Knowing in this practice is starting from where we already are… with gentle heart and open mind. It’s asking genuinely- “Who am I?– and non-conceptually transcending our habitual fabrications of the “I”, “me”, and “mine”; it’s cultivating a wise relationship to our experiences- and to our situations regardless of the circumstances- neither clinging or avoiding to arisings that are fundamentally empty.

The arisings or events in our lives have only the form we give them through thought and/or feeling. Our thinking gives rise to empty form as “concepts”. Problems are only problems because we make them so. It is our orientation that either opens or narrows our situations- whether we respond effectively and creatively or react ineffectively and habitually. Possibilities emerge when we are open and when we are not rigid or frozen in thought.

More often than not, our tendency is to fabricate (i.e. make) what we have… “formations” of the mind and body… “proliferations” as they are fed and nourished by an “idling” mind of endless thoughts, perceptions, fantasies, and ideals. Mindful awareness that becomes stable and refined with formal practice and informal diligence sees these fabrications- these formations as they  are occurring for what they are- simply events that arise and fall in the field of awareness. It is here where we rest in this awareness- watching and knowing the arisings beyond conceptual thought- sensing and feeling without emotional attachment. To get caught up in these fabrications- these ideas, conceptions, and ideals often distort what really is.  As we have previously discussed, it is our own storylines (i.e. constructs of “self”) that stand between us the knowers, and what is really happening directly. We cannot open to our innate sentience- our capacity to experience directly when we are bound to the fabrications- and to the mental formations of ourselves and our realities.

Self-constructed storylines narrow our realities to small, rigid views filled with self-cherishing and self-preoccupation. Our perpetual “self-talk”– our discursive chatter with ourselves rolls on and on, day in and day out- habitually setting the stage for the way things are supposed to be for us. When things go our way for awhile, we feel safe, secure, and confident about the way things are…  and when things don’t go our way as they will at some point in time, we often become angry, disappointed, and even depressed- forgetting that things were never supposed to be any particular way at all.

It is our prideful arrogance of heart- our own self-importance that forgets all things change in ways that are uncertain- and all life is subject to the “law of impermanence”. Simple awareness of this law counterbalances our habitual tendency to become entrained in our arrogance and self-importance. We are perpetually seduced by the appearance of things… fabrications and illusions of perception- unexamined thoughts & feelings- intimations of our immortality or omnipotence. Our way isn’t always what we think it to be- even when we “think” we do all the “right” things. It is our attachment to these fabrications- of what should and shouldn’t be– which is the root of our suffering. Our potential- our capacity to be with it all- complete & whole lies in our awareness- within which, all thought and emotion arises and subsides

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