Inquiry

Examine the relationship between content and awareness. Practices that look at the relationship between what appears in experience and the awareness in which it appears.

8 practices, each a few minutes. You can read them here and do them on your own, or work through them guided, one at a time, in the interactive version.

1. Watching Thought

Notice the difference between being inside a thought and observing it.

How to do it

1. Let your attention settle wherever it naturally rests.
2. When a thought appears, observe it without following its content.

What did you notice in the moment you became aware of a thought?

2. Ownership Illusion

Examine the assumption that thoughts belong to you.

How to do it

1. A thought appears.
2. Did you choose it?
3. Notice when the label "mine" appears, if it appears.

Does the sense of "my thought" appear before or after the thought itself?

3. Where Is The Observer?

Attempt to locate the one who is observing.

How to do it

1. Look at the screen.
2. Try to find the location of the one looking.
3. Attempt to locate the point from which experience seems to occur.

What happened when you tried to locate the observer?

4. The No-Center Field

Notice the visual field as a whole.

How to do it

1. Soften your gaze.
2. Without fixing on any point, notice the entire visual field at once.
3. Try to find the center of what is seen.

Did the field have a center? What happened when you looked?

5. Attention Itself

Investigate attention directly.

How to do it

1. Let your gaze rest anywhere.
2. Notice when attention shifts. You did not choose where it went.
3. Is attention something you do, or something that happens?

What did you notice about how attention moves?

6. Emotion Without Story

Notice the physical sensation of emotion, separated from its narrative.

How to do it

1. Recall a mild recent emotion.
2. Strip the story: who said what, what it means.
3. What is present? Locate it in the body. What is its texture?

What was the emotion without the story? What happens when the impulse to change it is noticed?

7. Time As Appearance

Examine what is actually here.

How to do it

1. Where is the past, right now?
2. Where is the future, right now?
3. What is here, if anything, that is not memory or anticipation?

What did you find when you looked for now?

8. Who Is Seeking?

Turn the search back on the searcher.

How to do it

1. Notice the impulse to find something — clarity, understanding, peace.
2. Ask: who is seeking?
3. Sit with this question. Do not answer it with a concept.

What happened when you looked for the seeker?

Begin this sequence