Open Awareness

The aim of buddhist meditation, in one form or other, is to expand the awareness by un-focussing the attention. The difficulty reside in that "attention" is a brain function that is hard to control. Attention, just like breathing or digestion can't be stopped. And it gets bored fast, it jumps from objects to objects, constantly attaching itself to everything around you, or when done with the stuff outside you, it will start daydreaming about the past, or the future...endlessly talking to itself...

STOP! BREATHE! RELAX! become aware, but don't analyse. Just sit and be aware. Let the river of conscious thoughts go by without following them. It's not hard, just keep coming back to just being aware when you catch your attention focussing on something.

The Tree: I like this analogy. Imagine a big tree with thousands of leaves flapping in the wind. Hear the sound. Now focus on one leaf. See it move. Now move your focus on the leaf next to it. Now include the first one in your attention. Are you aware of the two leaves? Keep expanding your attention one leaf at a time until all the leaves are in your awareness. Becoming the tree is to be intimately aware of every leaves, branches, trunk and roots...

Awareness...

It's all about "awareness", isn't it? When talking about awareness, it's difficult to make sure everyone is on the same page. Zen Buddhism has a very precise definition of awareness. A quick search on the net will result in thousands of pages attempting  to clarify this point.

But really, what is awareness? One point of view is: awareness is what you get when all the sensory inputs are integrated and processed by the brain. The senses are the 5 body senses (touch, smell, vision, taste and hearing) and the mind. Buddhism in general consider the mind or consciousness to be another sense. So, we perceive reality through those senses, after the brain processes the information coming from the sense organ. The brain then organise this information into concepts and symbols, store them in memory, and then plays with it. Awareness is this entire process. When you focus your attention on an object, you assign more brain resources to the signals your senses are generating about that object. Thus you become more "aware" of it. During this process, all the signals your senses are generating about the other objects outside the focus of attention are more or less ignored, thus you are "unaware" of them. All of reality is still present to the senses, but awareness follows the focus of attention, like a flashlight in a darkened room, all objects outside the lighted area are dimmed and out of focus, but are still present. this restriction of awareness to the focus of attention is referred to as "everyday mind", or normal consciousness.

Understanding?

What is "understanding? What is meant by it? From the Wikipaedia; "To understand something is to have conceptualized it to a given measure. A cow has an understanding of the electrical fence. It may be limited to it's appearance and its effect, but it is an understanding because the cow will avoid the fence. The more complex the brain, the more understanding it can process.