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Seven Factors of Awakening: Investigation

So the theme for this week is the Seven Factors of Awakening^[1], and the second factor of awakening is usually called investigation. That's how I was taught it when I was in Asia and Burma, and by teachers here in the West. I think it's a wonderful quality to bring to mindfulness: to investigate. The one word that I like, the kind of password^[2] that encapsulates this quality of investigation, is the word what. Just the word what. What is this? What? I like this word because in asking what is this?, we don't answer the question with words, like with an understanding. Rather, it's a movement of opening, of being more receptive, more attentive, to let things register more fully. It is as if the what is answered by reality, not by our thinking mind. Just asking what, and then being available.

Investigation is often how it's translated. I think especially for this week, and what's going on in our society, I want to take us to the literal meaning of the word, which is probably closer to what the Buddha meant. The Pali word is dhamma vicaya^[3]. Vicaya means to differentiate, to distinguish. Some people translate it as discriminate, and I would do that except that we have such strong connotations of that word—associations with bias. But it means to differentiate, to distinguish dhammas. Dhammas can mean anything at all; the particularity of anything, each kind of detail of things is a dhamma. But it also means mental qualities: the quality of the different functions of the mind, what's happening in the mind.

But the important thing I want to emphasize is differentiation. Mindfulness is a foundation; it's the beginning, it's not the end of practice. To really be able to rest in mindfulness and really be attentive is very satisfying and very meaningful. But the clearer mindfulness becomes, the clearer awareness is firmly established in the present moment. As we really begin seeing clearly, the more we start seeing each thing in and of itself. We see the distinctions between things. Rather than going out onto the sidewalk and just seeing, "I'm on the street," we see the cracks in the sidewalk. We see the little grass that's growing up in the gaps, in the cracks of the sidewalk. We see the details of what's happening.

We start to see greater and greater detail, as things become highlighted. It's like seeing our experience in greater and greater resolution. So it isn't so much the active, engaged investigation, thinking, and probing that dhamma vicaya means. Rather, it's starting to distinguish and differentiate the particularities of what's happening, rather than the generalizations or ideas we have about what's happening.

For example, I might be sitting, and I might have this idea that my breathing is uncomfortable as I meditate. My mind keeps wandering off, and so the generalization might be, "Oh, this is a bad day to meditate. I shouldn't have sat down to meditate." That's very far removed from really taking in the details of the moment, and really being settled and aware enough to see and differentiate that the breathing is just uncomfortable. I've eaten too much, my belly is distended, and it feels uncomfortable to exhale into that kind of belly. And then I'm thinking about something, and there's a detail in my mind that keeps going off a little bit for me into the right hemisphere, somehow in the right direction, as I think about something that's happening at home—which is the direction of home for me sitting here.

I'm starting to see the details of it all, and the details are not a judgment. Details are just seeing clearly for what it is. I can then open and rest in the distended belly and just feel it's uncomfortable, but I don't have to make it a problem. I just see a distended belly. This movement towards differentiation allows us to do something very powerful: we begin to be able to make the distinction, to clearly see the differentiation between different qualities of attention and different qualities of mind that are engaged when we're doing anything.

This is really at the heart of the onward-leading nature of the Dharma. As we are able to settle in mindfulness and become more and more clear to the experience—seeing, settling, seeing, and settling further—at some point we start seeing the dhammas of the mind, the different mental qualities. We start to differentiate between the things we're doing in our mind that are skillful and things that we do that are unskillful.

To put it in very experiential terms so it's not too abstract, we start feeling, seeing, and sensing the qualities of what the mind is doing that have a sense of "ouch" as part of it, or the qualities of the mind that have an "ah, that's nice, that's good." We start differentiating between what has qualities of stress or ease, what has qualities of pleasantness versus what brings dis-ease or is unpleasant. As we begin just becoming more sensitive to this, we start seeing deeper and deeper into how the mind functions.

For example, we can do that with mindfulness itself, with the meditation itself. We can at some point notice that I'm actually leaning forward. I'm trying, and really trying in a way that I'm contracted and tight. Being mindful while contracted and tight feels unskillful; there's an "ouch" in it, there's a little unpleasantness in that. Perhaps just knowing that, something releases and relaxes. I don't need to be leaning forward and straining to try to be mindful. Or I can make the adjustment to not be tight and contracted in mindfulness, but see if I can be relaxed and mindful.

This ability to differentiate what's happening in the mind or the heart gives us tremendous wisdom. If we really center ourselves, take in the information that's here, differentiate what's going on, and stay present, we can feel that as we say something mean-spirited, there's an "ouch" in us as we say it. As we start saying something that's kind, we can feel, "Ah, that's nice."

Or if the kindness is somehow off—if it's not really kindness, but more like pity—it's possible, if you're really centered, to feel, "Oh, my kindness, what I think is kindness, is a little bit off. It feels uncomfortable. I feel tight. I feel conflicted. There's a lot of self involved in this." Selfing itself is a kind of tightness and constriction.

Or if we feel that we're about to be mean to someone, it certainly feels uncomfortable. But as we really start differentiating, we see that underneath that meanness we feel afraid, or somehow we're trying to protect ourselves. Then we can realize, "Oh, well that's interesting. Maybe I can find a way to protect myself without being mean. Find a different way."

The idea is that we have a tremendous amount of information available to us in terms of the quality of our hearts and minds as we engage in the world. This investigation isn't so much probing and analyzing what that is, but rather, mindfulness helps us become more and more sensitive. So the path to this kind of investigation is a path of relaxed awareness, settling in, and abiding in awareness.

One of the most frequent ways the Buddha talks about mindfulness is that it is not something we do so much, but something we establish, something we enter, and something we abide in. All these verbs don't suggest an act of doing something, but rather something there that we can enter, something that we establish or abide and rest in. As we're resting in this mindfulness, abiding, and learning how to be centered in this, the capacity to differentiate becomes stronger and stronger. This is a treasure. The Seven Factors of Awakening are considered the crown jewels of Buddhism.

As we differentiate and see the details more, we start becoming our own teacher. We start seeing the Dharma in ourselves. The differentiation of the dhammas is to see the teachings in our own moment-to-moment experience. It's not very complicated. It's as simple as the "ouch" and the "ah"—the feeling of stress or de-stressing, the ease or the unease that's there in subtler and subtler ways.

Learning how to be with that experience of differentiation, of seeing clearly what's going on inside of us, opens up two broad paths. One is towards greater freedom, and the other is towards greater loss of freedom, caughtness, or bondage, to use ancient language. We can feel, sense, and smell the movement towards freedom through this capacity to differentiate our experience, to see the particularity of it.

This is one of the reasons in mindfulness practice we are trying to shift into an attentional mode, into the mode of a kind of silent awareness—almost silent awareness—as opposed to the mode of thinking our way through life, where everything is processed through the filter of our thoughts, ideas, stories, and commentaries that we might have about things. If we can step back from that and have a deeper foundation that's aware of experience, and keep resting in it, opening and resting and coming back here, slowly over time what will happen is that with that foundation of mindfulness, the differentiation of our experience—seeing the distinctions within it, seeing the particularity of things—begins to become clearer and clearer.

This is where wisdom begins to be born. This is where the path to greater awakening begins happening. And this is where we can participate better in our world. Because if we know ourselves well enough, we can pick up the subtle ways in which we're off in our communication with others, or the big ways that we are. We can pick up the cues inside of what is really wishing for the welfare of others and what is not.

We'll discover in this process that it's for our own benefit to live for the welfare of others, and for our own harm to live the opposite. To be concerned with harming others, putting down others, being critical of others, being prejudiced towards others, or being racist, is a kind of self-harm. We'll discover that not because we have to analyze it or believe it, but because we get the data. We get the information from within.

So mindfulness is just the beginning of the path. In terms of the Seven Factors of Awakening, the path then continues through the innate, natural capacity of heightened sensitivity to the uniqueness and specialness of each detail of experience as it unfolds for us. It's a beautiful thing.

Thank you, and I look forward to our time tomorrow.