"Awareness seems very close to consciousness in that it holds sense experience, but perhaps there is also mindfulness since it seems somewhat intelligent.

Consciousness in this usage means the knowing of an individual sense object: sight, sound, and so forth.

Awareness is not quite locatable. It is not an object that can be taken hold of; awareness is what holds objects.

Awareness is the activity of knowing; mind is the thing that does the knowing."

Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators

"Perception involves a sort of interpretative representation or view, while consciousness is direct knowing or immediate awareness of an object.

Conceptualization offers access to a wider world beyond immediate experience, but in its pursuit of commonalities it must abandon the compelling uniqueness of the moment. "

Untangling self

"Meditation moves us in the other direction. It is an attempt to remove, piece by piece, layer by layer, all the baroque ornamentation with which we embellish our world of constructed experience. Underneath all the drama, the restlessness, the hopes and fears, behind the narratives we weave about ourselves, and even before we've thought of ourselves as ourselves, lies a simple, unadorned awareness. It's not even a thing - just an event that happens, a little burst of knowing, deep in the center of it all.

Experiencing this awareness has more to do with subtraction than with addition or multiplication. [...] The Buddha got two steps further than Descartes, beyond the 'me' and beyond the thinker: instead of 'I think therefore I am' we need only say 'thinking occurs', or even more simply, 'awareness occurs'. "

Untangling self

"Craving 'to become' is an impulse that makes us lean forward, away from here, into a better moment, a better self. When we do so, we separate that idealized moment from the actuality of what is just here. It’s only when we learn to end the separation of the possible and the actual that we also learn to end this dichotomy between doing and being. Calm abiding is a present-tense phrase, a way of being in the midst of our lives. We learn to calmly abide in the body, in the mind, in the midst of reactivity. Nothing has to go away. It’s the shift from the object orientation to the seeing orientation. All of our likes and all of our dislikes, our wanting and not wanting, are born of object orientation. This object orientation—defining identity by objects (including the contents of our consciousness)—limits us. We’ll always have a sense of unease within it.

Calm abiding is something different. It’s a deep knowing of the ways in which events come and go, both unlovely and lovely. It’s knowing that we can’t control or define ourselves by those events. It’s learning to rest in a non-preferential, non-reactive relationship that is sensitive, receptive, and free from the demand that things go one way or another.

Meaningfulness is found not only in the dramatic and the intense but also in the small moments, illuminated by a curious awareness. We discover that meaningfulness is in our being present. We don’t need to seek meaning, but to understand our capacity to be present in this responsive, still way."

Doing, Being, and the Great In-Between - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Fall 2016

"Gotama has not eliminated the forces of Mara but became immune to them.

When regarded with mindful awareness, greed and hatred are seen for what they are: impermanent emotions that, when left to their own devices, will fizzle out. Realizing that they are conditioned processes and not essentially 'me' or 'mine' takes away their power.

Nirvanic freedom is the result of understanding how reactivity works.

Mara is whatever imposes constraints and limits upon us." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"I see Gotama's vision to be primarily concerned with these fundamentals:

An understanding of conditionality as the context for
A fourfold task:

to comprehend suffering,
to let go of the arising of reactivity,
to behold the ceasing of reactivity, and
cultivate an eightfold path that is grounded in the perspective of

Mindful awareness and leads one to become
Self-reliant in the practice of the dharma." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age 

"When desire is replaced by equanimity, and awareness of all phenomena thus unfolds without reference to self, we gain the freedom to move along with change rather than setting ourselves against it."

Self as a verb - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2005

"If you distilled out all the internal contents of your consciousness, including all thoughts and states of mind, you would again come to that same refined and simple state of being. This unprocessed sense of aliveness, both inside and out, is formless awareness."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 148

"Form is what you see, the objects of sight; formless awareness is what sees the objects, the seeing itself."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 28

"The person is a product of the mind, not the other way around, and the incessant mind chatter has to be maintained for the person to believe he or she is outside looking in. We know ourselves only by making mental noise, and if the mind gets quiet, this false dichotomy of "me" separate from "my" mental experience cannot be maintained.

The concept of "I" is another thought coming from the mind.

When we actually look inwardly with awareness to see this "I", we see only thought, emotion, and memory. There is no entity apart from these thoughts.

The thoughts of the brain and the sense of I are one and the same thing.

Over time these mental functions assumed themselves to be a person.

The person who was just created out of thought now became the person outside of the brain having the thought."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 43-45

"Thought gives substance to all things but does not impart essence to anything. The essence of all things is formless awareness, and nothing exists except that the formless makes it so."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 35

"Hear the sounds, smell the odors, and softly see the forms arising in this moment. Resist investing energy in thinking about what is sensed and hold the sensation just as it is, free of thought. Let awareness be expansive so there are no limitations. Now sense what holds all the shapes, sounds and sensations of this moment and feel the living moment itself."

Awakening: a paradigm shift of the heart - p. 34

"Once you fully experience the nature of your mind, you are a buddha. Awareness of your true nature is the stainless, single eye of wisdom.

The distinction between being enlightened and not being enlightened is whether you experience your nature fully or not. In seeing your nature, there is nothing to see, because there is nothing there."

Confusion Arises as Wisdom - p. 181

"When you look for the mind, the only thing you can find is awareness. The mind is nothing more than that. 

The nature of the mind is nothing but awareness-emptiness."

Confusion Arises as Wisdom - p. 72-73

"Thoughts and emotions are simply manifestations of your natural awareness, which, in a way, is actually nothing."

Confusion Arises as Wisdom - p. 63

"Cada momento de consciência plena, de presença tranquila e alerta, cada momento em que a mente não está às voltas com alguma coisa de que ela julga precisar, ou tentando livrar-se de alguma coisa que ela julga não querer é um momento de liberdade."

Não faça nada, só fique sentado - p. 84

"A principal prática de meditação ensinada por Buda denomina-se consciência plena: a percepção tranquila, sem apego e sem aversão, da experiência presente."

Não faça nada, só fique sentado - p. 18

"Mindfulness involves conscious effort; it is something you can practice. But it is moving toward real awareness, which is utterly without effort."

Breath by breath: the liberating practice of insight meditation

"The past and the future are obviously thought created, since all remnants of what has been or what will be cannot be found except through rumination.

Nothing could possibly be outside Now because it is the only place life can occur.

The closer we move into Now, the more spontaneously awareness arises, until finally we see that full awareness and Now are one and the same."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 216, 217

"Buddhism in its final summation is about abiding in the Now, and buddhist practice encourages and cultivates skillful states of mind to make that entry easier. It is a straightforward process of surrendering that occurs when the mind is calm, serene and equanimous, because those states arise from a lack of mental resistance and bring the person of awareness closer to Now."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 215