Tonight we will finish Guy Armstrong’s talk on Tranquillity, Concentration, and Equanimity - the last three of the Awakening Factors - and more or less, the last item on our journey through the foundational teaching of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness - sometimes referred to as the Four Establishments of Mindfulness - is the Buddha’s teaching on how we should practice. Mindfulness is the key ingredient here, sometimes defined as paying attention to our present moment experience without judgment. To start with, our mindfulness is a bit episodic as we get pulled away by the habits of our wandering mind again and again. The key to practicing mindfulness is beginning again, over and over, whenever we notice that our mind has wandered off into the past or the future, started building castles in the air, intently tracking old arguments, planning future activities. The mind has lots to do and our one task is to bring it back to the present moment again and again. Often, even usually, we will have a focal point for the mind to stay with - often, usually, but not always, the breath. The breath coming in; and the breath going out.
Then the teaching invites us to place our mindfulness on our bodies and do various explorations of our bodies to learn that they are not permanent and that they are made of matter, just like everything around us. That the first foundation.
The second foundation invites us to notice feelings, but not just any feelings, feelings that are positive, negative, or neutral. For instance, we smell freshly baked bread. That is usually an immediate positive feeling for most people. A loud crash is usually negative. The sensations of breathing are often neutral. To distinguish these positive, negative, and neutral feelings from emotions such as anger, sadness, joy, frustration, we call them feeling tones. And learning to be mindful of feeling tones is what the second foundation of mindfulness is all about. The reason this is so critical is that positive feeling tones lead to wanting something, craving something, which leads to attachment. And attachment is what the Buddha tells us - and we can check this out for ourselves - leads to suffering. Because whatever we want doesn’t last, and what we don’t want lasts too long. So we are constantly in an argument with reality about the way things are. If we begin to see attachment or its opposite, aversion, we can hold it more lightly - appreciate positive feeling tone without getting caught up in wanting it, making our happiness depend upon getting it. That’s the key right there. When we make our happiness depend on something that is impermanent, we are going to suffer - and have already suffered.
So feeling tone is an important object for mindfulness and thus the second foundation of mindfulness.
The third foundation of mindfulness some of you may remember is the arena of the mind. Here is where we begin to turn inward, to investigate the nature of our own minds and thoughts, emotions and moods. We can begin to see our thoughts running along, shaping our experience, criticizing, coaching, wanting this, not wanting that. We can begin to see how thoughts shape emotions and how emotions can shape our perceptions, how the way we view the world is a lens filled with our mind contents and often a distortion based on those contents. We can also begin to become aware of awareness itself - begin to see the subject-object duality of our experience - I over here am looking at that over there. When we see how our minds shape our perceptions, we can begin to see there is no over here and over there - it’s all our perception.
The fourth foundation of mindfulness is mindfulness of dharmas which is the Pali word for teachings and also for the way things are. So this foundation is a big of a grab bag of how to be mindful and progress along the path towards freedom from suffering. There are a number of lists contained in the fourth foundation - some of which may not have been in the original teaching of the Buddha but added later. There seems to be agreement, however, that the five hindrance and the seven factors of awakening were contained in the original teaching.
The five hindrances you may remember are craving, aversion, restlessness and worry, sleepiness and torpor, and doubt. These are the most common hindrances to meditation that practitioners run into and it’s helpful to become very familiar with them, how they arise, and how they are abandoned. Meditators can spend a lot of sitting time caught by one hindrance or another.
The seven factors of enlightenment are factors of mind that lead toward awakening. They are mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquillity, concentration and equanimity. These factors arise naturally in meditation and also off the cushion but we can learn to identify and foster their arising and continuing so that they become more central to our practice and help foster states of happiness, joy, tranquillity and letting go. We have just explored the last three over these past weeks.
Also contained in the Fourth Foundation - although I don’t know if this was added later or not - is the teaching on the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path. The Four Noble Truths tell us there is suffering and we need to learn to embrace it, there are causes for suffering and we need to see them, there is an end to suffering, and the Eight Fold path is the path out of suffering.
The Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eight Fold Path is a monumental teaching on its own. We have reviewed it in the past and we may yet review it again.
Tonight we’ll listen to the last third of Guy Armstrong’s talk on the last three awakening factors - tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity and then have a brief discussion about how practice is going before our two week break. You can find Guy’s talk on the Spirit Rock Website: https://www.spiritrock.org/talks/the-seven-factors-of-awakening-part-2
One note, Guy talks about the Brahmavirharas - which is Pali for the sublime abidings, vihara is the Pali word for home or house or place of abiding. These are the four sublime mind states that elevate us when they are present. They are loving kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (muditta), and equanimity or equipoise (uppekka). The last quality here equanimity is the same quality as the last awakening factor and Guy will guide us to a better understanding of what is meant by equanimity.
And, of course, then we’ll have time to sit and practice mindfulness of our bodies, feeling tones, minds, and the ways things are.