2022-05-03 Satipaṭṭhāna (68) The Unity of Awareness and the Path
IInsight Meditation CenterMay 3, 2022 at 10:55 pm14min
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00:00Gil Fronsdal
We are coming to this last week on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, The Discourse on the Foundations for Awareness – for Establishing Awareness.
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00:19Gil Fronsdal
I want to tell you a little bit about this text. It is kind of like cliff notes. It does not go into a great explanation of what is really being taught. It is more like brief statements. Then down through the centuries teachers have expanded on it and clarified it for people – used it as a basis for giving instructions. The instructions and the understandings have changed over time. The text is amenable to many different ways of understanding and interpreting. Maybe that is one of the reasons why it has remained so popular. It is more notes where the meat of it comes forth in the teachings that are received about it.
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01:19Gil Fronsdal
In the first many years that I studied this text and enjoyed it, the lens or the interpretation that I used to understand it had a lot to do with the very common verb expressed in the text. It is repeated many places, and in different exercises. It is to understand or to know, Pajanati, to know.
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01:52Gil Fronsdal
Many of the instructions were to know something – not to fix it, not to be concerned with attaining anything or getting anywhere. It was not about judging anything, or having commentary about things, but just to know the simplicity of it. I came to appreciate how powerful it is to just be present for something – to know it, to be aware of it. Giving it the gift of allowing everything to be itself.
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02:26Gil Fronsdal
Rather than we becoming free – maybe we will never be free. What we do though is give freedom to everything else. Everything receives freedom from us, including our inner life. So much so that maybe there is no sense talking about a self doing it. Everything is given its freedom to be itself.
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02:57Gil Fronsdal
I found it so freeing, and so satisfying to have this very clear present moment awareness. It was just abiding in the present, allowing things to be as they are. It was very freeing, very nice.
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