Q&AInsight Meditation Society Retreat29 Apr 2012
Q&A group A 1 — Awareness Instead of Focusing, and Appreciating the Awareness
Sayadaw U Tejaniya · 1 hr 44 min
Original audio: Burmese · English interpretation
0:00−1:44:58
Uses compressed audio.
AI-written summary
The group interview clarifies the difference between focusing and open awareness, advising against labeling objects. The teacher explains that difficult emotions are natural objects to be known with right view. Meditators are encouraged to sustain light, continuous awareness to allow wisdom to cultivate naturally.
Topics
Talks in this retreat
Insight Meditation Society Retreat · 28 talks
- 154 minDhamma everywhere — Three Yogi Jobs and Right View in Daily Practice28 Apr 2012
- Viewing21 hr 45 minQ&A group A 1 — Awareness Instead of Focusing, and Appreciating the Awareness29 Apr 2012
- 31 hr 58 minQ&A group B 1 — Observing the Thinking Process and Difficult Emotions29 Apr 2012
- 41 hr 53 minQ&A group C 1 — Natural Process, Delusion and Open Awareness29 Apr 2012
- 546 minQ&A Monday morning — Not Focusing Too Much, Seeing Versus Looking, and Being Aware of Thinking30 Apr 2012
- 61 hr 56 minQ&A group D 1 — Working with Pain, Mental Feelings and Asking Questions30 Apr 2012
- 71 hr 47 minQ&A group E 1 — Seeing Everything as an Object and the Role of Wisdom30 Apr 2012
- 81 hr 47 minQ&A group F 1 — Removing Greed from Effort and Awareness1 May 2012
- 91 hr 48 minGroup A 2 — Functions of Mind and Dealing with Defilements2 May 2012
- 101 hr 55 minGroup D 2 — Investigating Strong Objects, Torpor, and Thinking Mind3 May 2012
Transcript
English
It's— It's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Why don't we start? Who are the 8 who will speak this session?
English
Is it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7? 7? How are we? This session number 5. Or, oh, your name is Cornell. 7. Yeah. 7, right. Okay. So there's 17 people, so there should be more than 7. 8. 8. Who's—
English
Hold them up again. There's still actually. Oh, 1, 2, 3— There's only 1 actually. 9.
English
Oh, right. We're still getting—
English
9 and 8, that's 17. So we'll just go through the 9 first, and then once they're done, and if we have time—if we have time, then the same people can speak again or ask again, and the others can also do the same. Okay?
English
So from these 9, somebody please begin. So we'll do it overall, yeah. Yes.
English
In your book, there's frequent mention to not, not focus, not focusing, and that seems to go in opposite of some things we've been taught. It's even difficult to conceive of meditation without focusing.
English
Could you elaborate on that? Absolutely.
English
Was it— It is. Sound table. So the primary, the primary thing he wants, or what we're looking for in the practice, is really awareness.
English
And awareness itself requires no focusing. Is the power to know an object, any object, at whatever level you are aware of it. And the idea is to grow the power of the awareness naturally, so that that awareness becomes able to know many things, and also able to know very quickly, very fluidly.
English
If you focus on one thing. When you—when the mind focuses on one thing, then it naturally, it shuts out other experiences in the moment of focusing. It doesn't try to know them, and it cannot know them, because it's focused on one thing.
English
So we're trying to Yeah. So it's, it sort of ignores the rest of experience. Yeah. And— And you don't want to. You don't want to. You want to know experience. You don't want to ignore it. Yes.
English
And a very common experience that people talk about is that when they just try to be aware and they're not focusing, it feels like their mind is more scattered.
English
It feels like you know so many things, but you can't really—you don't really know what you know. You can't, because you're not grasping onto anything. He says, "It doesn't mean that you're not aware. In fact, it shows that you're aware of many things.
English
In our past practice, and in myself as well, we've been taught that if we know too many things, it means the mind is distracted. It's, it's, yeah, it's distracted or scattered.
English
So we reject this notion that if the mind knows many things, it's okay. We think that to meditate, the mind must know one thing, or it must two. It must be all over the place. Yeah, that's our— focus . Yeah. . Attachment .
English
Yeah. He says, "What tends to happen when we allow the mind to focus on one object is, it
English
first, first it will settle down, and it will get quite attached, quite, you know, it will start sticking to the object," which, yes, is what we want. . At that time. But we can become very attached to the object. It's like without the object, we can't function.
English
And that then some tension—it can create tension, because we don't have it or. focus . Yeah. If we focus too much on one. So I'm attached to focusing on the breath. I can't even help it. attachment sheet .
English
English
So Sayadaw suggests that you don't resist the mind's natural tendency to go to the object that it's used to, which is for you the Anapana. So allow yourself to be with the Anapana, but gently also allow yourself.
English
To acknowledge other objects that come up while you are on your Anapana. So I mean, I don't know if it's inconceivable that you might be on Anapana one whole hour and not know anything else at all.
English
But if you find that that's your experience, he suggests that you ask yourself a question like, "What else might I be aware of?" So you're on Anapana, and there's this question, "What else might I be aware of?" Awareness When awareness—yeah, awareness rather than concentration—when awareness gets stronger, it does have this ability to feel calmly aware of 2, 3, several objects, and feel completely in control, because it knows that it is aware.
English
. It's like the example he gave in the Dhamma. He says, "If you, you know, if you were set, if you were told to put your hands together and feel the touching sensation, then what we do is just zoom into that.
English
But if we were just asked to, you know, have our hands together, then what is this experience? You might know a lot more about what this experience is." So in the same way, it's, you know, trying not to zoom into just one part of the experience. . Awareness . Awareness is always there. Whether you're on one or the whole experience, you know, awareness is always there.
English
. Yeah.. In Vipassanā, you know, the awareness does
English
interact. It does allow itself to be available to all and for many varied objects. The eventual road that he's looking at is for the awareness to become so powerful that the awareness becomes the screen that we are aware of.
English
And then all—because all sense doors are
English
perceived by awareness, or known by awareness, that you don't have to go out to the sense objects to know them. If you look at the screen of awareness, then everything else is just known in there.
English
Hồ Tiết.
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Sayadaw U Tejaniya began his Buddhist training as a young teenager in Burma under the late Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw (1913–2002). After a career in business and life as a householder, he has become a permanent monk since 1996.…