The Vital Points of Awakening through Meditation

Awakening is a double handful of knowledge: not more than we can hold, but more than we can glean from a casual glance. Take the time to understand these points.

I spent the summer (2025) traveling between retreats in California and Colorado, where I spent weeks with my teachers and colleagues — meditators I have known much of my adult life. All of us are clear that we were fortunate to live through an age where the accumulation of knowledge and training was easy, inexpensive, and well supported. And many of us, now teachers, are just as aware that those starting out on the path now have a different landscape to navigate, one that becomes more difficult by the year as it is choked with bogus figures and slick packaging of bestselling authors offering their “wisdom” to the modern audience. Hang on, I gotta vomit.

The now infinite availability of information invites us to imagine that what used to take many years can now take days or weeks. As if the development of skill and understanding was, all along, a lack of information.

When I look back on my years in graduate school, or college, or wherever, I was never able to absorb even a fraction of the excellent texts on meditation I had on my shelves. I might spend an entire summer learning just one or two chapters from a classic meditation text from a teacher, going line by line. And that would take up most of every day, because this stuff is multi-layered, rich, and actually means something.

Meditation can be learned the way I learned it, going through the tradition of texts and commentaries and pairing it with practice retreats. It can also be learned more simply by spending time consistently with accomplished teachers who offer small steps in sequence over a number of years. It doesn’t matter.

But now, I don’t see many of those opportunities open to new students. The world has changed, and the great lineages that cooperated in the 20th century have been fragmented by the marketplace. Meditation is still in the world, but the methods for learning it need to come back for a world that wants to learn from the beginning.

I did what was available to me. The fact that so many universities had dedicated meditators among their faculty made it easy for university students to learn in a college setting. This meant that visiting teachers, Tibetans, Burmese, Japanese, could enrich our education in a setting that made learning easy.

Some of my friends found an alternate route. Two of them traveled to Nepal in their 20s, met realized masters like Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and lived near them for a decade or more. They learned the path within a setting of mastery, of the fully expressed society of great meditators living in meditation cultures. I kind of envy them, but they have shared nearly every story they can remember, so I benefitted too.

Altogether I spent at least 10 years in full time study of texts and commentaries under the best teachers I could find. Toward the end of that period I began another 10 years emphasizing retreat training. Many of my friends did the same, and when we see each other at these annual retreats we can speak the rich language of meditation without needing to slow down. We are fluent, just as every meditator whose practice reaches any degree of fulfillment is. Because meditation is a knowledgeable pursuit.

Real meditators of real accomplishment (to which I aspire) know what they are doing the same way that scientists or high level craftspeople or surgeons or physicists or translators or filmmakers or composers know what they are doing.

They are learned, and it takes time to become that way.

But meditation became a popular pursuit, which means people think they want to learn it who don’t know what it takes to learn it.

And what it takes is time.

And practice.

And community.

And teachers.

And this sounds inconvenient and time consuming. It’s hard to put this recipe in an app.

But everyone can rest easy, because there is a new generation of teachers trained in the old way that have to teach, like it or not, in the new world just described. And because this is our profession, we have to adapt.

So, in my efforts to adapt, I have found ways to essentialize the knowledge and training so that people can begin meaningfully, while getting what they actually need and not being overloaded with everything there is. (Which could take decades.) I teach all of this in Finding Ground Meditation, through retreats and courses and individual mentoring. This article outlines the approach I take, and the approach that made the most difference to me when I was exposed to it.

A path into practice in three techniques

I think everyone needs to learn a basic technique, an intermediate technique, and eventually, to move beyond technique. Because really, you have to do it this way, there isn’t any other way that works.

A basic technique builds stability, clarity and general fitness within the mind.

An intermediate technique leverages meditative insight to sustain deeper experience that opens the eyes to seeing how things really are.

Going beyond technique is the goal, which involves learning to sustain a genuine recognition of how things are, without dipping into effort, dualistic grasping, or concept. (This is where pure awareness traditions, like Mahamudra and Dzogchen, shine).

All these can be learned early on, but they will only enrich practice as our capacities grow into them. Very, very few beginners could use either the intermediate technique or beyond technique with confidence. They would simply become submerged in the swirling toilet of the mind and have no idea how to get out of it. That is why the basic technique makes sense.

Technique needs education

But even with technique, we have to face the facts that technique must be paired to knowledge.

Without knowledge, techniques will do nothing at all but consume your time as you circle in a mystery. We may hear stories about simple people who learned a simple method and attained awakening. But that, folks, is a story from the past. Awakened people rarely, rarely, rarely haven’t learned the language and perspective of the path. Just like very few notable musicians are entirely self taught.

We may want to be the exception, but that is quite a risk to take with our one shot at this.

I think a basic orientation makes the path more understandable. Here is what I consider a basic orientation. It is basic because it is touches on the big topics without going into elaboration. But it isn’t basic in the normal way of dumbing anything down.

Meditation is sophisticated. It can’t be dumbed down and still be what it is.

So here it is: my overview of what meditators need to know.

The big opportunity

The path of awakening is the great opportunity of life. That is what people who take it say. And everyone who’s come to its culmination in the past 3000 years seems to say this too. There really is something mind boggling about what it is, and that it has been there our entire lives without us being pointed to it by our parents, teachers, or presidents. If it were new that would be one thing, but it isn’t new, it has been thriving for thousands of years. Wow. What happened that we don’t know this?

Finding it is fortunate, but finding it isn’t enough. It still has to be walked. A path is only useful if you set out upon it.

And like any purposeful journey we take, we have stages of preparation and then setting out on the journey.

But in our world we have become enthusiastic —hyped and pumped— to jump into things without a hint of preparation. And no surprise, we have a recent track record of people who started meditation, then got disenchanted, and quit.

To cater to our enthusiasm and readiness to just dive in, meditation has been reduced to what can be learned without preparation. This is so sad, but at the same time so typical of what materialistic cultures do. We shouldn’t mistake the shortsightedness of the world we live in with the possibilities available to us. They are still there, once we look more carefully at the possibilities.

When we do, we see that meditation leads to something remarkable. It isn’t one thing among many that all lead to this same remarkable outcome. It is the one and only thing that leads to that outcome. That is why it still exists. That is why people take pains to learn it properly. There aren’t other options. If we don’t grasp this at the beginning, we lose a tremendous opportunity.

The outcome of meditation is called awakening. For nearly 3000 years meditation cultures have preserved the amazing meditation systems that lead to awakening.

These systems are intact, they are complete, and they are refined. They are ready for us — if we are ready for them.

Are we?

We are ready when we understand the stakes. If we view awakening as one of many worthwhile things we could achieve, we don’t understand the stakes.

The Prison is Not Your Home

Here’s an image.

On an island in a cold sea is a prison colony from which nobody comes or goes. Everyone is there for unjust reasons, none are actual criminals. But prison life has been rough, and they have begun to behave as captives in an unkind environment often do. They are suspicious and self-absorbed. And rough.

The prison has been a closed community for decades, with no new prisoners. There is no memory in the prison community of escape, so it isn’t something people think about.

Instead they preoccupy themselves with other things: they can behave well so they end up in a nicer cell, or earn an easier prison job. They can ingratiate themselves with powerful gang leaders in the prison and be more secure in their social standing, as long as they don’t anger the gang leaders. They can exercise and build their bodies up so that they appear more intimidating and ward off attack. This is what most of the prisoners think about all day long.

One day a boat arrives to the island, and a new prisoner is brought to the prison. This is the first new prisoner in ages, the first person from the outside world that has come into the prison.

This is also the first time anyone on the island has thought about the world beyond the prison. Many are so caught up in their prison life that they don’t take notice. But some are startled into memories of the world they knew before the island.

The new prisoner is interesting for another reason. On his way to the prison, he paid attention to the location of the island. He paid attention to the sea traffic and the various types of ships and boats that pass by the island, and those that deliver food and medicine, fuel and goods to the island. The prisoner realizes that the prison is not well guarded or fortified. He sees that escape is possible, even easy.

To this prisoner, and the few around him, escaping prison becomes more important than getting a better cell or an easier job. For the new prisoner, escape is a reality, and he plans for it day and night. For those around him, they are beginning to imagine that it is possible. Their life in the prison changes, because there is now hope for escape. Hardships are not as hard.

The day finally comes. The prisoner escapes, and those who are willing to take the risk join him. After the escape, the remaining prisoners are puzzled, but get on with their preoccupations, and eventually the escape is forgotten.

This is a similar situation to ours. People have awakened. They have left behind records and strategies so that we can do the same. Most of us aren’t thinking about anything nearly as daring as “awakening” and may just laugh it off. Others of us feel it powerfully, in the pit of our stomach: we know, somehow, that this is what we have been looking for. We long for awakening, and now we know it is possible. Most of those around us are oblivious. We are not.

Luckily for us, at least for now, we have the freedoms to pursue this journey. We can take up the methods and strategies for awakening.

Freedom from endless prison life

On the island, there was no way for the escapees to communicate with those back in the prison. Escape meant disappearing forever. But that isn’t the case in awakening. All those who have awakened continued to live out their lives among everyone else. Thousands, even millions of individuals have done this. It isn’t a goodbye at all.

Of course, it is a goodbye to suffering and confusion, but not a goodbye to friends and family.

But it is even better for us than for the prisoners on the island. Those who understand the journey are here, alive, and there are a lot of them. There are more teachers from authentic lineages than you will ever have time to meet. And you only need one to begin.

Teachers are the guardians of meditation in the world.

They have done the work of gathering together all the knowledge and training we will need. They are like doctors or engineers who train for many years in order to serve. But instead of learning conventional mainstream approved disciplines of medicine or engineering, they learned the path of meditation.

It is through connecting with this living tradition of meditation instruction that the real journey of awakening can begin in our lives.

Awakening is the core goal for our life

Awakening is the transformation our life makes possible. It isn’t like any other transformation or change or experience we could have. It is the final prize, the true treasure at the heart of your lifetime.

That is why we have thousands of years of detailed accounts of this journey, its landscape, and the best routes to follow. Studying these accounts we see clearly that the path is real. The results and final goal are also real. So it is only up to us: the path is available, the training is available, and our lifetime can be put to it.

But for most of us, the language and context of the path is distant from anything we have learned or explored.

At first the path may seem like things we are familiar with, such as religion or philosophy or personal growth. But the similarities are superficial, and once we are traveling the path on our own, we find ourselves passing the last remaining similarities to these other pursuits, stepping into something that hasn’t been mapped by our culture. We may feel alienated.

But this journeyhas definitely been mapped, just not by us. Meditation cultures who have hosted meditators for centuries hold these maps, and usually present themselves to us in a friendly, supportive manner. The path is to be shared, not held as property.

We need a connection

Gaining support from those who understand this path is the only real way to navigate the journey to awakening. People who don’t always wind up lost, spinning their wheels until they wise up and seek help. The greatest figures in the awakening traditions agree that a teacher, or a support network is critical.

Luckily for us, these are ready for us when we are ready for the path.

Starting out on this path is more challenging for modern western people than it needs to be.

It is challenging for everyone, of course, because it shows us how to reverse habitual habits and discover what is within us but which our habits had kept us from recognizing.

But for us it is additionally challenging because we don’t have a cultural context that validates this pursuit. Giving a little bit of time to meditation seems conventionally appropriate. But giving more time than that may seem excessive or extreme.

What a conundrum.

Awakening doesn’t happen through conventionally acceptable measurements. Conventional thinking is not a way into the path of awakening, it’s a way to keep far from it.

So we should take a little time at the beginning to understand the journey, the milestones of the path, and the handful of components that all meditators learn in the course of their lives.

I have spread these into four main categories, each of which is important to understand from the beginning so the path is seen and understood. But when we are actually on the path, practicing for the result of awakening, they aren’t just important, they are vital.

The Four Vital Points of Awakening

So these are Four Vital Points of the path of awakening.

First Vital Point

The first vital point of awakening is to understand the difference between two parts of ourself: mind and awareness.

Awakening takes place in awareness, not the mind. The mind is what must be traveled through in order to set foot in awareness. When we arrive at awareness we use certain instructions to stay within awareness without being pulled back into mind. Eventually, our stability in awareness is stronger than the mind’s ability to pull us back into itself, and the bridge between these two falls apart. That is good, we never needed that bridge, it only made us confused.

So the first vital point is distinguishing mind from awareness.

Second Vital Point

The second vital point of awakening is to understand the methods used to travel safely through the mind into awareness, and then to stay within awareness.

The two methods are called meditation and nonmeditation.

Meditation is training done with the mind to open a passageway to awareness.

Nonmeditation is a training done within awareness that stabilizes the experience of awareness.

Most traditions put both methods, meditation and nonmeditation, under the general heading of meditation. So, as clunky as this sounds, “meditation” has two modes within it, meditation and nonmeditation.

That’s just how language works. All of our methods and teachings are from sources written in languages like Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Pali. When we choose to learn in English (rather than learning the original languages), we end up with a handful of clunky translations that seem inelegant, but which really don’t get in the way.

The second vital point is to understand the differences between meditation and nonmeditation.

Third Vital Point

The third vital point is meditation. The task of meditation is to understand the realm of the mind, which has three parts.

The mind consists of body, subtle body, and thoughts.

The first two, body and subtle body, are called the feeling world. The third, thoughts is just called mind or sometimes, thinking. The feeling world is the most important at this stage, it is where the big gains begin.

It might seem strange to include body with mind, but from the perspective of meditation it saves a lot of time. As you begin meditation training, you’ll see why this makes sense.

In meditation we have to accomplish these things:

1. We distinguish body, subtle body, and mind from one another experientially.

2. We learn how to direct attention to each of them individually, using mindfulness.

3. We learn to sustain our attention toward body and subtle body together (the feeling world), using mindfulness.

4. We learn to release mindfulness to the point where both mind and the feeling world are seen as one arising, dissolving field of appearances.

Our main efforts at the beginning will be on the third task: to direct and sustain our attention, lightly but continuously, on the feeling world, which is the combination of body and subtle body. If we can do that, we will find the fourth task unfolding naturally.

We have to be ready

Even though meditation is something we can begin right away, we have to reconcile ourselves to what meditation really is: the reverse of what we have been doing before. If we haven’t been meditating, we have been letting our mind wander, where it has become increasingly confused over our lifetime. This confusion may not be apparent to us now, but our meditation journey will shine the spotlight on it quickly.

All of our stress, all of our unhappiness, all of our fear, are symptoms of confusion. Wandering mind has done this to us.

When confusion is eradicated, so are its symptoms. At our very core, the inner reality of our being, we are not confused, not afraid, not unhappy.

So what are we?

We are wise, compassionate, bright, and joyful. And all of that is natural to us, it doesn’t need to be maintained. It needs to be uncovered, so it can be recognized, or discovered. Our confusion is due to not knowing this inner reality, our fundamental core of wisdom.

That perspective should make it more appealing than the conventional assumption that meditation is just a way to calm us down or center us in our ordinary perspective. That isn’t what any of the ancient traditions talk about. That wouldn’t do very much for us, it would just appease us for an hour or a day. But then our confusion would return and send us back into fear and unhappiness because its root cause hadn’t been found, eradicated, or even looked for.

So for us, those who want to wake up and transform, meditation is the road to follow. We shouldn’t expect it to be easy, it isn’t a back rub. But we shouldn’t worry that it is going to be extremely difficult. Meditation has its challenges, but far more than that, it has its rewards.

We can prepare, it’s not difficult

Meditation is easier when we are prepared for it. This preparation consists of coming face to face with the realities of our life, the confusion we live within, the fear that attacks us from our depths, and the unfulfilled longing that pushes us through one fruitless pursuit after the next. And then one day that unfulfilled longing wises up and asks, what is not working?

In Finding Ground, we introduce elements of preparation throughout the initial training in meditation, so that the mind can have enough stability to stay in the face-to-face experience of the realities of life. An untrained mind has spent its entire life turning from these in hopes of a solution. But solutions cannot be found in the mind.

Meditation can’t be rushed. And it shouldn’t be overly front-loaded, which is to say that we shouldn’t take in more information than will help us in the beginning. As we develop, we will have a much better experience understanding the body of knowledge that comes along with the method.

Some traditions withhold all teachings until a student has gained initial competence in meditation. Some traditions withhold meditation instructions until a student has a full education in the theory of the teachings.

My teachers were all in between these two: they encouraged meditation right from the beginning, and then opened the teachings point by point along the way. This makes sense to me because most of the teachings are useful only after the beginning phase — they depend on the experience of meditation and the insights that come from it.

But the early teachings are very important for the first phase of the path, so they really deserve to be given alongside the initial instructions. That’s how I do it in Finding Ground.

The Fourth Vital Point

The fourth vital point is nonmeditation, the beginning of the transformative process within the path of awakening.

Nonmeditation depends on familiarity with awareness. This almost always depends on meditation, and nonmeditation is usually practiced in tandem with meditation. Without the experiential aha moments of meditation, nonmeditation can seem like an impossibility.

At heart, it is the simplest thing a person can do. It isn’t even a thing you do, it is just the natural flow of being unhindered by confusion. But that doesn’t mean it is easy to put into practice. Meditation solves that problem.

That is why most traditions only teach nonmeditation after a period of training in meditation. But some, like ours, introduce nonmeditation early, as a way to refresh and inspire our meditation path.

And then, we have the vital points of nonmeditation (oral instruction tradition).

Within the training of nonmeditation, there are several vital points. But these are usually given when students report their experience to an instructor, so the instructor can offer these points at the right time. It is almost better not to have these inner instructions than to have them at the wrong time.

In Finding Ground we use the initial points to develop the basic experience of nonmeditation, and then provide training in the unfolding of this experience as it happens. This is best done through communication, rather than reading anything and everything and applying it on one’s own.

Conclusion

That is it. I’ll return to this article after a little while to see if I still find it complete. These are my best thoughts at the moment, pulled together after hearing questions from meditation students and viewers of my Youtube videos.

I understand that greater teachers than I may choose to summarize things differently. There are many ways to do this, and the important points to one teacher may not be the same in every detail to another teacher.

But these four are important to me. When I am talking to someone who doesn’t understand these four, I can tell by their thoughts that something is missing.