is in the service of understanding. I mentioned this word, yoniso manasikāra, that the Buddha talked about. I want to go into this a little bit. Manasikāra means something like 'attention' or 'reflection,' 'pondering.' Something like that. It's a doing of the mind. Yoni actually has a few different meanings. One meaning is 'womb' or 'origin' or 'place of birth.' Another meaning is 'thoroughness.' Another meaning is 'insight' or 'knowledge.' And another meaning is 'with a purpose.' So it's actually quite a broad range of meanings there. In a way, they're all implicit in the full meaning of what this phrase, yoniso manasikāra, means, that the Buddha placed so much emphasis on. Often you get different translations. A few of the translations are: appropriate attention, wise reflection, the proper approach, systematic attention, attention or reflection by way of source, or attention/reflection by way of matrix (which sounds like a big mouthful; actually it really points to something that's very interesting).

Of this yoniso manasikāra, the Buddha said, "With regard to internal factors, I do not envisage any other single factor so helpful as appropriate attention [yoniso manasikāra, attention by way of matrix or origin] for a practitioner who is a learner, who has not attained the goal but remains intent on the unexcelled security from bondage."^[1] Most important internal factor.

Inappropriate attention -- let's turn this around -- inappropriate attention is not viewing experience in terms of those Four Noble Truths, which is the habitual human way, the sort of conditioned way of looking at experience. So when we say looking in terms of the Four Noble Truths, that's Right View, that doesn't mean a kind of intellectual knowledge about the Four Noble Truths: "Oh, yes, I know the Four Noble Truths. They're this, this, this, this." It's more like looking in terms of, as I explained before. It's a way of looking itself, looking, seeing in terms of suffering and the release of suffering and that possibility, and prioritizing that possibility, and finding it in the looking.

So it's what we're looking for in the moment. It's what we're looking for. And that way of looking is compassionate and wise and healing. We're focused, in a way, on suffering and its conditions, but we're also focused, going back to something we said earlier and we've said many times on this retreat, on the cultivating of what brings happiness, what brings peace, what brings well-being. Now, as I said, craving and clinging are implicated in suffering. Where there's suffering, there's craving and clinging. Any time there's suffering, there's craving and clinging. So the interest is to ferret out that craving and abandon it. That's the agenda of mindfulness. We're actually wanting to find how is it that I'm craving, where is it that I'm craving, in what form, in what manner, find it, and is it possible, how might it be possible to release/abandon that craving? As I said, it might be a thought, it might be an intention, it might be an identification, it might be in view, and it gets incredibly subtle as practice deepens, incredibly subtle.

Let's jump a whole level now. Okay? Jump a whole other level. It's not just suffering -- I said this briefly before -- it's not just suffering that this yoniso manasikāra is looking into, attention by way of matrix, by way of origin, by way of womb. It's not just suffering. It's the whole of experience, the whole of, we could say, perception. So getting interested in suffering, what I find is a lot of it is being held in place. A lot of my suffering in life is being held in place by views, by ways of looking, by beliefs, by assumptions. A big portion of it is being held in place by that. As I said, one learns to practise different views, different ways of looking -- so impermanence, or not-self, or disidentifying in the way of looking. And they're lenses through which we look at experience. One looks at experience, learns to look at experience this way. It's a practice. It really is a practice. We develop this slowly, over time, gradually. And what that does is it drains the craving out of experience. When I look at my body, when I feel my body sensations, my vedanā, my emotions, my thoughts through the lens of non-identification, I practise that, the craving automatically goes out. The craving goes out and the suffering goes out. So I'm comprehending suffering, and through that understanding, that comprehension, I'm abandoning it.

[40:00] However, as I said, it goes even deeper than this, even to a whole other level in terms of experience. I could, we could, you could try to stay at contact. Say there's a sight, and I'm aware there's proliferation or reactivity. I could try and stay at contact: sight, sound, body, whatever it is. Try and stay at contact with as little as possible proliferation, as little as possible sort of being pulled by the reactions, say, to vedanā (unpleasant, pleasant, neutral that Christina spoke about one morning). And with as little as possible, kind of leaving my history out of it -- I don't need to drag my mother and my upbringing and my whatever-it-is, I don't need to use the word "again." I can do that as much as possible. I can try to stay at contact, and I can practise that. And at first -- for quite a while, probably -- it will seem like I can do that. It will seem like I'm able to do that, kind of stay with contact.

What happens with that is we realize, oh, we've been putting all these veils, this veil of complication and preconception and everything over experience. It's almost as if experience becomes more vivid, more bright, more real. Beautiful, beautiful. The veils are removed. This moment becomes more bright, more vivid, more real. But then, if I keep trying to do that, it reveals itself as not being so simple. I will notice, if I'm pursuing this, trying to stay with what is (so to speak), trying to stay with contact, I will actually see that despite having felt like I could find it, I actually cannot find it. I cannot find it. I cannot find a basic contact with the world. I cannot find a basic 'what is' or a basic sound or a basic sight. It seems like I can at first. If I go into it more deeply, I will not be able to find that. I will not be able to find a basic reality. I will not be able to find a moment. I look for the moment -- where is it? I can't find it. You cannot find the moment. You cannot find a basic reality.

If I've been practising in a way, as I say, the mindfulness framed in terms of the Four Noble Truths and moving in a way of finding the craving and letting go, and just letting go, and I'm developing that over time, gradually, I'm developing my ability, my skill, my art of letting go, the whole thing just gets more and more subtle (over time, not linearly). More and more subtle. So I'm able to let go at more and more subtle levels. What I find if I follow that -- instead of a basic reality, a basic moment, this moment in its vividness and its is-ness, in its 'what is'-ness, presenting itself and being clear, I find the exact opposite. The exact opposite: that the moment, the experience, the so-called basic reality begins to actually dissolve and fade. Now, it's not that we're trying to get rid of our experience or trying to stay in a state where nothing happens; it's not that at all. Perception will always come back. To whatever degree it has faded, it's always going to come back. So it's not that we're trying to get rid of it. But something has gone on there. If I've been following this mindfulness, appropriately wrapped up with yoniso manasikāra and wrapped up in the Four Noble Truths, wrapped up with that way of looking that I'm letting go of craving of different kinds, something happens. Experience fades. It doesn't reveal itself as an is-ness, as a purity of "this is the reality," "this is the moment," "this is the moment of contact." The opposite happens. And it's so easy to overlook the significance of that, so easy. We could say it fades because things are impermanent. But it's actually not fading because it's impermanent. It's fading for a deeper reason.

So I heard the other day -- I don't know if it's true, this person that I heard -- that Aristotle apparently defined intelligence as the ability to see connections. Sounds pretty good. The ability to see connections. This, I think, is actually really crucial in our Dharma exploration, and when we use this word 'investigation,' that's really where it ends up going, the ability to see connections. And that seeing, ability to see connections, is a skill, is an ability that we can develop. So if I make a change in something, in some element of my inner experience, in the way that I'm looking at something, and I keep noticing when I make that change in the way I'm looking this changes, too, and every time I make this change in looking this changes -- well, a conclusion is to be drawn there. It implies something. It implies, in relation to what we've just been talking about, that the very way of looking, the very ways of looking themselves build the reality. They build our reality. It's not just that they colour a reality that kind of exists independently. They actually build our reality. More than they shape it a little bit, more than they just colour it, they actually build it.

As I said, some of this is extremely subtle when you get into the real sort of depth and subtlety of this. But it's a continuum of insight. So same question -- I'm just following the same question of the Four Noble Truths, more and more subtle, right from early practice all the way through. Nothing different is happening, in a way. The Buddha said, "Perceptions are fabricated." Perceptions are fabricated. It's relatively easy to see that when you've just been through a big papañca storm, and you've just made this whole big story about some scenario, and you see you've coloured the whole world a certain way and everyone's -- you've come into Gaia House and it's actually a cult full of zombies walking around slowly or whatever. And then afterwards, you calm down a little bit more, and it's fine. You realize, "I was colouring the perception a certain way." That's relatively easy to see. But actually what the Buddha is saying is all perception, all perception is fabricated. Sometimes people say, "Do you want your reality with or without additives?" [laughter] It's a nice thought, but again, it goes back to this thing -- it assumes that there's a way that the mind can know, there is a reality without additives. There is no such thing as a pure mindfulness.

So why is it that even when a person kind of reaches that -- following this theme, same theme, Four Noble Truths, yoniso manasikāra wrapped up with the mindfulness, following that -- may even reach this -- this kind of happens to them in practice; they begin to sense, and they often overlook it or they don't see its significance. Very common, very common it's overlooked. Why? It's because delusion, which is the fundamental problem in all of this -- the Buddha says avijjā, delusion -- delusion is a belief, a very deep-rooted belief in the kind of independent, fundamental reality of things, that things have an independent existence: this is a table, this is a talk, this is a me, this is a you, this is a moment. That sense of -- not intellectual -- ingrained belief in the independent reality of things, that's what the Buddha calls delusion, and that is the fundamental problem. Sometimes we can say, "Yes, I see that things arise dependent on conditions. I see that there were conditions that, in the past, gave rise to this. But still, in the moment, it's what it is. It's what it is." It hasn't quite gone deep enough. "It's what it is right now" hasn't quite got deep enough.

When that avijjā is there, when that belief in the sort of independent reality of things is there, perception will continuously be manufactured, fabricated in a way, shaped in a way that we're perceiving inner and outer, self and world, self and other, events (both inner events and outer events), and processes in time. It will continually fabricate perceptions that way. When that belief is there, the belief itself will continuously spin those kind of perceptions, and then they become unquestioned: that's the world we live in and six billion people agree on it. Unless we learn, with practice, to not support those perceptions with the views that support them, and see through that process, through taking away the supports in the view, that they're built, that they're fabricated.

So if my mindfulness is just a passive watching, I'm just watching, not interfering, just watching, it may not be that I understand or that I get to shake up and remove all the supports that are holding this seeming reality in place, unless I actually start tinkering with it a little bit and pulling away the supports. Like a house of cards, I pull away this card, I pull away this card, and I see what happens. So passive mindfulness, just being, just watching, it's beautiful but it may not reveal that totality of the depth of the insight. The Buddha said -- what do I need to do to gain full awakening? He said, "You have to contemplate in such a way," for example with relationship to vedanā. Let's talk about vedanā again. "You have to know such is vedanā. This is vedanā. Such is its origination, and such is its disappearance."^[2] Oftentimes we can hear that and think, "Oh, he's pointing to impermanence -- 'such is its origination, such is its disappearance.'" It's not, again, that it disappears; it's how it appears and how it disappears. It's this dependent arising, dependent on the mind fabricating it, the way of looking. So something at a whole different level.

I can approach this a few different ways. If I look for the basic reality of things, if I look to find the essence of things, if I look to find this moment, I will find that things are unfindable. Or I can be taking away these supports I was talking about -- taking away the craving, taking away the identification, unbuilding, so to speak, and I will see the fabricated nature of any and all so-called reality, any and all so-called reality. I will see that it's fabricated. Another way of going about it is actually seeing that the way things seem to exist as if they had an independent existence, inner or outer things, that's actually a logical impossibility. I'm not going to go into it. Christina was talking this morning about using the reflective mind very well, that we're not trying to not think in this practice. One of the, again, in the later Buddhism, one of the things that happened is Nāgārjuna and other people came with a very, very rigorous, logical disproof of the then-prevalent view in Buddhism and in the Dharma that things did have an independent existence. He just kind of -- amazingly brilliant logic, just tore it all to pieces. He said things cannot exist, inner things, outer things, they cannot exist in that way. They're unfindable, they're fabricated, they lack an independent existence.

There is no basic, independent reality of anything, of inner things or outer things. When I believe that there is, I suffer through that belief because I'm struggling in a world of inner and outer things which seem to be real. As long as that belief is there, there will be a level of suffering there. There's a basis for suffering. Now, hearing that -- things are unfindable, things are fabricated, things are, in Dharma language we say 'empty,' they're empty, or it's impossible for them to have an independent existence -- when you hear that, it could be, and I know it often is, a person finds this unfindability frustrating. Or it reeks of nihilism, it reeks of saying nothing exists, it's all an illusion. Or it's frightening. Or all of these. It's frightening, the whole notion -- it's like, "Hold on, hold on, hold on." Or it's confusing and we're left in a kind of perplexity. Or it's disappointing -- one feels like, "Oh. Where does that leave everything?" Or one's merely interested in it as a kind of philosophical abstraction. It may pass through those stages. It may be frightening at first. It may be frustrating at first. It may be confusing at first. It may feel a little bit nihilistic at first. It may be disappointing. But that's not the point of this. It's absolutely not the point of it. Absolutely not. None of those places are arrival points at all. It might have to move through them to bring the deepest freedom that the Buddha was talking about, the deepest level of freedom, and all the compassion and the beauty that flows out of that.

The other day I was in Totnes and I got into a conversation with someone, just a brief conversation. They asked what I did and I said I teach meditation and da-da-da. Actually they'd done an MBCT course, but now they were into this thing -- I don't know if you've heard of it, I don't know what it's called; it's like you put these headphones on and they send certain signals to the brain, and the mind ends up in a really quite calm state, etc. She said, "Do you want to try it?" [laughs] It sounds nice and everything. It's not enough. It wouldn't be enough because it doesn't involve all this. There's no way that it would involve all this. Calmness is not enough. Catharsis, not enough. We might feel I'm just releasing all this old stuff -- not enough. Being with, not enough. Acceptance, bare attention, not enough. But we can talk about modes of working or modes of emphasis. For example, going back right to the beginning, bare attention is extremely useful to a degree. Extremely useful and very beautiful to a degree as a concept and as something we can use. But it's not the ultimate reality and it masks actually the ultimate reality of things. It is more corroborating, you could say, with the sort of root and fundamental delusion. That's the very thing that the Buddha wanted to overturn.

So where to land with this? This came up in a group earlier today. I said this already, but I want to repeat it: if one feels like one is falling in love with the simplicity of bare attention and the simplicity of acceptance and the beauty that that brings, stay there. No need to hurry on. One needs to let that go deep and learn that and let it transform the being. But there are other aspects, too, to this. And it might be for some people also that it's actually time to shake things up a bit.

Okay. So let's sit for a little bit together.