Awakening

Created April 13, 2022

Awakening is a process where the mind ‘wakes up’ to the objective reality of its present experience.

In buddhism, the end goal is awakening, also known as enlightenment. The Buddha is considered to be the awakened one. But, I don’t personally approach it in a religious, or metaphysical way.

I instead see awakening as the process of waking up to the underlying nature of our life experiences. Calling it a process is essential as awakening is not a goal that is reached once and then you get a medal. On the contrary. It is an ongoing process that never ends.

This is because what are invited to wake up to, is to the nature of our experiences which looks like the following process:

1. Events manifest themselves via our 5 senses, and our mental formations. We hear, smell, see, taste, hear, or have a thought. These things ‘happen’ outside of our control.
2. These triggers come to the our consciousness and demand attention.
3. The less trained the mind, and the more tired will power is, the more likely it is for the mind to be overwhelmed by whatever just triggered it.

The mind of an adept meditator, thus, wanders less and is able to maintain focus, stable attention, and stillness. This results in calm, reduced stress, and joy. But also in insight into this nature of events, as well as other insights that can be of a more intellectual nature.

This process is of a very cyclical nature. Things rise, then fall. Only to rise again, and fall again. It does not matter what is rising, because it will always be falling, even if it rises again later.

Becoming aware of this process is also known as waking up, because in reality when it happens, it feels like we just ‘wake up’. As if someone just snapped their fingers and bang we see things differently. We experience life as if we were observing it from a third person point of view.

Awakening is thus the process of waking up to these processes, as they arise. And so, every time a process manifests, and we engage with it in an awakened state, we are waking up. So yes, it is very possible for an ‘awakened’ meditator to become less or not at all awakened.

Understanding, and experiencing this fundamental nature of life, leads the meditator to tap into emptiness and impermanence. These are 2 key concepts of buddhism.