We have been exploring the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (the Sattipatthana Sutta) for the past few months. This teaching was one of the two fundamental teachings the Buddha gave on mindfulness. The other was the teaching on Mindfulness of Breathing (the Anapannasati Sutta) - the sixteen steps from contemplating the breath to enlightenment. And they both are mirrored in each other.
To review, the first foundation is Mindfulness of the Body which includes the breath. We first become mindful through paying attention to bodily sensations and processes. We access the world through our bodies. And our minds.
The second foundation is Mindfulness of Feeling Tone - the positive, negative, or neutral feeling we instantly have about any experience that we have. This feeling tone tells us to jump back when we step off a curb and a car honks its horn or to duck when we hear a crash above us. It tells us delicious bread is baking somewhere or to turn our heads toward a wonderful heady scent because flowers are nearby. Feeling tone is a critical connection between the body and the mind.
The third foundation is Mindfulness of the Mind - becoming aware of thoughts and feelings, emotions and mind states, our mood at any given moment, fantasies, plans, memories. And mindfulness helps us learn what is in our minds at any given moment. Are we happy? Content? Irritated? Annoyed? Sad? Depressed? Further, mindfulness of mind helps us discern when our meditation is off, what is distracting us? Are we pulled to get up from our meditation early because we want something or we want to avoid something? Do we short circuit our practice at home because our mind is too busy and we say to ourselves "I can’t meditate right now”? Mindfulness of what is going on in our minds can help us realize, “Oh, restlessness is here,” or “Aversion to this discomfort is present.” Mindfulness gives us a choice. If we believe the thought that our minds are too restless, we try to avoid the restless feeling by distracting ourselves with other activities. Or we can acknowledge that restlessness is present and tolerate it long enough to investigate.
Now we have moved into the territory of the fourth foundation - Mindfulness of Dharma or "the way things are". Dharma means both the teachings and the way things are. Here the emphasis is on the latter. At first glance, this fourth foundation looks like a grab bag of all the teachings the Buddha couldn’t fit in anywhere else. And to a certain extent it is.
Included in the Fourth Foundation are the Five Hindrances, a list of the five mind states that interfere with our meditations. Then there are the Five Aggregates - one of the Buddha’s important models for how we experience the world. This model is so central to our experience that the Buddha included it in the First Noble Truth - the truth of suffering, as this passage from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center website shows:
"Now this, monks, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.
It goes on to explain, “The five aggregates is a list that includes all the aspects of experience we tend to cling to…”
The third list included in the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness is the six senses doors or bases, sometimes referred to as the six sense spheres. The six sense doors include our five senses and the mind and are doorways between the world and our experience. Investigation of the our experience through these sense bases is critical because suffering begins when sense experience leads to attachment, aversion, or delusion. Again from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center:
“The most common list is of six “sense bases” or “sense fields” which include the five physical senses and a cognitive sense that processes the complex emotional and mental content that creates our story and sense of self. Understanding the sense bases is central to understanding liberation because suffering arises directly from sensory contact, and it is in sensory contact that we can let go of clinging.
“In the fourth foundation, we bring the awareness of body, feelings, and mind states cultivated in the first three foundations to investigate important qualities of present moment experience. Investigating the six senses deepens our inquiry into how suffering arises through our relationship to embodied life, and how equanimity can grow in its place. “
~~https://www.spiritrock.org/practice-guides/the-six-sense-bases
These first three lists included in Mindfulness of Dharma or “ the way things are” help us explore what hinders our meditation, how our clinging causes us suffering, and how attachment, aversion, or delusion arise directly through our senses.
The fourth list - the seven factors of awakening - helps alert us to and explore the positive, wholesome qualities that arise when the hindrances are at bay, when clinging and aversion are not present, when our suffering has ceased. The first three investigations have prepared us to recognize and rejoice when the one of the seven factors of enlightenment appears. And part of that preparation is to know what qualities are not present as well as what qualities are.
The final list is the most important of all and in some sense encompasses all the other lists and that is the Four Noble Truths - the truth of suffering, the causes of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path out of suffering. The path out of suffering - the noble eightfold path - is taught separately.
This is just a brief (!) over view of the riches contained in this Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness. This is the foundation that the first three foundations have been preparing us to engage with - namely how our bodies, feelings, and mind lead the ordinary human into suffering and how with wisdom, understanding, and compassion, those same aspects of experience can be harnessed to lead us to freedom.