Underrating Awareness

Awareness is not difficult. Awareness is a light and simple knowing or noticing what is happening to your mind or even your bodily processes now. How difficult can that be?

So what then is making awareness difficult to develop just as some of you may have experienced? It is the obstacles to awareness, not awareness. There are many causes to it and it has nothing to do with awareness.

First on the list is forgetfulness. Our busy mind over other matters, including matters of others, is what makes us forget the importance of awareness. In this case, it seems like others are more important than us, but how can that be since entertaining or busy with others involves our mind? As a matter of fact, there is no moment that doesn’t involve our mind. And that mind of ours that is so busily involving outside is causing us stress, which we not aware.

We cannot experience the world. We only experience our mind, about the world. This knowledge may be new and surprising to you. All these while you are only experiencing your mind. When you go on holiday, your mind is happy. Happy is your only experience. You cannot experience the place or the holiday. When you go for a movie, the fear, the horror, the joy, the anger is your only direct experience. You cannot experience the movie. You may say I am seeing the movie, yet seeing is your direct experience. What is been seen is also your mind’s perception or interpretation at that time. Awareness enables us to know this. In short, understanding your mind is more important.

The second reason is the mind’s tendency. The tendency of seeking outside is what makes being aware difficult. Both are of different directions – awareness looks inward, attachment looks elsewhere. Whichever that has been conditioned for too long will supercede the other. As such, developing awareness is a new trade to your mind. Your patience will pay off over time if there is consistency.

The third reason is involving in too many responsibilities. Stress, worries, or not having enough time to handle everything makes the mind scattered and restless. Not that you cannot be aware or mindful, but if you are a beginner it is more difficult. You really need a lot of personal faith and dedication to steers it up.

The fourth final reason is that you have yet to see the benefits arising from awareness. If you were to taste the amazing benefits that come from awareness, you wouldn’t have given it up so easily. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say all of our unnecessary sufferings arise because of not being aware. Awareness makes you know what is happening now. Awareness makes you notice how your stresses come to be. Awareness is your refuge in time of anxiety, fear or inevitability. More importantly, awareness if developed correctly, in accordance with right view, can blossom a unique kind of transcendent wisdom. Wisdom is an asset to the mind. It is a treasure that cannot be compared to anything in this world, not even money or gems. Why? Because it brings ease, equanimity and also good wholesome qualities to the mind irrespective what is taking place around you.

Where wisdom is present in the mind, greed, aversion and delusion cannot exist. And these three that makes out the unwholesome mind, when absence, is what wholesomeness is. When the mind is wholesome, it is kind, loving, generous, patient and more. What else can you ask for?

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