Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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an escape is only more conflict. It is the search for an escape which
separates, which divides, which opposes and therefore IS conflict.
Then, if peace is the absence of conflict, there must be an end
to searching.
Now, awareness is exactly that. To be aware is to see what
is, and not to search for what may be. Awareness sees that all
striving for attainment (and that includes the attainment of peace)
is a striving which is conflict between what actuality is and the ideal
which is not. Thus awareness sees conflict as non-real, and striving
as idealistic, which also is non-real.
Peace is then a condition of existence, unknown to a searching
mind. It is a condition of existence, which is only known as a term,
an ideal, a thought, as the absence of chaos, of conflict. This absence
is not known in itself, but there is the experience of chaos, of
confusion, of conflict, which is not conducive to the sense of security
and safety required for undisturbed continuance and expansion.
Without continuance there is no existence thinkable; and expansion
is the first defence for continuance.
What is known then is not peace, not even the absence of peace,
but an expanding activity of self-assertion, which is necessary for
continued existence. The continued existence, if self is not known of
course because it is still an unborn ideal, hoped for in some future.
This hope for the future carries with it its own doubts and fears of
discontinuance, and is made up from reflected images and memories,
which thought has rescued in the past, and without which there
would not even be an ideal to look forward to.
All this together is the conditioning from which the mind tries to
free itself in its search for peace. But, peace itself being but an ideal,
that is, a thought produced by the mind, and that in turmoil, can
never be achieved by the striving of the mind to become peaceful.
Mind can exclude some troublesome thoughts by concentrating on
some more delectable objects. That is the work of escapism through
drugs, or prayers, or external and social activity, etc. But such