Yogi: How can I clearly differentiate between awareness and the object?
Sayadaw: Between attention and awareness, paying attention is more obvious. (You can start by noticing the attention mind.)
Why can you know the touching sensation? Because the mind is paying attention, right? If you’re daydreaming, then you cannot know. Now, do you know that you’re paying attention to this?
Paying attention is an activity of the mind. Attention and touching sensation – you can see that they are different, right?
Now, you try to pay attention to this object and that object – can you know the attention mind?
It is obvious that the attention and the object are separate. Paying attention is more obvious than awareness because awareness sticks to the object and is more difficult to recognize.