The Spotlight of Awareness

Last week, I wrote about the flux of experience, which is a continuous flow of mental impressions that somehow brings about the cumulative effect of a 'self' that is the source of everything.  No-self or anatta is one of the 3 characteristics of existence that all Buddhists have to realize on their path to Enlightenment.

The concept of anatta is a difficult one for most people to grasp because almost all religions of the world have the concept of a soul that transcends the body. If there is no substance, spirit or soul that is permanent, what then is there? And Buddhists believe in reincarnation don't they? If there is no soul, what is it that is being reincarnated?

Let me put it this way: the concept of a soul is a simplistic way of viewing an on-going chain of causality. There's only energy or karma being transferred from one thought moment to another. And that's all there is. A conscious moment is like the momentary illumination of a strobe light, and we see karma in freeze-frame, exposed in all its nakedness.

You experience it, but you cannot hang on to that thought moment, no matter how seemingly pleasant or unpleasant it is.  This is where the 2 other characteristics of existence come in: impermanence (anicca) and suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). 

Experience is a process and being a process, one moment is different from the next. The laws of statistical mechanics dictate that entropy shall increase, simply because order or perfection is an unlikely circumstance.  So, unlike anatta, the concept of impermanence or anicca is a relatively easy concept for people to understand because we see it everyday in our daily lives. Things breakdown, decay and die. Nothing lasts forever. 

But why this emphasis on dukkha? Can't we just accept the impermanence of existence without this rather pessimistic view of suffering or dukkha? 

Yes we can, but unfortunately we don't. And this is simply because we cling or attach ourselves to these impermanent moments of experience. Each moment has a feeling of 'unsatisfactoriness' because of its transient nature. If it is at its intense peak, then the moment is 'over' before you knew it. If it is rising, then it is 'not there yet'. If it is falling, it is 'slipping away'. It is never ever achieving the ultimate state of perfection because it never stays the same. 

Hence dukkha is baked into anicca and the resultant illusion of anatta frames the entire system as a finite region of suffering--a life, an incarnation.The 3 concepts are interlinked and self-perpetuating. 

Occasionally, when allowed to do so, moments of insight arise, and the system untangles itself ever so slightly. Part of our mind is a semi-autonomous faculty called 'awareness'. Awareness is dumb, like a spotlight. It can point and illuminate certain views of the on-going process. This pointing of awareness is all the self-less 'you' is capable of doing. 

Each time an area of darkness is illuminated by the spotlight of awareness, some illusions will be dissolved. So all you can do is continue pointing that spotlight. 

But how do we know if we are pointing at the correct spot? Well, you'll know it when you see it. It's called insight. And they only come when you meditate with the spotlight of awareness.