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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Diana Winston. Diana is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. She’s a well-known teacher, called by the LA Times one of the nation’s best-known teachers of mindfulness. She developed the evidence-based Mindful Awareness Practices curriculum, called MAPS, and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide. With Sounds True, Diana Winston has written the book The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. And also, she’s created a new audio teaching series. It’s called Glimpses of Being: A Training Course in Expanding Mindful Awareness.
In our conversation, Diana introduces us—as she says, this is a very experiential podcast—she introduces us to what she calls the spectrum of awareness, moving from being very narrow in our awareness to totally, absolutely expansive, open, infinite. Come take this ride with me. Here’s my conversation with Diana Winston.
To begin, Diana, on a personal note, I wonder if you can share with our listeners how you first came to the practice of mindful awareness.
Diana Winston: Well, I got started right after college when I was very lost and confused and depressed and not sure what I was doing with my life. And I was traveling around Asia. This was the late ’80s. And I ended up in Dharamshala, where the Dalai Lama has government in exile. And I did—everybody was into Buddhism, and I was not at all. I was a political activist. And I thought, “Buddhism? Why would I get into that?” But everybody was doing it, sort of peer pressure. So I ended up getting interested in taking some courses.
And I remember early on sitting in the back of a course with a big bar of chocolate and unwrapping it very loudly and being quite skeptical. But at some point, I decided to try a meditation retreat, and this actually wasn’t mindfulness. This was more in the Tibetan style. And they talked about what they call the “worldly winds” or the truths about the world. There’s praise and blame, and gain and loss, and pleasure and pain, and fame and disrepute, these pairs, these pairs of opposites. And when I heard them talk about it, suddenly this light bulb went off in my head.
And I thought, “Oh, my goodness, this explains my life.” Because what they were saying was that we go searching madly for the good stuff, the pleasure and the gain, the praise, and we go running away from the hard stuff. And that our life is like this roller coaster. And I could feel that part of me, the one that had achieved so much up until that point. I had done well, got into a good college, all of these—it all fell away. And I went, “Oh, this explains my life. Now what?”
At which point, the teacher said something to the effect of, “But there is a solution, and that is having a mind of peace, finding a mind of equanimity, of balance, that you can have no matter what’s happening in life.” And that’s what grabbed me, and I just thought, “I want that, I want that.” And from there I dove into, well, I did a deep dive into meditative practices and, within a few months, found mindfulness in the monasteries of Thailand and began to practice in the US and then Asia for quite some time over that first decade of practice.
TS: And at this point, you’ve done a lot of different kinds of meditation. And in your new audio training course with Sounds True, Glimpses of Being, you put it all together. You introduce mindful awareness, a training course in expanding mindful awareness, in an interesting way. And I wonder if you can share your “map,” if you will, when it comes to teaching meditation.
DW: So, yes, as you’re saying, I have studied many different practices, mostly in the realm of awareness practices because there’s so many different types of meditation. And the analogy I like to use is that meditation is like a big giant category, like sports is a giant category. And there’s hundreds and hundreds of types of sports and categories of sports. And the same with meditation. There’s many different types of meditations. So there’s people who do healing meditations, or people do Transcendental Meditation that concentrates the mind, for instance.
This is a category, a MAP, for awareness-based meditations. And those are the ones that have been my main study over these years. So the MAP I call the “spectrum of awareness”: it’s this idea that our ability to be aware can work in many different ways, from very narrow to very wide open. And we are constantly, throughout the day, moving between these types of awareness. So, if you’re driving, you do not want to have a totally focused in front of you awareness. You’ve got to have a fairly spacious peripheral awareness, or you might crash.
So this awareness is moving in different directions all the time. And what we can learn to do through this MAP is we can start to see what practices cultivate what types of awareness, because different meditative teachings teach different things. And it’s really interesting when you start to say, “OK, I studied with this teacher, and I learned this type of meditation. And I studied with another teacher and learned another type. But they’re both mindfulness, I think, but they’re really different. How do they make sense?” And that was my idea behind creating this MAP.
TS: I think it’s so useful because I think people get really confused, as you said. They learn one style of awareness-based meditation from one teacher, something different. And there’s rampant confusion, and yet I think you’ve created a MAP of the spectrum of awareness, where people can say, “Oh, I can place this practice here, this practice there.” So let’s get a feel for it. I wonder if you can take us through the spectrum and maybe give us an experiential sense from the most narrow to the most expanded. Can we do that?
DW: Yes, absolutely. And I first want to just throw out a really simple analogy because it helps people to understand what I’m talking about here: the idea of a camera. So a camera can take a photograph that has a telephoto lens that’s really narrow. You’re looking at something up close. Can take an ordinary picture, can take a panoramic lens picture, wide open. And so, in the same way, our awareness can be narrow, it can be mid-range, it can be broad.
And there are associated practices that go with each of these. So let’s start with the most narrow. Now, the most narrow is what I call “focused awareness.” And focused awareness is exactly what it sounds like. It’s when you’re focusing your attention on something and you’re staying with that thing. No matter what is pulling you away, your thoughts, the sound from the outside, whatever it is, you stay focused on whatever you’re focusing on, which typically is your breathing, but it could be something else. So this practice is really, really helpful, especially when you’re starting out. It helps to calm our mind, bring clarity, bring stability to mind. So, most of you, if you’ve practiced mindfulness, you’ve probably practiced in this way. It’s what’s typically taught. So let’s do it a little bit just so you get a sense of it experientially.
TS: Wonderful.
DW: So I just invite you, wherever you are, to settle back. And if you’re driving, don’t close your eyes. Take a breath or two. And notice your breath, bring your attention to your breath. You might notice your abdomen rising and falling, or your chest expanding and contracting, or maybe you feel the air moving through your nose. So let yourself land on one of those areas and stay with it, feel it, sense it. Expansion, contraction, rising, falling. And then your attention might get pulled away, it probably will, and just come right back.
So you’re with your breath, your attention gets pulled away. You bring it right back. So try it for a moment. Focusing. Started thinking about something. No problem, just come back to your breath. And we’ll pause. So this, as I said, is probably something most of you who have done at least mindfulness meditation have practiced in this way. And I’m wondering, Tami, you, of course, are very, very familiar with this. And when you did it, I’m sure … well, tell me, what happened for you?
TS: Well, it’s like a tight focus is the way I think about it, and really tethering my mind directly to that breathing process. And I liked it doing it here with you. I felt calm and focused and centered. It was enjoyable.
DW: Oh, good. Yes, it is a tethering your mind. So what I’m teaching in these different ways of being aware, of these different awareness practices, there are different uses for each of the practices. If you sit down to meditate—let’s say you already have a practice—you sit down to meditate, your mind is all over the place, thinking about a million things. Just do this simple practice. It’s so helpful. It’s so worthwhile. It calms and concentrates our mind. It builds concentration. So that’s the focused awareness category in this. That’s that area.
And then what happens as we do it now is we’re going to move a little more expansive, move from focus to what I call “investigative awareness,” or sometimes it’s called “flexible awareness,” our awareness is more flexible here. Flexible awareness or investigative awareness, let’s just use that for now, is where we don’t only stay on our breathing. We’re not trying to tether ourselves so much. We still use that, but we also are noticing what else is happening in our experience. We’re investigating. So maybe an emotion arises, and we pay attention to it.
So, in the first one, if an emotion arises, we just let it be in the background. In the second one, when an emotion arises, we check in, we feel. What am I feeling in my body, in my heart? What’s happening? There’s constriction in my belly. There’s tightness. So we notice what pulls us away and then we come back, and we do it in the spirit of understanding, investigating our world. So some people think that mindfulness practice is just what we did in the first one, but it’s not. It actually includes an ability to be aware of many things that are happening in our experience. So I’m going to demo this one.
TS: Wonderful.
DW: OK. So settling back into a comfortable posture. Your back can be upright if that’s accessible to you. And eyes can be closed if it’s safe. And if it doesn’t feel comfortable, leave them open. That’s fine. Let your attention come to rest on your breathing. So can you feel your breath? Maybe it was in your abdomen, in your chest or nose. Feeling the breath. Now, don’t just stay with your breath. If something pulls you away, this time notice it. Don’t immediately come back to your breathing. But see what pulled you away.
Maybe it was a sound from outside. Maybe it was a thought, a memory. Maybe it’s an emotion, a body sensation. So staying with your breath. Something pulls you away, notice it and then come back. And now, let’s actually investigate actively. Notice what you’re feeling in your chest area. Any kind of emotion that’s present for you? Maybe there’s sadness or anxiety or irritation. Maybe you feel constriction or tightness, warmth. See if you can let whatever is here be here. Breathe. Soften. And now, come back to your breath.
So, noticing that, take another ten seconds on your own just to see what’s happening. Letting whatever is here be here. And then let’s open our eyes if they’re closed. We’ll end that. So this is pretty different than what you did, but it’s still related to the first one. It’s similar in some ways, because you still stay connected to your focus, or some people call it a “meditation anchor.” But you have a little bit more room to roam here and to explore. So I’m curious, Tami, what happened for you when you did that?
TS: Yes. For me, it just reminded me of what one of my dogs is like when we go outside together in the yard, and she’s sniffing all around. And then she comes back to me, but then she goes and sniffs all over the place and comes back.
DW: That is awesome. I love that. And my dog is the same. Yes. So it gives you more permission to include your experience. And as we do this practice over—as you do this investigative awareness practice, you start to … it leads to insight. So this is really the territory of what we might think of as Insight meditation, because we start to see the changing nature of things. We start to see that things don’t really belong to us. They move through us. They come and go. And this is this territory of investigation.
And it’s also a pretty interesting territory. It’s much less narrow, it’s a little more open. So let’s try the third one. And the third one is what I call “choiceless awareness.” It’s also called open awareness. And this is akin to when we just sit and notice our experience moment after moment. In the Zen world, it’s called shikantaza. It’s just sitting. It’s noticing whatever is arising as it arises. And I’m going to show it to you in a fun, playful way that you can even do with kids, for instance, because it’s a nice way to get a sense of this one. It’s a nice way to get a sense of this one.
So, if you want to, once again, settle back. The key thing with this particular type of awareness is that we don’t go back to our focus. We don’t need to go back to our breath, because our mind is stable and clear and can notice whatever is happening. So, first, I just invite you to notice the sounds. There may be sounds in the room that you’re in, sounds outside. So notice the sounds as they come and go. Just noticing them, not getting lost in a story. Just noticing the sounds. Now, bring your attention into your body. Can you feel any sensations in your body?
There’s movement, heaviness, tingling, warmth, vibration. Maybe one area is really obvious to you. Maybe different things are happening in your body. Now, once again, notice what’s happening for you and your emotions. Is there a particular emotion here like sadness or joy, frustration? Simply notice and feel. What am I feeling right now? How about my thoughts? Can I notice my thoughts? What’s happening? Planning, imagining, remembering. OK. Now, let’s go to some other things we don’t normally notice when we meditate, but how about smells?
Can you smell anything? Any scents? How about taste? OK, so these are all the possible things we might—I forgot visual. Do you see anything behind your eyes, or if your eyes are open? And now, I just invite you to be with whatever happened. So take away all the rules and just notice what’s happening one thing after the next, the sound, a memory, a sensation, your breath, an itch, a feeling. Let’s see what happens just for a short time. Go. And feel your feet on the ground. Just feel that contact with the floor. And we’ll end that brief meditation. OK. What happened for you, Tami?
TS: For me, that felt wild, wild and open. I didn’t know where it was going to go. So it was, yes, enjoyable. Wild.
DW: I love that word. It’s a lot of permission, right? This type of open awareness or choiceless awareness sometimes shows up in our meditation practices, and we don’t even know. Wait a minute, it’s hard for me to pay attention to my breathing, but I can notice everything else. Oh, this is part of being aware. This is another practice on the spectrum of awareness. But it also for some people can feel overwhelming, like it’s too much, and that’s fine, too. And as I often talk about, they’re all really valuable. They’re equally valuable.
So if you just did that practice and it felt like too much, then stay with the ones that feel more comfortable. Shall I move to the last one?
TS: Yes. Let’s do it.
DW: OK. So the last one is what I call “natural awareness.” And natural awareness is the broadest, it’s the most effortless. It’s the awareness that comes when we start to realize that awareness is already present. It’s a little bit of a mental shift. The rest of them we’re working at, but this one is a resting in awareness itself. So wherever you are, last time, I invite you to just settle back one more time. And you’ve just already done a fairly open awareness practice. So, now, you might notice there’s many things happening. I invite you to relax. Relax and soften your body. And just be, just be.
No need to do anything. Connect to the awareness that’s already present. Our minds can be open, spacious, luminous like the sky or like the sun. So rest in this luminous quality. It’s right here for you. Nothing to do. Soften your body and simply be, just be. You can do it. One more deep, soft breath. Letting go into the awareness that’s already present. Feel your feet on the ground. And then, when you’re ready, open your eyes. End the meditation. OK. Last one, very different than the first or the other two. What did you notice?
TS: Well, that’s where I felt the deep peace feeling, using that phrase that you introduced before. And then I also felt, I think, just some of the tiredness in me that—it seemed like it was deep peace/tiredness. It was, just because I was relaxing and melting.
DW: Yes, yes. Well, in this territory of natural awareness, anything goes. We can feel our depth of tiredness. Strong emotions can arise. Anything can happen because it’s this wide-open space to allow ourselves to be exactly as we are and to see that we don’t have to work at it. It just is right here for us.
TS: Now, one of the things I want to ask you, Diana, for people that are used to working with some kind of meditation anchor. So, in focused awareness and in investigative awareness, we got to have an anchor. And they’re like, “Oh, OK, I know how to do that.” When you start losing your anchor, how can you help that person who’s like, “God, when there’s no meditation anchor, I don’t really know if I’m meditating or what’s going on?”
DW: First of all, you don’t have to do it, right? So one of the things that I like about this model is that we can be wherever we are, and it’s fine. But if you want to try the more anchorless meditations, one thing you can do is if you notice yourself feeling overwhelmed like, “Oh, I’m just floating out in space or something,” then come back to your anchor, come back to whatever you’re focusing on. It could be your breath, or feel your feet on the ground.
So you allow a little bit of spaciousness. If that feels a bit overwhelming, come back to something that you’re familiar with. Stay with that for a bit and then open up again. And then, usually, there’s a shift that happens where people start to feel more comfortable doing the anchorless meditations. It becomes easier for them.
TS: And in your book, The Little Book of Being, when you’re writing about natural awareness meditation, you write that we can marinate in that resting that we were just exploring and then refresh. And I’m curious, how do we refresh ourselves in natural awareness meditation?
DW: With natural awareness meditation, I tend to teach what I call “glimpse practices.” And I just did a little one with you all right then when I just talked it through. But they are practices that help us to access this quality of really—with wakefulness, this full capacity to be entirely present without much effort. That’s really what I’m pointing to. So these glimpse practices, I have maybe 25 or 30 tools to help us do that. So the idea is, once your mind is settled, so for instance, you might start your meditation session with a few minutes of focused awareness and then try a glimpse practice. And I can share some of these.
And then, if that evokes in you a quality of resting mind, of a mind that feels quite spacious, alert, present, then you marinate. You stay there. You rest in it. And then if you start to find that you get caught up in things, “Oh, no, I’ve got to call this person or I have to do that or what—,” then you simply refresh. And “refresh” is an analogy to … of … in our computer, when the webpage gets all wonky and you hit refresh and then it comes back to where it was. So you can refresh by either reorienting back to the natural awareness or throw another glimpse practice in and see if that helps.
TS: Can you give us an example of, maybe let’s go with two, two of your favorite glimpse practices at this point in your life?
DW: OK. So I’m going to have everybody try it, right? So let’s once again, getting settled here. This is a very experiential podcast. [Laughs] We’ll just take a moment to feel our feet on the ground. And first, I invite you to expand your sense of hearing. Open your sense of hearing as far as you can, wide open. What’s the furthest sound you can hear? Let your body be soft as we do this.
Now, feel your body. Can you notice your back body, the back of your body? Most of the time we’re facing forward. But now let’s notice our back body. And soften your back body, and become aware of the space behind you. And then allow it to expand 360 degrees. So it’s like we’re sensing into the expanded space above and below 360 degrees around you as far out as you can feel or sense. And add the hearing to it. So now, we’re listening, we’re feeling. And soft, soft belly. If you want to even open your eyes and feel the expansiveness so that we’re looking peripherally.
So, now, we’re in a very spacious state, perhaps. And if it does feel overwhelming to you, just feel your feet on the ground. Feel your legs on the chair. But if it does feel spacious, then relax, just soften and enjoy the space. Enjoy the spaciousness as mind like the sky, vast, open, spacious. Everything that’s happening is like clouds floating by, just clouds floating by. Rest and breathe. And then we’ll pause. We’ll stop this little meditation.
TS: Well, first of all, I have to say I love this experiential podcast. And I loved that experience, that total open sky. How do you know if, when you’re doing natural meditation like that, if you might not just be getting super spaced out? What’s the difference between resting in natural awareness and being super spaced out?
DW: Yes, that’s the danger, absolutely. I mean, one could say, “Oh, yes, I’m doing natural awareness meditation,” but you’re taking a nap or you’re spacing, thinking of other things. So it requires that the practitioner pay close attention and not delude themselves and notice like, “OK, what’s happening? Is their awareness here, or am I lost in thoughts?” If you catch it and you realize, “Oh, I’m just thinking about everything and spacing out,” then you reorient yourself. You go, “OK, so just letting go, dropping back into something that helps me return.” It’s not a big deal. And it happens all the time with people when they’re doing this.
TS: OK. So when we’re practicing meditation on the narrow side of the awareness spectrum and we have our meditation anchor, and it’s like, “Oh, yes, I’m meditating. I’m really doing it. I’m following my breath. I come back to my breath. Yes, I know what I’m doing.” And there’s a sense of being a meditator who’s meditating. Now, it seems to me, and I’m curious what you have to say about this, that as we move to the more expanded side of the spectrum, there’s somehow more of a collapse of a person who’s doing a meditation practice and more of just life arising and life emerging, which can be disconcerting, I think, to some people, may be interesting to others.
But what do you think about that, the person meditating versus some self-knowing quality that seems to emerge? And there is no meditator, even.
DW: Well, it definitely follows along with how these practices are taught. So each of the practices are derived from different teachings that I have had. The ones in the more narrow end come from the Insight meditation world, although I want to be really clear that in some teachers of Southeast Asian Buddhism, for instance, teach a more wide open and spacious type of mindfulness. But predominantly, where it is more of like a doer, a meditator, that’s the approach, and it’s such a valuable way to meditate. It’s not like there’s a problem to have a doer, because it’s an easier access door into like, OK, I’m going to meditate, and here’s my experience.
And then the ones that come out of the more spacious, non-dual end, and for those of you who are familiar with these types of teachings from Tibetan Buddhist practices, such as Dzogchen and Mahamudra, they’re connected to Advaita Vedanta. These are these practices where the self tends to disappear or there’s an emphasis on the removal of the self.
So another of the glimpse practices that we could have done today is where we investigate the nature of “I.” Who is noticing? Who is having this experience? And oftentimes, people, when they start to investigate the “I,” can’t really find it. And so it’s just an interesting—this is the feature of this type of practice. And there’s a great relief that can come sometimes when we realize we are not the center of the universe, that there’s a more of life—you were saying so beautifully—but life doing itself. It’s moving through us rather than me, the doer. There’s more spaciousness, ease, more well-being.
TS: What happens for you when you ask that question, “Who is aware?” as a glimpse practice? What happens?
DW: Well, different things happen at different times. That practice is—it’s like an oldy-moldy practice, right? Ramana Maharshi would have people try to find who is the knower, investigate who is noticing, who are you. And when I teach it, I’m actually very clear—and I’ll say that right now—that you’re not supposed to have an answer. There’s not a final answer to that question. What the question does is it invites you to open your mind in a new way.
And as you do and as you look, sometimes, not always, people have an experiential sense of, I don’t find the doer. And that’s what can happen to me sometimes. Sometimes I do it, and I think, “Oh, that’s a dumb question.” I don’t know. I don’t care. That is truly what can happen sometimes. But other times, there’s a sense of freedom that might come. Where is that doer? Who is she? Where has she gone?
TS: Now, one of the things that you write about in The Little Book of Being is that it’s actually possible for our default state, that state that our mind goes to when we’re not doing anything purposeful, to be natural awareness. And I wanted to hear more about that because I think for most of us, our default state is something like rumination, repetitive thinking, worry, discursive thinking, or just yes, like problem-solving, something like that. We’re going over my schedule—that’s my default state, not this open state of natural awareness. So tell me about how natural awareness could become someone’s default state?
DW: Well, it takes practice. So it’s not like you’ll pick it up tomorrow and then by next week you’ll have it together. Over time, it becomes more and more a sense of home, right? So when we practice right now, I agree with you totally, people’s default—I often will say that people live on Anxiety Street or Grieving Lane or Anger Boulevard or something, right? How can we move to a different address? And as we do these practices, it starts to become more what we default to.
So I’ll give you an example. I was just talking to a student recently who said when they were waiting in line, every time they were waiting in line, they used to pull out their phone or start worrying about something. But now what he does is he rests his attention in awareness. And it’s these little moments throughout the day that once you start to do that more and more, that you come back to this place. This is a place—natural awareness has this quality of inherent safety and a goodness. I sometimes call it our fundamental well-being. And so when we can move our street to a different street and live more from this place through practice and then through practicing in our daily life, it starts to be more and more of who we are, and it’s gradual for most people.
TS: Now, I mentioned to you that for some people, having a meditation experience without an anchor can feel scary or disorienting, something like that. You said, “Well, go back to having an anchor.” And of course, that’s a completely legitimate response, just go back. You can experience your breath in your belly again and feel safe and relaxed. What if somebody wanted to explore more the fear that they feel as they move into open awareness and then natural awareness? What would you suggest they actually consciously start working with that fear that can come up with such openness?
DW: Sure. It’s an interesting question. What I recommend is, so first, it’s going to be a meditator who has a little bit of stability or experience under their belt, so they know how to work with difficult emotions, for instance, when they arise. But let’s say you’re sitting and you’re practicing natural awareness, and fear comes up. So finding a part of your body that’s a resource, like a safe or secure place that you can go to even simultaneously. So let’s say you’re resting in awareness: fear comes up. Just keep grounded in your feet on the ground or your butt on the chair or something that’s really solid that keeps you centered. And then allow the fear to come up with it and let the fear, see if you can stay spacious enough to allow the fear to dissolve within it. And if that doesn’t work and that feels too hard, switch over to investigative awareness. What am I feeling in my body? What do I notice, saying, “Oh, my heart is racing. My stomach is clenched.” So we’re just bringing in the tools when they’re needed, but it’s absolutely workable. And oftentimes, we’ll find that strong emotions will come through us and they dissolve into the field of natural awareness and actually invigorates the field.
TS: Now, Diana, this MAP that you have of the spectrum of awareness that you’re experientially introducing us to here, which I appreciate, is this something that you took from a different tradition and you said, “I’m just going to bring some different words to it”? Or is this really a MAP that you put together based on lots of different meditative experiences that you had with different types of approaches?
DW: It’s the second one. I have developed it, but in conversation, dialogue with a lot of my colleagues and peers. So it’s not like I just made something up and said, “OK, let’s try it.” And it’s really just a way of taking these multiple meditative practices and helping them—finding the linkages and helping people to see how they relate to each other. And so I’m drawing from multiple awareness teachings to come together as one MAP, essentially.
TS: Well, first of all, how brilliant of you. So thank you. It’s so helpful, I think. And so thank you for that. And then I’m curious, at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, how does your work there relate to this MAP in any way? Are you studying aspects of it?
DW: Yes. So we’re not researching it, per se, although there are scientists who are doing research comparing the different types of awareness practices. There’s studies looking at focused awareness versus open awareness and how that might impact depression, for instance. So there’s some really interesting studies. What we’re doing at my center is, we have a basic class that teaches mindfulness. It’s a six-week class. It’s like an MBSR program, a little bit shorter, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. But we call it MAPS, Mindful Awareness Practices.
And we offer lots of classes teaching people mindfulness in a way that will help them incorporate it into daily life. And over the six weeks of that course, we go from a narrow focus to a wider focus. So you’re seeing it embedded in these courses. And after teaching on the narrow end for many, many years, a few years ago, I started teaching the more spacious, open practices because, really, what I’m doing is I’m secularizing something that has been taught primarily within religious settings, really, within Tibetan Mahamudra or Dzogchen.
I just want to be really clear: I’m not teaching Dzogchen. I’m not qualified to do that. What I’m doing is teaching my experience of it and how it relates to all aspects of mindfulness. So, in our classes now, we have classes on the spectrum of awareness. I actually have a training program teaching people how to teach it. There’s a lot of ways in which people can explore this spectrum. And just one more thing to say, it’s also about an approach. When I first started meditating, I described myself as—at the very beginning of our interview, I described myself as being very type A and driven, or maybe I didn’t say it quite so clearly.
But when I got into meditation, I wanted to get my A in meditation. I was struggling so hard to meditate, and I worked really, really hard. So that meant years of long retreats and staying up as late as I possibly could trying to meditate, trying to be a good meditator and get my A and get enlightened or something. I don’t even know what I was going for, but I was very serious at that point. And ultimately, I burned out. It’s like you can’t sustain that level of practice. Mind gets too tight. It’s overwhelming, and that happened to me when I lived as a Buddhist nun in a monastery in Myanmar, Burma.
And it was there that I discovered the more relaxed, spacious, open practices as an antidote to the struggle in meditation. And so the reason I’m saying all this is that we try to infuse this balanced effort, this spaciousness, even with the beginners. Yes, try hard but from a place of love and acceptance and kindness. You want to keep your attention on your breathing, but be so gentle and compassionate when your mind goes off, and allow yourself to just be as you are. This is like an underlying theme to the way we teach, I think, at our center.
TS: Now, you mentioned that you lived as a nun for a period of time. How long were you a nun? And did you think you were going to be a nun for your whole life?
DW: No, definitely not. I did it for a year. I actually went in thinking six months, but I stayed for a year. But I knew that I would come back, although there were periods of time when I was there and I thought, “This is pretty nice. I don’t know if I ever want to come back again.” Then I did.
TS: Right. So it was just a temporary nunhood. And it sounds like it was a tremendously beneficial experience for you, especially in terms of the depth of insight you had about meditation.
DW: It was one of the pivotal moments or years of my life, but it was incredibly hard, too. So it wasn’t like all rainbows and unicorns or something.
TS: Yes. Which reminds me of one of my favorite chapters in your book, The Little Book of Being, where you write about not being a “bliss ninny.” And I wonder if you can share some about that because I think sometimes the kind of people who are drawn to natural awareness, at least this is something I’ve seen, can be people who have affinity for that spacious, blissed-out way of being. I mean, I have some of that in me, so I can really connect to it. But you’re saying don’t be a bliss ninny. What do you mean by that, the “ninny” part?
DW: It’s an old-school term. I think I learned it in the ’70s or something. Of course, I was very young in the ’70s. But anyways, it’s this idea, exactly what you’re saying, that people who are attracted to these practices can want to live from this place of like, “Oh, I’m resting in natural awareness all the time, and therefore, it’s all good.” Right? And it’s a denial of the reality of the world with suffering and then a denial perhaps of relationships. We can think of it as a spiritual bypass. And so, the suggestion is, don’t be a dummy about this.
Yes, both are true. We can rest in our own nature. We can find this place of profound ease and well-being. And that doesn’t mean there’s not suffering out there and that the world is struggling and that there’s so much work to do.
So don’t be a bliss ninny. These practices actually can really transform our relationship to the world because we can find that depth of well-being and then that actually empowers us to act. I see it as like an evolutionary imperative. It is time to go out in the world and act to help solve the crises that are out here. And we can do it from a place of profound inner well-being. And it doesn’t have to shake who we are at the core.
TS: Now, one of the things, Diana, I wanted to ask you about was there’s a section where you write about thoughts and how we can relate to thoughts from a place of natural awareness. And you wrote, “Thoughts are present, but usually in the background. They often appear to be weightless or transparent.” And I wanted to talk to you about this notion of thoughts being transparent. And I think that’s because I’ve heard people use that word a lot, “transparent.” [Inaudible] transparent to reality. And as I was reading that, that our thoughts appear to be weightless or transparent, I realized I didn’t really know what that meant.
DW: I guess for me it means—so one of the things about writing about these states is some of these states of being are ineffable, so it’s hard to write about. But I’m trying to describe an experience where there’s a resting in awareness and the predominant thing—sometimes just to say another way of talking about natural awareness is awareness of awareness itself, right? So the main thing I’m focusing on is the awareness. I’m focusing on the sky, rather than the clouds that are moving through the sky. The clouds are part of the sky. They’re not separate. But my connection is to the sky itself.
So when I have that and when we did that exercise where there’s this wide-open spaciousness, the thoughts, for me, start to thin out. I don’t know how to describe it any more, almost like you could just see through thoughts. That’s why I use the language of transparency. They just come and go. They’re more like wispy clouds rather than big stormy clouds that take over, which is how thoughts tend to be most of the time. We’re lost in thought. We’re enamored by our thoughts. We can’t get out of our thoughts. We’re overwhelmed by thoughts, versus in the more natural awareness, and it happens in other ways of meditating as well, there’s much more sense of thoughts coming and going and me not being so identified.
TS: That’s helpful. OK. I want to share two of my favorite glimpse practices that you introduced and have you comment on them a bit about how to practice it. So, here’s one, they’re both questions we can ask ourselves. So here’s a glimpse question: What is here in the wake of letting go?
DW: Essentially, they’re questions that you drop into your meditation. And what one would do is get quiet in meditation and then drop this question in: What is here in the wake of letting go? This one is interesting because so much of these practices are about letting go. Meaning, I’m clinging to something. I’m caught in my desire. I’m caught in my aversion. I’m wanting this. I’m needing that. I’m caught in my sense of me, me, me, whatever it is. I want the cookie. I want my children to be a certain way. I want my dog to stop doing this, right? We get caught. And so these practices—through mindfulness, period, don’t even worry about natural awareness—through mindfulness, we see that we’re caught and we begin to let go.
I wanted to say an example quickly. I guess it’s in the book—that it’s like the way that they capture monkeys in Thailand is they hollow out a coconut and they tie it to a tree. And they just have a little hole in the coconut, and they put a banana in there. And so the monkey’s hand can go in and grab the banana. And it grabs the banana, but then it’s caught because it can’t get its hand out. And the solution, of course, is to drop the banana, to let go. And this is the solution. If you do that, if you imagine doing that, the monkey does it, and there’s freedom. So this is an essence of meditation practices in a way, or these types of practices.
Now, what’s here when you let go, when you stop wanting that banana or that cookie or your family to do something or your partner to do something, right? It’s like there’s this moment of peace. There’s this moment of ease. There’s this moment of relinquishment. And typically, we step over it, we ignore it because we’re too busy in life or we’re just relieved that we’re no longer feeling bad. But this is an invitation to rest in what’s here in those moments of letting go.
TS: Beautiful. OK. Another glimpse question that I really like. And then I am going to have to ask you a follow-up question. But first, let’s just drop the question into the conversation. What would be here if nothing were wrong?
DW: So, this one, I can’t explain. This one is entirely experiential. This is where people get to see and really ask that question themselves and what do they find if nothing were wrong. So, yes, it’s more experiential. There’s not a statement about it.
TS: I think the paradoxical question that comes up for me, and it comes up when I start thinking about it. I love this glimpse question. What would be here if nothing were wrong? When I asked that question, I’m just like, “Oh, thank goodness.” I’m going to have 60 seconds right now where there’s nothing wrong. This is a miracle 60 seconds for me. It’s just so fabulous. But then I think about your saying about don’t be a bliss ninny. And I think there are so many things that are wrong. And I better come out of meditation, keep addressing all those things. So, somehow, there’s truth in all of this. What’s your framing?
DW: I like to think about holding both, honestly. That we can cultivate this part of ourselves that is connected to the idea of, or at least the vision of, nothing is wrong. And at the same time, we are not in any way losing sight of all that is wrong. And so I think it was Suzuki Roshi who said, “Things are perfect as they are, and they could use a little improvement.” Right? So it’s like holding both simultaneously. But don’t come out of meditation because you’re like, “Oh, no, everything is a mess.” Stay in that, rest in that, enjoy, marinate, right? Really let yourself have that, and then there’ll be a natural conclusion. And then you come up, and you work, and you do incredible stuff for this world as you always do.
TS: All right. Diana, to end our conversation, you created with Sounds True this audio training course called Glimpses of Being. Approximately six hours, you go into depth teaching on the full spectrum of awareness. What do you hope people will get out of this series if they move into it and really engage in the meditative practices, glimpses of being?
DW: So I’m hoping that people will have a fuller picture of ways to practice awareness, and I think we get stuck in our ruts or we’ve learned one way to meditate. For instance, I was teaching recently these practices and someone said to me, “I didn’t know there was anything else to do, other than notice my breathing.” So that’s really common. And so I’m hoping that people will see the full expanse of ways of practicing.
It’s also a tool that can help them assess or identify what’s happening in their meditation. So for those of you who are long-term meditators or even more recent meditators, you can say, “Oh, this is where I am. And here, I’m stuck here. So what do I do?” So you can use it to address issues like “I’m really, really restless in my meditation. What might be the best approach?”
And then, finally, it can be used to expand your repertoire. How much fun is it—for those of you who like to meditate, and I’m one of those people, it’s like, “Oh, there’s all these new ways to practice, and there’s so many interesting things to learn and to deepen my practice.” So identify, work with difficulties, and expand and enjoy.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Diana Winston. She’s the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center. She’s written the book with Sounds True The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness and has created a new audio series called Glimpses of Being: A Training Course in Expanding Mindful Awareness. Thank you, Diana. Thank you for the brilliance of your work and how helpful it is. Thank you so much.
DW: Thanks, Tami. It’s great to be with you.
TS: Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at SoundsTrue.com/podcast. And if you’re interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. And also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.
