Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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insubstantiality (anatta). The lack of awareness is then a lack of
understanding which is basic ignorance (avijja) rooted in delusion
(moha). The overcoming of ignorance through a realisation of truth,
which is to know and see things as they really are (yathā-bhūta-ñāṇadassana),
is then truly an awakening from a state of delusion.
To be awake then, is to rise from the slumber of ignorance and
delusion, to perceive, to understand, to comprehend, to realise, to
be enlightened (bodhi).
It is this process of awakening, which is the ‘application of mindfulness’
(Satipaṭṭhāna), and which requires an intense state of alertness
and attention (yoniso manasikāra) to the actuality of experience,
an awareness of mental states as they arise, rather than paying
attention to states which have arisen.
Thus, ‘inhaling a deep breath, he is aware: I inhale a deep breath’
(dīghaṁ assasāmī’ ti pajānāti 3 ). To be awake is seeing the act in
action, that is, the actual reaction in the mind. Whether the breath
is long or short is immaterial in itself, except perhaps for a lung
specialist looking for symptoms. But the awareness of the mental
state which produces this quality of action is an awareness of the
reactionary ‘self’ which is being expressed. What follows after the
diagnosis is of interest perhaps to a psychiatrist, who can analyse
a symptom, tracing it through memory. That too, is mindfulness
(sati) as recollection (anussati) or memory, but not awareness of
the present reaction, which reveals the prevailing motive or volition
(cetanā), which is the activity (kamma) which makes the ‘I’.
Attention is often the result of selection, which is volition, which
is the ‘self’ in action. For, attention is an activity of the mind which
precludes distraction. Whereas alertness is choiceless and is as much
interested in the distraction, if that is the reaction, as in the preselected
focus of the attentive mind. The reaction, which is an afterevent,
is of much more interest, because it shows the actual state of
the mind reacting to experience. The experience itself is not impor-
3 M. I, 56