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Guided Meditation: (5 of 5) Foundations of Vipassana - Open Awareness

Well, welcome back and good morning. My name is Mei Elliott, and here we are on our last day of a week-long study on the foundations of Vipassana^[1] meditation. Today's instructions are on open awareness. Up to now this week, we've covered a couple of different areas of our experience to pay attention to: breathing, body sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Today is when we bring these four different aspects of meditation into a seamless whole. This is the culmination of the work we've done so far. We've seen that we can be mindful of any of these parts of experience, and today we see how they can be unified together.

So let's begin our meditation. Go ahead and connect with your meditation posture. A posture that invites ease and well-being, that's both energetic, ready to meet the moment, and relaxed. Sitting with a soft forehead, relaxed temples, a released jaw, relaxed shoulders, and a softened belly.

As we begin to sit, we can connect with our primary anchor. That might be the breath, the soundscape, or maybe a global sense of the bodily posture. For the sake of simplicity, we'll focus on the breath.

For this first part of the meditation, just be loyal to the breath. Connecting with where you feel it predominantly and staying connected to it. Releasing all preoccupation.

Feeling it for its full length, noticing the moment the inhale ends and the shift to exhale. Noticing the whole length of the exhale and the moment the exhale stops. Making contact with each transition, from inhale to exhale, and back again.

At any given moment, there are lots of things happening: sounds, sensations, emotions, moods, thoughts. The way that we'll include these, we'll begin to open the awareness. Rather than focusing solely on the breath, if one of these other aspects of experience becomes predominant, we'll allow the attention to go to that new experience and to feel it fully. To get to know what it feels like in the body, in the heart and mind, in the present moment.

You still have a preference for the breath, and that's where our home is. We keep coming back to the breath in between the objects that we notice. We'll venture out to different sensations, feel them for a bit if they're predominant, then come back to the breath. If an emotion arises, you go feel that emotion, connect with it, explore, and feel it. When it's no longer predominant, come back to the breath.

Our capacity for attention functions a little like a spotlight. It shines on one thing at a time. So with this practice, we're allowing whatever is predominant to be in the spotlight.

Noting practice can be particularly supportive for this style of meditation. Making a soft note in the mind:

Inhale. Exhale.

Here. Here.

Inhale. Exhale.

Tingling.

Contentment.

Inhale. Exhale.

Inhale. Exhale.

We're taking note of anything that arises and then returning to the breath.

For the last part of this meditation, let go of our preference for the breath. Let go of the practice of continuing to return to the breath in between phenomena. Now we'll sit with a full open awareness. In this style of practice, we're meeting whatever it is the spotlight of awareness falls on.

Maybe it's a pressure feeling in the chest. We feel that for a few moments, and then the sensations of relaxation in the belly become predominant. Then tingling in the neck, in the legs. Then a thought—you might note thinking. Even an emotion.

In this way, we keep meeting whatever arises. The breath might be something that comes into predominance and we note it, but we're not intentionally returning to the breath as our primary anchor. You could think of this as an anchorless practice. We're allowing the attention to move from one object to another to another. Not trying to control the environment, just enjoying receptive attention. Receiving whatever appears in awareness.

If the mind wanders off, you can gently bring it back into the practice by asking, "What's happening now?" Turning to notice changing objects.

What's in the spotlight now?

As we come to the close of our meditation, you can take a moment to connect with the goodness of this practice. Regardless of how we think our meditation went, just the intention to sit down and make an effort to have the body be still is so wholesome, so onward feeding. May all beings receive the benefits of this peaceful practice.

Dharmette: (5 of 5) Foundations of Vipassana - Open Awareness

I feel so blessed to get to have another day with this super sweet sangha. It's really been a joy getting to sit with you.

Here we are. The focus of today's instruction, our last day covering the foundations of Vipassana—these basics—and we're looking at open awareness. We're practicing open awareness, sometimes called choiceless attention, because we're not intentionally choosing our object of meditation. We're choiceless in that we're allowing whatever is most predominant to be the next object of attention. This practice of open awareness or choiceless attention is what's at the heart of Mahasi Sayadaw's^[2] meditation instruction, the Burmese master who had so much influence over insight in the West.

Today I'd like to review what we've done so far this week as it pertains to this open awareness practice, and then we'll shift to talk about styles of practice. When do we focus just on the breath versus when do we sit with open awareness? And how to discern when to do what. Hopefully, by the end of this morning, you'll have a better sense of what practice is best for whatever mind you happen to have at a given moment that you sit down to meditate.

Let's start with a review of where we've been and how this comes together into open awareness practice. The way this works is we start by developing mindfulness of breathing. The breath becomes our primary anchor. The anchor is where we've been directing our attention back to, bringing our attention back when the mind wanders. At that time in the practice, if something else drew our attention, we would return to the breath right away. We wouldn't focus on it, just go back to the breath. That's what we did on Monday, day one of the instruction, focusing on the breath.

Then the next day, we added more objects to our meditation. We added physical body sensations, and we learned that if a physical sensation became more predominant than the breath, we could shift our attention to that new sensation. We actually were to hang out with it, we would feel it, we'd give it our full attention until it leaves and no longer was predominant, and then we'd return to the breath. In that way, we learned the language of the body, and we began to feel the many different types of sensations that can be felt.

Then we focused on how to integrate emotions and thoughts into our meditation, learning that if an emotion became predominant, we could turn our attention away from the breath to the emotion. Recognizing it, allowing it, feeling it, teasing apart what we were noticing. And then when the emotion faded, we could return to the breath. In studying thoughts, if a thought became predominant, we could turn our attention to the process of thinking. Not the content of the thinking, not getting lost in the narrative of the thinking, but seeing the process, noticing our thoughts as present moment phenomena, and then returning to the breath.

Today, as I mentioned, we're learning to integrate them into a seamless whole. Rather than directing attention to the breath or to any specific object, on the last day here, we practice with receptive attention—receptive as opposed to directed attention. We open up our awareness and allow anything that arises—physical sensations, emotions, thoughts—to be known, and we're doing that without preference.

In a way, learning how to be mindful of each of these parts of experience—breath, body, emotions, and thoughts—is a little like learning to make a soup. Each day we've learned how to chop one kind of vegetable, right? Day one, we chopped onions. Day two, we chopped carrots. Day three, we chopped zucchini, etc. But today we put it all together in a pot and we make soup. When we dip the spoon in our soup, we pay attention to whatever vegetable floats onto our spoon. We taste that vegetable, and then we see what floats onto the spoon next. We don't go fishing for a particular vegetable; we just pay attention to whatever vegetable floats onto the spoon next.

In essence, our whole body and mind is the soup, and the vegetables are the different experiences of breath, body, emotions, and thoughts. Our awareness is the spoon. Whatever experience appears in our awareness, whatever floats onto the spoon, is what we're giving our attention to. In doing this, we're not controlling. We're receptive, we're relaxed, we're not choosing a specific object. Just allowing what's in the foreground to be experienced.

As I explained in the guided meditation, in this practice—and this was at the end of the meditation—we dropped our preference for the breath. We're equally interested in taking any predominant experience as our object of mindfulness in the open awareness practice. At any given moment, there are lots of things happening: body sensations, sounds, etc. As I shared in the meditation, our capacity for attention functions a little like a spotlight; it shines on one thing at a time. With choiceless attention, we allow whatever is the most dominant sensation to be in the spotlight. As soon as something else becomes predominant, we allow that to be in the spotlight.

The challenge with this practice is staying attentive enough. The mind needs to be pretty settled in order to stay with changing objects. I'd say that's the primary challenge of the open awareness practice. If the mind isn't settled, when it makes contact with an object—say a sound, an emotion, a body sensation—it will provide commentary. When a bird chirps, if the attention isn't consistent or it isn't grounded enough, rather than just being the sound of the bird chirping, the mind might say, "Oh, that sounds like a hummingbird," or "Oh, I love hummingbirds. I should get a hummingbird feeder. Oh, but that might attract squirrels," and do what the mind does. So the mind has to be relatively stable in order to stay with each object and not get lost in the commentary about each object.

One thing that can be supportive with staying with the object, as we've mentioned each day this week, is using noting practice. It's making that light mental note in the mind where 90% of the attention is on the sensation or the sound or the emotion, and maybe just 10% is denoting what's happening. When we're sufficiently present, when we notice a bird chirping outside, rather than falling into commentary about it, we might just note, hearing.

The way this open awareness practice might look is we note hearing, and we hear it for a while, noticing what it sounds like. Then we might notice a tightness in the neck and note tightness, feeling the tightness. Then a thought comes in: "Oh, I hope my neck spasms don't start up again." Then you might note thinking. At which point you notice an emotion and note anxiety. Then you might notice an intention to relax and note intending. Then relaxation happens in the shoulders, and so you note relaxing. Maybe it stays for a long time, and so you note a few times: relaxing, relaxing, relaxing, calm. Then a thought arrives, "Wow, this meditation thing is really working," and we might note surprise. You might think, "Man, I'm getting pretty good at this," and then we might note pride. Then an emotion comes in and you note embarrassment. Then some warmth in the face, and you might note warmth, etc., etc.

This is one way that it might look. Notice we're not taking anything that we notice personally. It's like, just a clean, clear awareness: now this is embarrassment, this is pride. You may have noticed that those were some pretty specific ways of noting experience. Pride, embarrassment, intending, etc. It's okay if you don't have the perfect note for what it is that you're experiencing. If you're not sure what it is, if it doesn't stand out—"Oh, this is an intention," or "This is planning"—you might just guess and note thinking, or you might just note emotion. You don't have to strain to try to find the right name for what it is that you're experiencing.

For a long time when I was growing up, I would sometimes say or do something, and then I would have this feeling afterwards and I wouldn't know what it was. All that I could do to describe it was to say, "I feel bad." "I feel bad," because of how it felt inside. It took me a long time to realize that that feeling was called guilt. But for the sake of this practice, it would have been sufficient just to note feeling bad.

If the recognition for the name isn't there, that's fine. The main thing is just being present and noticing what's happening, even if you don't have the name for it. The way that the noting functions is it really just gives the mind something to do to stay engaged. We're just giving it something that's present-centered to pay attention to. If you make a note every few seconds, that will be enough to help you stay connected. The pacing is relaxed and gentle and spacious. You don't have to make a note every millisecond. This might sound something like: hearing, inhale, etc.

That's a summary of open awareness practice and how noting can support us in it. I'd like to shift now to a question: when do we do this open awareness practice? Is this what I should be doing all the time in my meditation? Well, it depends on the person, but for a lot of people, the answer is no. This practice is best instead for when the mind is somewhat stable and steady, not when there's a lot of dispersive thought, a lot of papañca^[3]. If the mind is really slippery and unwilling to stay with an object, and you notice yourself getting really lost in thought, just go back to breath practice. This open awareness practice might be too wide of a pasture for the mind to play in at that given moment. Instead, just let the mind focus on the breath. The breath is a smaller playing field where it can be put on a leash. When the mind is dispersive, we just have it focused on a simple object. Go back to the breath, only go back to the primary anchor. This is directed attention and the simple object of breathing, as it stabilizes, as it settles the mind.

Once the mind is a little more steady and present, then you might start allowing in other objects and try this open awareness practice. When the mind is more stable, that's when you can allow it to go off-leash and have a wider pasture. Again, that's when you can most effectively practice with the open awareness.

Another way we can think about these two ways of practicing is through the analogy of a camera aperture. When we focus on the breath, the awareness has a small, narrow aperture. We're just looking at the breath. When we sit with open awareness, we're allowing anything to come into our field, and this is like having a very wide aperture. Open awareness. So if the mind is wild and there's lots of papañca, we go to the primary anchor, we hang out with the breath. Smaller aperture. And then when we stabilize and the mind is more quiet, we have a wide open aperture. Open awareness. I like to think about this as two ends of a spectrum: narrow to wide, from breath-only to open awareness.

Now I'd like to provide a middle ground for you in between these two practices on either end of the spectrum. This is what we did in the middle of the meditation today. What I'll share is what I often do in my personal practice, as it's both stabilizing and it's inclusive of all experience. This is a lot like what we've done each day in our meditation.

Here's what I do: I start my meditation by spending some time with just the breath to stabilize and collect the mind. Then as the mind settles a bit, if something else becomes more predominant, I allow the attention to move to that new object. I contact it, we get to know it, and that can be any of the things that we've covered this week: body sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc. And then when it's no longer compelling, I come back to the breath. That's the key piece here: the breath is the home. In this way, we're still being with the breathing, so it's stabilizing the mind.

The only difference is that open awareness doesn't have any preference for a particular anchor. With full open awareness, it doesn't favor the breath as the landing pad. But I'm sharing now this kind of middle ground in between the narrow aperture of breath and the wide aperture of open awareness. In this middle ground, we still have a preference for the breath. We're still coming back to it, so that stabilizes us, and at the same time, we're being inclusive of anything that arises because we're allowing ourselves to venture out to feel it.

I'll just give you an example using the analogy of a hand here. We can imagine that if the breath is our home, that's the palm here, and then each finger is a body sensation, emotion, thought. So we're focusing on the breath. When a body sensation becomes predominant, we go and feel the body sensation, then we come back to the breath. Then a thought arises. We notice the thought, not getting caught in the content of the thought, just noticing the process, and we're back with the breath. An emotion, breath. Body sensation, breath. Etc.

Hopefully that gives you a sense of something that you can do when the mind is starting to settle, but full open awareness practice where there's no preference for an anchor might be a little too expansive. The mind is too likely to get lost in things; it's not quite stabilizing enough.

Maybe just a few last words about open awareness practice. Remember that it's sitting with a receptive mind. It should be easy, it should have a naturalness to it in just receiving. One of the impacts of it is that it allows us to see anicca^[4], impermanence, the inconsistency of things. We get to see the practice of just seeing what arises next, next. We get to see the arising and passing of all phenomena. When we sit in this way, it's as if the whole world comes to us.

I will close with a quote from the Thai Forest master Ajahn Chah^[5]. He says:

"Just go into the room and put one chair in the center. Take the seat in the center of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptation and stories imaginable. Your job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.

As I see it, the mind is like a single point, the center of the universe, and mental states are like visitors who come to stay at this point for short or long periods of time. Get to know these visitors well. Become familiar with the vivid pictures they paint, the alluring stories they tell to entice you to follow them. But do not give up your seat. It is the only chair around. If you continue to occupy it unceasingly, greeting each guest as it comes, firmly establishing yourself in awareness, transforming your mind into the one who knows, the one who is awake, the visitors will eventually stop coming back. If you give them real attention, how many times can these visitors return? Speak with them here and you will know every one of them well. Then your mind will at last be at peace."

May you all experience this great peace and freedom of knowing the many visitors that can come to see us and not taking any of them personally. Thank you all so much for such a lovely week. I look forward to hopefully seeing you again soon. Take care.