October 17, 2010 Sunday Morning, Venture Fourth
Pure Awareness Mind
Barbara: We’re in Sunday morning, here. We’re talking about, the group that just met, talking about consciousness. I’ve asked the group, we were talking about perception, bare perception. I’ve asked, can there be bare perception in mundane consciousness or does bare perception require resting in pure awareness?
Q: I realize that urging us to look at the issue will bring us learning but I am wondering now, is there a definite answer to the question?
Barbara: Yes.
Q: That’s better.
Barbara: So I want you to look deep enough to see how that works. When there’s bare perception, where is consciousness? When you’re resting in pure awareness there are no stories. Is the perception that arises in pure awareness what you would call bare perception? Can you more clearly distinguish between mundane perception that’s filtered through the everyday consciousness and stories, and the experience of bare perception? How does knowing when bare perception is there, is bare perception, how does that help keep you grounded in awareness?
Q: Is bare perception in the context of mundane consciousness an experiential event or is that a mental distinction you create?
Barbara: There’s a real difference. What J wrote in his note to me, this:
Sitting outside in the dark. Awareness moved from itself to the aggregates. From the aggregates the conditioned world then came into being.
Seeing the arising of the aggregates was a fruit of resting in pure awareness and the experience of bare perception. There were not stories about the aggregates at that point, there was just seeing them arise. And then the conditioned world and then, “Oh, that’s a pretty bird, or a pretty bird song.” We’re then out of pure awareness and out of bare perception. It’s not bad, it’s mundane consciousness. It prefers this to that. That’s just mundane consciousness.
And we don’t have to act on that. If there’s a harsh, unpleasant sound, we don’t have to get up with a gun and try and shoot whatever creature is issuing that sound, we just note some sound is pleasant, some sound is unpleasant. Then we can move back into pure awareness and back into bare perception. But I don’t want you to take my word for how this comes together, I want you to see it in your practice.
You’re not preferring pure awareness or bare perception, you’re noting how when there is not bare perception, that gives a space for the mental objects to arise, the various mental formations and emotions. Am I making sense?
Q: One of my favorite Aaron quotes is, why can’t a chocolate chip cookie just be a chocolate chip cookie?
Barbara: (inaudible) mind comes in and says, “What’s the recipe? I want more.” Or, “It’s too dry, it needs more moisture.” Or, “More chocolate chips.” (inaudible) whatever may come up. Conditioned mind. Maybe next retreat I’ll make a batch of chocolate chip cookies, we can experiment!
Q: Can those of us who have not experienced pure awareness even deal with this question?
Barbara: No, but all of you have experienced pure awareness. Now, those who have not experienced could not understand my question. But all of you have experienced it. All of you. So you can understand my question.
Q: (laughter) Could you be more specific?
Signer: She is sure everyone here has experienced pure awareness.
Q: Would she define pure awareness, then?
Barbara: Okay, what is the definition of pure awareness. We’ve come full circle. We talked about this last night, maybe some time yesterday. What is pure awareness? We talked about characteristics of pure awareness. I don’t think we can say, ” this IS pure awareness” because that limits it and pure awareness is unlimited. We could simply offer characteristics of it. What were the characteristics we gave yesterday?
Q: Uncontractedness.
Barbara: Clarity, luminosity. Stillness.
Q: Joy.
Q: No subject or object.
Q: … boundless, openness, limitless.
Q: No boundaries.
Q: If you have any one, do you have them all?
Barbara: In my experience, no. But it’s like being on top of a building with amazing views in a 360 degree circle. The ability to experience all the views is there but you’ve got to open yourself to this 360 degree radius. And as long as there’s the slightest limiting, you’ll only see that slice of it. That slice of it will probably entice you enough to turn and see more and more of it. Entice is probably not the best word.
Q: Why is it that when I bump into whatever aspect pure awareness is, as soon as I acknowledge or say, “This is pure awareness,” or identify it in some way, it goes away? It’s just there …
Barbara: Well I <> anybody would answer that! Who wants to answer that?
(chatter)
Why do you think? Who is saying, “This is pure awareness”? The conceptual mind. So it closes the window, so to speak.,
I want to do something different than I had planned here. We have half an hour left. We’ll talk for another 15 minutes and then we’re all going to go up to the even lawn up there and we’re going to do walking meditation backwards. You’re all going to walk backwards. Just the same lifting, moving, placing, but backwards– lifting, putting the foot behind you, shifting, just watching the whole process of walking backwards.
This is a wonderful way to slip into pure awareness. So we’ll spend 10 or 15 minutes just before lunch doing some backward walking meditation. I think to avoid crashing into one another we’ll make a big circle and you’ll just keep stepping around so you’re not likely to walk into each other.
Q: I have a slightly different question. This is relating to what I’ve been contemplating the past couple of days, the relationship between pure awareness and access concentration. Specifically the question following J’s question is, okay so I understand when you’re in pure awareness, if you note it then you’re no longer in pure awareness. But if you are in access concentration, can you note it and still be in access concentration?
Barbara: Experiencing access concentration, if there’s a portion of the mind that speaks up and says, “I am experiencing access concentration,” you’re no longer in it. If mind becomes aware of the swift flow, arise and fall of objects, and there’s no contraction around any of that, and mind simply notes it as, even noting as the label access, but you’re not shifting into being a noter. With access concentration there’s also no subject or object.
Let me phrase that differently. There are objects that seem to arise and pass away but they’re noted simply as the outflow of conditions. So we don’t take them as solid or separate objects. So a primary experience of access concentration is non-separation, everything simply arising out of conditions and fading back into those conditions or into that ground. Everything arising out of the ground and passing back into the ground. Nothing is separate. The wind blows, a ripple arises. The wind dies, the ripple calms.
Just sitting by the water for 15 minutes watching that, feeling the wind on the face, seeing the waves come up and ripple, feeling the wind die out, seeing the water quiet down. For me at that point there is no self that can say, “Ah, this is access concentration,” I recognize that afterward. But there’s just a deep experience of presence. But in order to see in that way I have to stay present with this object, seeing it arise, seeing it pass away, seeing the next object. I’m not even so much creating the causality, this arose because of that, that’s too much thinking. I lose access concentration at that point. I’m simply present with the breeze and the breeze is gone. The waves moving and the waves are gone.
At some level there’s an understanding, an insight that ties it together, but the insight doesn’t happen for me within access concentration. I almost have to, I don’t want to say back out– transcend access concentration. Access concentration remains there as a base but the focus opens up a little bit, begins to take in the bigger picture.
It’s a different path, something different happens. I’m trying to find a way to articulate it. For me access concentration is a step along the way. When access concentration is profound, is very stable, attention begins to move very naturally, not directed, but naturally into how everything is dissolving. If there’s equanimity with that everything dissolving, I go through the objects themselves and into the ground from which they’ve come. Into the Unconditioned.
I personally, I’m not saying this is not possible, I’m saying I personally cannot experience, cannot open into the Unconditioned in that way from pure awareness. In pure awareness there’s spaciousness, there’s joy, there’s light, there’s bare perception, there’s no self or stories. But at that point I don’t take it into the dissolution experience which seems, for me at least, to be a necessary stage to opening to the Unconditioned.
The Buddhist path, Visuddhi Magga, the commentary on the path, it gives the name “change of lineage knowledge”. This means at first we’re looking at objects arising and passing away, arising and passing away, and at a certain point we see this is all the conditioned realm and what the heart is seeking is not there. None of that. And then you drop through into the Unconditioned.
I don’t think it’s so important to understand all of this conceptually. You’re not going to be writing textbooks about these experiences. What you need to understand is your own experience. What supports going deeper? What blocks going deeper? What helps?
You don’t even really need to be able to say this was pure awareness or this was access concentration, only, if one is feeling it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, but I’ve plateaued, why have I plateaued? I just keep coming to this experience of spaciousness and light and joy and a lot of people will mistake that and say, “This must be enlightenment.” But it’s not, it goes so much deeper.
So for me, resting in awareness is a very beautiful experience and is a helpful foundation for deepening access concentration. Not that I do awareness practice and it flows into access concentration, but the mind that sees this big picture that’s resting in awareness, then can begin to focus in on how everything is arising and passing away. And moves into that experience of dissolution. Sees it’s all passing away. What remains? And one then can move directly into the Unconditioned.
Remember, I said pure awareness is citta, consciousness. It is not the Unconditioned itself, it’s a state that for me hovers at the edge of the Unconditioned. I want to make it clear that there are practitioners who practice and open to the Unconditioned through pure awareness, probably within the Tibetan tradition. I don’t know, I’ve not talked to them to the point of understanding their process. I’m a Theravadan teacher and this is the path I know best.
But I take it out of the basic Theravada path, not just objects arising and passing away but also knowing and resting in the spaciousness between objects, and pure awareness practice allows me really to know that space between objects. Then when I experience dissolution and everything is falling away, instead of fear and withdrawal from the experience, the heart knows, just go into the space beyond. It doesn’t matter that it’s all decaying, it’s just the conditioned realm. Go through.
Q: Is pure awareness a way station like access concentration is a way station into this dissolution?
Barbara: I don’t want to call it a way station because when you’re resting in pure awareness you’re entering into the Unconditioned. Maybe not deeply into, but entering into. You’re at a place where there’s no karma. You’re at a place where there’s great peace and stillness. And I understand that there’s a path that can take that and deepen it. But I have not followed that path so I can’t explain it to you. Only, it’s there. It would require different kinds of practice that I don’t do, that I don’t know.
I highly value resting in awareness, and I find it not only of value but essential to the deepening realization experience. But it’s not the realization experience nor would I call it just a way station. One is too big and one is too small.
Q: What I have been taught is that it’s important to distinguish between resting in awareness versus resting as awareness. That we can really only know it by being it. It’s not (inaudible). And resting as awareness is as far as we can go. Being taken into the Unconditioned is an act of grace.
Barbara: That’s an important distinction. Resting in awareness, resting as awareness. And resting as awareness of course is much deeper. But resting for me, I can only speak from my experience and those of some others I have talked to, resting as awareness still doesn’t take me nearly into as deep an experience of the Unconditioned as I find through the path that takes me through dissolution, equanimity with dissolution, and the opening into the Unconditioned. I think the distinction for me is that resting as awareness, I have not personally found a way to bring the degree of mindfulness in that’s necessary for the deeper experiences of the Unconditioned. The first experience of the Unconditioned is fine.
But as one has repeated experiences of the Unconditioned and becomes aware of the bigger picture of, for example, for me an important piece of experience was, one experience of the Unconditioned led me to a deep understanding of how karma arises and passes away. Seeing it both in terms of the karma of this mind-body energy field, and generally of karma. Understanding how the whole Eightfold Path goes together and how all these factors work together, weaving this whole tapestry.
We see the simultaneity of conditioned and Unconditioned. There needs to be some level of mindfulness in there. For me, resting as awareness, being awareness, I find and I’ve tried, I find I cannot bring enough mindfulness in to go into the Unconditioned in that way. I’m not saying one is a better or lesser path, only this is my own karma and path. This is how it works for me.
So I’ve never asked a practitioner, when you are awareness, when you rest as awareness, can you move into those deeper places. I would suppose there’s a way to do that but I’ve not learned it.
We have 10 minutes…
Q: I do experience a strong mindfulness with that myself. But I don’t know as well as you do the dissolution experience. So this is inspiring me to open to that more.
Barbara: It’s profound because when everything conditioned falls away, either there’s a void and it’s terrifying or it’s incredible beyond belief because the Unconditioned is there. And at first, like Alice slipping down the rabbit hole, now what is it?
But gradually mindfulness leads us, we end up at the bottom of the rabbit hole and say, “Okay, I know where I am.” Not *I* know where I am, but awareness knows where it is, and I can direct awareness. In a sense I’m taking awareness down that rabbit hole through the dissolution experience and then directing awareness to really see the dharma in its entirety.
(Signer asks silent question)
Barbara: There’s no distinction at that point, I am awareness. There’s no self. But there is still intention because if I’m doing a retreat with the intention to understand something and I move into that space, deeply into the experience of the Unconditioned, I’m no longer consciously holding the intention, but I find that what I held the intention for opens up, and I begin to understand, begin to be in the space I need to be in for what needs to be understood to be revealed and understood. There’s no self understanding it. But later, reviewing knowledge can look at it and put it together and understand it.
Do you want to do the walking exercise or do you want to sit here for 10 more minutes?
Q: Let’s walk.
Barbara: Let me just say 2 or 3 things. Aaron says, his blessings and love to you, and there is no end of ground for discussion. So much to learn from each other, within ourselves. He is saying, please remember the important thing here is not to have some kind of experience. He wants to say it himself. Paraphrasing but Aaron speaking.
Aaron: The important thing is to be the divine being you are, to birth yourself fully into the expression of that divinity, that highest non-dual consciousness, and to bring it down into the world. The world needs that high vibration. The world needs all the love, the clarity, the wisdom, that you can bring to it. This is your work. It’s not about having experiences, it’s about what you do with those experiences.
I’m going to ask Barbara to email you out a statement I gave to her many, many years ago.
You are going to work– does somebody have a copy of Donald’s book? Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10 and conclusion. November, December, January, February, March. One chapter per month, focus on it. Barbara and I will send you out some emails with some exercises and work to do with each chapter.
I’ll ask of all of you, by early March, please email to us the areas you would most like to work on with Donald. You’ll have at least 2 full days with him. Three days of the intensive, Donald will have 2 of those days to work with you. When I say 3 days, Wednesday night and Sunday morning, but 3 full days. I’ve not yet decided how much of that if any of it we’ll spend in silence. And Donald and Barbara will talk about that. There will be some periods of silence but I don’t want to limit his time teaching with you, discussing with you.
What do you most want to talk about with him. In 2 days he can’t cover the full book. Where do you want him to focus? It maybe something outside of the book that you want him to focus on. So please email that to us in the early spring.
My deepest blessings and love to you. If you have questions, close your eyes and ask me. I’m never far away. Just your ability to connect with me and with your own guides.
I love each of you beyond the ability of words to articulate. My blessings and love.