What is a skillful or unskillful state of mind? What do those terms mean--skillful for what purpose? Even to know something at this most basic level requires active discernment. The Buddha may have said certain states were skillful or unskillful, but that does nothing for your practice. You have to see its effect on you and know its impact directly.
Questions are the life's blood of the dharma. If we are willing to follow wherever the question takes us, then the question will take us out of our beliefs and opinions into something new and unexplored. Something will end in us and will not arise again in the same way.
The Kalama sutta fits very nicely into the discussion on freeing awareness completely from any inward or outward authority. In the most radical statement possible the Buddha severs all ties from any dependency, essentially saying that freedom is not possible if one leans in any direction whatsoever.
This talk also includes John Teasdale and Jenny Wilks. This is the introductory talk for a retreat that is particularly relevant to those teaching or training in mindfulness-based applications. The retreat explores the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, as taught in the Satipatthana discourse given by the Buddha.
Accessing the Fourth Foundation is as easy as abiding in wonder. A question that is interesting to you but does not immediately resolve itself into an answer holds that wonder. When you hold a question without trying to immediately find the answer, you will feel the pull of form (needing to know the answer) in conflict with the formless (the wonder within the mystery of the question itself).
A quality of awareness is discernment, which can be active or passive. Passive discernment is seeing, "just this" without doing anything about it, while active discernment is uncovering what is hidden and unconscious. It uses an energetic and curious probing to broaden the expanse of awareness and welcome it beyond its egoic boundaries.
The Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness is the ability to discern what limits freedom and to see the value of open awareness when it is not limited. It encourages a complete examination and investigation of mind until there is existence without obstructions.
The personal evolves into the impersonal with time and exposure to awareness. The less "you" do about this process, the quicker it happens on its own. Simply say when a state of mind arises, "Is this about me?" In one way it is, in another way it is not. Be willing to see both tendencies and investigate each.
