Guided Meditation: Insight Koans; Dharmette: Wisdom Awareness (2 of 5) Interest

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Insight Koans; Wisdom Awareness (2 of 5) Interest. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 01, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Insight Koans

Good morning. Thank you for the sound check, and we'll get started in just a moment. Meanwhile, a warm welcome whatever time zone you're in. Whether you are greeting each other and me in the chat or holding silent presence, it's always meaningful to be with this worldwide sangha^[1].

With that, we'll start our morning weekday meditation. For those of you who weren't here yesterday, just a word or two about this meditation. This week we are covering the topic of wisdom awareness, a form of wisdom cultivation meditation that has come to me by way of Sayadaw U Tejaniya^[2].

Each of you is welcome to start where you are, with whatever kind of anchor or object of attention works best for you. I will be dropping in a few short wisdom reflections, or insight koans^[3], into our practice together.

When you're ready, please settle yourself in. Take a meditation posture that balances relaxation and a sense of expressing your wish to be awake. Taking a couple of longer, slower breaths and allowing your attention to settle into your body. Softening your eyes, your jaw, your forehead. Allowing the muscles in the forehead to spread. Letting the tongue relax with the tip of the tongue on your palate.

With another couple of deeper, more gentle, slower breaths, inviting a wave of softening relaxation from the head to the feet. Allowing the weight of this body to be held by the cushion or chair, and to be held by the vast earth beneath that. And then softening the area behind the eyes. Inviting your heart and mind to relax too, acknowledging whatever is there. Nothing needs to be a problem. Noticing. Are you aware?

Allowing a sense of awareness to resonate through your body, heart, and mind like the resonance of a tuning fork. Tuning in to whatever anchor of attention feels most soothing and settling. Breathing, perhaps sound, or the entirety of the body. All the little sensations. Resting your attention on the flow of experience in this moment.

Refreshing. Mindfully aware, tuned to present-moment experience. What else is here? What else is present? Breathing with any shifts in mood, attitude, emotion, or feeling tone. Noticing again: is awareness present? Noticing shifts in the volume of hearing, speaking. Noticing shifts in the attitude of the heart and mind. And returning again to awareness of this moment. Aware. What's here now? Experience settling into the flow. Settling into the moment.

In the last moments of this meditation, turning inward and gathering up any moments of sustained mindfulness, awareness, moments of patience, goodness, settledness, and ease, and appreciating them, nourishing them. Then casting your internal gaze outwards towards the others your life touches, and wishing that they may be well, happy, and peaceful. May our practice here together lead to greater love, liberation, and peace in the world.

[Music]

Thank you for the sincerity of your practice.

Dharmette: Wisdom Awareness (2 of 5) Interest

Hello everyone. With that, we will start on the second of five days on the cultivation of wisdom awareness. This week I'm offering these teachings in a cumulative fashion. These are teachings that are derived from the method of Sayadaw U Tejaniya, and hopefully, each day will serve as enough of a standalone. But if it's interesting to you, or if there's something you're not understanding, I really would encourage you to look back at prior days as we go through the week.

Yesterday, we covered the power of discernment between simple distinctions, as well as introducing what I call Vipassana koans, or insight koans, which are little questions and reflections that we drop in and let your system respond to. I'll say more about that today.

The practice of wisdom awareness, as it's come to the West, is often taught as an open awareness practice, and many people get great benefit from practicing it that way. For sure, U Tejaniya uses language encouraging this direction, because he's often asking people to notice what else is happening in their experience. But other people find the open awareness way of practicing a little drifty; it can get a bit unmoored, a bit unstable. So I'd like to say just a couple of words about my understanding of how this practice evolved in my own practice, and from some colleagues who spent a long time in the monastery with this teacher.

According to him, this is not an open awareness practice per se. Instead, the encouragement is to start where you are. Any object of attention that you're practicing with is okay. Just notice that you're practicing. If you notice that you're practicing mindfulness of breathing, great. If you notice you're practicing mindfulness of body sensations, fine. Sound or metta^[4] are beautiful things to practice with. Whatever way your practice has evolved in terms of the object of attention is a beneficial habit that your heart, mind, and whole system have cultivated and learned. It's not a problem. You don't need to stop just to add in a new technique. This offering is to notice things in a slightly different way, if it's helpful.

In wisdom awareness cultivation, it is very helpful to bring interest, even curiosity, to whatever is arising in the moment. In general, in cultivating Satipatthana^[5] mindfulness, the path is to get interested in what is here, what's obvious, and to be interested in what else is present.

If you're practicing in a narrowed down, really focused way, that might build some initial momentum and concentration. It often does for people, but the heart and mind will not be able to notice what else is there. I spoke to U Tejaniya when I was in Burma. I was practicing at a monastery down the street—long story as to why—and had been doing a lot of samadhi^[6] practice, concentration practice, metta actually, loving-kindness. And one of the things he said in our conversation was to encourage me to notice, "What else is there? What else is present?"

In other words, noticing what helps the lens of awareness, the aperture of awareness, to open more broadly. Notice: is attention tight and tense, clenched even, or is it soft, open, relaxed? If open awareness with no anchor of attention is natural for you, and if that's helpful, that's a beautiful practice that is also very conducive to wisdom awareness. It's really natural for the scope of attention to dilate or contract. It's not unlike your pupils responding to light or darkness, or a sea anemone^[7] opening and closing, right?

So get interested. Note it. And if you're bored or uninterested, get interested in that. Get curious about it. Curiosity can be an ally in this practice, and interest is a superpower.

Another ally is light, persistent effort. The effort to bring awareness back can be as light as a butterfly wing, or light as the breeze on your cheek. Just touch in. Notice what's there. The way effort is maintained in this kind of light-touch practice, I like to consider it like paddling a canoe. You put the oar in, move it, and then the boat glides for a little while. It glides. It's just like that. There's a touch in, a notice. Notice that you're aware. And then there's resonance for a while. And that can be very light. You can ride out the resonance. It's an unfolding journey, not a race. So it's helpful not to be in a rush and to have a light, relaxed touch.

That light, relaxed effort—which in some practices can be very strong, and on some occasions in life can take a huge amount of effort—is tied to interest, which is also on a continuum. It's on a continuum from intense interest or intense curiosity, to rapt interest, to a settled back, even dispassionate interest.

The more momentum your practice has, the more settled back it tends to be helpful to be in certain phases of practice. Intense curiosity and rapt interest can be really helpful, but generally, as the practice matures, or the more the practice feels like it's just happening—just practicing through you—the more likely it is that a more receptive, settled-back form of being interested is key. It's cleaner, actually.

And this curiosity, this interest in what's happening now, shades into Dhamma vicaya^[8], the Pali term for investigation. It's an awakening factor, and it's a kind of curiosity that becomes igniting, keeping us connected to the moment and connected to the practice. It's onward-leading.

The sort of interest that we hold, or the sort of curiosity we have, also becomes important as practice matures. This is not curiosity with the intent to dig or ferret out the truth on a content level, like a private investigator. That's rooted in aversion. Instead, this kind of interest is from a place of wonder or openness.

These wisdom koans spark interest, and they can be helpful on a whole-body level. As I mentioned yesterday, for the purpose of meditation, it's helpful to keep them simple, very simple. There were a couple of comments in the chat yesterday about identification with awareness. Asking "Am I aware?" is often helpful in terms of communicating on a daily life level. "Am I aware? Am I present?" In formal meditation, depending on where your practice is, it can be helpful to drop the "I". It leads to healthy disidentification and also distills it down as simply as possible. "Aware." Just a reminder: "Aware, relaxed, attentive." There's no need to be complicated.

And then today, adding: "What's here? What's happening now?" Or maybe, "What's this moment like?" A simple invitation to your system, like dropping a leaf onto a still pond and noticing the ripples, the resonance, to gather information in the moment. If things are going very well, or for that matter very badly, it can be helpful to ask, "What else is here?" or "What else is happening?"

You may notice then a shift, a tension, a relaxation, a change in posture. And that we'll pick up on tomorrow, because our internal posture, our internal stance, can be very helpful in developing wisdom.

So your assignment, should you choose to accept it today, is to play with a couple of these wisdom koans and insight koans in your practice, in your day. Maybe put them on Post-it notes where you'll see them, or set an alert on your phone, and be open to the answer. It can change in a finger snap.

Thank you, Sangha, for your kind attention.