INSIGHTAotearoa
A newsletter for New Zealand's insight meditation practitioners and communities
98 Riverside Road, Gisborne, 4010 Aotearoa New Zealand
deborah @ insightaotearoa.org | ISSN 1177-5076
FEBRUARY 2009
IN THIS NEWSLETTER YOU'LL FIND...
1. EDITORIAL: MINDFULNESS
2. Mindfulness: Moving from Revelation to Transformation
3. Mindfulness Meditation As a Buddhist Practice
4. Reflections on Mindfulness
5. Book Review: The Wise Heart
6. Poem: Mindfulness
8. Questions ... questions ...
9. Sangha news
10. The last word: Awakened Awareness
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1. EDITORIAL: MINDFULNESS
The word “Buddha” means awakened. If our path to liberation is to awaken, then mindfulness is a key. Mindfulness is paying attention. It is to be wake and to be fully present to the moment. The seventh principle of Buddhist psychology from Jack Kornfield’s book The Wise Heart states, “Mindful attention to any experience is liberating. Mindfulness brings perspective, balance and freedom.” Mindfulness is not limited to the cushion. Every moment of our daily lives offers the opportunity to awaken, take a breath, and pay attention. Liberation is not a future event, but rather its potential is within each moment.
This February edition of INSIGHTAotearoa is dedicated to mindfulness. This is the first of a three-part exploration of the mental aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path: mindfulness, concentration, and right effort. My gratitude goes to Kanya Stewart and Peter Fernando for contributing the mindfulness articles for this month. It’s great to have a team!
My friends, it is through the establishment of the lovely clarity
of mindfulness that you can let go of grasping after the past and
future, overcome attachment and grief, abandon all clinging and
anxiety, and awaken an unshakable freedom of heart, here, now.
--The Buddha
May Your Heart Awaken,
Deborah White
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Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
-- Sylvia Boorstein
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2. MINDFULNESS: MOVING FROM REVELATION TO TRANSFORMATION
-- by Kanya Stewart
In the early years of mindfulness practice I was, like many others in the early flush of spiritual seeking, looking for exotic experiences. The first time I heard a teacher say, “The practice is not about having a pleasant experience,” I was shocked! Not only had I gotten it wrong, but this was a number of years into practicing mindfulness and I‘d obviously missed the point. Up until then I had viewed my most successful moments as the times when there was spaciousness in my practice, and times of deep stillness and peace. Rather than being able to identify these moments as pleasant and subject to change, I became identified and thought that I had discovered the essence of mindfulness practice.
It’s not surprising that much of what we do when we begin practicing is to try to avoid the unpleasant. We resist the aching body, the restless mind, and the boring repetitive thoughts that can drive us to distraction. This is because we habitually avoid opening to what is unpleasant in our lives, with the amazing capacity we have as humans to deny our experience. The pleasant is no problem, we love it, we want it, and we constantly reach out for it. As we become more accustomed to the retreat space, the discipline, the lack of stimulation, we are challenged to open to the unpleasant in a different way; to observe it’s arising, to be with it, and to see that it passes. I used to think that unpleasant was synonymous with “wrong”, which then would be followed through in my thoughts as “there’s something wrong with me”, or “I’m not doing it right’. But over time, in working with the ability to just be with experience without any value judgments of “right’ or “wrong”, understanding the three feeling states of pleasant, unpleasant have become integral to my practice. This comprehension has come as a great relief. How liberating it is to be able to just to make a soft mental note ’unpleasant’ when it arises in consciousness. It takes a lot of pressure off feeling personally responsible or making a value judgment when conditions aren’t as we think they should be.
As our capacity to see the workings of our hearts and minds deepen through enquiry, we see more clearly our suffering and its causes. What can be revealed in our practice has no limits. If we remain committed to opening, and opening, and opening, then change, a natural consequence of perception of suffering and its causes, is bound to follow. The potential for transformation is great. But we will only ever go as deeply as we are willing to. If we fear making changes in our lives and resist change, perhaps because it means we are drawn out of our comfort zone and into the unknown, then transformation is unlikely to occur. Transformation by its very nature requires risk taking and the willingness to step into uncertainty. Mindfulness can take us to this place, it can re-make, re-form us, but not without the support of a compassionate heart. Loving-kindness practice is vital as a parallel practice where we work on opening our hearts more fully to ourselves. If insights are arising, and the compassionate heart is not present, there is no gentleness, no softness in which to hold a revelation that may be frightening, undermining, or personally threatening. Insights that reveal aspects of our personality that may be dysfunctional are not going to be of any benefit if we use them to “beat ourselves up.” They can be harmful to us if they become yet another means to reinforce a feeling of unworthiness.
Transformation is a process which can encompass much more than radical change occurring in the present.
I have recently come to the realisation that insight and understanding arising from mindfulness practice can work retrospectively. We practice in the present moment but the fruits of the practice can arise as clear understanding of situations that have happened in the past. Insight into past actions and behaviour can enable us to make connections to the present, and our choices as to how we respond and behave in the present can be transformed.
In this regard, I’ve found it helpful to contemplate some of the issues that came up for me nine years ago when I was doing a three month personal retreat at Gaia House in Devon. At the time I was aware of recurring themes and difficult mind states arising in my practice but I was unable to access insight or understanding as to what was going on. Perhaps if I’d had one teacher to work with during that time, I could have been challenged to look more deeply at these issues. However, the nature of Gaia House was that teachers came and went, and so there was not a lot of continuity with any of them. Perhaps I just wasn’t mature enough in my practice to see clearly. Certainly my ability to enquire and question my views and opinions was not so strong.
Now, with greater maturity and reflection, I can bring more understanding and clarity to some issues I had then. I am less hard on myself than I used to be, and able to “hold” my shortcomings and mistakes with greater ease and forgiveness. They are less threatening to my sense of self, and so I don’t have to hold them at bay fearing that I will be undermined, or that my ego will be bruised.
One of these particular situations was to do with the daily work I was assigned to do. For a period of time, one of my jobs was to look after the pot plants. Gaia House being rather large and rambling, there were a lot of plants to care for. I enjoyed the job, being a lover of plants, but after one of the other long term retreatants was assigned the job I became convinced that they were not caring for the plants adequately. I used to get really bothered, believing that the plants weren’t being given enough water, even to the extent that occasionally during lunch hour I’d sneak water to the more thirsty looking ones. On reflection, I realise that I was developing a subtle attitude of criticism and ill-will towards the yogi concerned. All the more foolish because I had seriously endangered the well-being of the plants during the first week of my duties. I’d misread the instructions for the plant food, and inadvertently given them many times more the required dose than was advised. After discovering my mistake I spent the rest of the week worrying that all of the plants were going to die of an overdose. I harbored my guilty secret without telling anyone, praying fervently that the plants would survive. They did, just as they continued to survive and thrive without me.
Looking back, I can laugh at my silliness. Yet the underlying implications are more serious. This situation shows me how easily the seeds of ill-will can be planted. If we don’t investigate or question our attitudes and opinions they have the potential to grow into something more insidious. I can see how I set a whole thought process in motion, creating a story, believing in it and then acting as though it was true. As a result I was developing a subtle attitude of superiority; I thought that I knew how things should be, and the other person didn’t, and was therefore wrong. How often do we do this, attach to self view and through inflexibility and ignorance turn someone into an adversary. This process is how all potentially harmful situations are set in motion.
We all have the seeds of destructive thoughts and tendencies within us. They are our shadow, the parts of ourselves that we cannot see clearly, but which we project onto others. It’s easy to recognise control issues or rigid thinking in another. The challenge is to be willing to look at our own shadow side through enquiry and bring into consciousness what we reject or don’t see clearly in ourselves. In this way we can keep moving towards being a force for good in the world while knowing that as humans we all hold within us both the light and the dark. Through mindfulness and enquiry we can consciously and intentionally continue to open to what we avoid in ourselves and in this way invite the process of transformation.
Scientists have discovered that the very act of observation changes the experience of the moment. With this in mind, then, there is no way that mindfulness practice cannot change us. The question we can ask ourselves is not are we willing to be changed by this practice. Of course we are, this is why we are doing it: to see deeply, to understand, and to know the workings of our hearts and minds. Rather, it is a question of how much are we willing to allow this practice to transform us. How far are we willing to go?
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The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected – precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command.
-- Stephen Batchelor
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3. MINDFULNESS MEDITATION AS A BUDDHIST PRACTICE
-- by Gil Fronsdal
While mindfulness can be practiced quite well without Buddhism, Buddhism cannot be practiced without mindfulness. In its Buddhist context, mindfulness meditation has three overarching purposes: knowing the mind; training the mind; and freeing the mind.
1. Knowing the Mind It is easy to spend an hour, a day, or even a lifetime so caught up with thoughts, concerns, and activities as to preclude understanding deeply what makes us operate the way we do. People can easily be clueless as to what motivates them, the nature of their reactions and feelings, and even, at times, what they are thinking about. The first step in mindfulness practice is to notice and take stock of who we are. What is going on in the body, in the mind, in our emotional life? What underlying dispositions are operating?
This part of mindfulness practice is a simple process of discovery; it is not judging something as good or bad. Meditative discovery is supported by stillness. Whatever our degree of stillness, it acts as a backdrop to highlight what is going on. It doesn't take much stillness to notice a racing, agitated mind. Discovery means becoming familiar with what a racing mind is like instead of being critical of it. What is the mind itself like, and what is its effect on the body? What emotions are present? What thoughts and beliefs?
The knowing aspect of mindfulness is deliberate and conscious. When you know something this way, not only do you know it, but also a presence of mind grows in which you clearly know that you know. It is like being one of two calm people in an unruly crowd. Neither of you gets caught up in the crowd's agitation, and a spark of recognition, maybe even a smile, passes between you as you share knowing that both of you are not caught.
When the focus is on knowing, we make no attempt to try to change anything. For people who are always trying to make something happen, just observing the mind can be a radical change and a relief.
2. Training the Mind The mind is not static. It is a process or, more accurately, a series of interacting processes. As such, the mind is malleable and pliable: it can be trained and shaped in new ways. An important part of Buddhist practice is taking responsibility for the dispositions and activities of our own mind so that it can operate in ways that are beneficial. When we don't take responsibility for our own mind, external forces will do the shaping: media, advertisements, companions, and other parts of society.
A good starting point is to train the mind in kindness and compassion. Even a little mindfulness will sometimes prove the cliche, "Self-knowledge is seldom good news." Mindfulness may reveal mental conflict with ourselves, others, or the inconstant nature of life. Such conflict can take the form of aversion, confusion, anger, despair, ambition, or discouragement. Meeting conflict with further conflict will only add to our suffering. Instead, we can begin exploring how to be kinder, more forgiving and spacious with ourselves.
Sometimes how one makes effort in meditation can be counterproductive. Striving too hard, trying to escape something, clinging to views and ideals, meditating as penance or obligation, and measuring every little bit of progress are some of the things that interfere with meditation. An antidote to this struggle is training the mind to be more at ease with how things are. Rather than trying to organize the conditions of the world, we can cultivate an ability to be relaxed with whatever is happening.
Once the mind experiences some ease in meditation, it is easier to train it in other ways. We can develop concentration or mental stability. We can foster the growth of generosity, ethical virtue, courage, discernment, and the capacity to release clinging. Often a Buddhist practitioner will choose one particular quality to cultivate for a period of time.
3. Freeing the Mind Central to Buddhist practice is training the capacity to let go of clinging. Sooner or later, the first aspect of Buddhist meditation, knowing the mind, will reveal how and where clinging is present. Some of the more painful forms of grasping are clinging to such things as pleasure, desire, self-image and judgments, opinions and ideals, people, and possessions. All clinging limits the mind's freedom and peace.
The good news of Buddhism is that we can release clinging. We can free the mind. Or, if you prefer, you can call it "freeing the heart." The ultimate aim of Buddhist practice is to liberate the heart so there are no barriers, shackles, or constrictions to our heart's freedom. Usually freeing the heart begins in small steps, each bringing a corresponding peace. Freed completely, the heart is completely at peace. Complete freedom is not easily attained. It requires knowledge and training.
Knowing, training, and freeing the mind develop together. The more we know ourselves, the easier it is both to train ourselves and to know what needs to be released. The more our minds are trained, the easier it is to know ourselves and the more strength and wisdom we have to let go. And the more we let go, the fewer the obstructions to understanding ourselves and the easier it will be to train the mind. Few people care for their own minds as they do their own bodies, their clothes, or their possessions. Care of the body is a daily task. The mind too needs regular care, exercise, and training. With freedom from suffering as the goal, knowing, training, and freeing are the three Buddhist ways of caring for the mind.
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A student asked an Indian teacher, Dipa Ma, if she should be practicing mindfulness or lovingkindness. Dipa Ma replied , "From my own experience, there is no difference between mindfulness and lovingkindness" For her, love and awareness were the same thing.
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4. REFLECTIONS ON MINDFULNESS
– an interview with Shaila Catherine
http://bodhi-retreats.org/teachings/mindfulnessInterview.php
Do you think mindfulness is sufficient in and of itself for people to change?
SC: No. In the Buddhist tradition mindfulness is always combined with other factors and other practices. Mindfulness might clarify renunciation. Mindfulness might join clear comprehension and wisdom. Mindfulness arises with effort, energy and concentration. It never exists independent and alone. Otherwise we could sort of walk through the world knowing our present moment experience thinking we were practicing the teachings. The Buddha wasn't concerned with people knowing their present moment experience. He was concerned with the cause of suffering and the end of suffering. When we are mindful, we are very mentally balanced. We are present, and because we are present we'll naturally see the interactions of things. We'll figure out how the mind releases its hold on things. I think of mindfulness as a mental factor that we can cultivate. We have the capacity to be aware, but usually that capacity is clouded by stories, thoughts and conditioned habits. Therefore we develop mindfulness as a skill. It's a mental factor, a capacity that we definitely all have, but needs to be purified and refined.
What are the qualities of this aspect of mind? You mentioned earlier non grasping.
SC: Mindfulness is non judgmental, it's non grasping, it's equanimous. This balanced attention brings an undistorted perception to the present moment. When we are mindful, we are not careening between desire and aversion, pleasant and unpleasant. Mindfulness is non-preferential. The Buddha did not use words like receptive and accepting, but actually when we are mindful, it feels like that. It feels like we're receiving experience. We accept the truth of the matter at hand. We open to what's actually happening now. The Buddha didn't use that kind of language, but that's how it feels.
Some contemporary therapies create a distinction between mindfulness exercises such as feeling the wind on the face, feeling a pen in the hand and awareness while eating, and formal sitting meditation. What are your thoughts on that kind of a distinction?
SC: The teachings on mindfulness have never been relegated to just the sitting posture with the eyes closed. That is a misperception of what the Buddha taught. The Buddha taught much more than sitting meditation. He taught how to free the mind. He taught how to live in the world with the continuous impact of all the senses with a free mind. He instructed his disciples to be mindful when using tools, reaching for objects, lifting things up, bending, talking, walking, and all kinds of movements of the body, engagements of mind, community activities and even urinating and defecating. Now we translate those into contemporary conditions, teaching students to be mindful in picking up the telephone, driving a car, typing on a computer keyboard, or flossing our teeth. We practice mindfulness when we interact with a painful situation and also when we hear good news, when we engage in a mundane daily chore and also a formal spiritual ritual. In my beginning meditation courses I include instructions in eating meditation, mindfulness in the workplace, mindful speech, and driving meditations. I use the same instructions that the Buddha gave, except instead of walking to the village for alms, I say driving to work in the morning. Mindfulness training has always included the whole range of experience: eating, tasting, seeing, doing activities, listening. Sitting meditation is one important component of these practices. Sitting meditation should not be excluded from contemporary training, but it is not the only way to develop mindfulness.
What is your understanding of the difference between mindfulness and concentration?
SC: Whenever we develop mindfulness, we're simultaneously developing momentary concentration. For that moment that we are mindful of something, we are concentrated. So, mindfulness and concentration in practical experience occur together. When I teach concentration, I teach the capacity to stay steady and attentive to a single object. When I teach mindfulness, I teach a clarity of knowing what is present. So they are slightly different. When I teach mindfulness, I use changing objects like sound, smell, taste, touch, and thought. When I teach concentration, I emphasize a fixed focus to encourage the mind to stay steady and connected. That distinction is made to facilitate explanation, teaching, and discernment. In reality we experience and cultivate them together. When you develop mindfulness, you'll grow concentrated and equanimous. These factors coexist so frequently that it is difficult to tease them out, and not so necessary to try to separate them. You don't just walk around saying “I'm mindful.” You investigate… In teaching concentration, once the attention is consistently connecting and sustaining with the object of meditation, I don't encourage the perception of change. Instead, I encourage continued and penetrating focus on that fixed object. Happiness, stability, and joy increase with sustained attention on a fixed object. Both mindfulness and concentration are based on the development of the capacity to connect and sustain attention. These are the primary tools we refine.
Are there any other tools that you think are specifically important?
SC: For mindfulness specifically? Investigation! Most people have weak investigation skills. Sometimes students have spiritual experience but don't know how to extract the insight from the experience. They don't know what significance it has. They don't allow it to transform their lives. What do you do with a connected mind? What do you do with your mindfulness? How do you use a concentrated attention? You don't just walk around saying, 'I'm mindful.' You investigate what happens in any moment of perception. In the moment of contact you're not just mindful of contact, you investigate the process of perception. Is perception clear or distorted? Is there a basis for attachment, self construction, suffering, or the end of suffering? Classically, the first step of investigation is to notice change. So a mindfulness class would include exercises to investigate how experience changes. Sometimes people remove themselves from their direct experience by telling themselves a story about their experience -- sort of narrating a blow by blow account of their lives. Why do we keep entertaining ourselves with our own story? Usually what people find in their thoughts is just a continual re-creation of 'I am here, this is me, this is what I am, this is what I am not'. In other words -- the chronic construction of self. Until one stops recreating self, the mind won't settle, we won't know peace. It is important to let go of the process of self construction and let the mind rest.
So that would be something that you would actually mention as a practice — to watch the process of self construction that is going on with most people all the time.
SC: In the Buddhist tradition, self construction is understood as a simple process. It is not a big mysterious or esoteric ogre. It's not a complex construction that needs to be analyzed in minute detail. It is just a process of attachment to a concept of self. That attachment occurs repeatedly and rapidly when we have a distorted perception of things. Conceiving of ourselves through our personal stories is one of the basic ways perception is distorted. For example we might see a friend and position a sense of ourselves through the thought: “I see that person, and I am her friend,” or “I smell a fish, and I don't like the smell of fish.” Right on the heels of contact with anything, we might take a personal stance in relationship to the perception, deciding if it is favorable or unfavorable to my image. It is that viewpoint of "I" that initiates the basic distortion of self grasping. Meditation helps clarify attention so that we meet our experience prior to the distortions of self concept and attachment. With mindfulness we connect with the fact of experience, rather than a notion of how we think things are or should be. We are present for our life and not just living in the story we imagine.
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My mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try not to go there alone. -- Anne Lamott
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5. BOOK REVIEW: THE WISE HEART, BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY FOR THE WEST
-- by Jack Kornfield
-- review by Deborah White
The Wise Heart is quintessentially Jack Kornfield. It is filled with the flavor we love in his books: wisdom, humour, wonderful quotes and stories all skillfully packaged in practical Buddhist teaching. The Wise Heart explores the author’s roots with teaching from Ajahn Chah and greater self-disclosure of Jack’s own personal challenges and roots in domestic violence.
The Wise Heart is divided into five parts: Who Are We Really? Mindfulness: the Great Medicine, Transforming the Roots of Suffering, Finding Freedom, and Embodying the Wise Heart. Twenty-six principles of Buddhist psychology weave throughout. The first is, “See the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings.” Number 26, the final principle is, “A peaceful heart gives birth to love. When love meets suffering, it turns to compassion. When love meets happiness, it turns to joy.” The final chapter closes with metta, compassion and equanimity practices.
This is an enjoyable read and a great reference for any library. If you only purchase one dharma book this year, this may be the one.
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6. POEM: Mindful
--by Mary Oliver
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made out of grass?
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The primary aim of Buddhist psychology is to help us see beneath this armouring and bring out our original goodness, called out Buddha nature.
-- Jack Kornfield
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8. QUESTIONS ... QUESTIONS ...
Do you have a question about your practice or about Buddhism in general? Send it in, and we will put it before a teacher. If it can be answered easily, it will be in a future INSIGHTAotearoa. Send your question to deborah @ insightaotearoa.org or by post to Newsletter, PO Box 891, Gisborne 4040.
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9. SANGHA NEWS
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10. THE LAST WORD : AWAKENED AWARENESS
The actual word Buddha means Awakened. It’s a “wake-up” teaching. Somebody asked me one time, “Could you describe Buddhism in one sentence?” And I said, “I can do it in one word.” He said, “What’s that?” “Wake-up!” This isn’t about me waking up, but it’s an invitation to pay attention, to be open, receptive, here and now, in which the sense of your thinking process, ego, cultural assumptions, the thought process itself, recedes. It’s not about getting rid of desire, or getting rid of your self; but of not limiting yourself to the language, the thoughts, the memories, the identities that we tend to when we’re not fully awake. Taking refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, on a practical level, a functional level, is this waking up.
-- by Ajahn Sumedho
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With Metta, Deborah White, Kanya Stewart, and Peter Fernando