Clarity online study group - Discovering the Heart of Buddhism Course

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This will be a 7 week online study group course for students who engage with an online group mentor.

Please also complete the additional form to receive the book if required or if you'd prefer a digital copy see the course page after registration.

 Any queries please contact [email protected]ku.gro.sha@stneduts

If you would like to purchase a Journal to add your reflections on the exercises in the Clarity book, click here: Clarity Journal (this is an optional extra)

We use the words clarity and awareness loosely to refer to certain aspects of our experience, but we do not always stop to think what exactly they are referring to.  The meaning of awareness overlaps with mind, but has a whole different range of associations and connotations.  Clarity again has a range of associations all of its own.  What we hope you will find interesting is that all these associations tell us something more about the nature of the Indestructible Heart Essence.  Openness and Clarity are not different things; they are merely names for the same reality talked about from different points of view. 

Both the space and the clarity of our experience are indestructible.  This tells us something about what is meant by awareness or clarity in this context.  The next step is to apply this observation to our own experience in order to discover whether it is true or not. 

 

Section A - Introduction

Reading

Read through the introductory pages, plus the section exploring the associations of the words 'clarity' and ' awareness'. Have a play with exercises 1, 2 and 3. Then read through the short piece on ' Two aspects of one fundamental quality' and see how you get on with the suggestion for bringing the associations of the words 'clarity' and 'awareness' together as one single quality in your meditation practice.

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Section A:  Introduction

In the previous section we focused on openness and noticed how an attitude of openness allows clarity and awareness to operate which in turn increases our sensitivity, responsiveness and sense of well-being. 

Although in this section the focus is on clarity or awareness, you should not think that this is in any way separable from openness.  The first step is to look at the ordinary sense of the words clarity and awareness and what associations they have for us.  We need to reflect on whether and in what way these words capture further aspects of the Indestructible Heart Essence that perhaps terms such as openness and spaciousness miss. 

We use the words clarity and awareness loosely to refer to certain aspects of our experience, but we do not always stop to think what exactly they are referring to.  The meaning of awareness overlaps with mind, but has a whole different range of associations and connotations.  Clarity again has a range of associations all of its own.  What we hope you will find interesting is that all these associations tell us something more about the nature of the Indestructible Heart Essence.  Openness and Clarity are not different things; they are merely names for the same reality talked about from different points of view. 

Both the space and the clarity of our experience are indestructible.  This tells us something about what is meant by awareness or clarity in this context.  The next step is to apply this observation to our own experience in order to discover whether it is true or not. 

If it is true, then we must already have clarity and awareness and any seeming expansion or deepening of it is merely a discovery of something that was there from the beginning.  Treating clarity and awareness as something to be discovered rather than developed transforms your practice and helps you to give up mental contrivance and effort.  This is a long and subtle process that we have no control over, so do not expect immediate results.  We have to find a whole new way of relating to our practice in order for it to become effortless.  In the meantime, clarity and awareness in their usual senses point us in the right direction. 

In this section we will explore how we can work on increasing our clarity and awareness on many levels at once.  In Section A, we begin with our associations with the words clarity and awareness and how they manifest in our attitudes and behaviour.  Having focused all these associations into a single fundamental quality inseparable from openness and sensitivity, we will look at how clarity and awareness in our attitude and behaviour can help link into all three qualities. 

The quality of clarity and awareness is also the power of mind and heart to cut through ignorance and confusion.  As such, it has tremendous energy and releases tremendous energy, just as ignorance and confusion block and distort it.  Clarity and awareness can be like a sharp sword or knife that cuts with precision.  It is also all pervasive like the power of a mirror to reflect images clearly, precisely, smoothly and vividly without fuzziness, mixing, sticking or arbitrariness.  Clarity and awareness are structured and dynamic and recognise patterns of structure and dynamic.  Cutting through ignorance and confusion, it aligns itself to truth and reality and reflects that back to us, empowering us to respond and act in accordance with it. 

This dynamic within the stream of our experience manifests in the space of the heart and mind, where we find a tremendous longing for it, as we discovered in the section on heart-wish.  The quest for truth, meaning and purpose in all its forms is a manifestation of this energy. 

In Section B we will explore the means of developing clarity through the practice of mindfulness.  We will look more closely at the associations of the word 'mindfulness' noting again why, in general, for the kind of daily life practice we are recommending we use 'awareness practice' instead of 'mindfulness'.  We will then look at how we can be aware and clear about confusion and finally explore ways in which we could increase awareness and clarity in our daily life. 

In Section C we will look at areas in which we can gradually gain increasing clarity and awareness through our practice.  First, to give you a complete overview, we will look briefly at the clarity and awareness involved in seeing the connections and relationships that we shall be discussing in detail in the theme of Mandala Principle.  We will relate this briefly to clarity concerning our physical connections within the body, mind and environment. 

The main thrust of this theme, however, will be to revisit areas explored in the theme of Openness in greater depth, with a view to introducing further subtleties.  In particular we will look again at impermanence, suffering and not-self in terms of clarity and awareness.  Openness is the quality of being prepared to look at these characteristics that invariably accompany all our experience, whereas clarity is the quality that sees the dynamic and significance of them.  It is the seeing of significance that produces the response associated with sensitivity.  We will consider distortions of the energy of clarity, such as misuse of the intellect, aggression, anger and hatred.  The aim is to help you feel confident that even negative qualities are in essence inseparable from the sanity of the Indestructible Heart Essence. 

Finally, we will encourage you to let your heart and mind lead you towards making a leap into a dimension of clarity and awareness well beyond your present understanding.  This means trying to imagine or feel some sense that you are linking into an ever-present reality, veiled from you, but very near. 

'To see omnipresent space we need to perceive things in a vivid and sharp way, which is what is meant here by clarity or awareness.  The mere fact that we perceive anything shows that clarity is present.  What is needed is for it to expand and deepen through our aligning ourselves with it.'

 

 - 'Openness Clarity Sensitivity' (p.88)

 

Associations of the Words 'Clarity' and 'Awareness'

Here we shall examine the words 'clarity' and 'awareness' according to our ordinary understanding of the terms. 

Exercise 1

Jot down associations with the word 'clarity' and any images that come to mind. 

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Suggestions from other students: 

'Clarity implies sharpness, vividness, understanding and vision.'

'It could mean transparency like clear water.’ 

'Clarity is associated with bright, sharp images as in a clear photograph or mirror.’ 

'It could mean being clear about things, for instance about how things relate and connect, what things mean and so on.’ 

Exercise 2

Jot down connotations of the word 'awareness'. 

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Suggestions from other students: 

'Awareness has the sense of being alert and awake.’ 

'Awareness suggests a living spacious quality that just knows rather than knowing anything in particular.'

'The word 'awareness' does not have the sharpness of clarity.’ 

Exercise 3

Jot down any contrasts you notice between the words clarity and awareness. 

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Suggestions from other students: 

'You have to be aware in order to be clear, but you could be aware but not very clear; for example, you could be aware that you were unclear.’ 

'Awareness' does not necessarily imply understanding, but clarity does.’ 

'Awareness sounds softer and more sensitive than clarity’ 

Whenever we say 'clarity' in this course we mean a quality that has all the connotations of both clarity and awareness. 

Two Aspects of One Fundamental Quality

In the previous exercises you probably noticed subtle differences in the connotations of clarity and awareness.  The importance of these exercises is that we must be careful not to confuse the fundamental quality that pervades all our experience with awareness in the sense of an observer, or with clarity in the sense of mere intellectual understanding.  It is the vivid, alive quality of knowing or consciousness without which there would be no such thing as experience at all. 

In the Theme Book on The Indestructible Heart Essence, we explore the way we use mind as a sense of space in which and out of which thoughts appear and disappear.  Here we are using mind, together with knowing, consciousness, clarity and awareness, synonymously for the mirror-like quality of making something manifest.  Our sense organs can receive messages, our brain cells can process them, but it is the clarity or awareness of the mind that manifests and knows them.  It does not matter how sophisticated technology becomes, or how much more we are able to know about the brain and its functions, ultimately, it is only our own clarity and awareness that knows anything.  Although we talk as if the heart or the brain knew things, actually it is only awareness itself that is aware and knows things.  Whereas, in our language we use the word 'heart' loosely to mean that innermost essence of our being that knows things, we have no equivalent use for the word brain.  It is all the more surprising therefore, that it is generally accepted as reasonable to suppose that our mind is the brain.  It is surprising because, although everyone agrees that we can be aware of the heart and the brain, insofar as they are matter and not mind, they cannot be aware of us. 

The point of this discussion is to show you that your own experience of awareness and clarity comes first.  You do not need to have a theory about it or wonder whether you have it or not, because it is there before the theory or the wondering; the theory and wondering arise out of it; they are its functioning. 

The power of clarity or awareness always involves movement.  We have already explored how all experience arises in and is inseparable from a sense of space.  As we observed when considering the EVAM principle, all our experience involves movement in that sense of space.  There has to be some movement to focus, and that movement just appears out of a sense of space and disappears back into a sense of space.  Without that movement there is no experience.  When there is no movement at all we blank out, as in unconsciousness or deep sleep.  But awareness does not cease.  It does not go anywhere.  We do not talk of awareness spontaneously arising out of nothing.  It is simply not moving.  As soon as it moves we say it has woken up, implying that it was there all along.  A dream is the mind moving in its own sense of space and waking experience is the mind moving in a shared sense of space.  When there is awareness of the open spacious nature of the mind, then the clarity moves freely and easily.  When we have shied away from that openness and solidified the world, the movement of awareness is obstructed.  Clarity is what cuts through that solidity returning to spaciousness again. 

Meditation

Reflect on the associations of the words clarity and awareness and let those associations focus your mind on one fundamental quality within your experience that is always present together with the space and openness.  You may be able to touch on it for a fraction of a second from time to time.  As you touch on it, let it affect your heart and mind for a moment and then let it go.  Continue your meditation as usual.  If you feel that you can recognise clarity and awareness as two aspects of one fundamental quality, try to notice this in your daily life awareness practice. 

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If you have time, listen to these recordings

 

Introduction

Clarity and awareness