Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening

by Joseph Goldstein

There is an early insight into the nature of the mind-body process that both comes from this continuity of mindfulness and also strengthens it: it is the understanding through one’s own experience that in every moment knowing and its object arise simultaneously. There is the in-breath and the simultaneous knowing of it, the out-breath and the knowing of it. A visual object arises, and in that very moment there is the knowing of it. This is true of every aspect of our experience. This insight is the first doorway into the understanding of selflessness, and in the stages of insight, it is called Purification of View. We begin to see that everything that we call self is simply this pairwise progression of knowing and object, arising and passing moment after moment. And we also see that the knowing in each moment arises due to impersonal causes and not because there is some abiding “knower.” So we can say that knowing (consciousness) arises spontaneously when the appropriate causes and conditions are present. Going even deeper, we see that the knowing faculty is not altered or affected by what is known, and this realization has liberating consequences for both our meditation practice and our lives. In meditation, as we go from painful sensations to pleasant ones, we see that the basic quality of knowing is not altered—it is simply aware of what is arising.