Quietness and awareness often go together, like a sweet aroma and a flower. A mind that is constantly chattering to itself, repeating what it has learned or absorbed… and then merely habitually re-repeating such things in (remembered) altered mental arrangements and recollections for itself, does not have the pristine energy to look freshly and directly beyond the known. The known is the past — as stored, old patterns of memory — and the beauty of real “newness” cannot take place when mere repetition from (and of) the memory bank takes place.
One cannot practice awareness any more that one can practice real quietness. A profound and living awareness/quietness is never the mere outcome of repetitive, learned procedures or known systems. Profound innocence can occur when one is not filled with what others have taught you to do. It is a motiveless looking, and most people, unfortunately, merely look with (and from) motives. Most are caught in a cause-and-effect framework; they live that way, they work that way, and they are programmed exclusively in that. Real joy seldom occurs in a mind trapped in such repetitive cause-and-effect oriented motives. In the sequence of things, the cause becomes the effect and the effect becomes another cause. To merely be one conditioned after-effect (after another) throughout life (in such a robotic sequence)… may not be real living whatsoever. (It would be wonderful if we could easily disinter such rather cadaverous minds out of the conditioned quagmire that they are in but, alas, it is not easily done.) Of course, we must engage in (and “as”) cause-effect occurrences often; however, to merely be stuck in that mode is a shame. An innocent (naturally quiet) mind can look beyond the crude sequence of things and that is when wholeness (beyond mere ordinary effects) and love really blossom.
Beyond the crude sequence of things… small Eastern Gray Beardtongue wildflower on the forest floor. Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 