How would you describe your mind and body when they are awake and mindful? What words would you use?
I once attended a small class on the Abhidhamma, the third basket of the Pali canon. It’s called the “higher” teaching because it’s the distillation of all the Buddha taught. In the class we were asked to remember times when we had felt the mind was in a good state—when we were helping someone out, enjoying a pastime, or just feeling at one with the world.
Each person wrote two or three words on the blackboard describing what they had experienced then. These included: alertness, flexibility, flow, energy, confidence, focus, attentiveness to others, and calm. In the end, we had a list of about thirty or forty mental states describing the mind and body when they were awake and mindful.
Then we turned to the list of what are known. A is a mental state, an aspect of consciousness (), and this list describes those found in skillful () consciousness.
