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Guided Meditation: Receptive Awareness; Receptive Awareness and Concentration - Andrea Fella

The following talk was given by Andrea Fella at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 02, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Receptive Awareness

Good morning, or for those of you on the live stream, whatever time it is for you. I'll start with a little bit of a guided meditation this morning, and I'm going to offer perhaps a style that may be a little less familiar to some of you. It's an open awareness style of meditation, and so we won't be, at least for the first few minutes in my guiding of it, inclining you towards stabilizing with the breath. It'll be more of a stabilization of awareness with whatever is arising. And then after some time, I'll suggest if you feel more comfortable you can shift back, but you might just go along for the ride for the first few minutes at least, see how it lands for you.

In any form of meditation, relaxation of body and mind are very supportive conditions for the connection of mindfulness with experience. And so I often find it helpful at the beginning of a sitting to take a few moments to consciously relax.

This can be done in a kind of a systematic way, starting perhaps at the top of the head, relaxing the head and face, neck and shoulders, arms and hands. Relaxing the chest and upper back, all those muscles around the rib cage. Sometimes as I relax that area, quite naturally a deeper breath happens, maybe allowing a deeper breath to expand and stretch those muscles, and then notice the softening of those muscles on the out-breath.

Exploring a softening across the stomach and abdomen, middle and lower back. Maybe the hips can relax, the legs, the feet.

And then perhaps there can also be a softening more deeply inside the body. Maybe the inside of the throat can soften, maybe the area around the heart can soften, maybe the stomach and intestines can soften, allowing there to be a kind of a relaxation, a letting go in all of those organs inside the body. We don't have to hold them up; our body naturally supports them.

As the body softens and relaxes, however much it's softened or relaxed, that supports a mental relaxation. So you might have noticed a little bit of relaxation of mind, a little bit of less pull to thoughts or worries or concerns. And we can also explore relaxing the mind. One of the best ways into that has for me been an encouragement by Gil [Fronsdal] as if the brain were a muscle. Maybe the brain can relax.

As we've been exploring a conscious relaxation, we have been aware, mindful of this process, at least at times, perhaps noticing the body, noticing the mind. This is awareness. And so now, I'd like to encourage a little bit of a shift to recognizing: are you aware? You don't have to think about it. If you're hearing my voice, knowing the sound, knowing body sensations, you are aware. You may not know how you know you're aware, but just open to that. Awareness is here.

And awareness will connect quite naturally, is connecting quite naturally already, with some aspect of experience. Maybe body sensations, with the breath, or sound. Maybe thoughts even, or a mood or an emotional tone.

Having a sense of settling back and receiving whatever is obvious in this moment. Awareness will be receiving something; we don't actually have to aim or point the attention. I think of attention; attention is a factor of mind that connects with some aspect of our experience. It's a little different from awareness. Awareness is that aspect that receives experience. Attention connects with some particular aspect of experience. And while attention is amenable to our conscious choice—we can choose, aim the attention at the breath or the body or sound, any experience—if we don't choose to do that and kind of let go of the active choice of where to aim the attention, the attention will connect with something.

So what is obvious without you trying to find anything? Relax, receive. Often it is something like the body, especially at first, because the body sensations are pretty obvious. And as we receive, step back from aiming or choosing where to place the attention, we will notice that the attention shifts. New experiences are received in each moment. Maybe a breath, and then another body sensation, a pressure, maybe the sound, hearing.

Receiving. It's okay if the experience changes. We're cultivating awareness, being aware with whatever is arising.

And also, if the attention lands in a familiar place like the breath, for instance, you don't have to keep it from being there. If that's naturally where the attention is going, that's fine. Receive the breath. Receive whatever the attention is naturally connecting with. And the attention is likely to shift at some point to a sound, another body sensation, a thought. And noticing that, be curious about the shift of attention and let the attention then receive, let the awareness receive wherever that attention has connected. We don't have to let go of that and return to any particular experience. If we notice the shift and allow the connection of awareness with whatever that experience is, we are aware.

Relaxation really supports this kind of exploration.

What is obvious in this moment? In this moment?

Sometimes the attention will connect with something very specific: a specific sound or a body sensation, a breath or a thought, very clear. And other times, the attention feels more broad. It maybe feels like connecting with the whole experience or something more diffuse, something less specific or precise. We may not even know what it is, but there's the recognition that we are aware. We don't have to find a specific, clear experience. If we know we're aware, that's enough. Are you aware?

Maybe have the sense of following the attention, that shift of attention.

And of course, the mind will wander. As with any practice, we'll get lost in some experience, get started thinking about something and not be aware that we're thinking. And at some point, awareness will return. In that moment you know when awareness returns, can you recognize, "aware again." Aware again. Awareness has returned and it's knowing something in that moment. It may be knowing something about where it was wandering to—the thought or an image. So, awareness of that. Relax and receive.

Now you may feel a pull back to thinking. You may be able to notice that pull. That's just another experience arising, that pull. It's kind of where the attention is wanting to go. You're noticing how the attention is drawn. You might be able to recognize that pull. And sometimes the pull is stronger than our capacity to really know it, and if it feels that way, then it's fine to relax and connect to some very easy experience, maybe the breath for you, or hearing, or body sensation, as a place to kind of remember awareness, refresh the connection with being aware.

And continuing, relax, recognize awareness. What is obvious in this moment? And this moment? Settling back and receiving this flow of human experience. We can be aware with all of it.

If this receptive awareness of just moment-to-moment experience of what is obvious feels easeful for you, you're welcome to continue exploring that. If it feels more agitating or chaotic, you're welcome to return to whatever practice or style of connecting with experience is most supportive for you right now.

Introduction

So we have a few announcements. Good morning. I just want to mention that Dharma Sprouts is not meeting today. Instead, next week at Stafford Park at 11:15, that's the kindergarten through second graders. And next Saturday, we are going to have a daylong retreat, we call it an intensive. Bruny will be teaching it, and it starts at 6:00 a.m. and goes to 9:00 p.m. Yes, I have actually done this before, it's been a while. And so we will be offering a light dinner, a light supper for the retreats. And so if anyone would like to help to offer soup, salad, bread, a cookie, something... if you'd like to offer to cook for that or just to help set up, please let me know. I'm Hillary. Let me know after the Dharma talk. We would love to have some volunteers. Thank you.

Thank you, Hillary. Can you hear me?

And so I'd like to warmly welcome Andrea Fella, co-guiding teacher of Insight Meditation Center and the Insight Retreat Center. She has been practicing Insight Meditation since 1996 and teaching Insight Meditation since 2003. She is particularly drawn to intensive retreat practice and has done a number of long retreats, both in the United States and in Burma. During one long practice period in Burma, she ordained as a nun with Sayadaw U Janaka¹. Andrea is especially drawn to the wisdom teachings of the Buddha. Her teachings emphasize clarity and practicality. Andrea is a member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council and teaches residential retreats for IMC and other retreat centers around the country. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to make one correction: I'm not a co-founder of IMC. I was a student here.

Receptive Awareness and Concentration

In this style of practice I offered in the guided meditation—the receptive awareness, settling back and just receiving moment-to-moment experience, not aiming or pointing to stay with one particular object—people often will ask, how does concentration fit into this practice? How does it work? I'd like to respond to that question in a little talk here, talking about different forms of concentration.

In general, there are different ways we can think about concentration. We often think about it as focus; that's what we tend to think the word means. But in terms of a quality of mind, we could say it's a stability of mind. In terms of the meditation practice, it's a stability of mind, a composure, a sense of collectedness, of non-distraction. Those are some other words that resonate with what concentration is. Unbroken attentiveness is another word.

Concentration arises; it's not something we do so much. Concentration arises as a natural condition. It arises when we explore energy and mindfulness together, making the effort to stay connected with experience moment after moment. Often we do that by staying with one particular object, the breath for example. So, concentration, in terms of these words—non-distraction, composure, collectedness, unbroken attentiveness—another definition we could say for concentration is mindfulness present moment after moment. Now, it may be present with one particular experience, the breath, moment after moment, or it may be present with changing experience moment after moment. These are two different kinds of concentration, and I'll talk a little bit more about those two different kinds, just to highlight some of the differences and how they're practiced and how they're cultivated.

But concentration itself comes about through cultivating mindfulness with some effort, with making energy to stay connected to the present moment. There's a couple of places in the Suttas² where the Buddha points to concentration being a natural consequence of practice. There's a statement: "It is to be expected that one who has faith, whose energy is aroused, and whose mindfulness is established, will gain concentration, will experience concentration." So we don't make concentration happen. We do connect with experience moment after moment, we make that effort, we engage in that way. Sometimes that's an active engagement and directing or aiming of the attention to the breath or some particular experience, and sometimes it's more of a connecting with awareness itself, knowing that we're aware and receiving experience moment after moment. That was the way I was guiding the first 15 minutes or so of the guided meditation today, that receptivity. We're not choosing to aim the attention at a particular experience, but we are connecting. It takes some effort to connect: what's obvious now? What's obvious now? Or maybe noticing when the attention shifts from one experience to another.

So we make that effort, we engage with energy and mindfulness. As the Sutta quote says, "whose energy is aroused and whose mindfulness is established will experience concentration." We don't make concentration happen; we gently encourage mindfulness moment to moment.

The purpose of concentration isn't the concentration in and of itself. Concentration does feel good. It creates a sense of ease in the mind, it often creates a feeling of tranquility. There are sometimes experiences of delight or happiness, joy, that can arise with the arising of concentration. But all of that is not why we do it in Buddhist practice. We look at establishing mindfulness and cultivating that concentration so that we can see clearly. We can understand our minds, we can understand how our minds struggle, how they get caught, and how they can move in the direction of more ease, more peace, more happiness, less suffering.

The concentrated mind allows mindfulness—it's kind of like sharpening a knife. We could think of mindfulness being like a knife that can clearly see what's going on in our mind, and the concentration is like the sharpening of that knife. It creates more capacity, more clarity perhaps.

So the recognition of what is skillful, what is unskillful... the qualities we begin to see with mindfulness, we begin to see what's going on in our mind. Sometimes patterns related to greed, aversion, and delusion. We see those patterns, we feel them, and we know directly in the moment, "Wow, those things do not feel good." They are suffering, they create tension, they create stress, they create contracted qualities of heart and mind.

And then, when our mindfulness can also see other qualities of mind—open-heartedness, connectedness, care, patience, happiness, tranquility, calm—when we feel those with mindfulness, we feel the ease that's associated with those. We feel a spaciousness, we feel openness, non-constricted. So we notice this difference between these habits and patterns of greed, aversion, and delusion, and the arisings of non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion: love, compassion, wisdom, patience, tranquility, joy, delight. We feel the difference between those.

And we don't have to turn away from those challenging states of mind. The teachings of the Buddha point to the First Noble Truth³: there is Dukkha⁴, there is suffering. And the Buddha's encouragement around that Noble Truth is to understand it. We should understand Dukkha. This understanding of Dukkha is precisely what concentration and mindfulness together support. So when we see the arising of anger or frustration or confusion or desire, greed—when we can see that with mindfulness and concentration, yes, we feel the Dukkha of it.

One of the beautiful things about mindfulness and wisdom together—this mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom as they come together—is that when we know and can see these unwholesome qualities of mind arising, these qualities based in greed, aversion, and delusion, when we see them arising, it creates the conditions for them to get weaker. Mindfulness and wisdom do that. We don't have to turn away from it. If we can know it, if mindfulness and concentration are established, concentration is present and there's this stability of undistracted attention, knowing the arising of those unwholesome states of mind is no longer unwholesome because it's being witnessed with wholesome qualities of mindfulness, wisdom, and concentration. So we're cultivating those wholesome qualities and learning about those habits and patterns of mind.

And when mindfulness, wisdom, and concentration recognize suffering, they understand, "This is not the way to happiness, this is not the direction." And so it begins to support the mind letting it go. Maybe not immediately, but it inclines in that direction. Then, when mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom meet those wholesome qualities of mind, states of mind based in non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion—those ones that feel expansive, feel beautiful, feel uplifting—there's a sense of well-being. When mindfulness, wisdom, and concentration meet those, they understand this is the way to happiness, and those qualities are strengthened.

So mindfulness, wisdom, and concentration are wonderful supports. We don't have to try to weaken those qualities of mind that are unwholesome or try to strengthen the qualities of mind that are wholesome. It's natural that the unwholesome qualities diminish and the wholesome qualities increase as we cultivate energy, mindfulness, and concentration with wisdom, with this curiosity about what's here.

The concentration does not need to be just on one experience. As we open to what's arising in our experience, we will see all kinds of things going on in our mind: frustration, confusion, anger, hatred, love, compassion, kindness. We'll feel all kinds of things going on in our bodies. So there is a form of concentration that allows for that.

I'll talk about two forms of concentration just briefly here. The one we're more familiar with, perhaps, we could call one-pointed concentration. That's where we aim the attention to one particular experience, like the breath. The practice there in cultivating this kind of concentration results from a focus on a particular experience where we turn the attention to it. It could be the breath, it might be a particular body sensation, it might be an image. We give preference to that. So the stability of mind with a particular experience, what we often call focus. We're focused on one experience.

The practice around that, I'm sure most of you are familiar with, is when we notice that the attention shifts away from that, we, as best we can, let go of what is not that and come back. So if we're attending to the breath and we notice that the attention goes to a thought, we try with as much ease as possible to say "not now" and return to the breath. We let go of anything not the focus of attention. In this form of meditation practice, that creates a stability of awareness or mindfulness on the object itself, for instance, the breath, moment after moment. That's where the attention is. We let go of what is not the breath and come back to the breath. The mind tends to begin to gravitate more to the breath. We're training the mind to come back to the breath, and so that begins to be more easeful. We can just stay with the breath, and the kind of concentration that's developed there is very stable because we're stabilizing the object as well as the mindfulness.

But the concentration itself is still simply a continuity of mindfulness moment after moment; it just happens to be a continuity of mindfulness moment after moment on the breath. When that concentration deepens, and it can deepen very much to a lot of stillness, a lot of depth, the movement of that kind of concentration is towards more and more stillness. Tranquility can be a hallmark of that. Stillness is a hallmark of that kind of concentration. The hindrances fade away, there's much less reactivity in the mind, and there's a lot of stability. It feels pretty good. A lot of the feeling of it feeling good has to do with the fact that these hindrances are not arising: sense desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt are not arising. The absence of those feels pretty good. So that's one-pointed concentration. It becomes very, very still, very quiet, and we like it, actually. It feels really good. It's such a relief not to have so many things going on in our mind sometimes.

Then there is this other form of concentration. It's called moment-to-moment concentration. This kind of concentration has many of the hallmarks of the other form of concentration. There's a lot of stability of the mind, it's not distracted, it's not being pulled out into non-mindfulness, not losing the connection with the present moment experience. But there's a stability of the awareness that we're cultivating here, rather than a stability of the object of experience. We're cultivating a non-judgmental, non-reactive awareness moment to moment with whatever is arising in the present moment, staying present with the flow of experience.

This kind of concentration also brings a lot of ease. The hindrances fall away when we're not involved in what's arising by thinking about it or reacting to it. The hindrances will fall away also in this, and that feels quite lovely. When the hindrances fall away, there's ease with what's here. Also, I'll say that this form of concentration is available not only on the cushion but in daily life, in the midst of whatever is happening. It's possible for this form of concentration, the stability of mindfulness, to carry through the day. Now, it's not easy. We have to work at this. There's a kind of an intention we need to set to be curious about how we can carry mindfulness through the day, how can we cultivate that continuity of mindfulness, which is concentration, throughout our day. This kind of concentration has a lot of similar qualities in the feelings that arise: the delight, the joy, balance of mind, ease, non-reactivity. And yet, what is very different about it is that it doesn't have that same stillness of object. The experience can feel very dynamic with this form of concentration. Now, we can tune into a stability of the awareness that can feel quite still, but a lot of what's happening in experience is changing, and yet we're not distracted by that change.

So I'd like to take a few minutes to talk a little bit about this form of concentration and how it can be cultivated not only on the cushion but in daily life, because to me, this is a lot of where the rubber meets the road. In our daily lives, we so often get caught by what's going on in our minds. So, what can support—if we think of concentration as being the continuity of mindfulness moment to moment, not so much on one thing, but the continuity of mindfulness moment to moment—what can support that with changing experience, with the flow of our lives, with just what's arising?

On the cushion, a gentle effort to recognize awareness, I would say, is one of the first things we're exploring. Trying to just remember awareness. When I learned this technique most fully, I was practicing in Burma with a Sayadaw, and the first instruction that he gave me was, "The only thing you need to do with your mind is to remind yourself to be aware. Everything else will follow." There's a little more than that, but that's a kind of first level of practice. Just reminding yourself to be aware. He would say, "Remember yourself." Not as a turning back and looking at yourself, but more of an opening, "Oh yeah, I'm aware." Awareness is actually quite obvious.

So recognizing awareness, I'd say beginning to learn what awareness feels like is one of the main supports for this kind of practice. One of the easiest places to begin noticing that difference, noticing the quality of being aware, is in the moment when, after you've gotten lost, awareness returns. That moment, we often are judging ourselves because we think we should have been staying mindful, but conditions arose and we got caught by something. And now new conditions have arisen, mindfulness is back. Let's celebrate! Here it is. What does it feel like? What does awareness feel like? What is it like to be aware now?

There's a contrast in that moment between what it was like a moment before when the mindfulness was not there, and what it's like now for the mindfulness to be here. Be curious about that difference. We don't actually know what it was like when we weren't mindful; we can't be mindful of when we're not mindful. But we can remember in the moment when mindfulness returns, there's a lingering memory of what it was like for the mind not to be mindful. So there's a contrast. Get curious about that moment of mindfulness returning.

When I started this exploration, it was really fantastic because I was just curious about, "Well, what is it like for mindfulness to come back?" And so it did not matter how many times my mind wandered. In fact, every time my mind wandered, it gave me another opportunity to notice what awareness is like. So, just practicing like that, maybe the mind wanders 100 times in a 40-minute sitting; that's 100 opportunities to notice what awareness is like when it comes back. As I shifted to that curiosity, the judgment about the mind having wandered really diminished. That practice was really helpful for me. In the formal sitting, you might take a sitting sometime where that's your practice. You don't try to stay mindful, you just notice the return of mindfulness. Just notice that and see what it's like. I don't recommend that as your only mindfulness practice, but you might explore it just to get the flavor of mindfulness returning, of what awareness is like.

You can also do this in your daily lives, this recognition of mindfulness returning. It happens a lot more than we think it happens. What often happens when mindfulness returns is we start thinking about what we've become aware of. We do something with it, and so we don't really connect with, "Oh, this is awareness. I've become aware." You can just set an intention or curiosity, kind of like I suggested for the sitting. Sit down and don't try to be staying mindful, but notice when mindfulness returns. You could start with a little stabilizing so you have a bit of a container to start with, and then let go and be curious about that moment of mindfulness returning. So there's an intention to connect with that moment.

You can do something similar in daily life. Now it's probably not going to happen as frequently, but when you begin to get familiar with it in daily life, you'll find mindfulness returns when you're walking down the street, crossing a sidewalk, opening a door, washing the dishes, hearing a dog bark, talking to a friend. Mindfulness can arise. You can become aware that you are aware in any activity. So some curiosity about that, if you set that intention... This is one of the supports for the cultivation of concentration. Because we don't make concentration happen, we set the conditions up for energy and mindfulness. One of the supports for energy is an intention to notice when mindfulness returns. Have that be an intention, remind yourself about that intention. Any time you notice that mindfulness returns, it's like, "Oh, here it is."

As you begin to get familiar with what it's like in daily life for mindfulness to return, you will start noticing it more, because the attunement to that quality—it kind of feels like the light is coming on, there's a brightening in the mind. As you start to get attuned to that, it will point itself out to you more and more. So this is one of the ways to begin to cultivate mindfulness, and it's so simple. You don't have to work, actually. That moment that mindfulness returns is great because you didn't make it happen. You didn't have to do anything to make it happen; it just happened. There's a little bit of effort to connect with the fact that it did happen. That moment when mindfulness returns also can give you a flavor of how easeful it can be to be mindful, to be aware, and that we can be aware with anything because mindfulness will arise in the midst of all kinds of activities, all kinds of states of mind. Curiosity about that moment of mindfulness returning in the sitting practice really supports the recognition of awareness. Then, once we have a sense of awareness itself, what it's like to be aware, that recognition helps us to not be so concerned about the object of awareness and the shift of attention, the mind moving from one experience to another. We can know, "I'm aware. It doesn't matter if there's some other object that's appearing."

The other key piece I'll point to is around the attention. Again, this may be a little bit more in the sitting practice, but it's useful in daily life as well. In the guided meditation, I pointed to how we can recognize the attention shifting from experience to experience. Attention is the factor of mind that connects to some aspect of experience. Mindfulness is the connection, the knowing, the receiving of experience. These are different functions of mind. I used to think that if I was not consciously directing my attention, that I was not being mindful, and that's not true. Beginning to understand the difference between attention and mindfulness is useful.

We can know this actually. If you're walking down the street and you're lost in thought, entirely not mindful, often we're navigating the street fine. We're seeing, we're hearing, we're not running into trees or walking in front of cars even though we're lost in thought, even though we're not consciously aware. Attention is working. Attention is noticing, seeing, and hearing, and mindfulness is not present. So we can see that attention and mindfulness are different things. Now when mindfulness is present, it's connecting to whatever attention is noticing. Also, that example points out that we don't have to make attention happen. When we're not mindful, we're not choosing where attention is; it's doing its thing. Conditions arise, pointing out various things that are useful to attend to as we walk down the street. That's happening. It's not self, it's an arising. So attention does not require us to aim it. And so when mindfulness is arising, it's basically connecting with whatever attention is connecting with in that moment.

Recognizing the attention and noticing when attention shifts from one experience to another, that recognition has a distinct quality. There's a feeling of when the attention shifts from one thing to another, and I think we know this too from meditation. We get attuned to this shift. If you're practicing in a more focused way with the breath, we know the shift away from the breath. That's a shift of attention. In our more focused practice, when we notice that shift of attention, we let go of what the attention has shifted to and come back to the breath. We aim the attention.

In this more receptive practice, when we notice a shift of attention, we get curious about that. What's that? The attention has shifted. We're mindful of the attention shift. Why not know that? As we get familiar with this quality of the shift of attention, we can kind of have a sense of following the attention moment after moment. Again, the mindfulness can stabilize. If you're more familiar with bringing the attention back, it can feel a little bit unstable at first to just watch that shift of attention. It can feel a little bit jumpy or wobbly or something like that. But over time, we can begin to appreciate, "We are aware." So there's the stability of the awareness, and noticing where the attention is moment after moment, and notice that we can be with experience moment after moment without reacting to it because of the mindfulness and the concentration together.

So, noticing that shift of attention. In daily life, this is also relevant. We might recognize we're focusing on something and something happens outside, and we may get annoyed, right? It's like, "Oh, the attention has shifted, I'm supposed to be doing this." If we don't notice the shift of attention, if we're not consciously aware of the shift, reactivity often arises there. I'd say too that not noticing the shift of attention is one of the main reasons our minds wander in sitting meditation practice. So familiarity with that shift, getting curious about it, and then there's a choice. If you're doing a more focused practice, then with that noticing of that shift, you can let go of what it has shifted to and come back to cultivate that more stable, one-pointed concentration. But you can also be curious about, "Oh, I'm aware of this."

At one point I was doing more focused practice and noticed that the mind kind of got really broad, or it felt like a drop and a spread or something. It was like, "Oh, come back." It almost felt like falling asleep. And so every time I felt the beginning of that drop, I would come back, come back, come back. At some point in this process, I noticed that I was quite aware at the beginning of the drop. It's like, "Okay, I'm aware. Let's just see," because it kept happening. It was almost a pull towards something. Mindfulness was being pulled toward something. It's like, "Well, let's see where is it going." And so in that moment of feeling the drop and the spread, I was completely aware and found that I did not fall asleep. I was completely aware and mindful, and the space was vast, expansive. It was a completely different space and it almost startled me. It actually pulled me out of it, like, "Whoa, what was that?" But that was the curiosity of following the attention. Since I've understood and have been able to follow that more, it's like a deepening of letting go.

This kind of noticing the shift of attention can also be very valuable in daily life because as we begin to get more familiar with that, there's much less reactivity that can enter because the mindfulness and the concentration are more present. And there's so much learning. The still concentration practice where we're really stabilizing the body and mind on one experience—depending on how deep or how still you're going for—the direction of that is toward stability, not a lot of change in that space. And so there's not as much opportunity to learn about the comings and goings in our mind in that space. Now, the movement to cultivate it, going into that state and coming out of that state, there's a lot that can be learned about the changing nature of our minds. That's typically the encouragement with one-pointed concentration practice: we're learning about letting go of the hindrances as we go in, we're learning about stabilizing the mind, and then as it ends, as it falls apart, we're learning about the impermanence of that state itself. We're learning something about that.

So it is in the space of changing experience that the learning happens: the learning about wholesome and unwholesome, the learning about what our minds do, cause and effect, impermanence. In this moment-to-moment concentration practice, we're learning all the time. Some people feel or think that you need to settle the mind first before you open up, to settle into one-pointed concentration before you open up to this changing nature of experience. That's definitely one way to go. That's a way to cultivate the Vipassanā⁵ practice, the insight practice into changing experience. But it's not necessary to start with one-pointed concentration. The one-pointed concentration kind of takes us down deep and then we open. With the open awareness practice, we're kind of learning as we go about everything that's going on in our minds. It's a little bit of a slower settle. It can take a little bit more time to really settle deeply, but we're always learning about what's happening in our minds, learning about the suffering of reactivity, learning about the beauty and well-being of the non-reactive states.

The point of cultivating the concentration is this understanding, whichever way you come at it. It's not the pleasant experience of concentration itself; it's what can be learned.

And it's time to stop. So thank you for your attention.