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When Attention Comes to Rest in Itself · Conversations with Amoda Maa - Exploring Awareness Through Dialogue and Living Inquiry

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  [Music]
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  You are listening to the Amoda Maa podcast.
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  In this series, Amoda explores her essential teaching through conversation and excerpts
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  from interviews and events.
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  Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.
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  So attention is
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  so often habitually
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  going towards the object of our experience
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  towards thoughts and sensations,
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  memories, problems, plans, it's as if attention becomes contracted around the
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  object of our experience. This is such a habit, it's ingrained.
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  It's so habitual that we overlook it and we assume that this is who we are.
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  We're bound up in the object of experience. If the object is a feeling or a sensation,
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  then I am that. If it's a thought, I am that. Our identity is bound up with the object of
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  experience. We believe we are our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions. If there's a difficulty,
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  challenge and intensity, then that becomes the center of who we are, who we think we are.
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  Again, this is just habitual. For most people, for many people, we don't give it any examination.
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  And yet it is possible for attention to relax.
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  It is possible for attention to soften.
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  that contraction around the object of experience is what creates a tight sense of me, me as
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  this and me as that. And so we ping pong between, I am good, I am bad, I am lucky, I am unlucky,
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  so on, constantly seeking to change, to fix, to control, to manage the experience, the
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  many objects of experience, as if that will help us manage ourselves, control ourselves,
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  place one sense of identity with another. But the relaxation of attention does not require
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  us to manage anything. It requires us, or invites us, to undo, to soften the management
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  project so that a sound can simply be heard without interpreting it, without following
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  it, without the attempt to reject it. Sensation can be experienced without naming it, without
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  labeling it. It's good or bad or it's unwelcome or an experience, whatever we are experiencing
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  does not need to become a problem to solve. You know, emotions can move through us without
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  becoming a problem to solve. The relaxation of attention is not a getting read of anything.
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  It's not a withdrawal from experience. It's not a negation or an erasure of experience.
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  is simply relaxing. That momentum, that movement towards, towards reaching towards, simply allowing.
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  Breath is breathing, sounds are appearing, sensations are changing, thoughts are arising,
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  everything is moving, life is movement. There's an extraordinary intelligence in this movement,
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  everything is functioning as it is. It doesn't require your management. It is our fascination
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  with that movement, with that reaching towards, with that object, that overlooks, that causes
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  us to overlook what is already here. The quiet openness of being. That which is beneath
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  all movement. It's not just available to us in meditation. It's not just available to
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  us when the mind is quiet or everything is still. It's always here. It's simply overlooked
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  because attention gets funneled in by the fascination with object of our experience.
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  It's deeply ingrained. Attention has been trained in some way to move towards objects
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  and identify them. And of course that is functional to survival mechanism. That's how we operate,
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  navigate in the world, but it's become habitual and it's not always required.
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  The invitation to relax attention is the undoing of that habit when it's not needed, when it
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  simply creates more suffering. But the undoing of that habit is mostly gradual. It doesn't
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  happen in one fell swoop. It's a gradual undoing. Usually we notice it in moments of
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  quiet or moments of beauty and moments where nothing much is happening. And then we notice,
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  ah, you know, moments of walking quietly without purpose.
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  Then we notice perhaps a quiet stillness, a sudden sense that
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  I am a sudden sense of being.
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  The problem is the mind goes looking for that and tries to manufacture it again,
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  tries to create another object out of it, usually through meditation. Most meditation practices are
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  built on the premise will certainly reinforce the idea that this stillness, this quiet
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  beingness can be manufactured through the meditation practice, that it's something we
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  have to look for, something we have to create, another destination that we have to find,
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  And this is contrary to what is being invited here.
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  The invitation to see that openness, this open beingness is not an occasional situation.
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  It's always here.
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  It's always here.
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  This is discovered when the habit of attention contracting around experience starts to soften
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  and that's why it's gradual.
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  happens in this situation, in this situation, usually in the easier situations, sitting
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  still, walking, etc. And then it starts to go deeper. It starts to become more obvious
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  that it's always here in all situations.
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  And the fascination with the content of experience with that which comes and goes starts to
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  loosen.
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  It's a willingness to let life be as it is, to let experience be as it is.
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  This allows that mechanism of reaching towards experience to undo.
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  So attention comes to rest in itself as openness itself.
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  It's gradual.
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  It's a gradual unveiling.
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  in the mind or the self expects it to be a dramatic event, a dramatic recognition, a
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  dramatic awakening. And sometimes it is. But it's more likely to be gradual. It's more
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  likely to be a gradual undoing of the habit of contracting around experience.
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  This is an unveiling, an unveiling of that which has always been here, the quiet ground of being.
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  the more we are willing to soften attention and to find out what that means directly in
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  our own experience.
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  When we come to recognize that being, openness, presence, true nature, call it what you will,
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  is not a state to attain.
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  Any state that needs to be attained requires effort, requires a reaching towards something.
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  And in this case it's an imagined something, because we imagine what it is, we imagine
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  what the destination is, what the status is.
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  More important than that.
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  The true invitation is for you to become available to this unveiling and to discover
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  within yourself what this availability means.
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  it's possible and it is available. And yet, clearly overlooked by many and in many instances.
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  So this is the invitation, not just for today, but always, always.
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  Always. Always.