Knowing

In Buddhist practice, “knowing” refers not to the accumulation of conceptual knowledge, but to direct, immediate awareness of experience as it unfolds. This kind of knowing is simple, intimate, and free from mental commentary — the bare recognition of what is present, moment by moment.

The untrained mind typically overlays raw experience with stories, judgments, and interpretations. Thoughts quickly arise: “I like this,” “I dislike that,” “This is good,” “This is bad.” In contrast, true knowing simply observes: “Seeing,” “Hearing,” “Feeling.” It allows phenomena to arise and pass without grasping, resistance, or elaboration.

Such knowing is cultivated through mindfulness and insight meditation. The practitioner trains to recognize each experience — bodily sensation, emotion, or thought — as impermanent, conditioned, and impersonal. Over time, the distinction between the knower and the known dissolves; there is just knowing, without identification.

Ultimately, this pure knowing points beyond duality. The act of knowing and the object known are seen as inseparable aspects of a single unfolding process, devoid of an independent observer. In this way, the illusion of a separate self is gently undermined, and the mind begins to rest in its natural clarity.

This knowing is not something gained but something revealed — always present beneath the distractions of habitual thinking. In stillness, it shines effortlessly, luminous and unobstructed.

“In the seen, only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; thus one is not ‘by that’ bound.”
— Bahiya Sutta, Udāna 1.10