Chapter Six. Mindfulness Meditation.
Significant progress in bringing about the fundamental internal transformation aimed at in early Buddhist practice probably cannot be made without some kind of meditation practice. This chapter describes a particular kind of practice today called “Mindfulness,” taught in an early Buddhist writing called the Satipatthana Sutta. Selected parts of this sutta will form the “skeleton” elaborated on in this chapter. I will put flesh on this skeleton in a way that will connect the practice described to the core teachings of Attachment, Impermanence, and Distress already elaborated on in earlier chapters.
For those already familiar with some forms of meditation, a little history may be helpful to situate ideas in this chapter in a wider context.
In traditional times in Asia, meditation practice was largely something engaged in only by monks and nuns in monasteries and convents. In the late nineteenth century, some monks and nuns in Southeast Asia started a movement teaching interested laypeople to meditate. They found the kind of meditation practice taught in the Satipatthana Sutta very suitable in this context, since learning this practice itself does not require extensive knowledge of Buddhist doctrines monks and nuns would have been learning, also because a person engaged in ordinary family and social life can experience significant benefits by attending weekend meditation retreats, and regularly practicing this kind of meditation only say twenty minutes a day.
I myself first learned this kind of meditation practice in two week-long meditation retreats in the 1970’s under the direction of an ex-monk from Thailand (Dhiravamsa). My interpretation of the Satipattana Sutta in this chapter has also drawn on this experience, from some writings by other Southeast Asia meditation teachers belonging to the Theravada school, and from my own attempts to practice this method, shaped by my understanding of how it could serve as an effective means of achieving the transformative goals taught in early Buddhist writings.
My study of the Satipatthana Sutta has led me to agree with Theravada meditation teachers when it comes to understanding meditation practice itself that is taught in this sutta. When it comes to the purpose of this practice, considered in the larger context of early Buddhist teaching as a whole, I have come to conclusions which I have not seen explained in writings by any Buddhist teacher. (For example my explanation does not include the idea that the purpose of this meditation method is to gain direct insight into the truth of Buddhist teaching, presumably the reason why this meditation method is often called by the Pali term vipassana, “Insight” mediation.)
This introduction should be helpful in situating the ideas and explanations in this chapter in the broader context of teachings and writings on meditation by many others whom readers may be familiar with. The term “meditation” has been used to refer to many different meditation practices. I think each meditation method should be evaluated on its ability to achieve some chosen purpose. If someone chooses to pursue the particular transformative goals set forth in this book, then regular practice of the meditation method I think is being taught in the Satipatthana Sutta is one very effective method of achieving this goal, and I will try to give reasons why this can be expected. There are many other possible goals a person might choose to pursue, and there exist many other meditation practices effective in making progress toward achieving some particular chosen goals.
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The specific skeleton passages in the Satipatthana Sutta I want to quote needs a little more introduction, because they employ a particular set of four categories to describe all possible objects of meditation, everything a person could possibly become aware of meditating. These include all bodily sensations and processes included under the term kaya “body,” and also everything one could become introspectively aware of in one’s own mental-emotional life, designated by the remaining three terms, feelings (vedana), mental states (citta), and “mind objects” (dhamma, objects of the sixth sense mano.) I think, just as in the case of the five khandha-groups, details are not important here. All one needs to understand is that these include everything a meditator could be aware of.
Finally is helpful to understand that in the title Sati-patthana, the Pali word sati most likely means “mindfulness,” and different forms of this word occur in instructions, such as satova and satima meaning “being mindful.”
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I begin then with passages involving the first category kaya or “body.” “Body” here is a general category which includes all bodily sensations, such as bodily pains or bodily processes such as breathing. The first part of this sutta envisions a monk sitting in a cross-legged meditation position, paying attention to breathing, belonging to the category kaya “body”.
And how does a monk abide contemplating kaya as kaya? Here a bhikkhu, gone to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty hut, sits down; having folded his legs crosswise, set his body erect, and set up mindfulness (satim). Ever mindful (satova) he breathes in, mindful he breathes out.
Breathing in long, he understands: ‘I breathe in long’; or breathing out long, he understands: ‘I breathe out long.’
Breathing in short, he understands: ‘I breathe in short’; or breathing out short, he understands: ‘I breathe out short.’
He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing the whole body’(or “everything bodily”); he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing the whole body’…
In the next section, this sutta envisions a monk continuing this practice of attention to bodily processes after he has risen from the traditional meditation posture, and goes about his daily business.
When walking, a bhikkhu understands: ‘I am walking’; when standing, he understands: ‘I am standing’; when sitting, he understands: ‘I am sitting’; when lying down, he understands: ‘I am lying down’
[he] acts in full awareness when going forward and returning… acts in full awareness when looking ahead and looking away… acts in full awareness when flexing and extending his limbs… acts in full awareness when wearing his robes and carrying his outer robe and bowl… acts in full awareness when eating, drinking, consuming food, and tasting… acts in full awareness when defecating and urinating… acts in full awareness when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, and keeping silent.
So “Mindful” attention is not something confined to sitting-meditation itself, but can be practiced as a person goes through their everyday life.
The instructions given here closely match instructions given to A. E. Shattock, who in the 1950’s went for a two week meditation retreat at a meditation center in Rangoon established by a prominent Burmese Mindfulness teacher Mahasi Sayadaw. In this retreat, the sort of attentive awareness of all everyday bodily activities described above was supposed to be practiced without a break while engaged in everyday activities, during every waking moment for however long the retreat lasts.
I think it is noteworthy that Shattock’s meditation teacher taught him this practice, but did not immediately connect this practice to any other aspect of Buddhist teaching. This is also true of my introduction to Mindfulness meditation under the former Thai monk Dhiravamsa. I recall him saying nothing about the purpose of Mindfulness practice as it might relate to other aspects of Buddhist teaching.
The same is true of the passage from the Satipatthana Sutta given above. But I think a puzzle remains about its purpose. The meditator is not trying to change anything. Breathing goes on as it normally does–no need to try to breath differently. And he goes about his everyday life as he normally does, walking, sitting, eating, lying down, and so on. The only change seems to have to do with the fact that, in the normal case, all these activities take place in a relatively unthinking way. When I am eating, I’m normally not paying much attention to the process of eating itself. Picking up food, chewing, and so on, are just happening rather automatically, while I pay attention to other things. What is different here is just that I am shifting my attention: Things that normally happen in the background of my awareness, are now made objects of conscious attention.
What is the purpose?
One indication of the purpose is given near the beginning of this sutta, which says of contemplating kaya “bodily sensations and processes”
He abides contemplating kaya as kaya, ardent, fully aware, mindful (satimā), putting away desire and distress regarding the world.
“Fully aware and mindful,” seems to emphasize the importance of a high degree of mental alertness. The compound “desire and distress” (abhijjhā-domanassa) supports modern Mindfulness teachers who emphasize the fact that the meditator should try to be a neutral observer of all bodily processes and activities going on in everyday life, neither “desiring” that they take place in some certain way, nor “distressed” that they are happening in some other way than desired. (Note that “the world” here includes not only the external world, but everything happening in one’s own inner mental/emotional life, indicated when the text repeats this same formula of the remaining three categories of meditation-objects referring to this inner “world.”
One other short passage is more explicit about “bare” awareness, but also ends by suggesting that practice of bare awareness is a means of ridding oneself of Attachments. This passage is repeated verbatim quite often in the Satipatthana Sutta, following passages describing Mindfulness of all the different kinds of things a person can be “Mindfully” aware of.
Again to avoid repetition, I cite here only the passage using the category kaya, “body.” It just has to be kept in mind that when this passage speaks of Mindful awareness that “body exists”, kaya/“body” here functions as a general category under which are included many different individual bodily sensations and processes, such as breathing, bodily pains, bodily activities, touching sensations, and so on, that a meditator might become aware of.
The passage first describes the practice itself. In this practice:
Mindfulness (sati)
that “body exists” (atthi kayo)
is present
just to the extent necessary (yavad-eva)
for mere knowledge (nana-mattaya)
[and] mere awareness (patissati-mattaya).
And he dwells non-dependent (a-nissito)
not Attached to anything in the world (na loke upādiyati)
So in the first part of this passage sati “mindfulness” is associated with “mere knowledge and awareness,” awareness of the bare existence of individual bodily processes and sensations a person can be aware of. This suggests a kind of limiting of one’s attention, just focusing alert attention recognizing the bare existence of whatever individual bodily processes and sensations a meditator might become aware of, without any further reactions or thoughts about what one is aware of.
This is in accord with what modern Mindfulness teachers speak of as “bare awareness.”
After this description of practice itself, final lines of this passage suggest the purpose of the practice:
And he dwells non-dependent (a-nissito)
not Attached to anything in the world (na loke upādiyati)
That is, practice in paying this kind of bare, non-reactive awareness is described here as practice in being a person un-Attached to anything to anything in the world (external or internal).
How can this practice of bare awareness be expected to help make progress toward the central transformative goal of ridding oneself of Attachments?
I suggest the explanation lies in the connection between this practice and Buddhist teaching about Dependent Arising.
That is, the doctrine of Dependent Arising says that, in the case of a person still in the grip of Craving and Attachment, any perception of anything gives rise to involuntary reactions to whatever is perceived. Buddhist psychology of meditation applies this to any perception of anything a person might become aware of in the external material/social world, or in their own internal mental/emotional world.
But all this is a problem. If I am presently still in the grip of Craving and Attachment, so that all my reactions are involuntary manifestations of Craving and Attachment, what course is open to me to free myself from these involuntary, Attachment-driven reactions, and become a free, autonomous, “independent” person?
I suggest that this is the connection between these last lines and the earlier lines describing the technique itself. If all my reactions are involuntarily driven by Craving and Attachment, the way to become free and independent is to practice not reacting at all, to pay “bare attention” just the mimimum of attention necessary for “bare awareness” of whatever one is aware of.
In other words, this is practice in gradually developing the ability to be a liberated, independent, free-standing “I”, free of being in the grip of a need for things in the world (inside or outside) being some particular way that I need them to be to provide me with the external support and validation I feel that I need to get from them.
Another explanation along similar lines occurs in a passage in a book written by a Thai meditation teacher called Ajahn Sumedho. In one place in describes the purpose of Mindfulness meditation in terms of “object-ification.” Speaking of feeling uncomfortable feelings you might feel when trying to meditate after a hectic day:
If, after a hectic day, you try to stop all your mental reactions… it will lead to failure, then you’ll feel you can’t meditate. So instead… you have to learn to objectify the feeling of being scrambled… You have to recognize that those feelings and ideas are just objects of your mind, and you are a witness to them… objectify them, rather than resisting or trying to make the confusion refined or peaceful. (Sumedho, p. 100)
In other words, when you feel “scrambled” by trains of thought going through your mind beyond your control, normally it is difficult not to get involved in the thoughts, actively but involuntarily involved in thinking about the thoughts. It is difficult not to feel that I am a person feeling scrambled.
But trying to stop the thoughts, or stop myself from feeling scrambled, is also a mode of being involved in the thoughts or feelings, in Buddhist language being caught up in an “aversion” to these thoughts and feelings, one manifestation of an Attachment to some opposite mental/emotional state.
Think of these trains of thoughts and these feelings as objects-of-awareness for me as an aware human subject. Normally, as an aware human subject, I find myself involuntarily entangled with these objects-of-awareness. Think of bare, non-reactive awareness as disentangling myself from these things I am aware of, “objectifying them” as Sumedho says turning them more pure objects-of-awareness for me as an aware human subject disentangled from these things I am aware of.
In another place (ibid. 106) Sumedho makes a similar point using the example of being aware of feelings of anger when you try to meditate. Anger is usually driven by some kind of Attachment. It is a kind of aversion-reaction to conditions being the opposite of what you need them to be. In the normal case, such Attachment-driven aversion would lead to be involuntarily caught up in simply being angry, identifying with the angry feeling and being an angry person. Mindful bare and non-reactive awareness of the anger would mean again object-ifying the anger, letting it remain a bare object-of-awareness for you, having no meaning beyond this for you as a disentangled aware human human subject.
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If all my reactions are involuntarily driven by Craving and Attachment, the way to become free and independent is to practice not reacting at all, to pay “bare attention” just the mimimum of attention necessary for “bare awareness” of whatever one is aware of.
In other words, this is practice in gradually developing the ability to be a liberated, independent, free-standing “I”, free of being in the grip of a need for things in the world being some particular way that I need them to be to provide me with he external support and validation I feel that I need to get from them.
Unlike many other kinds of meditation practice, this practice may or may not feel enjoyable or pleasurable while you are doing it. It is more like a football player working out in a gym before the game. Working out is in this case purely a means to an end. It may or may not be enjoyable in itself. Its purpose is to develop muscle enabling a football player to play better when he later gets on the football field to play football.
In the same way, the Mindfulness practice described here may or may not be enjoyable in itself on any particular occasion. It’s purpose is to develop a kind of unusual group of “mental muscles,” which would allow a person to return to everyday life and interact with the world as a liberated person.
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Here it is worth citing a passage from a book on Mindfulness by another Buddhist Mindfulness teacher Nyanaponika Thera describing in a more detailed way the meditation practice he thinks is taught in the Satipatthana Sutta. What this sutta calls “mere knowledge” and “mere awareness,” he calls “bare attention.”
Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of perception. It is called ‘bare’ because it attends just to the bare facts of perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind which, for Buddhist thought, constitutes the sixth sense. When attending to that sixfold sense impression, attention or mindfulness is kept to a bare registering of the facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech, or by mental comment which may be one of self-reference (like, dislike, etc.), judgement or reflection. If during the time, short or long, given to Bare Attention, any such comments arise in one’s mind, they themselves are made objects of Bare Attention, and are neither repudiated nor pursued, but are dismissed, after a brief mental note has been made of them. (P. 30)
The basic practice of Mindfulness meditation is not hard to understand. Sit still with eyes closed. “Alert” is important here. Sit in an alert posture, with back straight. It is important to maintain an alert state of mind, and an alert bodily posture helps maintain an alert mental state.
I want to call special attention to Nyanponika’s mention of “bare registering of the facts observed, without reacting to them.” Along these lines, I speak of “non-reactive awareness,” or “disengaged awareness,” as the essence of Mindfulness practice. Non-reactive awareness is the practice of being aware of some X–any X–while as much as possible refraining from any reaction to what one is a aware of. “X” here might include sounds heard in the external world. For practical reasons to be explained below, it can be most useful for beginners to gain skill in non-reactive awareness by paying attention to very concrete bodily sensations – especially breathing sensations, but also focusing awareness on places where the meditator’s body makes contact with a chair or a cushion the meditator is sitting on. It potentially includes also any mental/emotional phenomena the meditator might become aware of, as for example thoughts or mental images going through the mind, or feelings, emotional states or moods a person might be aware of (elation, excitement, depression, anxiety, anger, annoyance, pleasant mental peace and calm, etc.)
In terms of the ultimate goals of Mindfulness, it is actually of no importance what a meditator is aware of. What is important is that the meditator refrain as much as possible from any kind of reaction to, or engagement with, whatever she is aware of. This can be described as “bare awareness,” “non-reactive awareness,” “disengaged awareness,” “non-involved awareness.”
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Attachment and a contrastive mentality.
Suppose I am a wealthy person and my wealth is an important source of my sense of self-worth and meaning in life. Suddenly I lose most of my wealth. I could still live comfortably, but what my mind remains obsessively focused on is the contrast between my present state and the wealthy state I used to enjoy. To put this in Buddhist terms, I am now experiencing “aversion” toward the new situation I am in. Aversion is just a negative manifestation of upadana, “Attachment” or “Attachment.” My Attachment to my previous wealthy condition shows itself in my aversion to the situation I now find myself in, contrasting so strongly as it does with the situation I was used to and became Attached to. Progress toward the Buddhist ideal (the “cessation of Attachment”) would manifest itself in an increased ability to rather quickly shift my focus, fully accepting any new situation that comes my way for what it is, and focusing on making the best of the possibilities any new situation presents to me.
Apply this to meditation. Here, by sitting still and closing my eyes, I cease paying attention to external conditions and events taking place in the external world. What I will be mostly aware of are various bodily sensations, various thoughts and images going through my mind, and the mood I am in. Still, Attachment and a contrastive mentality might show itself here. For example, I might be aware of so-called “negative” emotions: anger, jealousy, upsetness, anxiety, feeling hurt or frustrated. I’m uncomfortable feeling this way. I experience an aversion to unpleasant feelings. I wish unpleasant feelings would go away, contrasting as they do with pleasant feelings that I wish were there. My initial attitude is a strong desire to change these feelings.
This aversion to unpleasant feelings might also be a manifestation of a possible problem with dedication to the Buddhist path itself. That is, it might occur to me: The anger or hurt that I am now feeling is probably itself a manifestation of Craving and Attachment. If I had made more progress toward eliminating Craving and Attachment, I would not be feeling so angry or hurt now. Such thoughts might increase my aversion to these feelings.
A better and deeper understanding of Buddhist teaching would make me realize that what is made manifest here is a more subtle form of Attachment. This added aversion I feel toward unpleasant feelings might seem a result of my dedication toward the Buddhist ideal. But in reality, what is happening is that I am Attached to a particular identity or self-image of myself as “an Enlightened Buddhist.” What distresses me about feeling angry or hurt is that it contrasts so strongly with a self-image that I am attached to, of myself as an Enlightened Buddhist who never feels such “negative” feelings.
Indeed it may be true that, if had made more progress toward the Buddhist ideal, I would not now be feeling angry or hurt. But the question is: Given that I am now in the grip of unpleasant feelings that I would not be feeling if I were Enlightened, what is the best way I can handle the present situation as it is, so has to make more progress toward Enlightenment?
This is where the ideas explained above become relevant. Focus your attention on the unpleasant feelings, but resist any aversive reactions to them, and resist the desire to try to change them and make them go away. Trying to change them manifests an “aversion” to them. The Buddhist ideal relevant here is not to try directly to bring about some very positive emotional state that I imagine nibbana to be. In the present situation as it actually exists, what will bring me closer to the ultimate transformative goal is to try to overcome my aversion to the unpleasant feelingf that I am now unavoidably experiencing. This is the meaning of “non-reactive awareness” which is the essence of Mindfulness meditation. Non-reactive awareness in this situation is perhaps better described more positively as “fully accepting awareness.” Accepting awareness is the opposite of aversive awareness, awareness accompanied by a dislike of these feelings and direct attempts to try to make them go away and be replaced by more pleasant, “positive” feelings.
One implication here: The way to bring about the Buddhist ideal of “the cessation of Attachment” is not to locate and try to directly repress Attachment as itself a particular mental state. Attachment is a pervasive driving force driving most people’s instinctive reactions to life-situations. While I might think that my desire to change my feeling-state is driven by my desire to cease Attachment, this desire might well itself be actually driven by a subtle form of Attachment.
This then I think is one important clue to the purpose of non-reactive awareness: Since most human reactions are driven in one way or another by Craving Attachment, one of the best ways to overcome these deeply rooted underlying tendencies is simply to learn the skill of not reacting at all.
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Some personal thoughts
I’ve explained how I think parts of the Satipatthanna Sutta support modern descriptions of Mindfulness practice, and how this method van be expected to help bring about the kind of internal transformation described in earlier chapters.
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I now want to add some personal reflections based more on my personal experiences trying to practice this method. These may reflect my own personal psychology, but it may be useful for others to hear about them.
First, don’t expect to be able to practice complete “bare” non-reactive awareness right away. You need to have patience and be satisfied with very slow and gradual progress from the beginning.
Don’t expect to feel good while you are doing this. The main results you should aim at is to gradually change your spontaneous reactions to the world as you go through your everyday life outside meditation. I became motivated to continue regular practice because of significant changes in my life following two intensive meditation retreats meditating for many days sometimes ten hours a day. And for a few years afterward I got up early to meditate an hour a day most days.
I find thoughts to be the main problem. I take the aim to be not to try to stop your thinking, but also not let yourself be caught up in active involvement with your thoughts,
actively thinking about the thoughts that occur to you. Like watching a herd of horses running by and resisting the temptation to jump on one and ride it.
Involuntary thinking processes are a good example of Dependent Arising. I might think I am thinking because I want to think, and I could just stop if I wanted to. But experience at meditating shows that this is not so.
Mindfulness meditation is gradually developing the difficult mental skill of being able to be a non-reactive observer of thoughts going by.
In many cases I find this almost impossible, though sometimes it becomes more possible if I meditate for a longer time.
This is one reason I think attention to more concrete bodily sensations can be helpful, like the physical sensation of breathing, or tightness or discomfort in other parts of my body. The problem with thoughts Is that they are interesting. One advantage of breathing sensations is not only that they are more concrete but they are relatively boring,
In Buddhist terms attention to breathing can be an exercise in building concentration-abilities, breaking the habit of letting your thoughts run on involuntarily most of the time.
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So I think one of the first things that needs to be said, especially for beginners, is: Don’t expect to be able to do this. Realistically, expect that you will be able to be less engaged than you would ordinarily be, and probably less engaged for only very short stretches, perhaps only a few seconds at a time. So expect short periods of disengaged awareness, followed by longer periods of involvement in some train of thought that is of concern or interest to you. This is like building up muscle by lifting weights – start with easy-lifting of lighter weights and build up to harder lifting of heavier weights. Patience with yourself is part of Mindfulness practice itself. That is, frustration at not being able to do this is itself a manifestation of aversion and a contrastive mentality – contrasting your present state of rather weak ability with the advanced ability you wish you possessed instead. Fully accepting the present weak state of your ability is part of the practice itself. Try not to get frustrated with your lack of ability, and focus instead on the task, trying to be as disengaged as you can, for periods as short or long as you are able.
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The main issue relevant here is something noted above: the fact that thinking processes present one of the main difficulties standing in the way of non-reactive attention. Thoughts are interesting. One interesting thought occurs, drawing forth an interested response, setting off a continuous train of purposive thinking on some interesting topic. Even though the ultimate goal would be to be able to pay disengaged attention to this train of thoughts going on all by themselves, this I think is one of the most difficult skills to develop. This is especially true when it comes to compulsive thinking about things that are especially worrying.
By contrast, one big advantage of breathing sensations is the fact that they are relatively uninteresting, making it much easier to pay attention to them without becoming actively engaged in thinking about them or trying to change the physical processes being observed. As in any kind of skill-building exercise, it is best to start building up any particular skill by practicing on easier tasks and gradually building up to the more difficult ones.
It is also true that encountering specially difficult life- circumstances might make it very difficult for even an advanced meditator to be able to pay disengaged attention to thoughts and feelings, in which case it is much better to fall back on attention to breathing.
Another advantage of breathing as a meditation-object has to do with the fact that physical breathing sensations are relatively concrete and easier to concentrate on than are thoughts and emotional states. Forcing the mind to restrict its attention and concentrate on some single meditation-object is not itself the ultimate goal in Mindfulness meditation. Any kind of attempt to control the mind’s activities are antithetical to the ultimate goal of letting mental activities go as they go, and pay disengaged attention to them. Still, this is a skill to be gradually developed. And in its initial stages, one of the main obstacles consists in the mental fragmentation that occurs when the mind responds to one different stimulus after another, being thus uncontrollably drawn to and fro in response to different stimuli. (“Attention Deficit Disorder” can be an extreme example of this.) Consequently, just learning to concentrate can be an important skill to learn in the beginning, to overcome the tendency to be involuntarily drawn into involuntary responses to varying stimuli.
In this context, the very concreteness of physical breathing sensations makes them an easier object of concentration. An additional advantage is that, unlike static concentration-objects, breathing sensations are constantly moving and changing. Learning to concentrate on constantly changing breathing sensations is good practice for learning to pay accepting attention to constantly changing life-circumstances. In this respect, it is important to pay attention to breathing without trying to control it, as for example trying to breathe slower or faster.
One final advantage of attention to breathing lies in the fact that for most people, attending to one’s breathing seems to have a calming effect. Again it is important in the Buddhist context not to think of mental calmness as part of the goal of Mindfulness meditation – that one is meditating in order to become more calm. The desire for calmness can be one of the main obstacles to achieving the goal of Mindfulness meditation, if it involves feeling a contrast between one’s present un-calm state, and a calm state that might exist somewhere else in the future. This would obviously be an obstacle to paying fully accepting attention to one’s present (un-calm) state.
Nonetheless, even though advanced skill in disengaged awareness should allow a person to pay disengaged attention to a state of frantic mental activity, it is much easier develop this kind of skill when one’s mind is relatively calm.
I have found particularly helpful another kind of meditation-object which I have not seen mentioned much by Mindfulness teachers. That is, I think it is helpful to pay attention to the particular character of what might be called bodily “energy” at any given time. Nervousness can be felt as a certain kind of bodily sensation, as can depression, excitement, or calmness. Often when I begin to meditate my initial feeling is one of discomfort. I find the general bodily sensations that I feel to be unpleasant. I dislike them and wish they would go away. But this sets a particularly challenging task for Mindfulness. Not trying to change these sensations so they would become more pleasant, or trying to ignore them and pay attention to something else. But paying concentrated attention to these unpleasant sensations, but also trying to pay completely accepting attention to them.
This brings up another aspect of Mindfulness meditation that is the opposite of what one might expect. That is, I spoke earlier of achieving greater separation between myself as aware subject, and processes going on in my being that objects-of-awareness for me. But, paradoxically perhaps, achieving this separation can at the same time being about more unification.
Consider again for example the case of my discomfort with “nervous energy” pervading my body. My discomfort is a sign of some conflict, between the way my body actually feels, and some contrasting way I want it to feel. I do not really want to be in my body as it actually exists. Giving up this desire in one way creates a distance and separation. But in other way, paying fully accepting attention to the energy in my body puts me more in touch with it and allows me to be more fully at home in it.
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How it works
Sense of what it feels like
Breaks a cycle
Appeases your heart’s desire (Suzuki advocates very similar method)
Ideal effect afterwards
More calm but not main purpose
More free, but free for what
Action oriented face world as less in the grip of Craving Attachment
Able to face world as more free standing independent source of action, vs preoccupied with need to get support, frustrated with not getting it
Preparation for everyday life.
Thus Mindfulness meditation is a skill-building exercise, building up a certain kind of skill or mental “muscle.” Ultimately, the purpose is to bring about a fundamental change in one’s internal psychological dynamics, which would in turn change our spontaneous reactions to the world in everyday life. Here I would like to add what are perhaps some more personal thoughts, concerning what I think is one of the best ways of conceiving how Mindfulness practice can be expected to change a person’s way of dealing with everyday life-situations.
As I explained earlier (p. 000), Attachment gives us a “needy” relation to the world, a need for the world to be a certain way to serve as an essential basis our sense of self-worth and meaning in life. This gives the world a certain power over us. It is what gives conditions in the world the power to be deeply threatening. Building up the mental skill of non-reactive awareness enables us to resist giving in to immediate responses driven by Attachment. This in turn is a way of blocking this power of the world to deeply affect us.
But ultimately, it is obviously not possible or desirable to go through life never having any reaction at all to situations one is in. Everyday life requires active engagement of some kind with life-situations, precluding the meditator from practicing in everyday life the complete non-reactive awareness practiced in Mindfulness meditation.
Here I think another idea introduced earlier is very helpful: This is the idea of replacing a “needy” relation to the world with an “expressive” relationship. Ultimately, the goal of building up the skill of non-reactive awareness is to free a person from knee-jerk reactions to situations in the world involving desires and aversions based on involuntary Attachment and neediness. This frees a person for, first, a readiness to fully accept every new situation for what it is, lessening desires one might have that the situation be other than it is. Secondly, it frees a person for a different kind of “expressive” reaction, engaging with the situation in the best way one can just for its own sake, with no need to get something back from reacting this way. No matter what the situation, there is always something that is the best thing one can do in the situation as it is. At its best, Buddhist practice frees a person to focus attention on thinking what is this best thing, and do it for its own sake.
Appendix on “Insight”?
