Oakville Zen Meditation
There are 2 types of awareness:
One is the mundane one that is knowing this and that from memory.
The other one is more subtle and fundamental regarding Zen philosophy and practice.
Awareness is to pay attention, mindfully, to the present moment, and its content, whatever it is.
Awareness is the essence of the practice of meditation, and meditation is the practice of awareness.
The 4 important attributes of awareness are defined in Zen:
*Paying attention, that is to focus on x, y,…., like a laser beam.
*Mindfully. To be mindful is to pay attention w/o any analysis, judgment, or decision. Paying attention mindfully is to observe and to reflect on things and people as they are, like a perfect mirror, and not by using any analytic approach that contains opinion, judgment, and decision.
*Current moment. The present moment is the only genuinely existing time since the past is dead and the future has not been born yet. Remember: you exist only in the present moment. Past and future, you are just mind-made avatars, and yet this is how we identify ourselves most of the time.
*Content. The content of the present moment includes my body, what my body is doing, what it is thinking, my environment, and using my 5 senses.
From this list, one realises that active awareness is moving away from our overthinking mind-trap.
Being aware, as defined here, is experiencing our genuine pure consciousness, exempted of its mental cognitive attributes. Awareness is pure being, free from noisy thinking.
Being aware in its Zen meaning is the opposite of our constant daydreaming state, in which we are trapped most of the time, since it is our genetic mental default mode.
When you wash your hands, make a cup of coffee, wait for the elevator, drive, etc, instead ofof being trapped in the past or future by your getaway, automatic thinking, use one of your mundane, daily, and repetitive opportunities to practice, mindfully, awareness of one of the realities of your current environment.
This is what we do while meditating: paying attention to our breathing to anchor our mind
for, eventually, being able to control it.
Zen says, “When you eat, just eat. When you walk, just walk, “ meaning: bring your mind where your body is, and what it is doing.
This is the practice of awareness: bringing your mind with your body, and what it is doing in the moment.
This is mind control, the opposite of daydreaming. Thanks
