What are the Five Aggregates and what do they have to do with anything??

One of the major goals of all the Buddha’s teachings is seeing with clear knowledge and vision the way things are.  This is the path to the end of suffering.  The implication here is that it is our own inattention, obscurations, prejudices and faulty reasoning, emotional entanglements, fears and desires, mistaken beliefs that interfere with our seeing clearly.  This lack of seeing clearly prolongs our suffering. When we see clearly and deeply, we let go of old habits of mind and heart that don’t work for us.  We gain freedom.

The fourth foundation of mindfulness is the road map toward that seeing clearly and that freedom.  In this teaching, the Buddha talks about 5 categories of practice - the 5 hindrances, the 5 aggregates of clinging, the 6 sense doors (5 senses plus consciousness), the 7 factors of awakening, and the 4 Noble Truths.  We have spent some time on the hindrances.  We have even touched on the 7 factors of awakening, and we have explored the Four Noble Truths.  

But the 5 aggregates of clinging sound a bit more alien and off-putting.  So I have spent a few months looking at the 5 aggregates to become more familiar with their place in the teachings. 

The 5 aggregates of clinging are the Buddha’s model for the categories of experience we all have.  He used the word “aggregates” to indicate masses of stuff bundled together.  Our experience feels like one more or less seamless field of experiential phenomena and this seamless field supports our belief that we are a solid self experiencing all of this.  The Buddha’s model was a way for meditators to consider each aspect of our experience by contemplating each aggregate to begin to perceive their separateness.

Bhikku Bodhi explains in an article on the Upanisa Sutta, “The five aggregates - material form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness - are the basic categories structuring the Buddha’s analysis of experience.  Each experiential occasion, from the Buddha’s perspective, is a complex process involving a number of factors functioning in unison.  To normal, non-analytical consciousness, this unified complex appears as a uniform mass, a false appearance which, when accepted at face value,  leads to the assumption of a simple solid self as the permanent subject of cognition…  

“To dispel the illusion of independent selfhood, the experiential process must be submitted to searching scrutiny which rectifies the false perceptions contributing to its formation.  The first phase in this examination is the dissection of the cognitive fabric into the distant threads entering into its make-up.  These ’threads’ or components are the five aggregates.  The aggregate of material form covers the physical side of experience, comprising both external material objects and the body together with its sense faculties.   The other four aggregates constitute the mental side of experience.  Feeling is the affective quality of pleasure or pain, or the neutral tone of neither pleasure nor pain, present on any occasion of mental activity.  Perception is the selective faculty, which singles out the object's distinctive marks as a basis for recognition. The formations [sometimes known as volitional formations] aggregate is a comprehensive category incorporating all mental factors other than feeling and perception; its most conspicuous member is volition.  And consciousness is the faculty of cognition itself, which sustains and coordinates all the other factors in the task of apprehending the object.  These five aggregates function in complete autonomy, entirely through their reciprocal support without the need for a self-subsistent unifying principle to be identified as self or subject.”*

Through meditative contemplation, we can begin to see our physical experiences as belonging to the material aggregate, experiences with an affective tone as the aggregate of feeling, our noticing of an object’s distinctive signs (chirping as a bird call, facial recognition) as the workings of perception, our experience of will or volition as belonging to the mental formation aggregate, and of course our ability to cognize as our consciousness aggregate.  This investigation helps us begin to see how experience unfolds with each aspect of experience arising and passing away - without a little man behind a green curtain making it happen.  If our faculties are working properly, we can’t not see when we look around.  We can’t not hear when there is a noise nearby.  We may not notice, but the perception of sight and sound are present with or without our willing them to happen.

And the 5 aggregates are often referred to as the five aggregates of clinging because we can see with some analysis which aspect of experience is craving and clinging.  The body hurts and wants to shift position.  We like the bird sound and listen for more of it.  We don’t like remembering the fight we had with a colleague and move to distract ourselves.

This may sound familiar to those who took Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in the past.  As we negotiate an environment that may seem to present greater opportunities for suffering in store, it is helpful to have a practice like this to help ground us in the causes of our suffering.  Attachment and clinging - often to the way things were, even when we weren’t all that happy about the way things were.  Fear and aversion to what the future might bring which is based on our imaginings about the future.  We can begin to see through the illusory nature of both past and future and stay with our present moment experience as a refuge that will help us connect to our inner calm, strength, and resolve.

* Bhikku Bhodi, Transendental Dependent Arising: Translation & Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta, Buddhist Publication Society, 1980.

A turning point....

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  Yesterday the cease fire in the Gaza held and the first three hostages were released.  And today also is the Inauguration of, as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, who knows what, maybe the end of democracy, maybe something else unknown, surprisingly better or just different, unimaginable in our today’s thinking.  

So this is an extraordinary time.  We honor Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memory, courage, sense of justice, wisdom, urgent leadership.  We crumple in gratitude and compassion for those at the center of the cease fire and hostage release.  But how do we respond appropriately, wisely, heartfully, to this Inauguration?     

I listened yesterday to an on-line session called AWARENESS IN ACTION: Poly-Crisis, offered by Upaya Meditation Center during which Jon Kabat-Zinn talked with Roshi Joan Halifax and an audience of over 1200 people.  Poly-Crisis is a term the UN is developing to describe the increasing environmental crises we face.  Over 1200 participants is 40 screens on zoom and another couple hundred on YouTube - remarkable as these things go, testament to the strength of feeling out there at this time.  All these people, mostly meditators from all over, gathered together to listen to what the father of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) had to say about this moment in time and how we fit into it, what we can do, how we can be.  He has continued to be a radical leader in the world of mindfulness in relationship to ourselves and to the larger world, reinventing himself in the most natural and gently expansive way to support us and also to urge us to regard ourselves called to this moment to contribute something we are uniquely suited to contribute.  

Tonight we will listen to a bit of the introduction to this session and to the guided meditation he offered to the group.  I think you’ll find it inspiring and calming.  He also offered, in conversation with Roshi Joan Halifax, a wider perspective on the forces propelling this world in this direction at this time.  He cited the creation of a dynasty about 4000 years ago that was destroyed 3600 years ago.  It lasted 400 years - a long time but was, as are all things, impermanent. "Never forget the 10,000 year view,” he quoted. At least backwards, who knows how long the view forward will extend.  He also reassured us that, “On a million different levels, you are not alone.”  

It began with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

 “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.  Power at best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” 

He ended with this well-known quote from Howard Zinn, his father in law:

“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”    ~~ Howard Zinn

In Buddhism, Kabat-Zinn reminded us, monks were often instructed to go meditate in the charnel grounds, surrounded by deceased bodies burning and decaying, to help them understand and come to know deeply the finite-ness of this life and the urgency of living it as wisely as possible.  Today, he said, Gaza and the Ukraine are our charnel grounds.  

As I scanned the zoom screens, I saw various people I recognized - one from the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care where I studied chaplaincy, one from a cohort of participants in a mindfulness meditation teacher training, many MBSR teachers and meditators I had met or practiced with.  So it resonated with painful beauty when he said we are called to belong to wider and wider circles of community  - whether our small Monday night gatherings with overlapping members of the different regional communities or different political action communities such as the progressive group Indivisible, or this gatherings for the Upaya series, or any other gathering inspired to help us remember and live for the best that is possible in ourselves and in our communities, country and world.  On a million levels, we are not alone.

Today and tomorrow are turning points.  And yet they are only a series of present moment experiences with each moment the mother of the moment to come, as Thich Nhat Hanh said.  And as Howard Zinn said, "The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

I found this a heartful way to consider and live in this point of time.

 I want to offer a poem by Stephen Levine.  Some of you may remember it from other times I’ve offered it.  Some of you may know it already.

If prayer would do it
I'd pray.
If reading esteemed thinkers would do it
I'd be halfway through the Patriarch.
If discourse would do it
I'd be sitting with His Holiness
every moment he was free.
If contemplation would do it
I'd have translated the Periodic Table
to hermit poems, converting
matter to spirit.
If even fighting would do it
I'd already be a black belt.
If anything other than love could do it
I've done it already
and left the hardest for last.
~~Stephen Levine 

The Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness and the Coming Together of the Inner and the Outer

Yesterday as I took down the Christmas tree and made some of the last of the holiday calls to old friends, I determined that I would get back on track and take us through the interesting but more complex Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness.

The first three foundations or establishments of mindfulness seem relatively straight forward compared to the fourth.  In the first, we investigate the body with mindfulness, including the breath, the posture, the activities, the anatomical parts, the elemental make-up and the body in death.  In the second, we explore the first flicker that accompanies any arising experience, the sense that this experience is positive, negative or neutral.  And we see how this first feeling tone leads to wanting and then grasping, not wanting and then pushing away, or neither one which leads to confusion and wandering.  In the third foundation, we take our courage in hand and dive into the experiences of mind - the emotions, moods, the experience of grasping or pushing away, the experiences of confusion, delusion, memory and fantasy, and we have learned how slippery this investigation of the mind can be

In the fourth foundation called mindfulness of dharmas, we are asked to bring mindfulness to the way things are.  We are also asked to use our prodigiously busy minds to “think” about the way things are.  So we are bringing awareness to the way things are and we are also bringing our capacity to think, evaluate, discern, and decide what to “do” about the way things are.

Just to give you an idea how complex this fourth foundation can be, I’ll give you a little overview that I got from reading Andy Olendzki on the subject.  Andy Olendzki founded or co-founded the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (BCBS).  He is a Buddhist scholar and has taught there for many years.  Relatively recently, he left and has been teaching in many different venues including several colleges.  I have taken a number of retreat/courses with him and, not only have I learned a lot about Buddhist psychology, I have also been impressed with his depth of knowledge and understanding.  For those of you who have been to BCBS, he built the stone structure called a stupa in the middle of the lawn which is featured on the BCBS home page.  It fell down once, and he rebuilt it.  Such is his dedication to the dharma.

The Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness is made up of mindfulness of the five hindrances, the five aggregates of clinging, the six sense doors, the seven factors of enlightenment, and the Four Noble Truths.  

Andy Olendzki writes the following:  https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/the-fourth-foundation-of-mindfulness/

"Now with the fourth foundation of mind­fulness, mindfulness of mental objects or of mental phenomena, we are sometimes told in meditation instuction to simply notice when a thought arises, be mindful of it, and allow it to pass away unobstructed. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but actually the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is directing through a much more precise exploration of the inner landscape of mental experience…. Almost as a guided meditation, the fourth foundation of mind­fulness investigates 108 mental objects, and in the process manages to guide the meditator through the whole curriculum of Buddhist psychology: five hindrances, five aggregates, six sense spheres, seven factors of awakening, and four noble truths.

"These are subjects familiar to all students of Buddhism. But in working with them as objects of meditation we are asked to look not just at their presense or absence in the mind, but also at how these factors are in motion. And in practice we are directed by the text to working with the arisen mental states in particular ways: when they are hin­drances we want to loosen our attachments and abandon them; when they are factors of awakening, which are beneficial for the growth of understanding, we are invited to learn how to cultivate, develop and strength­en them.

"This goes well beyond an agenda of passive observation of phenomena, and takes us into the realm of transformation.”

108 is a significant number in a great many realms.  For a deeper dive into the meaning of the number 108 see the article “What’s So Sacred About the number 108?” in the link below.  Olendzkie arrives at the 108 mental objects through the Buddha’s teaching in each category of the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness. For each of the five hindrances, this instruction applies: 

1) When there is sense desire in him, a person is aware: ‘There is sense desire in me’; 
2)  or when there is no sense desire in him, he is aware: ‘There is no sense desire in me’;
3) and when the arising of unarisen sense desire occurs, he is aware of that;
4) and when the abandoning of arisen sense desire occurs, he is aware of that;
5) and when the future non-arising of abandoned sense desire occurs, he is aware of that.

For each of the Five Aggregates - form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness, there are three states to consider:  

1) Such is material form (or feeling or perception or volition or consciousness);
2) such is its origin;
3) such is its disappearance.

And for each of the other three categories, there are a prescribed number of mental “objects” or occurrences to be aware of for each, the total of all these adding up to 108.

This may seem confusing and off-putting.  I alternate by being inspired and discouraged with the precision of mindfulness of the way things are that the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness asks of us.  But remember, this is the path to full awakening.  It also gives you an idea what those monks are doing when they sit in meditation for days, months, years… Their minds are discerning in finer and finer grain, the way the mind works with unarisen states, with arisen states, with disappearing states, with developing states.  They are learning to abandon all unwholesome states no matter how subtle.  They are learning to nurture all wholesome states.  And as their minds become more adept at awareness of these objects, their attachments weaken and begin to fall away.  They become increasingly free.

And we know some of this falling away of attachment and increasing freedom in our own minds and hearts - because the fruits of practice are not reserved for only the most experienced meditators.  These fruits have been felt by each and every one of us and will continue to be felt and discovered as we continue along the path.  

So the two most important instructions in meditation apply equally to the adepts and the novices:  

First you begin.  And then you continue.

https://www.himalayanyogainstitute.com/what-is-so-sacred-about-the-number-108/#:~:text=In%20Buddhism%2C%20it%20is%20also,usually%20made%20of%20108%20beads.

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Recently, two people sent me Chris Hayes’s NY Times opinion piece, “I want your attention.  I need your attention.  Here is how I mastered my own."  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/opinion/chris-hayes-msnbc-attention.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare  

For those of you who watch MSNBC or who have recently stopped watching the news and the news you stopped watching was MSNBC, Chris Hayes has a regular evening news hour.  And although I never questioned his intelligence and political acuity,  I would not have imagined this level of self-awareness in him.

This morning, I received an email and signed up for a program featuring Jon Kabat-Zinn.  The program is entitled, “Awareness in Action: The Radical Path of Engaged Practice.”   JKZ explores the question:  “What Is Your/Our Karmic Assignment? Activist Embodied Dharma in the Face of the Full Catastrophe of the Human Condition and the Planetary Poly-Crisis.”   https://www.upaya.org/program/awareness-in-action-the-radical-path-of-engaged-practice-online-january-19-2025/

Most of you know Jon Kabat-Zinn as the founder/developer of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and author of Full Catastrophe Living.  More recently, Jon has explored questions of diversity, equality, inclusiveness in the medical profession and Buddhism and Activism.  

What I was struck by with these two threads is how public figures deeply engaged in the political-social sphere are turning their sharp exploratory skills inward while major Buddhist figures with considerable chops on looking inward are exploring how we bring our practice into the world, what our larger purpose or calling or remit is in this one precious life we have been given.

I think this is a hopeful trend.

Starting over....

As we approach the end of one year and the beginning of another, we may all be contemplating what lies ahead with some degree of trepidation or at least with a sober outlook.  Days of rain when in other years we might have experienced snow is one reminder that the world is changing, moving on, impermanent.  Another, of course, is the approach of a change of leadership or perhaps the end of leadership and the transition to planned chaos.

I for one have looked around after the intensity and disruptions of the holidays - some of which I enjoyed very much, some of which I did not - and asked myself, where is my practice????

This morning as I got down on the yoga mat again, did stretching and PT again, sat on my cushion again, I felt the aches and pains of NOT doing that for a number of days and the discouraging thoughts about having backslid.  I was getting vaguely caught up in the being discouraged, in calculating how many days it would take to “get back to where I was,”  to feeling bad about wasting so many precious opportunities to practice.  And that’s when I realized, this was no big deal.  I was just “starting over.”  I was “beginning again.”  

Does that sound familiar?

Sharon Salzberg is one of my meditation teachers who counseled about “starting over.”   We do it with every breath.  We breathe in, we let go and release the breath.  And then, we start over - we breathe in again.  

Further, we pay attention to this in-breath, we pay attention to this out-breath, our mind wanders off, we drift around in thinking, planning, remembering, we wake up to the present moment, to the mind wandering, and we begin again - paying attention to this breath.

There are a number of aspects to starting over.  One is that we have to let go of all the negative, discouraging thoughts that come with the waking up to ourselves and where we are.  When we realize our minds have wandered, that we have back slid as I did above, we need to acknowledge where we are and loosen our grip on those habitual thoughts and self-condemnations.  We can breathe and be right there, acknowledging the judgments without getting involved or caught by them.  Having judging thoughts and bringing awareness to them, we can cultivate patience and resolve to begin again.    With these qualities of mindfulness, patience, and resolve, the judgments will lessen.  

What we may also begin to see is how our judgments, condemnations, aversions are based on false expectations.  We expect that we should be able to stay present during the holidays, during bad news, during friends and families suffering reversals and misfortunes.  Sometimes we can.  But other times, these influences catch us up in expectations we have about ourselves, our practice, the world.  For instance, as much as we have believed and embraced the climate emergency, we might still harbor a secret wish, magical thinking, that the earth will right itself, snow will return, intense heat or drought will not come to us, and so forth.  We may harbor the delusion that through our practice, we have somehow gotten ahead of the world’s ability to throw us for a loop.

Phillip Moffitt’s, well known meditation teacher, has this wisdom to share about ‘starting over’:    

"I first heard the phrase 'just start over' used to describe a spiritual practice some 20 years ago from the Buddhist meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg. During a mindfulness meditation retreat she taught at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, Sharon told us about her own struggle with learning to meditate – how she would become lost, distracted, and discouraged and would constantly second-guess herself and her teachers. Gradually she learned to pay no attention to the mental and emotional chatter and to just start over by meditating on her breath as she had been instructed. “Just start over” became her mantra, which she now teaches to her students.

"Each time Salzberg repeated this phrase during the retreat, I was deeply inspired. I realized that she was pointing to a radical attitudinal shift in which you cease to be reactive when you are knocked off your intended path. Instead, when you discover that you have lost your focus, you just begin again without getting caught up in emotional stories about why you can’t achieve your aim or judgments about how unworthy you are or why the change you seek is impossible. With Sharon as my inspiration, I set about developing 'just start over' into a daily life practice.

"Often the problem is that you don’t know how to be resolute without also being rigid in your expectations. You haven’t learned how to sail the waves of the ocean of your mind or successfully navigate those emotionally charged or intractable parts of yourself that cause the inner storms in your daily life. You have the mistaken notion that you must know why you have a problem and must get rid of it before you can act in a more self-empowering manner. Starting-over practice takes a different approach. It switches your focus away from dwelling on those characteristics that limit you and redirects it toward recognizing your strengths from which you can realize your potential.

"This shift in focus is attitudinal: You simply do what you care about as well as you can. This is a humble attitude, but it is exactly what’s needed for you to sustain your resolution. In so doing, you free yourself from your judging mind that thinks it can control results and creates the grandiose expectation that you can do more than you can do in the present moment. You become a more effective person by simply learning to use your time and energy to do what you can do right now….

"So just how do you practice starting over? Think of it as shifting your attention away from controlling the outcome and abandoning your usual reactions – criticizing, judging, complaining, and lamenting – to getting off track. You don’t deny your thoughts and feelings, and you don’t try to make them go away. Instead, you acknowledge them without making any judgments about them and with compassion for how difficult this moment is. You then follow the acknowledgment with what I call “and” practice, in which you say to yourself, “Yes, I just got lost, and now I’ll just start over.”  Phillip Moffitt, https://dharmawisdom.org/starting-over/

So here we are - back to the cusp of the new year - perhaps wondering how 'starting over' will help us get through this next year.  The lessons are simple.  Stay in the present moment and don’t let our expectations for what we think is going to happen get in the way of our ability to be present for what is happening.
After all, every one is this mess we call life has expectations for the future.  And no one’s expectations are going to come true exactly as they hope or predict.  Our charge for the new year is to stay open to the possibilities, not to foreclose the future with our expectations, to have compassion for ourselves and others, and as Moffitt says, “…do what you care about as well as you can.”

These past few weeks have been hard ones for people in my friendship circle and in the community.  A young person with friends and family dies in despair.  An older person passes away surrounded by family, to be followed by an older woman with a terminal illness. Some deaths are shocking and painful and out of time.  Others are within the realm of expectation and yet still wrenching.  Close friends, acquaintances, strangers struggling with illnesses, disruption, death.  

It is worth noting that these things happen all the time - somewhere, to someone.  But the stresses of the last two months have been of an order considerably larger than we have known, and certainly larger than we were anticipating.  

And stresses will find our weaknesses and play on them - perhaps adding just that feather weight to the tipping point already teetering.

At the same time, the holiday season is full upon us.  Sparkling lights at the Newport Cottages enthrall the freezing visitors who wander the grounds and amaze the inside guests who take pictures of the 12 foot high poinsettia tree and red carpeted marble staircases lined with white poinsettias and holly garlands.  

The holidays have their own stresses as families get together in harmony - or not - while others look forward to loneliness and want - and every combination in between.

The first noble truth tells us suffering exists.   

But we, as practitioners of mindfulness and meditation, have practiced - often for years - to give ourselves the tools and habits of resilience and balance.  The tale of the two arrows tells us that the first arrow pierces our vulnerable bodies but the second arrow invades our minds with fear of the pain, of the outcome, of the causes, of the consequences.  And our charge to ourselves is to work with the second arrow, the arrow of how we relate to the first arrow.  

There will be the suffering.   Our human existence is heir to these sufferings.  The Buddha himself was familiar with these misfortunes. 

How we relate makes all the difference.  Do we react?  Blindly lashing out, freezing up, frantically rushing to push away?  Or can we stop, breathe, take a moment and then respond with our best, most centered selves?  Can we build a refuge in our minds of patience, clear seeing, and gratitude?  Can we nourish kindness, compassion, joy for others and for ourselves, and equanimity?  These are qualities we can practice, develop and count on to help us weather the inevitable whirlwinds of living.

Our goal is not to insulate ourselves so that we are blocking out and avoiding suffering, insulating ourselves from life. That doesn’t work.

Rather we seek patience to endure what we can’t change, contentment with our lives just as they are, insight to see the impermanence of suffering as well as that of good fortune.  

So can we allow the suffering and understand that this too is part of life?  Can we see the unfolding of life as just that, an unfolding?  We are not making it happen and our ability to alter it is limited.  We protect ourselves and others as best we can.  And then we say “yes” to the unfolding, allowing and accepting.  

Our practice is our refuge and our path to equanimity.

gratitude for the brilliance of teachers...

Two weeks ago we listened to a guided meditation on mindfulness of breathing given by Venerable Analayo, renowned meditation teacher and scholar of early Buddhism.  In this meditation, Ven. Analayo interwove mindferulness of breathing progressing through the 16 steps of the teaching on mindfulness of breathing known as the Anapanasati Sutta ( see below) with the seven factors of enlightenment - mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration and equanimity.  You can listen to this meditation by connecting through this link and choosing Meditation 5.   https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/resources/breathing-audio/

Last week we listened to the first half of an interview Venerable Analayo gave with Wisdom Academy on the Satipatthāna Sutta or Four Foundations of Mindfulness - the same teaching we have been exploring these many months.  

This except from the Wisdom Academy’s website reviews in part what we heard last week:

... Bhikkhu Anālayo discusses the role of mindfulness in early Buddhist texts, specifically the Satipatthana Sutta, and then explains some important etymological points regarding the word satipatthana. He talks about how Pali became one of the early languages of Buddhism and provides some pointers for doing comparative study of the Satipatthana Sutta. He also reflects on how it is important to not reject certain Buddhist teachings just because they were not originally taught by the Buddha himself. Bhikkhu Anālayo then explains what the true meaning of the “direct path” to awakening means and how to understand the various types of mindfulness. 

Tonight we’ll hear the second half of Ven. Analayo’s interview.  The Wisdom Academy overview concludes below:

He also discusses the role that mindfulness plays in the path to liberation, the relationship between mindfulness practice and breathing practice, the continuity between the four satipatthanas, the importance of body contemplation practice, and much more.

A couple points to clarify.  We have been studying what is commonly referred to as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.  Ven. Analayo concludes that a more accurate translation would be The Four Establishments of Mindfulness - so that mindfulness is established in the body, established in feeling tones, established in the mind, established in the Dharmas through the practices in the teaching.

He also points out that the Buddha states rather empathically that the Four Establishments of Mindfulness are "the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of dukkha (suffering) and discontent, for the acquiring of the true method, for the realization of Nibbāna (enlightenment), namely the four satipatthānas.” (Analayo, Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization, p.3) 

So this a pretty big deal teaching.

Many of you, especially those of you who have been practicing a while, have grown into the practice through mindfulness of breathing.  This practice which is contained in full in the Anapanasati Sutta, 16 steps of Mindfulness of Breathing (see below), also leads to full awakening, realization, enlightenment, Nibbana…

Ven. Analayo talks in this interview how he realized that the two teachings overlap as the sixteen steps divide into four tetrads each of which corresponds to one of the four establishments of mindfulness - body, feeling, mind, and dharmas or insights.  

The final tetrad of the Mindfulness of Breathing teaching is about the realization of insights - the insights of impermanence, dispassion, cessation, and letting go.  These are found in the Fourth Establishment of Mindfulness, Mindfulness of Dharmas, in the teachings on the five hindrances, the five aggregates of clinging, the six sense doors, the seven factors of awakening, and the Four Noble Truths in an expanded and more comprehensive way.  The brilliance of Analayo is that he has incorporated this wider understanding of both teachings into his guided meditations on his resource page on the BCBS website making these powerful teachings available at the experiential level for the lay practitioner.

This entire investigation may seem a bit esoteric and even technical.  And it is.  

But since the main two meditation buzz words/buzz phrases in western culture are “mindfulness" and "breath awareness", I thought it might be useful to delve into the relationship between the two in their historical context and to know that these two overlapping practices have deep roots as Buddhist practices leading to full awakening, realization, the deathless, full enlightenment, the island...

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MN 118 - Anapanasati Sutta: Mindfulness of Breathing (An Excerpt0

"Now how is mindfulness of in-&-out breathing developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit?

"There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore.[1] Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.

"[1] Breathing in long, he discerns, 'I am breathing in long'; or breathing out long, he discerns, 'I am breathing out long.' [2] Or breathing in short, he discerns, 'I am breathing in short'; or breathing out short, he discerns, 'I am breathing out short.' [3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the entire body.'[2] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the entire body.' [4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming bodily fabrication.'[3] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming bodily fabrication.'

"[5] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to rapture.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to rapture.' [6] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to pleasure.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to pleasure.' [7] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to mental fabrication.'[4] He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to mental fabrication.' [8] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in calming mental fabrication.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out calming mental fabrication.'

"[9] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to the mind.' [10] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in satisfying the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out satisfying the mind.' [11] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in steadying the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out steadying the mind.' [12] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in releasing the mind.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out releasing the mind.'[5]

"[13] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on inconstancy [Ed. note: impermanence].' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on inconstancy.' [14] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on dispassion [literally, fading].' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on dispassion.' [15] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on cessation.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on cessation.' [16] He trains himself, 'I will breathe in focusing on relinquishment.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out focusing on relinquishment.'

"This is how mindfulness of in-&-out breathing is developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit.

The Way Ahead

Now that Thanksgiving has passed and we are well and truly in the weeds of the impending holiday season, something became clear this morning.  As I move through the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness with you, I have slowly been realizing that the journey seems to get longer and longer the farther we progress along our path.  As I ponder it, I think it’s because the Buddha is teaching about the whole of "the way things are".  So it makes sense that "the way things are" might take a little time to understand.  And in turn to teach.  If "the way things are" was a simple concept, we probably wouldn’t be spending so much time trying to escape into or avoid a future that will never exist the way we imagine it or a past that we will mourn either because we loved it or we didn’t love it.  Accepting and settling into the way things are is the whole of the path - but it has a number of approaches.

So I want to offer a bit of an overview of the journey ahead.  

But first, I want to give you a greater sense of how our current subject - the seven factors of awakening - appears in our daily experience during practice.  The seven factors of awakening - mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity or equipoise - sound so lofty that we might mistake them for qualities we will only access much, much further down a murky path that doesn’t feel like it relates to us.  

This is both true and not true.    

We experience many of these factors already but we may not realize it or be able to name them when they arise.  Venerable Analayo, renowned meditation teacher, scholar of early Buddhism, and revered practitioner, shares some deep and surprisingly clear guided meditations on his corner of the Barre Center for Buddhist Center (BCBS) website.  Tonight we will hear a guided meditation on awareness of breathing that will help us to see, in first hand experiential terms, how the seven factors of awakening appear in the course of the practice of mindfulness of breath.  The meditation is about 27 minutes long. We’ll try to get to the meditation by 5:55pm so that we might have a few minutes at the end for questions or reflections on the experience.

Venerable Analayo is currently in residence at BCBS.  He is supported entirely by dana - the Pali word for generosity. He offers these guided meditations free of charge for listening or for downloading.  If you feel so moved, you could go to the website and offer dana to contribute to his support at the center in gratitude for his practice and his teachings.  The following is the link to his guided meditations and the donation page.  https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/resources/type/offerings-analayo/

Now for the overview, there are three more “topics” in this Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness:  1) the six sense doors; 2) the five aggregates of clinging; and 3) the Four Noble Truths.  

This is how the Buddha introduced this seminal teaching of the Four Foundation of Mindfulness to his monks:

This is the only way, monks, for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the destruction of suffering and grief, for reaching the right path, for the attainment of Nibbana, namely, the four foundations of mindfulness. What are the four?

The Buddha didn’t mince words.  This is the only way, he says, for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation… and so on.  The only way.  Mindfulness of body, feelings, "objects" of mind such as emotions, thoughts, concepts, etc., and “the way things are.”  

The next two topics of the fourth foundation deal with the concepts in our minds that cause us suffering.  The six sense doors refer to seeing, hearing, touch, smell, taste and consciousness (anything in our minds which is pretty all-encompassing).  The Buddha teaches that what we add to seeing or hearing etc., what we think about, remember, attach to, project on to what we see, causes us suffering.  Can we just see?  The same with the other five.

The five aggregates of clinging are a model of human experience the Buddha used to help the monks let go of clinging.  Aggregates refer to things stuck together but not dissolved one into another - like a sack of five different items.  Those items are form (body, materiality), feelings (feeling tones of positive, negative or neutral), perceptions, volitional formations (this includes our will, habit formation, and more and bears more elaboration), and consciousness (thoughts, concepts, emotions, moods, mind states).  Remember this is a model that he found useful. More about these later.

The Four Noble Truths we have come across before - 1) there is suffering (recognizing, acknowledging, accepting that suffering is present when it is), 2) there are causes for suffering, 3) there can be an end to suffering, and 4) here, the Eight fold Noble Path, is the way out of suffering.  

These three topics open into a universe but we will just introduce them in coming weeks.

Later on this year or early next, I think it might be useful to explore the teachings on Mindfulness of Breathing in greater depth.  There are two - the one we have just covered in the first foundation of mindfulness and a second one called the Ānāpānasati Sutta which is an in-depth look at the progress of mindfulness of breathing as it leads toward full awakening.  It is made of sixteen steps divided into tetrads.  So you will hear Analayo refer to tetrads in this guided meditation tonight.  I have included the sixteen steps at the end of this email.

We will also explore what is meant by full awakening and why it’s so important.  As it was considered indescribable, Buddhist scholars have counted 52 words used to refer to full awakening including enlightenment, the deathless, the island and more.

And we’ll move back and forth between these teachings and their relevance to our own lives and especially our current predicament in which we might be anticipating greater suffering.  And we’ll ground our experience in loving kindness, compassion, joy in the good fortune of ourselves and others, and equanimity.  These four sublime feelings can help us transform our suffering and that of others.

If this all seems a bit overwhelming, please just let it go.  It will unfold in its own time.  Laying it out like this is as much for me as for you.  But it will give you a glimpse of the way ahead.

If you are accessing this Musings from the internet and wish to learn more, please go to https://www.innerlightyoga.com/

The Last Days of the Buddha....

In a teaching described as The Last Days of the Buddha, the Buddha summarized his teachings.  Here he refers to the Seven Factors of Enlightenment which we have been encountering in the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness.  If you remember, the first three foundations were Mindfulness of Body, Mindfulness of Feelings (tone), Mindfulness of Mind, and now here, Mindfulness of Dharmas or the way things are.  These Four Foundations of Mindfulness, one of the Buddha’s most important teachings, cover every aspect of our experience.  Hence its importance.  We are encouraged to be mindful of everything in our experience.  Everything.  Nothing left out.

This fourth foundation, as I have said before, contains a cluster of teachings about the way things are:  the five hindrances to meditation encountered by every meditator, the seven factors of enlightenment as the way leading onward, how to work with the temptations presented by the six sense doors, the five aggregates of clinging, and the four Noble Truths which culminates in the Noble Eight Fold Path.  Note: The Buddha used lists as a memory device for his followers since nothing was written down until many many years after his death.

Here is the excerpt on the seven factors of enlightenment. These seven are considered factors of enlightenment because they lead onward from one to another toward final realization.  And yet these factors arise in our meditations often if we can pay attention and recognize them for what they are. 

9.  "Seven further conditions leading to welfare I shall set forth, bhikkhus [Ed.: monks]. Listen and pay heed to what I shall say."

"So be it, Lord."

"The growth of the bhikkhus is to be expected, not their decline, bhikkhus, so long as they cultivate the seven factors of enlightenment, that is: mindfulness, investigation into phenomena, energy, bliss, tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity. So long, bhikkhus, as these seven conditions leading to welfare endure among the bhikkhus, and the bhikkhus are known for it, their growth is to be expected, not their decline.

Mindfulness is the first factor.  We are familiar with this quality in our lives and in our meditations.  So we begin with mindfulness.  We can simply allow mindfulness to note when the other six factors arise.  Awareness of these factors can strengthen their presence and their arising in our lives.  

But the six factors - investigation into phenomena, energy, bliss, tranquility, concentration and equanimity - can be divided into energizing factors and calming factors and we can apply these factors skillfully to balance our meditation energy.  If we are feeling a little dull or sleepy, we can start with mindfulness and then apply investigation.  Investigation then arouses energy and leads to bliss or joy.  If we are excitable or agitated, we can apply the calming factors of tranquillity, concentration and equanimity.

These days you might note that there is extra energy in the form of agitation or anxiety in our lives - perhaps listening to the news for any amount of time triggers these reactions.  Perhaps the approach of Thanksgiving which may include positive anticipation, or the agitation of desire, or perhaps the anxiety of knowing that the family in all its beautiful and difficult forms may be coming together, or not coming together.

If we can keep arousing mindfulness by asking ourselves, ‘what is happening right now?’, we will arouse curiosity and investigation.  Bliss or joy might arise because we know we are mindful.  Pay attention closely.  Bliss can be subtle but becomes more noticeable when we pay attention.

If mindfulness allows us to see that agitation or anxiety is present, we can support tranquillity by letting go of our striving for a certain result, by asking if we can be content with what is.  We can apply concentration either through mindfulness of breathing or the practice of loving kindness or compassion.  We can foster equanimity by letting go of striving for a reality that is different from what is here.  We can bring acceptance of the way things are to the fore.

These seven factors of enlightenment can be a wonderful addition to our conscious practice.  Discovering that they are present - in ones, twos or threes - can be invigorating.  Learning to see them as tools that can be applied to help us center and keep moving forward, that our “growth” is to be expected with their presence, is also a wonderful benefit.  And finally, learning to use them as balancing factors - bringing in the calming factors when we are agitated or over excited, bringing in the energizing factors when our minds are dull and sluggish - can be very helpful to our practice of the art of meditation. 

In closing, I want to offer the poem I mentioned at the end of our last session.  It’s by Mary Oliver (who is sometimes referred to as the patron saint or poet laureate of mindfulness practice) and is called “The Buddha’s Last Instruction”.

“Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha, before he died.

I think of this every morning

as the east begins

to tear off its many clouds

of darkness, to send up the first

signal — a white fan

streaked with pink and violet,

even green.

An old man, he lay down

between two sala trees,

and he might have said anything,

knowing it was his final hour.

The light burns upward,

it thickens and settles over the fields.

Around him, the villagers gathered

and stretched forward to listen.

Even before the sun itself

hangs, disattached, in the blue air,

I am touched everywhere

by its ocean of yellow waves.

No doubt he thought of everything

that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself

as it blazes over the hills,

like a million flowers on fire —

clearly I’m not needed,

yet I feel myself turning

into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,

he raised his head.

He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

~~From House of Light by Mary Oliver
Copyright 1990 by Mary Oliver.  
Used by permission of The Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency Inc. Courtesy of Beacon Press, Boston

Opening...no matter what...

As we move deeper into the weeds of the “consequences” of this election, we might also move deeper into the Buddha’s teachings and how the wisdom they impart applies now more than ever.

Late in the Buddha’s historical life, those he cared about suffered political reversals of a more or less catastrophic nature.  

These two passages from Wikipedia outline the events that unfolded.  

"The early texts also speak of how during the Buddha's old age, the kingdom of Magadha was usurped by a new king, Ajatashatru, who overthrew his father Bimbisara. According to the Samaññaphala Sutta, the new king spoke with different ascetic teachers and eventually took refuge in the Buddha.[238] However, Jain sources also claim his allegiance, and it is likely he supported various religious groups, not just the Buddha's sangha exclusively.[239]

And later

"At around the same time of Devadatta's schism, there was also war between Ajatashatru's Kingdom of Magadha, and Kosala, led by an elderly king Pasenadi.[247] Ajatashatru seems to have been victorious, a turn of events the Buddha is reported to have regretted.[248]”

So the Buddha’s own father was defeated and lost control of his kingdom.  The poignancy of the second passage is that the victorious king who defeated the Buddha’s own father went on to make war with and defeat one of the Buddha’s most ardent supporters, king Pasenadi.  King Pasenadi appears in a number of the Buddha’s teachings and built many Buddhist monasteries in gratitude to the Buddha and devotion to his teachings.

I am reflecting more and more these days on changes that will outlast my lifetime - global warming, the increasing volatility of the weather with storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires becoming more frequent and closer geographically.  And even if some of the destructive forces of greenhouse gases could be reversed, the healing might not be visible in my lifetime.   

And now political reversal.  

That realization has caused me to reflect even more deeply on what the Buddha meant by the Four Noble Truths - there is suffering, there are causes for suffering, there is an end of suffering, the Noble Eightfold path is the way to the end of suffering.

One of the key causes for suffering is craving, wanting.  Craving or wanting quickly lead to attachment.  Think of the closed fist.  Grasping.  Holding on. Do you feel yourself holding on to a vision of the future that seems to be receding before you?  Can you feel the tension in that holding on?  The wanting of that holding on?  The contraction?  

The Buddha taught that nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as me or mine.  Not my future.  Not my way.  Not my vision of how the world, the country, the forest, the trees should be. Not my body.  

Impermanence is the other key teaching of the Buddha’s.  As much as we think our new reality is this way, simply wait and see.  In whatever way we imagine the future to be, the truth is ever other than that.  And this truth is universal, applies to all of us.

So when we are suffering, we can remember the truth of impermance.  Lincoln said, this too shall pass.  That helped him endure the terrible suffering of the Civil War battles.  There is suffering and there is the end of suffering.

The Buddha was also very clear that the end of suffering did not depend on our external circumstances.  The end of suffering is an internal freedom that is available to everyone in this lifetime.

I want to return to a statement I made above, "And even if some of the destructive forces of greenhouse gases could be reversed, the healing might not be visible in my lifetime.”  Let me add, that the changes and the healing has never stopped.  If you cut yourself, the cut heals by itself.  If the forest burns, regeneration begins immediately.  The rains come, the rains go.  And then they come again or they reappear somewhere else.  Life goes on, persists, flourishes even in the darkest circumstances.  

The hope we have had of justice for all beings, environmental responsibility, access to resources for everyone, a kinder, gentler attitude towards all beings may being suffering the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” but the work that has been done to realize those goals is not wasted.  Those new seeds have been planted, watered, nourished.  They will not die easily, many of them will flourish.  And they will not stay neatly on one side of a fence or the other.  

The freedom from suffering we can achieve for ourselves and others will give us the energy and purity of purpose to continue working toward this future whether we will see it or not.

So can we let go of the wanting, of the striving, of the struggle?  It doesn’t mean we need to let go of our wholesome efforts.  Just our attachment to the results.  

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his famous speech at the National Cathedral, in March of 1968: 

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” 

Election Eve Session, the Hindrances, and the Enlightenment Factors

Election Eve Session, Monday, November 4th:  Monday, November 4th, is Election Eve.  Some of you may be wondering how to get through the next week.  The “What ifs” are profound and troubling no matter what the results.  Staying engaging and doing what we can to support the outcome we want is important to our mental health as well as contributing to a positive result.  But it is also critically important to support wholesome qualities in the mind and abandon unwholesome ones at all times.  

I will be offering a special session next Monday devoted to protecting a healthy state of mind and practice as we move through the powerful currents that surround Election Day.  In conversation and practice, we’ll explore appropriate responses to the election to find some equanimity and calm with which to meet our changing world.  

See Innerlight Center for Yoga and Meditation, https://www.innerlightyoga.com/ weekly classes, Mindfulness Meditation for Stress Reduction, Mondays at 5:30pm

*  *  *  *  * 

We have been exploring the hindrances recently.  Two weeks ago, I shared the one of the Buddha’s similes for the experience of the five hindrances as follows:

Sensual desire is like being in debt.

Anger/aversion is like a disease.

Sloth-and-torpor are like being in bondage.

Restless-and-worry are like being enslaved.

Doubt is like being on a perilous journey.

To be free of the hindrances is like getting out of debt, being well, being freed from bondage or slavery and arriving safely at your destination.  

Moreover, this freedom from the hindrances allows wholesome qualities to arise in the mind.  One of the most important lists the Buddha offered was of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.  When the mind is free from hindrances, these seven factors can arise:  mindfulness, energy, investigation, joy, tranquillity,  concentration, and equanimity.  As indicated in their name, the seven factors of enlightenment arise and lead onward to enlightenment, either the temporary or final freedom from suffering.

As I have indicated before, the hindrances don’t arise only in meditation but are arising and passing away through our daily lives.  We only become more aware of their presence in meditation.  And while this awareness is a key first step, it is not the end of the story.  With the hinderances, first, becoming aware of, and second, tolerating their presence allows the wholesome factor of investigation to arise.  Thus, the first two factors of enlightenment are brought to bear - mindfulness and investigation.  The purpose of this tolerance, acceptance, and investigation of the suffering state of the hindrance is to learn what it is, and how it arose and finally what conditions allow for the abandoning of the hindrance, what causes the hindrance to cease.

This excerpt from Venerable Analayo’s book, Perspectives on Satipatthāna, elaborates:  

"A clear understanding of the different ways in which the hindrances can manifest is relevant not only when one tries to meditate, but also in relation to more mundane tasks such as trying to learn something. As their very name indicates, the hindrances of sensual desire, anger, sloth-and-torpor, restlessness-and-worry, and doubt “hinder” the proper functioning of the mind. 

"Any attempt at study, whether of a language, a theory, or anything else, can be greatly enhanced by devoting some of one’s awareness to one’s mental condition while learning. Such awareness can alert one to the presence of any of the five hindrances. For example: indulging in sensual fantasies instead of being with the topic in hand, having aversion towards what one “has to learn”, feeling bored, becoming restless in the wish to get it done quickly, or lacking confidence in one’s ability to complete the task successfully. Each of these conditions will of course go a long way in frustrating one’s efforts to learn effectively. Recognizing these conditions, however, makes it possible to overcome the mental condition that “hinders” one’s attempt to learn effectively. In this way, contemplation of the hindrances has considerable potential in relation to education and study. 

"In the ancient Indian setting, the task of learning anything was inextricably related to memorizing, to learning something by rote. This was of considerable importance for the early Buddhist community, since all the teachings given by the Buddha and his disciples were passed on by oral transmission. Thus someone who is learned, in the ancient context, is one who quite literally “has heard much” and remembers it.” (p. 189)

A word about the approaching election:  I want to reiterate what I said last week about the election and compassion as one of the effective ways to abandon the hindrances - especially anger or aversion or ill will.  This hindrance is present in toxic quantities this week as the election barrels down on us.  

This election is not just about the negative.  It is also based on our love for ourselves and other humans, those who share our country with us as well as those who share the world with us.

And when that love sees suffering, compassion arises.  We have all felt this compassion recently.    

We must begin to understand that the hindrances are suffering - desire is suffering, aversion is suffering, agitation and remorse are suffering, apathy and dullness of mind are suffering, and doubt is suffering.   When we are caught in suffering, we yearn for clarity, calm, being centered, ease of mind and body, equanimity.  We yearn for the presence of the enlightenment factors.

Can we hold our suffering, our pain, our annoyances with compassion?  Can we extend compassion to others?  Can we wish that others also hold their suffering with compassion?  When I extended the compassion outward to others with whom my mind was at war, it allowed me - sooner or later - to connect with how I cared about them.  

Since I have been back from retreat, it has become clearer to me that the love I feel for family, friends, neighbors, all inhabitants in this world is more important than the disagreements, arguments, injustices.  This is not to belittle the desire for justice - but to help us stay connected to the current of love and compassion even as we work with fierceness toward our hope for a better future for all.  Love and compassion are not passive qualities, but can be the basis of the arising of the warrior within us, can inhabit us with a fierceness to protect the weak, seek justice, to do all we can toward a better world for all.  

“In the end, everything is either love or a distortion of it.”  ~~ Ann C. Klein

Hindrances, the Election and Compassion

It is often easier to recognize the hindrances when they are strong than when they are just arising.  The onrushing election is a powerful trigger for strong unwholesome states/hindrances.  So this might be a great time to see the hindrances at work.

When you think about the election, a strong desire for one result or the other may arise.  Can you sense that desire?  Is it comfortable?  Probably not.

At the same time, there may be a strong aversion or anger or sense of ill will as you think of the forces opposing what you desire.  You may find you feel helpless, furious, vengeful, bewildered, hurt, scared or any other of a list of negative emotions.  Ask yourself.  Is this a comfortable feeling or uncomfortable?  Where and how do you experience it?  

You might even notice it first as restlessness or distraction.  Maybe even agitation.  Maybe remorse that the group you are aligned with was not quicker to understand, or more sympathetic to the suffering of people who look toward the extremes for comfort.

You might notice a sense of apathy or helplessness, a wanting to go to sleep and wake up when it’s over.

Or you may notice doubt in the basic goodness of human beings, our leaders, newscasters, ourselves.

All of the hindrances are leaping around with abandon when we contemplate the approaching decision point or watch the news or talk to our freaked-out friends.  As to your meditation practice, are you experiencing more restlessness, mind wandering, inattention?  Is calm elusive?  That in itself can be a source of doubt.

It’s harder for the mind to settle when it has been feeding on disturbing news, thoughts, conversations, texts, etc.  We are surrounded with triggers for unwholesome states.

What are we to do?

The first thing is to recognize that suffering is present.  The first noble truth - there is dukkha (big suffering, little suffering, annoyances, irritation, unleashed desire).  This is suffering.

Next it is helpful to understand the causes for the suffering - the second noble truth.  And the path to the end of suffering - the third noble truth.

One of the Buddha’s instructions is to guard the senses.  Be careful how much news you ingest, notice when your heart rate, breathing, anxiety, agitation begins to rise.  Some people stop watching the news but often out of aversion.  Some can’t stop watching the news fixated like a deer frozen in the headlights.  Guarding the senses means not closing yourself off from information but not dwelling overly long on it.  It means going out for a walk in nature and enjoying it without getting tangled up - wanting to move to a forest, plant a new garden, own the path you’re walking on.  Hearing a pleasant sound without straining for it to repeat - think birds singing.  Or hearing an unpleasant sound and getting agitated because it won’t stop (the neighbor’s barking dog, the backup beep of a dump truck).

So guarding the senses asks us to notice what the input is, how it is affecting us, and to make the effort to step back from getting entangled in wanting or not wanting.

Easier said than done.  We often find ourselves in a multiple hindrance attack.  Wanting the election to be over, the results to be good, not wanting to hear any more negative news, agitated about not being control, and doubting everything about the practice including our ability to do it.

Underlying all of this are some very noble emotions and beliefs - we want equal justice for all people, we want war to stop, we want our environment to be protected and our world to calm down, we want fairness and opportunity for all, we want our voices and the voices of others to be heard, we want ourselves and others to be happy.  There is a wonderful kernel of love present here.  

This election is not just about the negative.  It is also based on our love for ourselves and other humans, those who share our country with us as well as those who share the world with us.

And when that love sees suffering, compassion arises.  We have all felt compassion for the suffering we hear in the news.  

The Buddha had a list of antidotes for the hindrances.  Having noble friends and noble conversations is key.  Guarding our senses and not getting lost in fantasies about how great or horrible something is (it is rarely as our imagination projects) is another major one.  Much learning.  Inquiry into what we are experiencing.  Moral behavior - not harming, not lying, not engaging in sexual misconduct, not overindulging in food, drink, gossip.  It is hard to settle in meditation after engaging in behavior we’re not proud of.  

To that list, I want to add compassion.  We must begin to understand that desire is suffering, aversion is suffering, agitation and remorse are suffering, apathy and dullness of mind are suffering, and doubt is suffering.   When we are caught in suffering, we yearn for clarity, calm, being centered, ease of mind and body, equanimity.  

Can we hold our suffering, our pain, our annoyances with compassion?  Can we extend compassion to others?  Can we wish that others also hold their suffering with compassion?

This is a very powerful practice and one I worked with on retreat this September.  Whenever I felt restlessness arise, I looked around for the cause and often found that my body had ceased to be comfortable or disturbing thoughts and fantasies had arisen in my mind.  If I could bring my awareness back to my breath, I would.  But if the mind kept bouncing back to restlessness or aversion, disturbing thoughts or the endless mental imaginings of heroics or disaster, I turned to compassion.  And when I said the phrases of compassion, “May I hold my pain, my suffering with compassion", I found I looked for the deeper source of pain or suffering.  Connecting with the pain was - well, painful! - but all the endless recycling thoughts of the hindrances ceased as I allowed, relaxed into, held the pain or discomfort and wished myself deep compassion.

And when I extended the compassion outward to others with whom my mind was at war, it allowed me to connect with how I cared about them.  (This is not an instantaneous result but takes time and repetition.)

Since I have been back from retreat, it has become clearer and clearer to me that the love I feel for family, friends, neighbors, all inhabitants in this world is more important than the disagreements, arguments, injustices.  This is not to belittle our desire for justice - but to help us stay connected to the current of love and compassion even as we work with fierceness toward our hope for a better future for all.  Love and compassion are not passive qualities, but can be the basis of the arising of the warrior within us, can inhabit us with a fierceness to protect the weak, the seek justice, to do all we can toward a better world for all.  

A friend shared this quote with me this week that captured this understanding:  

“In the end, everything is either love or a distortion of it.”  ~~ Ann C. Klein

Mind Moments and Hindrances

One of the experiences we may have had in our exploration of Mindfulness of Mind was how many different aspects to a single moment of experience might be available to be explored.  There are the five bodily senses of sight, hearing, sensation, smell and taste.  There are all the zillion mini-experiences of perception, cognition, understanding, confusion, exploration, inquiry, aversion, desire, energy, sleepiness, moods, emotions….the list goes on.

The brilliance of the Buddha is that when he sat in meditation, he began to see each of these fleeting experiences as mind moments in rapid succession.  Shaila Catherine, meditation teacher and author on two books on concentration Wisdom Wide and Deep and Focused and Fearless, commented in a discussion this weekend, that there are thought to be 17 mind moments in a cognitive process - a cognitive process that feels almost instantaneous.  And when the mind gets very quiet, it is within human capacity to experience these mind moments as discrete mental events.

The Buddha urged his followers to rest their meditations on an aspect of the body - mindfulness of breathing or the whole body, etc., because the body changes more slowly than the mind.  He opined that nothing changes as rapidly as the mind.  Trying to hold on to a mind experience is building our houses in shifting sand.

So when we look into our minds, we might be overwhelmed or dulled by the rapidity of changing states, emotions, experiences.  We can begin to train our awareness to see more deeply by asking, “What is happening right now?” “What is the condition of my mind?”  “What am I feeling?”  “How do I feel about this?  Is it positive, negative, or neutral?”  

While this inquiry might feel burdensome at first, with a little time and practice, it will become a wholesome habit of your practice to check into the mind and rapidly assess what is going on there.  It is important to note that no answer needs to be forthcoming.  It is enough to pose the inquiry.  The inquiry alone will prompt the mind to investigate itself.

With this kind of inquiry, the condition of the mind will gradually reveal itself to us and we will be able to tell how it is, is it well, is there some negative property presence, is the experience well and expansive.  And what about now?  And now?  And now?

This morning after some minutes spent in breath awareness meditation, I felt a feeling of calm descend on my mind.  I was awareness mindfulness was present.  And I detected a sense of joy or gladness within this calm.  Just as Guy quoted from the Buddha’s teachings, "Mindfulness of breathing is peaceful and sublime. Abiding in its happiness breaks up and calms unwholesome states whenever they arise.”  

And just to be very clear, I inquired into my mind for the hindrances.  Was desire present? Aversion? Agitation? Sleepiness? Doubt?  To each the answer was no.  I was able to ascertain that in that period of time, my mind was free of the hindrances.  That inquiry in itself strengthened the joy and gladness that was present as well as my faith in the practice.  

The Buddha had several lively similes to describe how it is to be tangled in a hindrance.  One is as follows:

Sensual desire is like being in debt.
Anger/aversion is like a disease.
Sloth-and-torpor are like being in bondage or enslaved.
Restless-and-worry are like being enslaved or in bondage.
Doubt is like being on a dangerous journey.

To be free of the hindrances is like getting out of debt, being well, being freed from bondage or slavery and arriving safely at your destination.

So it is important for us to know when a hindrance is present and when it is absent, and also to know when a positive quality is present and when it is absent.

This is one way our investigations can be forward leaning, leading onward on the path toward awakening - in this moment and in a more lasting way.

The Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness - Mindfulness of Dhammas

As we have explored the first three of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness - Mindfulness of Body, Mindfulness of Feelings, and Mindfulness of Mind - the greater weight of the instructions has been simply to be aware of these aspects of our experience.  Does our body have pain?  Pleasant sensations?  Wants or needs?  Are we attracted or repelled by some experience that arose?  When we are upset, calm, excited, fearful, engaged, can we bring awareness to the mind (read here mind/heart) that is having the experience as well as the object that triggered our reactions?  Mindfulness of our experience in all of these different arenas has been our objective.  There has been no need to do anything, change anything, alter our experience.  Simply being present has been what is asked of us in mindfulness.

And in that presence, we are asked to look inside our minds and know when a wholesome feeling or state is present and when it is absent, when an unwholesome feeling or state is present and when it is absent.  We begin to see what is in our minds and what is not.

With the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness - Mindfulness of Dharmas/Dhammas or Mindfulness of the Way Things Are - we move into the territory of discerning what it in our minds, whether it is wholesome or unwholesome, and whether it would be skillful to take action to change what is in our minds.  We do this already with the loving kindness practice.  When we say the loving kindness phrases, we are substituting the phrases of well-wishing for whatever else is in our minds whether it be jealousy or anger, worry, rumination, or desire.

But to back up a bit, Mindfulness of Dhammas (the Pali spelling), has a number of categories - The Five Hindrances, The Five Aggregates of Clinging, The Six Sense Spheres, The Seven Enlightenment Factors, and the Four Noble Truths which includes the Noble Eight-fold Path.  Taken together they lay out the path to enlightenment.  We will explore these in the coming weeks.

The First of these categories, the Five Hindrances, we have touched on before.  These five hindrances are the most common obstacles that arise for all meditators.  When the hindrances are present, they obscure mindfulness.  In the quote above, mindfulness of breathing is peaceful and sublime - a state of happiness in which we can abide.  The Buddha practiced mindfulness of breathing through out his life and, in fact, chose to practice mindfulness of breathing when he died.  It is only peaceful and sublime, however, when the hindrances are absent.  Our task as meditators is to look into our minds and hearts to see if any constriction or disturbance is present, to identify which hindrance might be there, and to apply skillful means to keep the hindrance at bay.  

And we can do this.  We can all have periods in our meditations when the hindrances are at bay.  We strengthen our ability to abide in their absence when we see clearly when a hindrance is present and when it is absent.

The hindrances are sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and skeptical doubt.  In their simplest form, they are wanting, not wanting, too much energy, too little energy, and doubt.  

As you think about your practice, can you identify periods when wanting was present?  The desire for something?  To get up or eat something?  To know what a noise outside was? To take a nap? To have a better meditation?   

Not wanting can be a reaction to pain in the body, can express as anger or irritation (“stewing" for instance), can arise in reaction to a horror fantasy or the memory of a passage in a novel or scene in a movie.  Anytime we want something else to be happening other than what is, we are either in desire/wanting or aversion/not wanting.

Too much energy, agitation, restlessness can make it hard to settle down, to bring our attention back to our chosen object, to restrain our minds from wandering, fantasizing, getting distracted.

Too little energy can take the form of sleepiness, dullness, apathy, a sinking but pleasant comfort without a lot of clarity.  Sometimes we may simply be tired, other times we may be “bored”, but sometimes we may be resisting a difficult feeling such as grief or fear.

Some of us are familiar with doubt off the cushion as well as on - doubt in ourselves and our ability to practice, doubt in the teachers and their ability to communicate the dharma, doubt in the teachings themselves.  

The first step in working with any of these hindrances is recognizing that they are present or not, but this is especially true for doubt.  Doubt is sometimes simply the choice to believe a certain thought that arose.  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”  “I’m no good at this.”  “Look how much better others are.”  “These instructions are impossible to follow.”  These are all doubting thoughts that may arise - and we may choose to take on these thoughts in a split second without even being fully aware that we have done so.

There are specific antidotes to each hindrance given in the teachings but two of the main ones are mindfulness, clearly seeing the hindrance, and the practices of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.  

All meditators cycle through the hindrances but one of the key understandings is that resisting or ignoring the hindrance is sure to increase it.  Accepting that the hindrance is present is a critical step.  A further step is to see that the path we are traveling is not around, over, or under the hindrance, but through it.  The hindrance is not something that shouldn’t be there, but a state that arose through causes and conditions.  Can we explore the hindrance and the causes and conditions that support them, can we see how they arise in our daily lives and pull our attention into the alleyways of our minds, can we understand how these hindrances are telling us something about our lives, our understanding, our hearts?  The hindrances, as annoying and challenging as they are, are the fodder for our awakening.  

The Lessons of Children...

It appears that the local playground will occupy the high energies and equally high volume of my half nieces and nephews this afternoon.  So in gratitude for the genius of child-size zip lines and scary tunnel slides, I will be present for this evening’s session - humbled by their small, strong bodies and also by the challenges their vitality presents to my own peace of mind.  I have to keep reminding myself that these young life forces which push all my buttons of insecurity, competition, desire to be liked, desire for control, desire for “QUIET!” are only “almost three,” four, and five years old.  And, as some of you may know, the biggest trigger puller is an  “almost”  three year old. 

Late one evening as I faced the sobering realization of all this, I found Ayya Chema’s The Path to Peace and opened to the first chapter.  Venerable Ayya Chema may be best known as Leigh Brassington’s teacher.  Brassington regularly gives Jhana (deep absorption) retreats at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.  The Jhana he teaches is considered by some to be Jhana-lite because it is accessible to a wide number of people on a 10 day retreat.  I found it a valuable experience and found Leigh to be one of the more knowledgable teachers I have practiced with an encyclopedic mind and a verve for exploration of the mind in meditation.

Ayya Chema’s lesson in that first chapter is that we come into this world with the capacity to do good and be at peace and the capacity to be highly unskillful, wrong, and be in constant turmoil.  She points out that any time our ego is touched, things go off track.  In her book, she gives a series of talks on loving kindness or metta from the Buddha’s teaching called The Metta Sutta: The Buddha’s Word on Loving-Kindness. The first line goes like this:  

What should be done by one who is skilled in wholesomeness 
to gain the state of peacefulness is this:

She points out an important truth in that first line.  Wholesomeness is possible.  But it is a skill.  We need to learn to recognize wholesomeness, learn to practice wholesomeness, learn to cultivate all the ways wholesomeness can be established in us in order to have wholesomeness become more engrained, perhaps more of a “habit” that unwholesomeness.

And further, she points out that we must do this for ourselves.  No one can do it for us.  Reading about esteemed teachers can inspire us but we still have to ask the question as she does:  “How am I going to do this?”

The answer may not come as a surprise - we need to recognize when an eruption of negative, unwholesome states occur.  And this eruption comes about through the interaction of our thoughts and feelings, through allowing negative thoughts and feelings to go unnoticed, through not understanding how much thoughts influence feelings and feelings influence thoughts.  

This is the essence of the Third Foundation  of Mindfulness - Mindfulness of Mind.  Thoughts and feelings and how they influence one another.  

The key to this recognition and bringing about change is the Second Foundation of Mindfulness - Mindfulness of Feeling or feeling tone, positive, negative or neutral.  Feeling tone arises with every contact.  Feeling tone is not the problem.  Not being aware of feeling tone is how we get in trouble.  So bombarded by the numerous “Auntie Nancy, can I have...?” or “Auntie Nancy,…” accompanied by pointing or grunting or moaning or  that “wanting" sound children make before they can fully verbalize, I was so intent on responding, on being a loving Auntie, a patient Auntie, a caring Auntie, that I was not paying attention to the rising irritation.  And when it all reached a fever pitch of yelling punctuated by occasional shrieks, I recognized the jangled nerves but tried to suppress them.  (Note to self…again:  That doesn’t work.)  So negative feeling tone leads to not wanting.  Suppressed negative feeling tone leads to more not wanting and more negative feeling tone and more not wanting.  An unpleasant spiral.  

What are we to do?  Or to ask Ayya Khema’s question, how am I going to do this?  Mindfulness is the key here.  Knowing our own reactions as they arise, allowing, holding them with awareness and compassion leads us to clear thinking and clear seeing.  And the stronger our mindfulness, the more clarity we are capable of.  Mindfulness brings us back to ourselves and allows us to find a foothold in equanimity, the highest of our emotions.  This is the way things are.  Things are not as I would like them to be.  Things are difficult or challenging right now.  And I can just be with them and with my breath and at ease in the center of the whirlwind.  

*  *  *  *  * 

This week, I learned a meditation master revered by all also suffered from painful knees.  In fact, another meditation master, Charlotte Joko Beck writes of painful knees on retreats as well so I suspect painful knees are commonplace among meditation practitioners - whether students, teachers, or masters, especially in the west where sitting cross-legged has not been as extensively cultivated.  This master I heard about this week chose not to have knee surgery because it might interfere with his sitting posture, and he preferred to work with the pain instead.  

Initially, I found myself judging his decision, thinking he was “attached” to his sitting posture at the expense of his body.  He could meditate in any posture as I have been saying for several weeks.  Taking care of the body and adjusting the sitting posture seemed a wiser course.  

But then I reflected further and began to wonder.  Didn’t my quest of surgery represent an “attachment” to the body over my sitting posture?  A wish to have the body restored to near perfection?  Actually, yes.  I found a revulsion to the injury and a wish to “fix” the body.  And underlying that was a rejection of the aging and injury of the body, a rejection that the body will grow old, and ultimately a rejection of the ultimate end of the body.

Through this lens, I could see the wisdom of that meditation master in allowing a deeper contemplation of the impermanence of the body and also a deeper aspiration to support his spiritual practice above all.  

It was a beautiful lesson.  And an “aspiration” for me, to use Gil Fronsdal’s word from his article "The Spectrum of Desire”.  

The ultimate decision is not as important as the motivation.  The important task is to bring mindfulness or awareness to the different attachments at work, to hold those attachments and see the suffering associated with them, to contemplate “letting go” of those attachments - whether a little bit, a lot, or completely.

As the great Thai forest master Ajahn Chah said: 
"If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. 
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. 
If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.”

Wholesome Desire...Part II

I was listening to a talk on desire on DharmaSeed last night.  It was by Rob Burbea, esteemed meditation teacher and author of Seeing That Frees.  As he was talking about ways to work with desire, he stopped abruptly and said, sometimes it means you have to do something.  He repeated it, sometimes it means you have to do something.  

At the time I wondered what he meant as he didn’t explain further. Then this morning I received an email which I have copied and pasted below.  The subject line was "Save Our Democracy" Special Online Event July 13 and was sent by meditation teacher James Baraz who is also one of my mentors.  

In Buddhism, desire is one of the three poisons.  And in fact, desire for worldly pleasures for the purpose of pleasing only the self is unwholesome.  But there are wholesome desires as well - chief among them is the desire for the practice.  How would we persist on the path, how would anyone aspire to enlightenment without desire?  Desire is a powerful motivating force and without it not much gets done - including our meditation practice.   

Our challenge is to learn to discern wholesome desires from unwholesome desires as Gil Fronsdal wrote an eloquent article called "The Spectrum of Desire" which I have copied below.  In it, he makes the clear distinction between desire which is craving that “undermines psychological health” leading to suffering and healthy desires which "can contribute to psychological well-being, happiness, and peace.”  He calls these wholesome desires “aspirational.”  

Here he makes the key distinction between healthy and unhealthy desires and gives us guidance on how to keep the former from becoming the latter:  

The sensitivity and awareness that come from mindfulness practice support the discovery of our healthy desires and aspirations. Mindfulness not only helps us get in touch with our aspirations, but it helps prevent aspiration from becoming craving. Even though what we might want is healthy and appropriate, if we are not careful, this desire can manifest as craving. Noticing the physical and mental tension, pressure, and uneasiness that come with craving makes it easier to distinguish aspiration from craving.

One way aspiration becomes craving is through expectation. At its best, aspiration has an openness to possibility without a need for anything to happen. This doesn’t mean that we don’t act on our aspirations, but that we don’t cling to their success. There is something satisfying and wonderful in a healthy aspiration that is not dependent on outcome.

So I want to circle back to the subject matter of the email I also attached below.  Buddhism is not passive.  The Noble Eightfold path includes Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, and Right Effort.  But such action needs to be grounded and preceded in Right Understanding and Right Thought and purified by Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.  Fronsdal’s article gives us some guidance on how to go forward with our right action by using mindfulness to discern when craving and expectation have begun to color and distort our wholesome desires.  It does not mean we shouldn’t take action.  It simply means that we need to watch carefully for the constriction and striving that characterize craving/expectation.  If it is our wholesome desire to engage in right effort to preserve our society for liberty and justice for all, then we can be fierce in our compassionate action.  Our charge as practitioners of meditation and mindfulness is to aspire to do so without being driving by craving for the outcome.  

And as Rob Burbea observed, sometimes we have to act.

The Spectrum of Desire

by Gil Fronsdal, August 25, 2006

Desire is so inherent to the human condition that life without it is almost inconceivable. It is probably more accurate to call us “human desirelings” than “human beings.” Anyone wishing to live a wise life needs to explore deeply the nature of his or her own desire.

A number of myths about desire circulate among Buddhists. A common one is that desire is bad, and a spiritually mature person has no desires. Another is that the Buddha taught that desire is the cause of suffering and therefore all desire, even the desire to practice for liberation, is a problem. But life without desire is not necessarily a good thing: for example, one symptom of depression is having no desires. The Buddha did not teach that desire was the cause of suffering. In fact, he encouraged his followers to arouse ardent desire for liberation.

A starting point for understanding desire is to differentiate between unhealthy and healthy desire. Unhealthy desire undermines psychological health, producing what Buddhism often calls “suffering” for short. Healthy desire can contribute to psychological well-being, happiness, and peace. If we place healthy and unhealthy desire on a spectrum, at one end we have the motivations that lead to some of the worst and most horrific things people do. But at the other end, desire expresses some of the most beautiful and noble aspects of human life.

One way to distinguish the two ends of this spectrum is to differentiate between craving and aspiration. When the Buddha pointed to the cause of suffering, he used the word tanhà or thirst. It represents desire which is in some way compulsive, driven, and therefore not easy to let go of. This kind of desire is often accompanied by clinging, contraction, tension, or pressure.

Craving has its costs. People have destroyed their lives by acting on their addictions. When craving has the upper hand, it is all too easy to make poor choices. Freedom, that is, free will and the ability to choose wisely, is easily compromised. Craving takes a toll on our bodies when it expresses itself as physical tension. And it can take an even bigger toll on our minds: constant wanting can exhaust the mind. Left unchecked, craving can lead to an alienation from our self. Unfulfilled, craving can all too easily turn into frustration and anger.

One of the surprising discoveries that we make in mindfulness meditation is how pervasively and constantly the mind is under the sway of craving. This thirst is the primary reason the mind chases after its own thoughts.

An important function of meditation is to calm down the incessant churning of desire so that we can discover at the other end of the spectrum our deeper wellsprings of motivation. When surface concerns and chatter quiet down, among the beautiful things we can find are our aspirations. The etymology of “aspiration” (like “spiritual”) is rooted in the Latin word for “breath” (spirare). This points to the close relationship between breath and aspiration. Craving tends to contract the breathing; aspiration surfaces most easily when our breathing is relaxed and open. In the same way that natural breathing can’t be an act of will, so too the motivations and sense of purpose that come with aspiration can’t be willfully generated. Staying aware of our breathing can keep us close to what inspires us.

The sensitivity and awareness that come from mindfulness practice support the discovery of our healthy desires and aspirations. Mindfulness not only helps us get in touch with our aspirations, but it helps prevent aspiration from becoming craving. Even though what we might want is healthy and appropriate, if we are not careful, this desire can manifest as craving. Noticing the physical and mental tension, pressure, and uneasiness that come with craving makes it easier to distinguish aspiration from craving.

One way aspiration becomes craving is through expectation. At its best, aspiration has an openness to possibility without a need for anything to happen. This doesn’t mean that we don’t act on our aspirations, but that we don’t cling to their success. There is something satisfying and wonderful in a healthy aspiration that is not dependent on outcome.

If we want to base our lives on aspiration rather than craving, we have to give ourselves time to discover our deepest wishes. Aspiration often arises from a non-discursive part of the heart and mind. Craving and clinging are often tied to the discursive world of planning, thinking, and fantasy, while aspiration is associated with inner stillness and relaxation. Sometimes it is only during long contemplative periods that people discover what they most want to base their life on.

It is also important to respect both ourselves and our aspirations. It is easy to dismiss both our aspirations and the search for them. Believing that we are not good enough, capable, or deserving can leave us feeling unfulfilled and regretful. In the world of aspiration, it is far better to try and fail than to never try.

Buddhism recognizes many beautiful aspirations, including wishes of goodwill and kindness for others, and the desire for happiness and other wholesome qualities of mind for ourselves. Central to Buddhist practice are the aspirations for liberation and for the alleviation of the sufferings of others. However, Buddhism does not require us to desire either of these; when the heart is open and relaxed, these wishes often bubble up. Both aspirations can flow through us without egotism or craving. They can seem so natural that they appear impersonal. Just as water flows downhill, so the unimpeded heart flows to freedom and service. The healthy desire for freedom and compassion can flow like a mighty river that finds its rest in reaching the vast ocean.

https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-spectrum-of-desire/

Desire...Part I

In re-reading the PDF I sent around last week, I was struck by the description of the opposing forces of greed and aversion that exists in comparing ourselves to others.  Comparing is a relentless activity in our culture.  We laud competition in all areas of life - sports, finance, productivity at work or at home.    But it often starts with competition between siblings for love or attention when there is a sense that such love or attention is finite and one sibling’s gain is another’s loss. It abounds in youthful friendships or love relationships at all ages.  The idea that one person’s gain is another’s loss is a deeply entrench idea behind competition.

Here is how the article described it.  Remember the definition of greed can be read as desire, craving, or wanting, while hatred can also refer to aversion or not wanting.  

Greed and hatred aren’t necessarily all-or-nothing states, both occurring in varying degrees and varieties. Jealousy and envy are instructive in this regard, ranging from states of minor discomfort to that of consuming passions. Not only that but these particular forms of coveting demonstrate the invariable simultaneity of attraction and aversion. If I’m held in the throes of jealousy, that’s because I want to possess a particular object or person to the exclusion of others. I’m left suspended between the will to include and exclude, a contradiction that can’t be sustained because the two states are emotionally self-canceling.

It’s a matter of reeling in and tossing out at the same time. But jealousy and envy also point unmistakably to the source of this simultaneity, which is seen to reside in threatened identity, a protective defense on behalf of the idea one holds of one’s “self.”   If, as in jealousy, I’m distressed by the attention someone gives to someone other than me, it’s because I somehow feel diminished by that loss.

The critical possessiveness that drives me into jealousy is not found so much in the desire to possess the coveted object itself as in the manner in which the object's possession reflects on me. Which means that what I’m actually trying to protect is my idea of myself, which leaves me straining to maintain possession of the conditions necessary to support the “person” I think I am. If I’m coveting your house, job, wife, car, success, or fame that’s because I feel less of a person with them in your possession than in mine. If I can’t match or exceed your acquisitions and successes, I’m drawn into doubt regarding myself. I need what you have in order to be the person I want to be.  https://tricycle.org/magazine/three-defilements/ 

This also applies at a more elemental level - such as desire for chocolate.  Chocolate often triggers greed or wanting, the intense desire for the chocolate that is not connected to hunger.  If I think of chocolate that might be in my cupboard and suddenly want that chocolate, it may drive me to stop whatever I was doing and go get the chocolate.  I am simultaneously driven by a powerful desire to eat the chocolate and a powerful desire not to be frustrated in that desire. In other words, the desire has to be fulfilled, i.e., made to disappear, for me to be happy.

The greed and the aversion to the frustration of the greed have got a hold of me and won’t let go (I believe) until I have that chocolate.  Interestingly, the chocolate is secondary.  My desire to be relieved of the desire and the potential frustration of that desire is what drives me.  If something distracts me or if I employ mindfulness to the desire at the root and ride it out, I will discover that the desire and aversion are impermanent states that will pass away once they arise whether or not I eat the chocolate and that centered state that comes when they pass on their own without my indulging in the chocolate is a relief and even a joy.  

As with the prior examples, identification with the object of desire is at work. “I” must have that chocolate, need that chocolate.  If “I" can get that chocolate, it will make “me" happy.  Part of the relief when the desire passes away without indulging in the chocolate is the freedom from being driven by the needs of making the “self” happy.  Indeed, when we begin to let go of objects of desire and allow desire to be met with mindfulness, we begin to live from a place of greater tolerance, greater acceptance for the states of having and not having that give us more freedom in our lives.  

The great Thai forest master Ajahn Chah put it this way:

"If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. 

If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. 

If you let go completely, you will have complete peace."

When we know desire and freedom from desire intimately, the choice gets easier.  

More about Mindfulness of Mind...

The Third Foundation of Mindfulness introduces us to the investigation of mind - generally taught in meditation classes as thoughts and emotions.  It is devilishly hard to turn mindfulness on thoughts and emotions and keep it there.  The mind is quicksilver and slippery to the extent that bringing the full force of mindfulness here is quite challenging.  Why?  Because we find our thoughts and emotions endlessly compelling.  This tendency has good survival value in that those who started investigating terror with mindfulness instead of running when confronted with a tiger were probably not our ancestors.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of emotions that arise that are not directly related to our survival in this moment.  But they are relevant to whether we are suffering and therefore worthy of mindful investigation.  So the first step in Mindfulness of Mind is to begin to see what is there, in the mind, in this moment.  Is there fatigue or energy?  Is the mind bright or dull?  What are you thinking about - right now?  As you read this, there is the meaning of the words, but there are also associations and interpretations, “this reminds me..” kind of thoughts, “I don’t have time to finish this right now” thoughts. Is there excitement or recognition?  Or is there boredom or impatience?  Is there distraction?

But The Third Foundation of Mindfulness is invites us to look underneath the story line, the mental conversations, the pull of images and memories, imaginings about the future to discern what is the motivating force of the mental stream.  As I mentioned last week it invites us to know if greed, hatred, delusion, or distraction are present.  And when they are absent.  Greed has a wider meaning which includes lust, craving, or wanting.  Hatred includes aversion, fear, and not wanting in its definition.

The first three qualities - greed, hatred, and delusion - are key to the Buddhist teachings; freedom from their hold over us is liberation or enlightenment.  

In the age before writing, the Buddha was a big fan of lists.  And numbers.  The Four Noble Truths.  The Eight fold Path.  The Triple Gems also known as the Three Refuges.  Here we have the Three Poisons - sometimes also referred to as the Three Defilements.   In Tricycle Magazine "What did the Buddha teach?”, this is how there are introduced:

"In his early teachings, the Buddha identified “three poisons,” or three fires, or three negative qualities of the mind that cause most of our problems—and most of the problems in the world. The three poisons are: greed (raga, also translated as lust), hatred (dvesha, or anger), and delusion (moha, or ignorance). The three poisons are opposed by three wholesome, or positive attitudes essential to liberation: generosity (dana), lovingkindness (maitri, Pali: metta), and wisdom (prajna). Buddhist practice is directed toward the cultivation of these virtues and the reduction or destruction of the poisons; practitioners identify those thoughts that give rise to the three poisons and don’t dwell on them, while nurturing the thoughts that give rise to the three positive attitudes.”  https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/three-poisons/

The final sentence "practitioners identify those thoughts that give rise to the three poisons and don’t dwell on them, while nurturing the thoughts that give rise to the three positive attitudes”  is the purview of the third foundation of mindfulness.  Mindfulness of mind is the process of bringing awareness to our thoughts and identifying thoughts which give rise to the poisons as well as thoughts that support the wholesome attitudes.

In a related article, Tricycle Editors write the following: 

The first of the Three Defilements, Greed, drives us to cling to or hoard the things we want, and hate drives us to avoid and resist what we don’t want. Delusion is the folly of thinking we can get what we want to the exclusion of what we don’t want. It’s an attempt to split up circumstances into categories of our own devising. But reality is not divisible in that way, and the irony of such a delusion resides in a failure to recognize that greed and hate are psychologically one and the same.

My clinging to something I want is always in resistance to something I don’t want. My resistance to something I don’t want resides in my preference for something I do want. It’s a situation that leaves me pushing and pulling simultaneously, a matter of considerable strain. When I put myself at odds with circumstance, I’m certain to suffer just as the Buddha said I would. The tug of war set up between clinging and aversion nullifies the effective force of either. The resulting lack of inclusive receptiveness has the effect of shutting down the whole system of human exchange, confining me within my own likes and dislikes.  https://tricycle.org/magazine/three-defilements/  
(I have included the article in a PDF below.  It’s valuable reading.)

We can start with craving or greed.  What does it feel like?  When does it arise?  Can we learn to recognize it?  One exercise I wrote about last week suggested by Donald Rothberg is to do walking meditation in the aisles of Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  If Whole Foods is closer, try that.  Or Pottery Barn.  What’s your favorite store?  Do you feel wanting arising just thinking about which store you enjoy the most?  

Do walking meditation through the rooms of your house and see if you can feel the pulling in of greed.  You might also experience the pushing away of aversion.  The kitchen is a great place to feel wanting.  Any piles of bills or unsorted papers or muss might trigger aversion or not wanting.  Stop and notice how this craving and aversion feels in the body, in the mind, how it manifests as thoughts.

Getting to know wanting and not wanting is a great practice.

Mindfulness of Mind - The Third Foundation of Mindfulness

I have been promising to talk about The Third Foundation of Mindfulness for some weeks now.  So today is the day.  

Review:  To review for those who are newer to this thread of teaching I have been presenting here, one of the seminal teachings of the Buddha’s path is the Satipatthana Sutta, known to us more familiarly as The Four Foundations of Mindfulness or Four Abodes of Mindfulness.  We have been talking about and practicing with these teachings from the very outset of these pages.  This will also be familiar to those of you who engaged in the 8-week course Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction a few years ago.  The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are the basis for the Insight tradition of mindfulness and the bedrock of our practice.  

The First Foundation is Mindfulness of the Body.  Breath awareness is the foundation practice from this teaching.  Body scans, while a newer iteration, are another valuable aspect of Mindfulness of the Body.  The Second Foundation of Mindfulness is Mindfulness of Feelings.  Feelings in this Buddhist context refers to the initial feeling tone or valence of positive, negative, or neutral that arises in the first nano second of an experience to let us know whether this experience is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.  This is a very useful aspect of experience which can save us from burning our hands on a hot stove, stepping in front of an oncoming bus, catching Covid from an infected friend.  It can also bind us together with love and protective compassion to a tiny baby, a stray kitten, a faltering parent.  It can swell our hearts when we hear a bird call in spring or witness the first blooms of daffodils or irises we planted last fall.  It allows us to continue our day without interruption when the sound of the heat goes on and off, when a car drives by, when we brush by furniture or touch a plate.

The Third Foundation of Mindfulness:  Mindfulness of Feelings leads us directly into Mindfulness of Mind - the Third Foundation, because directly behind those initial tones of feeling toward pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral is the arising of thoughts, perceptions, opinions, mind states, memories, fantasies - either in an avalanche of mental events that can commandeer our minds and energies for long periods of time.  

Imagine an incident when someone borrowed something from you and promptly lost it, or conversely, what happens when you wander through a clothing store, a hardware store, a stationery store. 

In this imagining, you might remember a whole cascade of negative thoughts and emotions that arise from the incident with the borrower or the deluge of wanting, imagining, fantasizing that accompanied you down each aisle of the stores of abundance.  This cascade and the ongoing mind stream of thoughts and emotions is the province of the mind - and investigating this stream is Mindfulness of Mind.

We’ve touched on this territory often.  Mindfulness invites us to bring our nonjudgmental awareness in the present moment to our experience of our minds.  What are our thoughts?  In this moment?  Our emotions?  Our moods and mind states?  Are we remembering something?  Fantasizing about something?  Planning a future event or activity?  How would we describe our mind?  Bright and alert?  Sleepy or foggy?  Depressed?  Busy?  Constricted? 

The teaching of Mindfulness of Mind in the Satipatthana Sutta, instructs us to discern what is underneath the activity of our minds, what qualities are present at the root of the mental event we are encountering, what qualities are absent, and whether those qualities are wholesome or unwholesome.  Is greed at the basis of the thought about buying a new sports car?  Is aversion prompting the grumbling about an irritating neighbor?

There are eight qualities whose presence or absence are the concern of the Buddha’s mindfulness of mind.  Lust (which here refers to greed or wanting), hatred or aversion, delusion, and distraction are unwholesome states of mind.  The higher states of mind are great, unsurpassable, concentration, and liberation and refer to wholesome and more advanced meditative states.  Liberation is enlightenment and pretty advanced and wholesome.  We can have moments of these states but we’ll leave that for another time.

Back to the reality of greed or the wanting mind, hatred or aversion, delusion, or distraction.  According to Donald Rothberg in a dharma talk given at Spirit Rock in 2012 (see Dharmaseed.org), the characteristic that is common to these unwholesome states is concern for the self alone.  "I” want this.  “I” don’t want that. These are not altruistic states.  The other quality that accompanies these states is a lack of concern for consequences.  “I’ll” have that no matter what.  “I’m” going to ignore this intense pain in my leg and keep running.

Seeing a new bloom in your garden and wanting to share it with a friend is not greed at work.  Receiving a gift of dark chocolate and hiding it from company is.

I’ll end with an illustration of the astonishing power of mindfulness.  In Satipatthāna: The Direct Path to Realization, esteemed meditation teacher, author and scholar, Analayo writes, “Maintaining non-reactive awareness...counters the impulse towards either reaction or suppression contained in unwholesome states of mind, and thereby deactivates their emotional and attentional pull.”  

He footnotes the observation with a citation from a book by John Newman who writes, “…The proper approach for overcoming mental defilements is repeated wise observation.  A clinical case supporting the ingenuity of the approach is documented by Deatherage 1975, p. 40, where a twenty-three-year-old male, hospitalized for extreme periodic aggressiveness and alcohol abuse, was cured within eight weeks simply by being taught to recognize and mentally name the emotions he experienced, without even knowing that what he was doing was related to “meditation”.  Another chronic anger case-study involving awareness of mind as cure can be found in Woolfolk 1984. p. 551.”  

I have listed the book titles below for those interested.

Citation books from above:

John Newman’s 1996 book, Disciplines of Attention:  Buddhism Insight Meditation, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and Classical Psycho-analysis.

Deatherage, Gary, 1975: “The Clinical Use of ‘Mindfulness’ Meditation Techniques in Short Term Psychotherapy,” in Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 133-43.

Woolfolk, Robert L., 1984: “Self-Control Meditation and the Treatment of Chronic Anger”, in Meditation: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives, Shapiro, (ed), New York, Aldine, pp. 550-4.

... "little dust in their eyes"...

Last week I wrote that the Buddha refused to be drawn into an argument among his monks aout his own teachings.  Instead he asked them, when they were “arguing, quarreling, and fighting…etc.”, were they treating each other - their fellow spiritual companions - with kindness?  Were they kind to each other with their actions, with their words, with their thoughts and feelings?  Were they living according to the precepts they shared for moral behavior - not harming, not making false speech, not taking what is not freely offered, etc.?  Were they sharing whatever material goods they had - in this case, the contents of their alms bowls, their food for the day - with each other?  Were they living their lives according to Right or Wise view (the Four Noble Truths)? 

The Buddha taught that wise living starts with Right or Wise View.  If our umbrella perception of the world is incorrect, misguided, false, tinged with greed, hatred or delusion, all of our thoughts, speech, actions will be tainted as well.  And yet the hardest thing to change is Wrong View.  Sometimes our deeply ingrained wrong view is self-doubt or self-hatred.  We could search the whole world over and not find anyone more deserving of our love than ourselves.  

But there are times and this one seems to be among those times when a core value is at stake and we have real and seemingly solid disagreements with people and are convinced that we are right, that our point of view is more accurate, true, aligned with reality and that the opposing viewpoints are based less on fact.  And sometimes, perhaps often, we feel somewhat hopeless about making any headway with anyone in this disagreement.

After his enlightenment, the Buddha felt much the same way.  "For several weeks the newly awakened Buddha remained in the vicinity of the Bodhi Tree contemplating from different angles the Dhamma, the truth he had discovered. Then he came to a new crossroad in his spiritual career: Was he to teach, to try to share his realization with others, or should he instead remain quietly in the forest, enjoying the bliss of liberation alone?

At first his mind inclined to keeping quiet; for he thought the truth he had realized was just too deep for others to understand, too difficult to express in words, and he was concerned he would just weary himself trying to convey his realization to others.”

What changed his mind was the intervention "of a high deity named Brahma Sahampati, the Lord of a Thousand Worlds, (who) realized that if the Master remained silent the world would be lost, deprived of the stainless path to deliverance from suffering. Therefore he descended to earth, bowed down low before the Enlightened One, and humbly pleaded with him to teach the Dhamma "for the sake of those with little dust in their eyes.”” https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel433.html

Setting aside the high deity aspect of this, the lesson from this wise Brahman was clear.  There are people with “little dust in their eyes” who can understand the dharma, who can realize awakening and liberation, and who can go on to teach others.  

This is true for us as well.  The teaching is not saying to take on the more deeply entrenched of those we disagree with but to find those with “little dust in their eyes” and start a kind and loving conversation with them.  Perhaps sharing a meal or extended some kindness to a neighbor or friend or family member would be a great vessel for the conversation.  Or perhaps in our modern world, it’s identifying those farther away with whom we basically agree but who are not as inclined to action to support our common cause.  

Democracy is just such a cause.  We have heard again and again this week since Memorial Day the price in chaos, lives lost, and suffering that has been paid to gain and regain a system of government that continually attempts to put the power in the hands of the largest number of people within the borders of that country.  

So I’m reminded and heartened that we don’t have to convince the seemingly unconvincible.  We may not be the people to do that - because they may not be able to hear us and we might not be able to hear them.  But someone else might be just the voice they need to hear, might be just the ear they need to talk to.  And that someone else might be convinced by someone else they listened to who was convinced by talking and listening to us.  

The Buddha went back to his fellow ascetics who had given up on him when he decided to eat to sustain his health and strength to find the path to freedom from suffering.  They scoffed at him but were impressed by his calm appearance, an inner glow.  They sat and listened to his teachings and were enlightened and the wheel of the dharma began to turn.  

I have heard that when the people of Burma were overtaken by the military coup that changed their name to Myanmar, their biggest concern was that the teachings and practice of the dharma not die out.  They made other compromises to save the dharma.  

Every generation eventually has to take up the effort to learn, practice, and perpetuate that which we value the most, that which leads us to freedom internally and externally.  The Buddha’s teachings have lasted over 2500 years, have been pushed out of their country of origin or subsumed by a competing belief system, have travelled from country to country through the dedication of enlightened beings, have adapted to the different cultures and found ways to touch the hearts of new generations and thrive.

But the idea, the teachings, need to be strong, and perhaps need to be purified and re-interpreted to able to cut through the clutter of another time.  

Kindness is always possible...

The news this week of former President Trump’s 34 guilty convictions has been the occasion for a sigh of relief for many, for deepening anger and frustration for others.  While many of us will not regret the outcome and will even rejoice in it, it has not silenced divisive, rancorous voices.  And it remains to be seen whether it can lead to a coming together of people agreeing to be united in a common view point, in shared values.  

Family gatherings, visits home to parents, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners can often play out this divide and turn into highly stressful occasions in which family members get into loud and contentious arguments.  We’ve all wondered in recent years how to turn down the arguing  and forge more caring relationships with those we disagree with.  

I heard a wise practitioner recently relate how she shifted such a dynamic with her father.  She described him as someone who likes to needle others with argument.  It had reached the point where she dreaded her visits.  Arguing and fighting is a form of intimacy, albeit exhausting and sometimes dangerous, but it takes the place of close contact when the understanding and skills for real intimacy are lacking.  

The turning point conversation went something like this:  Her father started in on whatever argument was close at hand or perhaps an old stand-by.  You can imagine differing political points of view here and feel the tension rising.  This woman suddenly said, “I don’t want to talk about that, dad.”  His reply, “Why not?  It’s important.”  Her response opened a whole new path for them, “Not between us,” she said.  “Not between us.”  

She stuck to her guns, so to speak, and their whole relationship warmed and became more heart-centered.  I could even imagine him in the privacy of his own mind wondering about her point of the view and reexamining his own.

That kind of self-reflection and reexamination won’t be the outcome of every exchange we have no matter how skillful but the chances are greatly improved when we’ve engaged and are engaging in our own process of self-reflection and reexamination.

One of the Buddha’s teachings involved the monks of a certain village who came to him because they had been “arguing, quarreling, and fighting, continually wounding each other with barbed words.  They couldn’t persuade each other or be persuaded, nor could they convince each other or be convinced.”  Not so different from today.

They came to the Buddha expecting him to resolve the argument.  After all, they were arguing about the dharma, so surely the Buddha would side with them and all would be well.

The Buddha did no such thing.  Instead he asked them, when they were “arguing, quarreling, and fighting…etc.”, were they treating each other - their fellow spiritual companions - with kindness?  Were they kind to each other with their actions, with their words, with their thoughts and feelings?  Were they living according to the precepts they shared for moral behavior - not harming, not making false speech, not taking what is not freely offered, etc.?  Were they sharing whatever material goods they had - in this case, the contents of their alms bowls, their food for the day - with each other?  Were they living their lives according to Right or Wise view?   

This last was a specific reference to the first path factor of the Noble Eightfold Path.  The Buddha - and all the monks knew this - was referring their shared understanding of the Four Noble Truths. 

The beauty of the Four Noble Truths - there is suffering, there are causes for suffering, there is an end of suffering, the end of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path - is that it is like a pocket dictionary, short and portable and containing all the basics.  When one opens it to find quick guidance, one is drawn in deeper and deeper with each step not only leading onward, but ever inward, away from that which is unwholesome.  

Right or Wise view basically says we need to be guided by a whole overview of where we are going and how we might act.  If we think, speak, and act in unwholesome ways, there were be suffering and an unwholesome result.  If we think, speak, and act in wholesome ways, there will be wholesome results and freedom from suffering.  

And one of the basic tenets of Right View is the understanding of the Four Noble Truths.  Which contains the Noble Eightfold Path and Right View!

So the Buddha sends us back in a circular fashion as soon as we step on the Eightfold Path of the Four Noble Truths.  Remember the Four Noble Truths.  Be guided by the Four Noble Truths.  

If we imagine everyone in this country as a member of our own village, can we begin to think more kindly toward them, imagine they have reasons for believing as they do, imagine they struggle with uncertainty, fear, hardship, just as we do, imagine that they want to be happy too?  And can we begin to have conversations locally that are related to shared concerns, that are sprinkled with kind acts - smiling, opening doors, engaging in conversations about the weather, perhaps even sharing coffee and a muffin? 

Many of us are already engaged in such actions.  They spring from the natural kindness and good will in our hearts.  Perhaps thinking of Right View, that this is the View that needs to set the tone for all our thoughts, words and deeds, needs to color our perceptions, needs to spread across the skies of our minds to shed a particularly warm light on the goings on below, perhaps that view can deepen our sense of when kindness is possible.  According to the Dalai Lama, happiness comes and goes, but kindness is always possible.

Because it turns out, the content of the argument - even for the Buddha, even if it was about the dharma - was not as important as the attitude of mind.  Arguing stemming from anger is an unwholesome habit pattern.  The anger and the arguing are unskillful.  Although the Buddha understood that the realm of leaders was not the same as the realm of the spiritual life, he also understood and taught his followers, as was captured in the Dhammapada, that “Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is an eternal law.”