OLLI0064 - Effortless Mindfulness: Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart

Course Description

This is a meditation course, open to both beginning and experienced meditators. What has come to be known as “mindfulness” in the West most typically comes in two “flavors.” The first flavor is Focused Attention, which is a concentration practice (or samadhi in Buddhist teaching). The object of attention may be breathing, sounds, the world of bodily sensations, a mantra, or a visual image. The second flavor of mindfulness is Open Monitoring, or choiceless awareness (known as vipassana in Buddhist teaching). Choiceless awareness is less focused and more “open” than Focused Attention. It is a witnessing of the passing procession of cognitive and emotional and somatic experience, without focusing on any particular content. Focused Attention and Choiceless Awareness are two flavors of what is known as “Deliberate Mindfulness." There is a third, and less commonly known flavor of mindfulness, known as Effortless Mindfulness (or rigpa in Tibetan Buddhism), which is the awareness of awareness itself, or Non-Dual Awareness. Here the focus of attention is not on contents in consciousness, but on consciousness itself. In this case, the meditator turns and shifts awareness back on itself. Because awareness is not striving, not trying to get anywhere, not trying to make anything happen, not resisting anything, awareness “recognizes" itself as “effortless.” Effortless Mindfulness is a simple, yet advanced form of mindfulness. It is an upgrade to another “operating system,” one shifted from the contents of perception, thinking, and emotion to the boundless welcome and loving embrace of Awareness itself. Christian mystics call this upgrade into Awareness itself “Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart.” This class will train your natural, relaxed capacity to See with the Eyes of the Heart, both during your formal meditation practice and in your daily life. Watch video