Episode 171 – Fresh Eyes

In this episode, I’d like to focus on awareness, or vipashyana  •  while mindfulness refers to stabilizing, grounding, and focusing the mind, vipashyana is about clarity, openness, curiosity, and inquisitiveness  •  vipashyana is a natural outgrowth of mindfulness practice: as the mind settles, it begins to naturally clarify  •  vipashyana draws us outward; it is based on taking a genuine interest in the details of our life, in the details of our perception, and in the details of our own character  •  with vipashyana, we use our meditative grounding as a stepping stone to engage in the world with clarity and insight  •  the idea of clarity in vipashyana is more like a verb than like a noun: it’s a positive kind of questioning mind, a process of seeking clarity, of not being satisfied with a superficial or vague understanding of our experience or of the teachings of Dharma  •  when you hear about something like the Four Noble Truths, what does that actually mean?  •  rather than just passively accepting that this is the way it’s been taught, we try to really penetrate and understand it  •  vipashyana exposes how fuzzy we are about so much of our basic experience, how many unexamined assumptions we operate under, how much we miss  •  vipashyana is like having a set of fresh eyes: when you take a fresh look, you see things differently  •  you connect to a vaster world that is more vivid, and fresh, and true.