Date: 08/16/2025 08/17/2025
Location: Star Ocean Meditation Center
Teacher: Sara
Sitting Meditation
The Ordinariness and Accessibility of Awakening Experience
Awakening is often misunderstood as rare, mysterious, or reserved for a few. In reality, awakening in Buddhism is not an extraordinary event but a clear seeing of reality as it is. It does not depart from ordinary experience; it reveals what has always been present. Practice is not about acquiring something new, but about removing obscurations so innate clarity can appear.
1. Clarifying Misconceptions: Awakening Is Not a Mystical Event
1.Awakening is not dramatic experience
It does not necessarily involve visions, bliss, or altered states. Many awakenings are quiet and recognized only afterward.
2.Awakening does not transform personality
Daily habits and functions remain, but identification with them fundamentally shifts.
3.Awakening is not a permanent state
Initial insight is a clear seeing that must be integrated and stabilized through life.
2. Why Does Awakening Seem Distant?
1.Attachment to extraordinariness
Imagining awakening as exceptional directs attention away from present reality.
2.Substituting concepts for understanding
Relying on descriptions and theories builds new layers of obstruction.
3.Subtle self-protection
Awakening loosens self-centered structures, which the mind instinctively defends.
3. Genuine Characteristics of Awakening
1.Direct seeing of reality
Experience is known immediately, without conceptual mediation.
2.Natural weakening of clinging
Attachment to self, emotion, and viewpoint softens.
3.Clarity with simplicity
Awareness is clear and stable without exaggerated excitement.
4.Awareness independent of posture
Stillness and movement no longer limit clarity.
4. Why Awakening Is Accessible
1.Reality is always present
Awakening reveals what is already here, not something new.
2.Awareness is universal
It is not created, only uncovered.
3.Practice removes misperception
It subtracts confusion rather than adds experience.
4.Daily life is the field of practice
Walking, standing, sitting, and lying down all reveal truth.
5. Returning Awakening to the Ordinary
1.Releasing fixation on results
Letting go of striving allows openness.
2.Valuing subtle clarity
Moments of ease and non-grasping are gateways to awakening.
3.Practicing steadily and gently
Insight matures through continuity, not force.
4.Integrating wisdom into life
True awakening is reflected in response, not in special experience.
Conclusion
Awakening is not distant or rare, but ordinary and immediate. When fixation on the extraordinary falls away, awareness naturally reveals itself—always available, always present.
