Hugh,
thanks for taking the time to offer this response. I like how this teaching on insight nudges me to look at my own experience. I am reminded to take stock of my own effort and intention to be present, moment to moment. What am I fervently holding on to at those times every day when my wellbeing and my 'felt happiness' is wobbling, unstable? --- seeing the many moments when I'm looking outside of myself for relief?
Thanks, Chick. I posted this response to the group in the ‘Chat.’
Following last week’s live session, one of the participants, Chick, shared the follow-up questions below and I thought they were excellent questions that would be helpful to share with everyone—along with my response.
Questions: Can you say a little more about the notion of ‘clear seeing’? Seeing what? Your talk today seemed to present to me an alternative sense of the word ‘insight’. Mindfulness leads to clear seeing, but what exactly will I be ‘seeing clearly’? It must be different for every person… In that moment, my guess is I’m seeing the teaching appropriate to that moment. (Chick)
Response: Thanks for your excellent question, Chick. You ask, what is ‘seeing clearly’ in Buddhist understanding? And what are we seeing when we see clearly, or gain insight?
A way of understanding insight is that it is seeing that frees us (i.e., that is liberating). What is it freeing us from? It’s freeing us from suffering. It’s a deep seeing that is transformative. It changes our life in fundamental ways. So, it is much more than intellectual knowing or understanding. It is seeing/knowing that undermines the patterns and habits that lead us to suffering (habits of craving, aversion, and delusion, or ignorance, most importantly)—and when the understanding/insight goes deeply enough, suffering is completely eradicated (as in the Buddha’s awakening and the enlightenment of other great spiritual practitioners).
Some of the most important insights are those that allow us to see and acknowledge that we are suffering and the cause of our suffering—understood to be ‘craving’ or ‘clinging’ in Buddhist teachings—and that we can let go of clinging—and this letting go frees us from suffering. Other liberating insights are into the impermanence of all phenomena and conditioned experiences; that we cannot cling or hold onto anything as ‘I’ or ‘mine’; and that the sense of a separate ‘self’ is not ‘real’ but an expression or manifestation of clinging.
A wonderful Buddhist meditation teacher, who died in 2020, Rob Burbea, speaks of these liberating insights as ‘Seeing that Frees’ (and has an excellent book by this title).
I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions. Kindly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻
Hugh, your talk today landed so ‘spot on.’ Thank you. Can you say a little more about the notion of ‘clear seeing’? Seeing what? Your talk today seemed to present to me an alternative sense of the word ‘insight’. Mindfulness leads to clear seeing, but what exactly will I be ‘seeing clearly’? It must be different for every person… in that moment, my guess is I’m seeing the teaching appropriate to that moment.
