The Vipassana Retreat
9. Clearly Knowing Daily Activities
A basic skill in Vipassana meditation is to acquire the ability to give full and sustained attention or mindfulness to what you are doing as you are doing it; yet we rarely, if ever, give anything our full attention, at best it is just partial attention. The consequence of this is ”faulty intelligence”, that is, not being in touch with reality, or having false views. If one does not have the right information one misreads the experience, lives in delusion and therefore suffers. The writer, Iris Murdoch, wrote: "We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality".
Regrettably, we live in a shallow, superficial culture that lacks any real depth. Almost everything is geared to allow us to give only partial attention towards what is in front of us. The dominant software company, Microsoft, has coined a phrase for the way we take in the world around us: “continuous partial attention”. Their products are all geared to be usable under such circumstances. Three or more task windows are open on my computer screen at any time. So we skip from one to the other - just skimming and scanning - which is symptomatic of the rather shallow life the majority of us lead.
The task then, in this retreat, is to turn this around and train oneself to be fully attentive as much as possible. This ”presence of mind” with clear knowing uncovers reality and in time brings healing and transformation of consciousness. So there is a need to develop the capacity for sustained and close attentiveness of all one”s movements and activities down to the minutest detail throughout the day. Such a dynamic practice of close attentiveness with clear knowing is the key to deepening one”s mindfulness, as it intensifies the awareness, to expose the reality of one”s own physical and mental phenomena as constantly changing, unsatisfactory, and as just impersonal process.
We cannot pretend that this is easy, as having continuous, close attentiveness goes somewhat against the grain - it is not natural to us. The Buddha once described the practice of the Dharma as “going against the stream”. As long as one swims with the current of the river, one remains largely unaware of it. But if one chooses to turn against it, suddenly it is revealed as a powerful, discomforting force.
It is said that just prior to the Buddha”s enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, the Buddha floated his alms bowl on the nearby Nerangera River, and when the bowl went against the current he took that as a sign that he would be successful in his aspiration to attain enlightenment. I do not think we need to take this story literally, as I see it as more of a metaphor that points to the need to consciously face and explore one”s own conditioning and assumptions in order to grow in the Dharma.
The “stream” refers to the accumulated habits of conditioning. The practice of Dharma requires us to turn around midstream, to observe mindfully and intelligently the forces of conditioning instead of reacting to their promptings. Therefore, we need to make constant effort to train ourselves to do this practice until it is so well established that it has become, as it were, our second nature, that is, ingrained - only then will deeper states of mindfulness develop.
It is very informative to read the instructions the Buddha himself gave in the Contemplation of the Body in the subsection on Clearly Knowing (sati-sampajanna) in the text we are following: the Four Establishments of Mindfulness:
"And again, monks, a monk, while going forward or while going back he does so with clear knowing; while looking straight ahead or while looking elsewhere he does so with clear knowing; while bending or stretching his limbs he does so with cl…
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