Direct Experience

A core teaching of all the mindfulness-based traditions is the emphasis on direct experience. This means that insight—a powerful and sometimes abrupt understanding into the nature of one’s mind and freedom from its agonizing conditioning is entirely dependent on one’s own practice and “seeing for ourselves.”

Insight arises only out of direct experience—there is no teacher, book, or podcast that can generate wisdom in our hearts, although these things can motivate us to practice, validate our experience, and help us process what may be unclear or help to awaken what is dormant. The Buddha wanted people to not take his word for it, but see for themselves.

We can understand the difference between knowing about the ocean from geography class versus about the ocean if you are a a licensed scuba diver. Within our intellectually dominant culture, it can be very challenging to approach an embodied, direct knowing like this. We sit down to meditate and try to “do” the being. We try to put down the mind with the mind. This is basically like trying to fix a car engine by slamming on the gas pedal. How crazy does that sound?

We have to pull over to discover the problem. We have to stop. This is meditation—and authentically, radically, connecting to the present moment in daily life. The dishes, the laundry, the walking, the living. Sitting and committing to presence helps us gain liberation from the conditioning of the mind and water the seeds of peace and true happiness.

Part of our practice is beginning to identify how the mind is attempting to do the practice. And learning to be accommodating and kind as it relentlessly performs its function in order to help us and protect us. We have to love the mind because a) it does not know how to do anything else b) it is actually trying to help and c) it is convinced that it is the only solution. No wonder why it’s stressed!

But when we sit with diligence and commit to presence during more moments (see Embodiment), the mind slowly begins to relent, like a crying baby being given proper attention. The mind starts to feel safe, recognizing there are other options. We can train the mind to fidget less, defend less, arrange less, resist less, cling less. We can train ourselves to relax more, appreciate more, and love more.