Buddha - Be Aware, Become Free

In The Dhammapada, Buddha says, “the monk who delights in awareness, seeing the danger in unawareness, not liable to fall back, is close to [Nirvana].” So Buddha is saying that awareness leads to freedom from suffering, and unawareness leads to suffering. So there’s something we have to figure out right away: what is awareness? To put it simply, awareness is to see what is.

And you might be thinking, aren’t I always seeing what is? And the most likely answer is no. See, where there’s thought, there’s no awareness, and where there’s awareness, there’s no thought. So if you spend a lot of time thinking, it means you spend a lot of time not being aware. And you might be wondering, is thinking bad? Am I thinking too much? How can I think less? How can I be more aware?

And all of these questions will be fruitless. It’s much more useful to see the function of thought. Thought is useful for working on problems you already know the answer to. For example: where are my keys? Let me think about where I last saw them. Oh, yeah, there they are! But thought can never answer this one question: what’s a fact that I should know that I don’t know already?

Because if you can articulate it, then you already know it, but thought can’t articulate what it doesn’t already know, so thought is always limited by your past experiences. And what you want—what everyone wants—is answers, and thinking will never give you answers that you don’t already know. Thinking can’t tell you anything new.

If you sit still and really listen to your mind, you’ll quickly find out how repetitive it is. It talks about the same things over and over again. It revisits the same ground. It produces nothing new. It provides the same solutions over and over again. That’s because thought comes from memory, and memory is always of the past. And if your memories had the answers you’re looking for, you’d already have solved your problems.

You’d already be where you wanna be in life. So if you’re still seeking answers, you won’t find them through thinking. And when you truly realize this, you’ll start to wonder: what’s outside of thinking? When thinking stops, awareness starts. When awareness starts, you see what is, no longer blinded by your thoughts, emotions, memories, and preconceptions. In other words, you’re no longer blinded by your past.

And you may be wondering, blinded by my past? What does that mean? Think about a time when someone you know got a haircut, or did their nails, or lost some weight, or gained some muscle. Did you notice right away? Or did you have to be prompted to notice? If you didn’t notice, you were not seeing the world as it was. You were seeing the world as you were, and you were blinded by your past.

You didn’t see the person as they were, but rather, you saw a memory of them. But when thinking stops and awareness starts, you see the world as it is, not as you are. And when you see what is, you can discover the new and the interesting. And when you discover the new and interesting, you learn, and when you learn, you really find the answers you were in search of.

But if you haven’t already solved a problem, thought will never give you the answer. And when you know that you don’t know, thought stops, and awareness begins. And it’s only when you become aware that you become free of the past, and it’s only when you become free of the past that you become available to the present.

And it’s only when you become available to the present that you become capable of knowing what you don’t know, and maybe, someone who’s capable of knowing what they don’t know is close to Nirvana—maybe, maybe not. As always, this is just my opinion and understanding of the Buddha’s words, not advice.

If you liked the video, please consider liking the video. And if you’re looking for a video to watch after this one, I recommend watching my video “Buddha - Your Thoughts Determine Your Future.” I’ll put a link to it in the description below and in the top right of the screen...