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Cultivating Choiceless Awareness

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Cultivating Choiceless Awareness

by Matthew Flickstein

When meditation teachers address the pursuit of enlightenment with

their students, they either discuss the gradual or sudden approach. The

gradual approach focuses on the value of virtue and on the accumulation

of wholesome karma. Meditation techniques which concentrate and calm the

mind are taught. The cultivation of mindfulness and clear comprehension

is encouraged. The mind thus becomes a precise instrument for perceiving

things as they really are. In the gradual approach, wisdom is seen as an

unfolding process and even enlightenment is seen to progess in stages.

 

In the sudden approach, however, the teacher's perspective is that

we all have Buddha nature and that we cannot " practice " to become what

we already are. Concerning oneself with virtue will not lead to the

goal since cultivating karma, even wholesome karma, is still involving

oneself with the phenomenal world. Even the quest for enlightenment is

seen as keeping oneself trapped within a dualistic conceptual framework.

When the student makes statements that believe the fact that he or she

is already enlightened, the teacher points out the errors in his or her

thinking.

 

Both approaches are valid and students at different stages of

development gravitate to one or the other of these schools of thought.

Although it is not immediately clear to the casual observer, what both

schools have in common is the quality of mind that enables one to

directly perceive or experience the reality to which they both point.

This quality of mind is referred to as a " non-judgmental " or "

choiceless " awareness. Although meditators hear about this state of

mind quite frequently, it is not until they recognize that it is one of

the primary causes and conditions for the arising of insight that its

true significance is appreciated.

 

The consequence of making judgments is to perpetuate obsessive

patterns of mind. If we judge the contents of mind to be good, positive,

or fortunate, we grasp at them. By doing so the presence of these

patterns are reinforced. If we judge the contents of mind to be

important, we focus on them, watching to see where they will lead. If we

judge the contents of mind to be bad, negative, or unfortunate, we tend

to resist them. Although the patterns will be suppressed, they will

continue to persist on an unconscious basis. Every form of reactivity to

our mental patterns actually invests them with additional power to

influence us.

 

It is not easy to cultivate a non-judgmental or choiceless

awareness. However, the consequences of remaining present in this way

are quite significant. Issues that have been deeply repressed begin to

rise to the surface providing us with the opportunity to consciously

address them. By recognizing our self-destructive patterns, their power

to control our behaviors diminishes. Our attachments typically decrease

as we discover more subtle levels of impermanency and realize our

inability to stop or control the incessant rise and fall of phenomena.

We may perceive the unfulfilling nature of sense experience and abandon

the pursuit of meaningless goals. Ultimately, as the mind experiences

the selfless nature of all phenomenal existence, it may turn for its

security to the freedom of the unconditioned.

Choiceless awareness is a quality of mind that is free from making

judgments, decisions or generating commentary as it meets with sense

experiences. It is a mind that responds to each new moment without the

burden of its past history or of making future projections. When the

mind no longer clings anywhere, not even to the idea of not clinging

anywhere, we realize, either suddenly or gradually, that we truly

already are that for which we have been searching.

 

 

http://www.midamericadharma.org/study.html

<http://www.midamericadharma.org/study.html>

 

 

 

 

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