Bare attention and clear comprehension


bare attention and clear comprehension

Here are two key cconcepts that you might like to immerse yourself in once you've been meditating for a while. It's a way of breaking down mindfulness a little bit and is onward leading.

Firstly, we might ask ourselves: what is mindfulness?

There are lots of mindfulness experts out there nowadays who could help with this but generally speaking it is: paying attention to something without effort. You could call this bare attention or choiceless awareness or open awareness. We hear a sound, a sound is heard - it takes no effort. It arises and passes away.

Bare attention is a skill that requires practice. The more we practice, the easier it becomes to stay with bare attention. If we do lots of body scans the mind will relax and this will happen naturally: we fall into a state of: in one ear and out of the other.

So, let's say we have been sitting in a state of bare attention for 10 minutes or so - it's pretty cool, relaxing, and we're grooving along quite nicely in a state of empty awareness. This is all well and good but we need to interact with the world: we need to act. Now, mindfulnes of action is clear comprehension. I need to move, I'm going to move, now I'm moving. A LOT of stuff happens when you want to lift a finger - it's easier to see if you have been doing nothing for a bit and then you attempt to move your finger. There is the intention to move and the actual moving. Notice the magical 'about to' moment. It's huge!!!! Once you have a grip on this, you will open up a vast area of of investigation which could go on forever but mainly: everything you do is managed by the mind.

That's probably enough for now. Clear comprehension is onward leading and has many facets to it: application of wisdom to actions and maintaining awareness as you go about your business and merging it with the truth about reality. That's for another time. For the purpose of this exercise, tune into mindfulness: bare attention and then clear comprehension. These skills are highly advantageous to mind explorer.



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