Reading Highlight

Passive discernment is the inactive expression of awareness. This is the Buddha’s Third Foundation of Mindfulness that will be fully explored in chapters 9 through 11, but as a preview, it is meditation without the meditator. It takes a purely receptive pose of letting everything be just as it is. Passive discernment does not interfere or interpret, but simply leaves the mind completely alone to be what it is. If the mind thinks, it thinks, if it does not think, so be it. There is no leaning into the mind to encourage it to be one way as opposed to another. However it is, that is what is seen, and since there is no rancor, criticism, resistance, or argument coming from the mind about what is being seen, then we, the observer, have abated and are now stilled.