Awareness Notices All Without Condoning or Condemning, Repressing or Expressing

While meditation may be cultivated as a formal practice once or twice a day for half an hour or so, the aim is to bring fresh awareness into everything we do. Whether walking or standing still, sitting or lying down, alone or in company, resting or working, I try to maintain that same careful attention. So when I go to get milk, I will notice the scratching sound of the leaves on the sidewalk as well as my anger and hurt at what S said.

Awareness is a process of deepening self-acceptance. It is neither a cold, surgical examination of life nor a means of becoming perfect. Whatever it observes, it embraces. There is nothing unworthy of acceptance. The light of awareness will doubtless illuminate things we would prefer not to see. And this may entail a descent into what is forbidden, repressed, denied. We might uncover disquieting memories, irrational childhood terrors. We might have to accept not only a potential sage hidden within but also a potential murderer, rapist, or thief.

Despite the sense I might have of myself as a caring person, I observe that I want to punch S in  the face. What usually happens to this hatred? I restrain myself from expressing it, not out of any great love for S but because of how it would affect other people's view of me. The attachment to self-image likewise inclines me to shy away from and forget this viciousness. In one way or another I deny it. I do not allow it into the field of awareness. I do not embrace it.

Or I may play it out as a fantasy, either in my imagination or on the analyst's couch. This may temporarily relieve the symptoms of rage and frustration, but will it make a difference when S presents me with the next barbed remark? Probably not. Such fantasies might even reinforce the kind of emotions they seek to assuage. As the hatred rears up again, something in me knows immediately how to relieve it. This becomes a habit that demands ever larger doses of anger to enjoy relief from. I could develop a subtle taste for violence. I might even end up by hitting S.

But to embrace hatred does not mean to indulge it. To embrace hatred is to accept it for what it is: a disruptive but transient state of mind. Awareness observes it jolt into being, coloring consciousness and gripping the body. The heart accelerates, the breath becomes shallow and jagged, and an almost physical urge to react dominates the mind. At the same time, this frenzy is set against a dark, quiet gulf of hurt, humiliation, and shame. Awareness notices all this without condoning or condemning, repressing or expressing. It recognizes that just as hatred arises, so will it pass away.

By identifying with it ("I really am pissed off!"), we fuel it. Not that we consciously choose to do so. The impulsive surge has such an abrupt momentum that by the time we first notice the anger, identification has already occurred. Suddenly we realize that we are perspiring, the heart is beating faster, hurtful words are choking in the throat, and our fists are clenched. By that time there is little we can do but watch the anger buffet and batter us. The task of awareness is to catch the impulse at its inception, to notice the very first hint of resentment coloring our feelings and perceptions. But such precision requires a focused mind.

---Stephen Batchelor, in Buddhism Without Beliefs---