Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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which is a mental exultation (pīti), but which can never be an object
of thought. The memory of joy may provide a pleasant memory of
an experience in the past, but that is not joy, that is not delight.
Why should a memory be called back to provide satisfaction in the
present? It is clear that in such memory there is no experiencing, but
only a desire for gratification. It is the thought of ‘self’-gratification
which makes thought delve into the archives of memory for the purpose
of filling in a blank in the present. Just because here is no joy,
one recalls a joyous experience. Thus the experience has become
the property of an experiencer who is now craving for an clinging to
what has been experienced, idealised, stored away and now brought
back to fill the vacuum of the present moment. That means, the
present moment had no experience to satisfy the ‘self’ and now the
‘I’ goes back into the past, having separated itself from the experience
and brings back a dead memory. Thus, the experiencer had
no experience in the present. But if there was no experience in the
present, there could have been an experiencer either.
It is this separation of the actor from his action which sets up an
opposition of conflict: the ‘I’ which is the experiencer, the thinker,
the actor, wants to possess the experience as ‘mine’, to call it back
from memory, so that the ‘I’ can live again in that experience. But
the memory, of an experience is never an experience, and thus there
cannot be an experiencer holding on to the past, to memory, to
property. Such holding in is the present. ‘I’ am just that: a memory,
a reflection, a projection, a ‘clinger’ to what is not! That is the work
of awareness, to make free, to be free. And that is joy!
Delight as a facet of insight (bojjhaṅga) is a living experience
which has no duration and therefore is only experiencing without
comparison, without memory, without a past. In this actual experiencing
there is no thought about it, so that it cannot become a
memory as there is no reflection of an ‘I’ who wants to retain, to
possess, to recall, to store. Such joy (pīti) is beyond logical thought
(vitakka) and sustained application of mind (vicāra). It has no aim