Four Types of Clear Comprehension

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Clear Knowing; Four Types of Clear Comprehension. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 05, 2021. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation

Thank you for being here. It's delightful for me to be able to come here to IMC and sit and practice and be able to teach, so it's wonderful.

And one of the kind of North Stars, the guide for this orientation of mindfulness practice, is the possibility of clarity, of clearly knowing what's happening in the present moment. And it takes a while, maybe, for new practitioners to learn this clear knowing and have a sense of what that means, and get a feel for it—a sense, kind of an inner recognition of what clear recognition is, clear knowing. And to appreciate it, and to appreciate clear knowing. And then maybe it's easier to come into this quiet or non-discursive meditative mode of being where we're not chasing for states of mind, we're not trying to make ourselves concentrated particularly. The concentration definitely is a good thing to happen, but we're relying first and foremost on our ability to clearly know, and not to chase after clear knowing, but to clearly know what is obvious.

So it's not like a lot of work to know, but then appreciate what that clarity is like. And even if we are unclear—the mind is tired and fuzzy—perhaps it's good enough just to clearly know that, and to appreciate something about this clear, simple knowing that's possible.

So, to assume a meditation posture. That the posture itself encourages a little bit of embodied alertness, embodied attentiveness. And to take a few long, slow, deep breaths. And those breaths can be easy, relaxed, leisurely. Just a leisurely, longer breath than usual. Take your time doing it, but don't make yourself winded or strained in doing it. Three-quarters full, and a long, leisurely exhale. And in this long exhale, to settle in and relax your body.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. In the core practice of mindfulness, we don't do any special breathing anymore; it's just a kind of a warm-up. But part of this settling in then, with the normal breathing, can be continuing to relax the body as you exhale, to soften and relax around the face. To soften and relax the shoulders. To soften and relax the belly.

And then to just settle into the simplicity of the body breathing. And in doing so, see if you can know something about the breathing with clarity, clear recognition. It can be as simple as clearly knowing that you are inhaling. Clearly recognizing the exhale. Clearly knowing the sensations that appear as you breathe in, and knowing the sensations that appear when you exhale. And if you're practicing this clear knowing, just simple knowing, see if you can adjust it so there's no strain. There's no reaching to try to attain something or get something, or avoid anything.

If your mind gets involved in thinking, step back and clearly know that that's the case. Where the knowing is not further thinking, but rather a kind of quieting, calming awareness that clearly knows, "This is thinking." And then begin again with the breathing. Whenever you return to your breathing, notice if you return to an inhale or an exhale.

Is there available to you a kind of clear knowing of the moment, of what is obvious, that the clear knowing itself feels peaceful, quiet, calm? At ease with what is known. Simply knowing.

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, take a moment or two to clearly recognize where you're sitting, the location here in your seat. You can be grounded in your place, rooted here in clearly recognizing, and not drifting off in thought to other places, other times, but to be here now.

But then to open your attention to the whole world around you, while you stay rooted, while you stay embodied here. And take in that across the world, locally and far away, there are fires and smoke, hurricanes and rain, heat and drought. There's illness of all kinds: COVID, and people in lockdown. People struggling with illness. War, and poverty, and hunger. To sit grounded here, without losing the embodiment and groundedness in here^[1]. Not getting swept up in the conditions of the world, but in being grounded, to have a greater capacity to witness it, to be present for it all.

And through this practice that we do, may we find the ability to balance being grounded and centered in the present moment here with us. Here we can find our inner freedom, and be mindful of what's happening in the world around us, so that we can live for the care of the world. That our ability to support the welfare of others is also part of how we can live our life. May it be that this meditation practice we do together supports us to be more capable in living for the welfare and happiness of others, and for ourselves. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Four Types of Clear Comprehension

So, good day to everyone. I just finished yesterday teaching a week-long retreat on Zoom; it was an online retreat. Lovely to teach this, lovely to be part of it. And the theme of the retreat was the topic of clear comprehension or clear recognition. So I'd like to continue with that theme, since it's fresh on my mind and on my heart.

And it's an integral part of mindfulness practice. In fact, sometimes in the teachings of the Buddha, the word for mindfulness (sati^[2]) and the word for clear comprehension or clear recognition (sampajañña^[3]) are treated as a compound: sati-sampajañña. They're closely and intimately connected to each other. Our capacity to be mindful makes room for our capacity then to know what's happening. And this ability to really know—not in some complicated way, but to really recognize, "What this is, what's happening, this is what is"—is a kind of superpower. It's that valuable, it's that significant. Once we can stop and clearly rest (we have to stop), but once we clearly recognize something, that makes room for it to register, for all kinds of other understandings to follow. There's less confusion. Sometimes there can be a clear relaxation: "Oh, now I understand what's happening. Oh, it's like that."

The clear recognition of something allows for sometimes the next step to occur, the next thing to happen. But if we're fuzzy, if we're not really clear what's there, then we can't build on that, or can't grow from that, or can't let it somehow register, or be felt, or be processed in some deep way. The clearer we can know what we're feeling, what's happening with us, what the impact of world events has been on us... In all kinds of ways, clear recognition, clear knowing makes room for the heart to move on, open up, and process in some way.

It's a great support for mindfulness practice. In fact, in the teachings of the Buddha, the primary function of clear recognition is in the teaching and practice of mindfulness. We are to practice clear recognition of all aspects of our life as we go through it, so that we stay close to always being cognizant, always being conscious of what we're doing as we are doing it.

So in Buddhist teachings, if you're walking, clearly know that you're walking; if you're standing, clearly know you're standing; sitting down, clearly know you're sitting. It's so simplistic, this little instruction, that it can seem like, "You know, I'm more sophisticated than that. I don't have to slow down for anything just to recognize that I'm standing or sitting." But to remain close enough in with awareness to really track and be conscious of what you're doing. What you're doing in your body, also what you're doing in your speech, or what you're doing just before you speak, so you're conscious of what's coming. You start living a mindful life, but you also start living a life where you're closer to the place where you make choices about what to say and what to do. To stay that kind of close in, and clearly recognize, and be conscious—live a conscious life—is a clearly important part of Buddhist spirituality.

Now, as the Buddhist tradition developed over the centuries, they developed an expansion of this idea of sampajañña, clearly recognizing, clearly knowing. They listed four different things you can clearly know. I think of this as stepping away a little bit from the clear knowing of breathing, or standing, or walking, or clearly knowing how we're feeling in the moment. It's a clear knowing of something that's definitely part of human life, but it's a higher order, a little bit more involved than the simple moment-to-moment experience that sometimes happens in mindfulness meditation.

These four things to clearly know... clearly knowing them gives us so much benefit, and this is where it becomes a kind of superpower.

The first one is clearly knowing the purpose of what we're doing. The second is clearly knowing the suitability—what's suitable to fulfill that purpose. The third is clearly knowing how we get nourished from that. It's called the pasture, the place where the cows go and eat (gocara^[4]). How do we clearly know how we get nourished by engaging in the purpose of what we're doing? And the fourth one is clear comprehension of non-delusion. Clear comprehension of how to go forward without the overlay of projections, bias, fantasies, and stories that make the whole thing so much more complicated.

These four can be understood, or they can be practiced, in the form of questions: What's the purpose of what you're doing right now? What's the purpose of why you're going to say what you're going to say? To ask that question repeatedly in all kinds of circumstances begins bringing clarity to what drives us, what motivates us. It also gives us an opportunity to adjust the purpose.

We might have a simple answer right away. Sometimes people who've been practicing some forms of Buddhism don't like to get into a complicated purpose. You ask them, "What purpose are you going for a walk for?" Like today, I went for a walk this morning, and someone could have stopped me and said, "Why are you going for a walk?" And I could have said, "I'm walking just to walk." But that wasn't actually the case. I had another purpose in mind for the walk. The purpose was to begin thinking about this Dharma talk to give today. So the purpose was thinking about the talk.

Then, what is a suitable way to walk if that was what was in mind? Well, when I think about my Dharma talks, I tend to walk a little bit slower than I would if I'm not doing something like that. So I knew that I needed a slower pace. It was also not to spend a lot of time looking around and noticing a lot about the different things in my neighborhood, but to walk and be attentive, while allowing myself to stay close to the flow of thoughts about different ideas. In this case, clear comprehension.

And how to do it in a way that is nourishing? If I'm worried about the talk, or if I'm so pulled into the world of thought and ideas, then I'm not nourished by it. But if I take my time, walk slowly (I did walk slowly), and stay connected to my body as I walked, to my inner experience as I thought about it, then there's a way in which that thinking was in harmony with something within. It was actually very pleasant and enjoyable to do this.

And then I wasn't deluded about what I was doing. I was very consciously aware of what I was doing. I had chosen what I was going to do, and I was engaged in that choice. It felt like there was a clarity and simplicity to what I was doing that I felt was also kind of nourishing and satisfying.

So these four kinds of clear comprehension can be used in all kinds of circumstances in life. Sometimes we do something for one purpose, and if we reflect on the purpose of doing it, we realize that actually there's a higher purpose we could do this for. If I realize it's time for me to cook for my family, the purpose is to cook for my family. Well, that's nice, but if I reflect and ask myself the question, "For what purpose are you cooking?" then I could say, "Well, I'm cooking for my family, but I'd like to offer food to my family that's nourishing for mind and body. I'd like to be able to offer it with love." And then I orient myself to the cooking in a different way than if it was just to get the cooking over with so I can go on to other things.

To live a purposeful life is actually one of the orientations for doing Buddhist practice. There are many purposes for why people do it, but it helps to have a clarity of what that purpose is. If we're vague about doing Buddhist practice, if we're doing it because we have a general idea it's a good idea, we might still do it and might still benefit from it, but there isn't such clarity about how we engage, how to do it in a way that supports the purpose. There isn't clarity to understanding the purpose and then prioritizing that with other purposes that we have. There are many good things to do in the world, but it's hard to do all of them. In fact, if we spread ourselves thin, we don't do anything really well.

For example, in the case of Buddhist practice, if this is a high enough priority in a person's life, and they know that, then they can easily, hopefully, organize their priorities in terms of what they mostly engage in. For some people, Buddhist practice—the Dharma life—is the most central thing in their life. And so if it's that central, it makes sense to really give yourself over to it, to make time for it, and not spend a lot of other time doing other things so you never get to the practice itself.

This is not a requirement to do this; it's not meant to be an obligation. But to ask ourselves the question, "What is the purpose that I want to live my life for? What's the intention? What's the organizing principle I have?" If there's clarity around that, then we can put ourselves behind it.

But then, how do we put ourselves behind it? How do we engage in the purpose we have? For that, it's good to reflect on, to contemplate suitability—clear comprehension of what's suitable.

It could be that your dedication is to meditate every morning for an hour, but maybe you have new kids at home, and simply it's not possible to do that. You keep trying to do it, and it just becomes frustrating and resent-making. The idea that the purpose of living a Buddhist life means you have to meditate for an hour every day when the circumstances don't allow for it easily, means it's not suitable to do it that way. Maybe what's suitable is to engage in the domestic life of caring for kids by bringing mindfulness to that, or bringing generosity, care, and compassion to it. To really infuse the activities you have to do with the practice, rather than having the practice be something separate.

Or it might be what is suitable for this body and mind. Some of us have physical conditions, health issues, where maybe we have to adjust how we practice. Sometimes we have had a difficult life, and the difficult emotions that persist from that mean that what's suitable to do in mindfulness is to do it gently, very gently, with maybe a lot of self-compassion. Someone else who has a mind that drifts off into fantasy really easily, and spends an inordinate amount of time developing the habit of fantasy, they don't need gentleness and compassion. Maybe what they need is a certain definitiveness: "Okay, now I'm going to practice." And for them, practicing definitively for an hour every day is really what they need in order to begin breaking the habit of always being in fantasy.

These are simple examples, but the idea is to take stock of our conditions and to begin appreciating, "What supports me? What's a helpful way for me?" In this way, we become our own teacher, and really we need to become our own teacher. That's the direction we're going in this practice. Having a clear sense of purpose is part of this task, and then having this question of what is suitable given the conditions around me. If a neighbor has a need, maybe it's not really suitable to practice freedom, compassion, and presence by sitting in meditation ignoring the neighbor. It might actually be more undermining of practice to hold something at bay like that just so I can take care of my own practice. Maybe the practice is supported more by letting go of my formal practice and caring for the neighbor.

So, what is suitable here? And then the next thing is to consider, where do I get nourished from this? Where is the pasture?

The Buddha was very clear, he always had an answer for this, and maybe this is not a surprise for some of you. The answer is found in the four foundations of mindfulness. The answer is found in being mindful of our embodied experience, being mindful of the feeling tones, the feelings of experience. Being mindful of the mind states we have, the attitudes we have. And being mindful of the inner mental processes that are operating in our relationship to our experience.

What this does is it brings our attention close in. This is where the idea comes of being grounded and rooted here in our direct experience, and realizing here is where we get nourished. Sometimes we want other people to make us happy, other people to provide us with what we need. Other situations, experiences. And they certainly can be supportive and helpful and wonderful sometimes, but to depend on the external world, to depend on certain kinds of stimuli—alcohol, drugs, food—in order to feel spiritually nourished is kind of a dead end.

And the remarkable thing is that if we practice mindfulness to stay close in to our experience, our mindful experience is generative of a sense of nourishment, a sense of well-being. That's where we find our centeredness, our peace, our happiness even. The very system that gets nourished is the system that generates the nourishment. This is a remarkable system where, through mindfulness, this very psychophysical system that we are part of generates the sense of well-being that nourishes the system itself. So it's self-generating in a certain way, as opposed to needing something outside.

So the clear comprehension of the nourishment, of the pasture, in the Buddhist teaching is to stay close to mindfulness. Stay grounded here. Don't lose yourself. Stay conscious of your lived experience as you go about doing what you're doing. One thing you can notice is when you get stressed, when you get exhausted, when you get tired, and then you don't just keep pushing yourself that way. You can recognize that not only by avoiding stress, but by being relaxed with what you do, there's a deeper inner well-being that can come as well.

And then the clear recognition of non-delusion. Some people think it's a little hard to recognize delusion and non-delusion. But when we stay close to the four foundations of mindfulness, when we stay close to our experience in some degree of calm or subtleness, then the mindfulness is strong. We can watch the arising of thoughts. Most delusions are ideas or thoughts that are created by the mind. If we stay close enough to watch thoughts arise, watch ideas and projections arise, then we can start seeing, "Oh, it's not inherent in the situation that this is how it is. This is just the way I'm seeing it; it's the way I'm interpreting it."

Sometimes with that ability we can see it clearly: "There's a fantasy. Clearly I'm deluded here. I've had the same idea a thousand times and it's never proved to be true, and so maybe I should stop thinking it." But to watch thoughts arise and have the mindfulness to see it—the watching, the mindfulness itself is the non-delusion. And to begin appreciating that there is a place of clarity, of witnessing, that in and of itself sees clearly. In that clarity, it's prior to the filters through which we see. That's where non-delusion is, and that's a place that's very close to non-clinging, non-reactivity. To learn this place of non-delusion and have that support us.

It's very closely related to this idea that this whole enterprise begins with: clear recognition, clear knowing. Clear knowing has a lot to do with clarity, simplicity. Not all these layers and veils of ideas and interpretations. To learn to relax, and soften, and quiet, and to see the simplicity of the moment allows us then to have clear comprehension.

Some of this clear comprehension is very simple—these four different categories. And some of it comes from a contemplative life, a life of being reflective and thoughtful. In Buddhist life, Buddhist spirituality is not just a life of mindful attention to the moment, what's going on. It's also a life where we spend quality time thinking about our life, reflecting about our life, reflecting about the purpose of particular things we do. Reflecting on the purpose of our life itself. What do we want to dedicate our life to? What's most important for us today, this week, this year, this lifetime? To spend time staying close and reflective in a calm, relaxed, contemplative, spiritual kind of way. To reflect about suitability: what's the most useful way to accomplish this purpose given the causes and conditions around me? How do I approach this? How do I do this so I'm nourished by it?

When we're nourished by it, then we're able also to support other people better. We actually have more resources within to live for the benefit and welfare of others if we are nourished.

And then now to practice non-delusion. Where is the delusion? Where is the non-delusion? Where are the projections? Where are the agendas? Where are the expectations? What are the associations I bring with me from the past that maybe cloud the water? To really look and see what's happening here.

A life of contemplative reflection about these four things is useful to contemplate. One of the things you could do is you can journal about it, you can go for walks and think about these things, figure out where you can have quality time. For some people, this quality reflection can happen in conversation with friends, talking about purpose, exploring it, discussing it, and suitability, and all this.

It is a kind of superpower, because once you're clear about purpose, and you know this is really what you want to do, then you can organize other things, organize your life yourself. "Okay, this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to do it wholeheartedly." Even if it's just cooking a meal, if that's the purpose, and the purpose is to do it in a suitable, supportive way, to do it in a way that's nourishing. Maybe you just want to give yourself over to cooking when you're cooking for the purpose that you have. Or maybe it's what's really important for your life energy, what you want to do with your life: to make it a priority, to really know what that is, and get behind it, is a superpower. So much can be done behind a clear sense of purpose.

So thank you very much, and may you this next week reflect a little bit on the value of clear comprehension.