Bare Awareness

   "Bare awareness" is a term that I first encountered when I read Jon Kabat-Zinn's writings, and I have more recently read about it in a book by Donald K Swearer called Secrets of the Lotus. One of the tricky things about the notion of bare awareness is that it's about seeing non-judgmentally, or seeing past the sense of self or "I". The problem is that the "I" is often so deeply ingrained in seeing that the act of seeing is already presupposing a self. Even something as innocent as taking notice of a sweet food in a candy store is tinged by the lens of desire, which is often used to select what we want to pursue.  I have often caught myself realizing how consciousness seems to 'pre-select' objects of desire, thus defining the scene in front of me before I can take in everything in the picture.
   It's not enough to try to suppress the thoughts of desiring something in particular, since that thought has already arisen in mind at that point, and there is no sense in fighting off the thought: it's just a puff of smoke that will be replaced by other thoughts. I have found that what most helps for me is to understand that the thought itself is not my mind; it is only coming from the previous karma which has accumulated as the result of habits. I have also noticed how trying to fight a particular thought only makes that thought seem more real than it is, only because I am adding to that same thought.
   Just now, as I am writing this, I am thinking about the difference between bare awareness and asceticism. I think that ascetics try to cut off all desires through a strenuous exercise of mind or will, whereas bare awareness is somewhat softer than this: it sees past the desire or thought to get a sense of what supports the thoughts. In this way, there isn't an effort to engage content, only to look deeply at the process that gives rise to the thoughts themselves.