https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/audio_player/567.html

There are two forms of knowing that come into play in mindfulness. One form of knowing has to do with sensing. Sensing  our experience. Then the question is, where does sensing occur? So if you sense your hand right now. Where does the sensing occur in your hand. Does it occur in the foot, where does it happen? Does the sensing happen in the mind?

...In your hand. Of course. Something happens in your hand, that gives you the sensations right, and I call that  sensing. Sensing the hand in the hand. The hand is having its own experience of the hand. Your foot is not experiencing  your hands. But that hand is having its own experience of the hand. The mind can know what that experience is, but the
hand is sensing itself. Vibrations, tension, warmth, coolness. The sensations happen right there in the hand. The hand  is sensing itself. There is a kind of awareness that exists in the location of where we are experiencing it. Does that  make some sense? Any of you are confused at this point?
...Part of what mindfulness practice involves is relaxing into the sensing of the experience. And just allowing ourselves to become the sensations of experience. Bringing a sense of presence or involvement... allow ourselves to really kick in that sensory experience... whatever happens in life, whatever experience we are having, has an element of also being sensory. "Awakening beckons us within everything" is a suggestion - Go in, and dive in to the immediacy of  how it is being sensed. That's a nondual world. There is no duality between the experience and the sensation, the  sensation and the sensing of it. There is a sensation and sensing of it right there, right? There is no sensation without a sensing, even though you might not be paying attention to it, there is a kind of sensing that goes on there.  So part of Buddhist practice is to delve into this non-dualistic world... this undivided world of how the sensing is happening in and of itself. Most of us hold ourselves distinct from it, apart from it. We judge it, measure it, define
it against ourselves, but if we relax and delve into the immediacy of life... then there is something in there that the Buddha-seed can begin to blossom and grow.

~ Gil Fronsdal on Buddha Nature, 2004
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... And as that gets kind of being settled and dealt with in practice, in order to get deeper and more  fully into our experience, we also have to somehow deal with [inaudible] very very subtle, which the traditions call a  sense of I Amness. That I Am. And it can seem very innocent, very obvious, that I'm not a doctor, I'm not this and I'm not that, I'm not going to hold onto that as my identity. But you know, I am. I think, therefore I am. I sense, there I am. I am conscious, therefore I am. There is some kind of Agent, some kind of Being, some kind of Amness here. Just a sense of presence, and that presence that kinds of vibrates, that presence kinds of knows itself... just a kind of sense of Amness. And people say, well yeah, that Amness just IS, it's non-dual. There's no outside or inside, just a sense of amness. The Buddhist traditions says if you want to enter this immediacy of life, enter into the experience of life fully, you also have to come to terms with the very subtle sense of Amness, and let that dissolve and fall away, and then that opens up into the world of awakening, of freedom.

~ Gil Fronsdal on Buddha Nature, 2004


Gil Fronsdal is a Norwegian-born, American Buddhist teacher, writer and scholar based in Redwood CityCalifornia. He has been practicing Buddhism of the Sōtō Zen and Vipassanā sects since 1975, and is currently teaching the practice of Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area.[1] Having been taught by the Vipassanā practitioner Jack Kornfield, Fronsdal is part of the Vipassanā teachers' collective at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.[2] He was ordained as a Sōtō Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and was a Theravāda monk in Burma in 1985.[1] In 1995, he received Dharma transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center.[3]

He is one of the best-known American Buddhists. He has a PhD in Buddhist Studies from Stanford University. His many dharma talks available online contain basic information on meditation and Buddhism, as well as subtle concepts of Buddhism explained at the level of the lay person."
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