From Suffering to Peace

One of the perennial mysteries of human experience is the phenomenon of consciousness. Neuroscience is still trying to understand what the mind or consciousness really is, but the predominant scientific view is that awareness is a product of the brain, perhaps arising out of its complex matrix of billions of neurons. This materialistic premise says that without organic life, no sentience would exist. From the scientific perspective, since there has been little verifiable evidence that consciousness exists separate from the body, to posit otherwise is simply speculation.

In contrast, mystical traditions for millennia have postulated that mind or consciousness is not confined by physical matter, nor is it located in the brain or body. Some perspectives propose that consciousness itself animates and gives birth to the human body, the mind, and even life itself. One only has to be present at the death of someone to intuit this perspective. When a person dies, it is clear that the “consciousness” or “presence” — or whatever we choose to call this awareness — that previously animated the body has ceased, and only a lifeless corpse remains.

How do we reconcile the differing perspectives of science and mystics? Mindfulness practice is a phenomenological methodology. That means we look to our own empirical experience to verify what we know to be true. Rather than look to science or religious philosophy to understand the nature of awareness, we instead turn our attention to our own awareness to learn.

What exactly is awareness? This is a challenging question. Its very nature eludes being confined by definitions. However, we can come to know it by inference, by what it does, what it reveals, and how it functions. By observing how awareness works, we can shift our lens from looking for a thing to understanding awareness as a process.

Awareness is what allows human beings to know and observe. It is what observes our moment-to-moment experience. This observation is neutral, without preference, and it includes the five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch — along with thinking. Awareness is ever-present, regardless of our personal circumstances, moods, or energy. And it requires no effort to be aware; it simply happens by itself. If you don’t believe me, then try to switch this knowing quality off!

My favorite meditation with students is what I call “unmindfulness” meditation. The instruction is to try to not be aware, not be mindful, not pay attention, not notice anything. Experiment with this idea right now. Close your eyes and see if it is possible to not be aware for one minute. As you will discover, this is impossible. Awareness is always “on,” always present to something. Even in deep sleep, we can be aware of our dreams, and afterward, we can have some sense that we slept well or not. This practice is instructive for mindfulness meditation, in that it reveals how effortlessly we can be present to experience.

After students try this meditation, I pose a question: “If awareness is always present, then what is it aware of? What does it attend to?” Most often, what occupies this valuable resource is our thoughts, usually to the detriment of our other senses and everything else. However, in recent years, in this era of what is sometimes referred to as the “attention economy,” companies vie for the precious commodity of our attention. Subsequently, awareness is now oriented in ever-increasing measure to the screens on our phones and computers.

We utilize this same awareness in the practice of mindfulness. Without it, there is no cultivation of attention. Mindfulness is the conscious knowing of what we are present to. Take, for example, the sound of a bird singing in our garden. We may not be conscious of the birdsong if our attention is absorbed in something else. Although sound vibrates in our ears, we may not even recognize that a bird is singing. However, when we are mindful, we not only hear the song but consciously recognize that we are listening to a songbird.

Another common example is driving. We must keep our eyes open while driving, or we risk crashing our car. But most of the time, we don’t pay much attention to what we are seeing. Our minds are elsewhere, and if someone asks us what we saw on our journey, we may have difficulty remembering. (We often can’t even recall which route we took to our destination!) We are present at a basic level to function and drive, but without mindful attention, our memories become a blur of impressions — nameless cars, buildings, trees, colors, shapes, and people. Mindfulness is the conscious knowing of experience as it happens, along with knowing that we are aware. That is what enables recollection, another function or outcome of mindfulness.

None of this, however, necessarily explains what awareness is. A text called The Flight of the Garuda by Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol, a renowned eighteenth-century Tibetan teacher and poet, tackles this difficulty directly. In this text, Shabkar asks his students to inquire deeply into the nature of awareness by posing many questions: Does awareness have a shape, a color, or a size? Does it have a location? Does it have a gender or an age? Does it have any history? Does it come and go? He then asks his students to look directly at their immediate experience of awareness to discover empirically the nature of awareness.

In mindfulness meditation, we can turn the lens of our attention to become present to awareness itself. And what we discover is mysterious. As Shabkar teaches, there is no “thing” to find. Nothing with a location, shape, color, or form. Yet awareness is unmistakably present. In the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition, they say it is “empty.” Awareness is empty of any “thingness,” empty of any separate, substantive existence. Yet at the same time, it is understood to be luminous, brightly shining like a light, and cognizant, clearly knowing.

Experiencing this directly can be transformative. One of my meditation students, Stinus, who is from Denmark, shared with me a story of when this happened to him on a mindfulness retreat I was leading. He wrote:

We were thirty minutes into our group meditation, and my mind was calm. Now and then a thought came. They seemed distant, almost like an echo. It felt like awareness was watching them from afar. Minutes passed in this expansive space, simply observing. Now and then our teacher would ring a bell and instruct us to notice who or what was hearing the sound. Toward the end of the sitting, the teacher said: “Now turn awareness toward itself.” And then it happened. Awareness watching itself. A formless, nondualistic, nonchanging presence that I cannot describe. If I had to try, the best word would be sacred or divine. I noticed that I was silently crying. I felt humbled and in awe. The experience left me with a knowing of what is behind the physical world. When this body dies, it will only be my body that will disappear and not the formless. This was perhaps the most liberating thing I have ever done.

Awareness is neither a thing nor not a thing. It is clearly present and is what illuminates our experience. It is what allows us to know ourselves, one another, and the world. Awareness helps reveal the laws that govern our experience, for example, understanding that to cling to the transient is to suffer. Such insights, which arise from the clarity of mindfulness, are indispensable for awakening and freeing us from suffering. Yet awareness is also what allows us to function in a simple day-to-day way, to walk down a busy street, to drive our car, and to behold the vistas on a hike.

On a meditation retreat, I once received a beautiful teaching from Ajahn Sumedho, a senior monk from the Thai Forest meditation tradition. He said: “Be the knowing, not the conditions that are known.” He was pointing to an essential aspect of mindfulness practice where we train to abide in awareness and not get caught up in all the various things that we attend to. Like all practices, this is easier said than done. Yet through mindfulness practice we can learn to reside in this knowing presence, this awareness that knows experience, without being tossed around by the circumstances of life.

As our practice of mindfulness grows, we strengthen and deepen this capacity of awareness. In the beginning of practice, moments of present-moment attention seem fleeting. Over time we come to establish ourselves in awareness, and that knowing quality of mind becomes our fundamental orientation. In doing so, it is moments of unmindfulness that become the infrequent visitor. Instead we come to abide in this ever-present awareness, which is the conduit for living with clarity, wisdom, and peace.

This spacious awareness allows us to access a sense of freedom and peace amid the turbulence of change and adversity. It becomes a refuge when facing uncertainty and stress. And it is something we can trust like a true friend. Over time we come to see its value and treat it as a precious gift, not wishing to do anything that dulls or diminishes its illumination. Yet it remains one of the great mysteries of life, as transparent as air, as vast as the sky, and piercingly present in all moments.

• PRACTICE •

Mindfulness of Awareness Itself

Begin this meditation by sitting in a comfortable, relaxed, but alert posture. Close your eyes and attune to the presence of sounds. Open awareness to expand to the farthest sound, and invite a quality of openness and receptivity in your attention. As you attend to sounds, notice how, when each noise occurs, it is known quite effortlessly by awareness. A sound appears and is known. Then ask yourself: “Known by what?”

This inquiry invites a direct observation of awareness itself. What is it that knows, and how does the knowing happen? Avoiding a flurry of thinking and speculation, observe how hearing, and the knowing of it, happens all by itself, quite effortlessly. That still may fail to answer the question about what awareness is! So it is important to maintain this inquisitive observation.

Similarly, notice how all experience is known in this way. Sensations of pain, pressure, or itchiness occur and pull the attention. Awareness automatically becomes cognizant of such experiences, often without any conscious directing of attention from us. When our eyes are closed, sensations appear in the seeming darkness of our interior landscape. They appear like touch points of sensation. In this way, the nuance of breath sensations are also known in awareness. When we see how effortlessly this happens, it begs the question of why it is so hard to maintain concentration in meditation, since awareness of experience occurs so naturally.

Observe this same process of how awareness becomes present to thoughts, emotions, moods, ideas, and any other phenomena. They all seem to appear on the screen of awareness, as it were, cognized in the same way we feel the breeze on our face or taste mango on our tongue. When you sense how awareness knows experience so effortlessly, how does this impact your understanding of meditation?

Now turn your attention to awareness itself. Follow Shabkar’s instructions and ask: Does awareness have a shape? A size? A color? A location? Does this knowing presence have a gender? An ethnicity? Is it the same age as you, or is it timeless? Does it come and go, or is it ever-present? Is it confined or unobstructed? Is it limited or boundless? Don’t look to your mind or the past for answers. Turn to your direct experience in this moment and look directly at awareness itself. The answers may not come readily, so treat this as an ongoing reflection on the nature of this wondrous aspect of human nature.

Perhaps the most important question is whether you believe awareness is yours. Does it belong to you? Is it part of you? Is it under your control? How does your sense of awareness relate to the consciousness that resides within every other human being and other conscious life-forms? With these questions, don’t seek any definitive answer. Simply let the reflection percolate in your meditation. As you end the meditation, stay curious about how awareness reveals experience throughout your day. Return to this reflection frequently in and out of meditation. Such inquiry will help illuminate your understanding of both awareness itself and your mindfulness practice.

This investigation into awareness raises profound questions, ones that have fascinated humankind for centuries. Thus far, our understanding of awareness remains elusive, and perhaps that will always be the case. Personally, I like that such things remain in the realm of mystery because that encourages us to inquire with earnestness into this important facet of reality, which is a key aspect of who and what we truly are.

• • •