Cultivating Choiceless Awareness

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Cultivating Choiceless Awareness

by Matthew Flickstein

 

 

When meditation teachers address the pursuit of enlightenment with

their students, they either discuss the gradual or sudden approach.

The gradual approach focuses on the value of virtue and on the

accumulation of wholesome karma. Meditation techniques which

concentrate and calm the mind are taught. The cultivation of

mindfulness and clear comprehension is encouraged. The mind thus

becomes a precise instrument for perceiving things as they really are.

In the gradual approach, wisdom is seen as an unfolding process and

even enlightenment is seen to progess in stages.

 

In the sudden approach, however, the teacher's perspective is that

we all have Buddha nature and that we cannot " practice " to become

what we already are. Concerning oneself with virtue will not lead to

the goal since cultivating karma, even wholesome karma, is still

involving oneself with the phenomenal world. Even the quest for

enlightenment is seen as keeping oneself trapped within a dualistic

conceptual framework. When the student makes statements that believe

the fact that he or she is already enlightened, the teacher points out

the errors in his or her thinking.

 

Both approaches are valid and students at different stages of

development gravitate to one or the other of these schools of thought.

Although it is not immediately clear to the casual observer, what both

schools have in common is the quality of mind that enables one to

directly perceive or experience the reality to which they both point.

This quality of mind is referred to as a " non-judgmental " or "

choiceless " awareness. Although meditators hear about this state of

mind quite frequently, it is not until they recognize that it is one

of the primary causes and conditions for the arising of insight that

its true significance is appreciated.

 

The consequence of making judgments is to perpetuate obsessive

patterns of mind. If we judge the contents of mind to be good,

positive, or fortunate, we grasp at them. By doing so the presence of

these patterns are reinforced. If we judge the contents of mind to be

important, we focus on them, watching to see where they will lead. If

we judge the contents of mind to be bad, negative, or unfortunate, we

tend to resist them. Although the patterns will be suppressed, they

will continue to persist on an unconscious basis. Every form of

reactivity to our mental patterns actually invests them with

additional power to influence us.

 

It is not easy to cultivate a non-judgmental or choiceless

awareness. However, the consequences of remaining present in this way

are quite significant. Issues that have been deeply repressed begin to

rise to the surface providing us with the opportunity to consciously

address them. By recognizing our self-destructive patterns, their

power to control our behaviors diminishes. Our attachments typically

decrease as we discover more subtle levels of impermanency and realize

our inability to stop or control the incessant rise and fall of

phenomena. We may perceive the unfulfilling nature of sense experience

and abandon the pursuit of meaningless goals. Ultimately, as the mind

experiences the selfless nature of all phenomenal existence, it may

turn for its security to the freedom of the unconditioned.

 

Choiceless awareness is a quality of mind that is free from making

judgments, decisions or generating commentary as it meets with sense

experiences. It is a mind that responds to each new moment without the

burden of its past history or of making future projections. When the

mind no longer clings anywhere, not even to the idea of not clinging

anywhere, we realize, either suddenly or gradually, that we truly

already are that for which we have been searching.

 

 

http://www.midamericadharma.org/study.html