The Key to Meditation is Awareness
By Tergar Community Team • 6 min read
Ordinarily, when we talk about “the mind,” we’re referring to memory, perception, thoughts, feelings, and so on. But in the meditative tradition, these describe mere mental events. Clouds move in the sky, but clouds are not the sky. Awareness is the sky, in which the clouds of mental events come and go. Awareness is simply knowing. You know that at this moment you are reading these words. You know what your senses of sound, smell, touch, taste, and sight are picking up. You know your own perceptions. That itself is awareness. Regardless of the state you’re in — cheerful or depressed, distracted by the thrill of first love or the annoyance of an ingrown toenail, frightened or serene — awareness is present.
Right now, raise one hand slightly. Does your hand feel warm? Cool? Numb? Painful? Knowing what your hand feels like is awareness. Is there no particular sensation there at all? Knowing that, too, is awareness. Now put your hand down. Do you know that you just put your hand down? If so, any guesses as to what is at play? Yup! Awareness! Do you get it yet? If you get it, that is awareness. If you think you don’t get it yet . . . and you know that you think you don’t get it yet . . . that’s awareness!
Awareness is not the same as the inner monologue — you know, that constant stream of thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and images yammering away up there 24/7. It’s not the same thing as the conceptual mind, either, though we use concepts, thoughts, and emotions to describe our experiences to ourselves. For instance, let’s say you pass someone who is walking a puppy on a leash. First your mind identifies it, categorizes it: puppy. Immediately, your mind is off to the races. “Ooh, adorable puppy. I must pet it,” or, “Oh no, I’m afraid of dogs. I hope it doesn’t come any closer.” The mind is going all over the place. Yet in the bigger picture, awareness transcends all of those perceptions, responses, and imaginings.
“Whatever we experience, as long as we’re aware of what’s going on, is meditation.”
– Mingyur Rinpoche –
Right this second, what you are experiencing is knowing (unless you are unconscious. Are you unconscious? No? Congratulations, you have awareness!). And within this awareness are love, compassion, and wisdom. They’re all there together. And this is the truth of who you are.
In this video, Mingyur Rinpoche discusses how awareness is central to meditation. He elaborates on how the recognition of awareness is the very foundation for one’s meditation practice.
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If we’re coping with a heavy, complicated problem, we’re often too busy to feel lonely. But sometimes, loneliness itself becomes our major problem. What’s happening is that our monkey mind is zooming in on the feeling, exaggerating it. Sometimes we think, “I don’t really have any good friends,” when what we really mean is we do, but they’re not around, or we don’t feel connected to them at that moment. Sometimes we think, “Oh, I don’t want to be around other people,” and we isolate ourselves. Later on, when our mood has shifted and we want company, we forget that we ourselves created that environment, and we feel lonely.
“Trying harder and putting in that extra bit of exertion was so counterproductive!”
When we have committed to the path of meditation, we tend to impose this desire for consistency on that, too, so should we experience any sort of dip in our meditation practice, we feel uncomfortable, dissatisfied, insecure — all those bugaboos start vying for our attention.
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