Know the still mind, the moving mind, and what knows both

Notice when the mind is quiet, notice when thoughts move, and notice the awareness that is present in both.

Pourquoi ça marche

Mipham Rinpoche’s short Mahāmudrā instruction defines three terms: when you look within and the mind abides without movement, that is stillness; when thoughts occur, that is movement; and in either case the mind’s own capacity to know is awareness. Sustained, he says, this shows how joy and sorrow arise from the mind and dissolve back into it. The Ninth Karmapa’s fourth vipashyana point asks whether the still and the moving mind are really different, and answers with the image of water and waves. The practice changes what a session is measured by — from how quiet it was to whether what happened was known.

Comment faire

1. Settle for a few minutes with or without a support.
2. When the mind is quiet, know it as stillness.
3. When a thought moves, know it as movement — no need to follow it or stop it.
4. In both, notice that knowing is present; this is what Mipham calls awareness.
5. Later in the session, look, as the Karmapa’s text asks, for any real difference between the still mind and the moving mind — in colour, shape or place.

Données probantes

The three terms come from Mipham’s text and the still-and-moving examination from the Ninth Karmapa’s manual. In a laboratory imaging study, Josipovic and colleagues found that the usual anti-correlation between the brain’s externally and internally oriented networks was weaker during nondual awareness meditation and stronger during focused-attention meditation, compared with plain fixation — evidence that these are distinct modes of practice at the level of brain organisation, not evidence of benefit. (mechanistic)

The imaging study is a single laboratory study of a related nondual practice; it did not test Mipham’s method and measured no outcomes.

Sources

• Mipham Rinpoche. The Mahāmudrā Practice of Stillness, Movement and Awareness. Trans. Adam Pearcey (2021). Lotsawa House.
• Wangchug Dorje, Ninth Karmapa. Mahamudra: Eliminating the Darkness of Ignorance, Part 3: Mahamudra Vipashyana Meditation. Trans. Alexander Berzin (1977, rev. 2008). Study Buddhism.
• Josipovic, Z., Dinstein, I., Weber, J., & Heeger, D. J. (2012). Influence of meditation on anti-correlated networks in the brain. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 183.

Erreur fréquente

Ranking stillness as good meditation and movement as bad. Both texts treat movement as part of the practice; what matters is whether it is known.