Wed, 09 Aug 2006
Three Terms
Here's a brief explanation of three terms people sometimes get confused: mindfulness, awareness, and wisdom. Of course these terms have all sorts of meanings, but they have specific meanings in the context of Buddhist philosophy. Mindfulness means remembering to do the practice you have committed to do. It could be either meditation or a post-meditation practice. Awareness is noticing that you have strayed from the practice. Awareness notices the straying and mindfulness returns to the practice. So the combination of the two of them makes practice continuous.
It might seem that these two are sufficient and that nothing more could be added if mindfulness and awareness were practiced perfectly. But there is also the additional factor of wisdom. The analogy The Path of Purification uses for wisdom is a money changer who can tell between a counterfeit and genuine coin (more a problem back then than now.) We can be perfectly present to the moment or to our thoughts and still not perceive their nature, Wisdom is what perceives what is present for what it is. Mindfulness and awareness are necessary for developing wisdom, because they present what is there to us. But actual understanding, wisdom, is something more than these.
