PPP, Part 15, Simple Knowing

Greetings, Friendlies. :)

In some dhamma traditions a type of bhavana (cultivation/meditation) is practiced that goes by names like Bare Attention, Open Awareness, Choiceless Awareness. Presently I prefer Christina Feldman’s “Simple Knowing”. From her book Mindfulness:

a way of attending where no judgment or narrative is added to the experience of the moment. A thought is a thought, a sensation is a sensation, a sound is a sound, and a feeling is a feeling. Historical association is released, future dreads and anticipations are released, and we establish the capacity to know the moment just as it is. We may be acutely aware of the pull of habitual patterns to interpret, evaluate, speculate, and ruminate. Yet those patterns are also known in the light of Simple Knowing—habit as habit, reactivity as reactivity… [1]

This Simple Knowing can be one way of understanding Ud 1.10, The Bāhiya Sutta, “In the seen, only the seen,” etc. The general idea being: don’t layer thoughts, papañca, views, etc, on top of basic sensory input.

You can probably see where this is going, weaving together Simple Knowing, the Interpreter Module, Papañca, Saṅkhāra-ing/Fabrication, Avijjā. More to come….

With friendliness!

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[1] I think this is an enormously useful cultivation, and I think Feldman’s description accurately represents what is understood/taught/practiced. But I also think it’s important to include the teensiest caveat of my disagreeing with some of the premises here stated; tabling that for now.