Someone asked: in the teaching about the path of "knowledge paired with happiness and purity," does "knowledge" here mean moment-to-moment self-awareness, or does it mean academic knowledge — subjects and disciplines?

This "knowledge" is made up of two parts. The first arises from the state of knowing itself — self-awareness — a state that can only arise within each present moment. This is called sacca-bhāva, the state of truth, arising only within each moment of the present. This very state is what gives rise to experience, which, once gathered, becomes knowledge — information from the past, stored in the reservoir of memory. We then take this knowledge to teach and guide people, writing it into textbooks and books — all of it is information from the past, and all of it depends on the sacca-bhāva that once arose in some particular present moment as its source.

The wholesome abides within every present moment. The contest among the three natures likewise plays out in every present moment — whichever one seizes the moment becomes the "owner of the house," drawing in energy according to its own nature to act upon people and beings, and this can only be carried out within the present moment. So each present moment is enormously important. As the three natures operate, the wholesome guides us toward correct knowledge and correct principles within each present moment, while the unwholesome and the neutral, if they manage to seize the moment instead, lead us into dwelling on the past or the future. The future is usually the realm of fantasy — greed, wanting this or that, none of it real — building castles in the air, illusory pictures of a future that doesn't exist. The past, meanwhile, is used to manufacture worry or various forms of deception.

So it's only the moment-to-moment state of the wholesome that we can come to know — and it requires deliberate anchoring to access. Whatever practice center one visits, teachers there will always instruct practitioners to abide within each present moment, so as to access sacca-bhāva. Someone seeking truth, no matter how far they travel or which teacher they seek out, will never find it if that teacher doesn't themselves abide within each moment of present Dhamma. Only upon meeting a teacher who teaches learning solely within the present moment can one come to find sacca-bhāva and truth. Once truth is found, that understanding gets stored as information in the reservoir of memory, in books, in our recollection — becoming knowledge that belongs to the past, gathered and preserved so it can be passed on for others to learn and understand in turn. Knowledge, then, is of two kinds: knowledge of principles, and sacca-bhāva — the state of truth arising in each present moment as we abide with the wholesome.