We’ve moved through the Satipatthana Sutta - the great teaching on Mindfulness - from the First Foundation of Mindfulness to the teachings and practices contain in the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness. It is a great and deep teaching. Perhaps we’ve gotten an overview and dug a bit more deeply here and there. But this overview is not to be confused with a deep dive into the practices, meanings, implications, that a more rigorous examination would reveal. Joseph Goldstein’s book Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, Venerable Analayo’s three books - Sattipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization, Sattipatthana Meditation: A Practice Guide, and Perspectives on Sattipatthana are all great resources for a closer look at this teaching. Bhikku Bodhi’s book The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering is a wonderfully readable journey through this bedrock teaching contained in the Satipatthana Sutta. I urge you all to take a peak at these and other sources to explore a bit more.
However, there is an important teaching embedded in this sutta that I would like to introduce here - that of dependent origination. The essence of it is contained in this paragraph found in "Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma" in this paragraph:
This is what the Blessed One said. Elated, the bhikkus of the group of five delighted in the Blessed One’s statement. And while this discourse was being spoken, there arose in the Venerable Kondañña the dust-free, stainless vision of the Dhamma: “Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation."
Whatever arises will pass away.
In other teachings, it is stated this way:
“When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.”
The Buddha taught that all things are conditioned and therefore impermanent. They arise when causes and conditions come together and they cease when the causes and conditions fall away, cease, aren’t sufficient.
Take fire - it needs heat, oxygen, and fuel. Striking a match in our atmosphere supplies the heat from friction, the fuel from the point of the match and then the wood or paper of the match, and oxygen from our atmosphere.
The acorn is necessary for an oak tree to grow. But it is not sufficient. Conditions sufficient for the acorn to germinate and grow include air, soil, warmth, water.
Our bodies came to be from a complex interaction of egg and sperm, fertilization, warmth, moisture, a place to attach that will provide nutrition, protection from harsh elements, etc. Our continued existence is conditioned on our obtaining oxygen, water, food. Our bodies will cease when a vital organ fails and any number of other conditions.
The Buddha called this teaching Dependent Origination and in some of the suttas it is described as a 12 step process that begins with ignorance which leads to volitional formations (habits, tendencies, automatic reactivity) which leads to a kind of consciousness which leads to name and form (the body) which leads to the six sense spheres (eyes, ears, etc.) which leads to contact (with an experience such as sight or smells) which leads to feeling tone about that contact of positive, negative or neutral from which arises desire or aversion or confusion, grasping, clinging, pushing away or overlooking which leads to becoming (forming an identity) which leads to birth which leads to old age and death with all the suffering and misery that entails.
In the Buddha’s world this had a reference to the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth with some of the factors pertaining to the past life, some to the present, and some to the future.
There is much more to be said on this topic but for our purposes, we will focus on the overall principle of one thing leading to another and to a specific sequence which is familiar to many of you. Out of our bodies (name and form) arise the six sense spheres - eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. With the six sense spheres comes contact with experiential phenomena - sights, sounds, smells, tastes, sensations, and perceptions, thoughts, mind states, emotions. Each of those experiences has as feeling tone of positive, negative and neutral. Out of that feeling tone arises wanting, not wanting, and delusion. When we want, we reach out and grasp. When we don’t want, we push away. When it has a neutral tone, we often overlook the experience in confusion. With our grasping arises actions like grabbing a cupcake which leads to becoming a person who likes cupcakes and grabs them - a form of birth of the self - which leads to suffering, aging, and death of that cupcake loving self.
And as many of you learned in MBSR, awareness at any point of the cycle changes the whole inevitability of the cycle. But awareness that arises at the feeling tone point of experience just as we experience positive, negative or neutral is especially effective at breaking the cycle of suffering. This awareness at the feeling tone point interferes with the arising of desire or craving, aversion or confusion, and thus the rest of the cycle of suffering.
Dependent origination says that one thing leads to another but if our awareness arises at the beginning point of experience but before our positive experience turns into wanting and craving, we can experience the positive experience without getting caught by it. Awareness is the condition that breaks the inevitability of cycle of dependent origination.
Awareness doesn’t change the over all conditioned nature of our existence but it is the necessary condition to break the cycle of suffering.
Guy Armstrong teaches that we learn from our sitting practice but we also learn from hearing and speaking about the teachings and also from reading and studying the teachings. So our gatherings are a place where all of these forms of learning are possible. Asking questions, sharing experiences, hearing the journey others are going through can be enormously helpful to our own explorations. Sometimes it can be uncomfortable when we realize we may have gone a bit astray, sometimes energizing when we have another insight about our practice. Reading a teaching before practice can prepare our minds and spark our curiosity during our next sit. These different forms of practice are a three-legged stool supporting and energizing our explorations.