Clarity is a natural quality of awareness. Clarity is also involved in the details of life. Clarity includes choosing our words, obeying traffic rules, being mindful of timing and appointments, and when the toothpaste is running low. Profound examples of clarity include illumination, realization, insight, and the sparkle and lightness of being.
The first set of examples are exacting, the second set are expansive. Yet, within all is the quality of clarity. And this is the case with three qualities of awareness-mind. Exacting, expansive, and open or empty (in all their possible derivations and synonymous expressions) are co-existing. They are inseparable. This fact is what empowers each person to live from awareness and clarity, openness and expansive equanimity all the time. The trick is to realize that it is our choice to experience the openness within the exactitude, the possibility within the moment of necessity.
Within a meditation practice, exactitude is how one learns the techniques that will establish a practice. If one’s practice is suiting one, then the specific details of each meditation experience will result in peace of mind, an increase of creative inspiration, as well as foster wisdom and compassion. Once again, the exacting, being conjoined to the expansive and open, has easily brought forward a fuller range of all three qualities of awareness-mind.
We experiment with the sitting itself, in this meditation. In the long silences, you – the practitioner – can experience at least two of the three qualities in their union.
Downloadable podcast: Clarity and expanse
Filed under: Current Round, Entry Level Tagged: attention, awareness, clarity, concentration, dharana, insight, meditation, vipassana, vipasyana
