Mindfulness of Mind

As Buddhism has become more popular, it seems to have entered

popular consciousness through psychology as a term of art: Mindfulness.

John Kabat-Zinn has pioneered the use of the term in his Mindfulness Based

Stress Reduction program, a very well researched use of mindfulness

techniques as applied to stress and chronic pain. Marsha Linehan uses a

variant of mindfulness in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Cognitive

psychology is now being paired with mindfulness in the treatment of ADHD

and well being. And of course there are the less solemn spin-offs of what

has become a fad; books on the Zen of everything from freeway driving to

golf, which I am sure means that many ancient Zen masters are spinning in

their graves.

It might be useful to take a look at what we’re talking about when we

use “mindfulness”, since the term has a variety of meanings, and these

meanings have implications. The Pali word is sati, which can be translated

as “memory”, “calling back to mind”, “awareness”, or “mindfulness”. (PTS

Paliword

would emphasize awareness that leads to quiescence as in the

recollection of the object of awareness. This would usually be the breath, the

body, or sometimes a mantra. The meditator constantly returns attention to

the object in order to allocate attention to a simple, relatively unchanging

object.

If sati is understood as component of inquiry into the nature of

experience and of being, then the emphasis would be on “calling back to

mind” where the meditator simply lets things come without using a

technique, in order to gain insight into how experience comes into being,

remains and dissipates. Here, a quiet mind may appear and disappear, but

the object is not to still the mind but rather to see how intentionality and

belief shape one’s ability to experience what is. Rather than stabilizing the

mind in a calm and spacious state, one utilizes a degree of calm when it

appears in order to provide a background with which to contrast the

movements and patterns that arise. Think of it as a movie screen – it is a

relatively featureless background with little or no information to offer. But

without it the movie would be unseen; the characters, their dramas, the plot

and the structure of the movie difficult if nor impossible to make out. The

dynamic that drives the production is called “dependent arising” and

sankhara is the motor that provides the power.

The reason I feel that this is important to note is because these different

applications of attention have very different results and sometimes are based

on very different understandings of Buddhism. When confined to simple

relaxation and its positive effects on health and well-being, the definition

and use of mindfulness is not that important in the short term.

In the Zen tradition, it is called “bompu zen” or “ordinary zen”. It has

been recognized since the time of early Chinese Buddhism as a way of

concentrating and controlling the mind in order to improve physical and

mental well-being. It has no particular content or aim beyond health.

The goal of this kind of mindfulness is to reduce the reactive, reflexive

responses to unpleasant experiences of physical, cognitive or emotional pain

or distress. It is understood that the reactivity itself adds a level of distress

that heightens the aversive quality of the initial stimuli. The mind is quieted

by focusing on a particular mental object, usually the breath or the body.

When this concentration is interrupted, the meditator is instructed to

note the interruption and its object, and in noting these phenomena to also

notice the feeling state that is present with them. Feelings are described as

pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Once this noting has been done, one returns

to the object of concentration.

Over time, the automatic nature of responses to unpleasant states is

weakened, and an observing ego is established that can then return attention

to non-stressful stimuli such as the breath or body. The effectiveness of this

application of mindfulness in the treatment of chronic pain, stress and

ADHD is well documented. This has become the standard reference in

psychological literature when Buddhism and psychotherapy are combined.

Its association with health and contentment has probably created the

popular impression that Buddhist practice is about the same, and that there is

a one –to –one correlation between meditation and happiness. One risk here

is that the practitioner who is experiencing neither is vulnerable to

evaluating his or her practice as inadequate or incorrect, since there is no

wider philosophical or intellectual context in which the practice rests.

In my opinion, bompu mindfulness is not a particularly Buddhist

practice, and applying this kind of mindfulness to psychotherapy can never

go beyond the level of bompu zen. . It has obvious benefits, but it does not

lead to liberation from suffering.

When the Buddha defined his teachings he referred to is as “Dharma”.

We can paraphrase the word as “the nature of all things.” He was explicit

about what dharma is: it is dependent arising. “When you see the Dharma,

you see dependent arising; when you see dependent arising, you see the

dharma.” There is no reference to dependent arising in the bompu kind of

mindfulness, which among other things, means that the recognizable

characteristics of Dharma are not accessible. Of these characteristics, the

most relevant for our discussion are akaaliko, ehipassiko, and opanaayiko.

Ehipassiko means “inviting”: in examining experience there is a quality

that appears that invites further inquiry. One becomes curious. This is not a

likely feature of bompu zen because curiosity about experience will sooner

or later be interrupted by the instruction to return to an object of awareness.

Opanaayiko means “onward leading”: curiosity is aided by an

unfolding of experience that is not generated by intention, but is

spontaneous and unpredictable. If we are practicing bompu zen, then we

will never perceive the subtle, constant navigation to avoid unpleasant affect

by shifting attention away from it. This navigation by its nature will prevent

following any experience for very long, particularly if the experience is

painful. So in a very subtle way, we are also cultivating attachment: in this

case, the attachment to aversion to suffering.

This is the way we live our lives: an endless process of unconsciously

steering ourselves around painful areas within ourselves. We may imagine

that are proceeding straight ahead, but in fact we are weaving a very

complicated route around experiences we don’t like.

When we begin to meditate (bompu zen excepted) we begin to drop

these evasions and encounter areas of ourselves we’ve become very skilled

at evading. We start moving in straight lines, as it were. Then meditation

practice becomes painful and difficult, and if we imagine that the point of

meditation is be calm, peaceful and serene, then we will evaluate these

experiences as proof of our poor practice when in fact they are evidence of

the opposite.

“The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, except that it refuses to pick

and choose.” This is the essential statement of saijojo zen, and of

opanaayiko.

Finally, akaaliko refers to a quality of experience that is not dependent

upon and therefore not constricted by conceptualization and conceptual

constructs. In fact, it is a quality that allows you to see through categories

that would otherwise be taken as absolute. So, for example, when the

instruction given is to deal with thinking by labeling it “thinking, thinking”,

I may be able to create enough internal distance to avoid getting completely

caught up in thoughts, but I will also be uninterested in the experience of

thinking itself.

The subtle aversive attitude encouraged by the instructions will lead me

away from being “invited” by thinking to follow it, either as the

development of themes or as the phenomenon of thought. It will therefore be

likely to remain “just” thinking, a fixed, known event.

Because bompu mindfulness tends to work against the development of

these qualities, it works against the examination of how experience is

created and held on to (upadana) and sustained by the proliferation of

concepts (papanca).

Since it can produce pleasant experience, you can see how it also can

easily play into the dynamic created by a variable ratio reinforcement

schedule. A blissful experience can easily lead to a craving for similar

experiences and meditation can be hijacked by self-soothing. The craving

for this experience will almost inevitably lead to a reification of it, so that

the meditator now has it that the state he seeks exists in some way outside of

his own processes, waiting for him to stumble back into it. Then meditation

becomes a process of mapping and strategizing a return visit with the long

term aim of taking up permanent residence. While this kind of mindfulness

has been shown to be of great benefit for physical and emotional health, it is

not likely to lead to liberation.

Mapping experience and producing desired outcomes seems to be an

intuitively obvious thing to do. If it makes me happy and content, after all,

why not learn how to do it all the time?

Consider the possibility that because of the brain’s ordering and tracking

functions in regard to regular and predictable patterns, we are hardwired to

seek what in Sanskrit is called atman. The term refers to the eternal,

unchanging constant that we unthinkingly assume lies behind the variability

of sense experience. This union with the godhead is the goal of most

spiritual systems (as well as of science—cf., a unified field theory), and both

the path and goal to this are encoded in the simple practice itself.

Whether or not this tendency actually develops in the course of bompu

meditation, it is always in the background. Because this approach never

challenges it, it is never exposed or questioned. Buddhist practice then can

appear to be perfectly reasonable and – exotic trappings aside – familiar.

The Buddha is understood to be a cooler version of God. I don’t think

it’s accurate to say it’s intuitively familiar just to Westerners; this is an

assumption that most everybody makes without expending any effort at all

in coming to. In other words, it is intuitively obvious. I suspect that it is this

kind of mindfulness and view that Western psychology has adopted as its

definition of Buddhism and Buddhist psychology. It’s easy to understand.

Mindfulness as “calling back to mind” or recollecting experience

however is based on a very different and very difficult perspective. This

kind of mindfulness is called “saijojo” in Zen, and is the practice of

liberation. This is a path with no goal, or a path whose goal is the path itself.

The “no-path’ path. It means constantly confronting how we create beliefs

and goals with no conscious intention of doing so. To my mind, this is the

deconstruction of samsara, and is a long and difficult practice that provides

no end in sight. Here, mindfulness entails coming to know the sankharas and

how they create karma, which is fixated in habits and modes of being. This

is the practice that cultivates knowledge of intentions and the states of

consciousness from which they arise, and which they then perpetuate. It

offers no stable foothold, because a foothold inevitably becomes a “thing”

that we will turn to for reassurance that there is something, somewhere, that

we can find and remember; a compass that will always point to true north.

Seeing patterns includes seeing feelings, emotions, the narrative that

usually accompanies experience, and from time to time, the covert intentions

that create expectations and longings that lead to frustration and suffering

when these expectations are unmet. It may also entail seeing how one’s

personal narrative influences subtle states of mind.

Once while meditating I watched my mind move from long trains of

thought to shorter, more random thoughts, to a kind of pre-thought where

images and thoughts were not yet formed, to a peaceful calm state of mind.

In that calm state of mind a feeling of happiness and bliss arose and I felt as

if I were being gently carried off into a current of a jhana, or absorption.

Then it abruptly ended, and my mind went back to its previously busy

state. After meditation I recollected that experience and wondered what had

happened to interrupt the absorption. In examining my memory of that

moment I saw that doubt had stopped it. This was not doubt about the

veracity of the experience itself. Rather within that doubt a very

complicated and subtle personal narrative had unfolded: I had experienced

or interpreted (same thing) the developing bliss as an invitation to be held

and carried. With that arose a self who had been abandoned before, and was

certain of a repetitive trauma. The immediate reflex was to generate

suspicion and a refusal to trust. The feeling was more or less “why should I

trust you? You dropped me before.”

This may appear to be very compatible with the cultivation of insight

that psychotherapy (especially object relations) offers, with one notable

exception: This is a mindfulness that looks in places we never think to look,

places where the self-structure arises and disappears in tandem with

experiences that arise and disappear. This is the insight into insight itself,

which like the orobouros eats itself. This is conveyed in a parable of the

Buddha’s:

Bhikkhus, I shall show you how the Dhamma is similar to a raft,

being for the purpose of crossing over, and not for the purpose of

grasping. Listen and attend closely to what I shall say.” “Yes,

venerable sir,” the Bhikkhus replied. The Blessed One said thus:

“Bhikkhus, suppose a man in the course of a journey saw a great

expanse of water, whose near shore was dangerous and fearful

and whose further shore was safe and free from fear, but there

was no ferryboat or bridge going to the far shore.

Then he thought, “There is this great expanse of water, whose

near shore is dangerous and fearful and whose further shore is

safe and free from fear, but there is no ferryboat or bridge going

to the far shore. Suppose I collect grass, twigs, branches, and

leaves and bind them together into a raft, and suppose by the raft

and making an effort with my hands and feet, I got safely across

to the far shore.” And then the man collected grass, twigs,

branches, and leaves and bound them together into raft, and

suppose by the raft and making an effort with his hands and feet,

he got safely across to the far shore. Then, when he had got

across and had arrived at the far shore, he might think thus:

‘This raft has been very helpful to me, since supported by it and

making and effort with my hands and feet, I got safely across to

the far shore. Suppose I were to hoist it on my head or load it on

my shoulder, and then go wherever I want.’ Now, bhikkhus, what

do you think? By doing so, would that man be doing what should

be done with that raft?”

“No, venerable sir.”

“By doing what would that man be doing what should be done

with that raft? Here, bhikkhus, when that man got across and had

arrived a the far shore, he night think thus: ‘This raft has been

very helpful to me, since supported by it and making an effort

with my hands and feet, I got safely across to the far shore.

Suppose I were to haul it onto the dry land or set it adrift in the

water, and then go wherever I want.’ Now, bhikkhus, it is by so

doing that that man would be doing what should be done with that

raft. So I have shown you how the Dhamma is similar to a raft,

being for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of

grasping.

‘Bhikkhus, when you know the Dhamma to be similar to a raft,

you should abandon even good states, how much more so bad

states.”

Belief of any kind is the chief obstacle to receptivity – and chief among

them, the belief in atman-- which is why he begins with the caution that this

is for the purpose of liberation from all the fixations, not the creation of a

new and even more gratifying, extraordinary belief system. The dangerous

expanse of water is the expanse of our lives within the confines of an

unpredictable, changeable world; the near shore, our beliefs and

expectations whatever they may be (including those of liberation), and the

far shore an as-yet unknown way of being free from all intentions and

fixations.

There is no ferryboat or bridge because there is no one else who can

deliver us from this existential condition. We can only use what is at hand,

our own capacity to recollect, to apperceive our own perceptual processes

and to cultivate wisdom. Having developed that capacity, we must then

relinquish it. To hold on to a way of doing is the same as hauling a raft

around when it is no longer relevant to anything. This is pretty obvious

when we confront bad states. It is less obvious then we experience good

ones. In either case, the experience is likely to generate questions of “how

did I get here? What were the steps, and how can I repeat them to get here

(or avoid getting here) again?”

This can be called “Right View”, the governing variable that guides all

the other variables such as right effort, right speech and so on. We can say

that “right view” is the view that all views are temporary and conditional, to

be abandoned when they become objects to be held on to.

As always when listening to a teaching we first of all develop the motivation of bodhicitta, the awakened mind intend on the greatest possible benefit for all sentient beings: enlightenment. In order to realise this and to establish all beings in that state we engage in Dharma study and practice.

The Buddha taught the four foundations of mindfulness as the basis of all meditation practice in the Satipatthana Sutta, the tenth sutra of the middle length collection (Majjhima Nikaya) of the Pali canon. This sutra is the basis for the mindfulness practices of all Buddhist schools. Further explanations are found in the Anapanasati Sutta, where the Buddha talks about mindfulness of breath as a means to develop all four kinds of mindfulness, and in theKayagatasati Sutta, where he develops the instructions on how to practise mindfulness of body by giving many examples. These three sutras together are the heart of mindfulness practice in the Theravada tradition. Gampopa mentions the four foundations of mindfulness in the Precious Ornament of Liberation as the factors to be developed right from the beginning of one's practice as one is entering the smaller path of accumulation. They constitute the first four of the 37 factors of enlightenment.

Here, in the context of this brief introduction, we will not discuss all aspects of mindfulness but concentrate on what the Buddha called the "Four Foundations". Mindfulness itself would be a still vaster subject as it includes virtually all practices starting with being mindful of the preciousness of our human existence, impermanence, cause and effect, suffering, continuing with a mindfulness of the qualities of refuge, of bodhicitta, of the masters, yidams, and protectors, and finally being mindful of mahamudra, the nature of things itself. Mindfulness is what makes our practice work. Without it, no practice whatsoever will have a profound effect.

When explaining the four foundations of mindfulness the Buddha first talks about the motivation to develop: the wish to obtain complete liberation, nirvana, the complete purification of clinging to a self which means the same as going beyond all suffering, beyond all worries and complaints into true happiness. He then says that in order to practise the four foundations of mindfulness, no matter which one we intend to practise, we should go to a secluded place, sit with crossed legs, and with a very straight upper body first let our mindfulness gather in front of us – not necessarily with the help of an object, but simply through resting with unwavering, steady eyes. Then, through contemplating the nature of samsara, we should relinquish all desire, all wanting, all clinging to the cycle of existence and dissolve all sadness and evil-mindedness. With "sadness" the Buddha meant the sadness which arises in the beginning when we take the resolution to leave samsara behind, an uneasiness due to leaving our beloved attachments. There should be no such sadness in our mind when we are letting go of the causes of suffering (!), but rather the great joy of a firm resolve to go towards liberation and to become able to make it accessible to all others as well. In order to practise mindfulness it is very helpful to have the support of a joyful aspiration.

Mindfulness is the practice of those who are happy to get out of samsara. Our basic attitude of mind should be free of clinging to this world. Having this as our basis we can develop the four foundations of mindfulness. For this we have to practise with diligence and with a clear, precise knowing of what we are doing, with clearly understood instructions on our meditation. Mindfulness means not to be forgetful, not forgetting the object of one's intention. Mindfulness needs to be accompanied by equanimity, a stable mind, not impressed by whatever might appear in mind, and it should be continuous, without interruption; not sometimes mindful and sometimes not. A continuous mindfulness is actually based on a deep letting go, just as Gendun Rinpoche always instructed us. Mindfulness establishes itself naturally when we have no interest for the world and let go of our worldly preoccupation.

But there could also be spiritual preoccupations that create obstacles: a strong wanting to let go, one is struggling to find relaxation with the hope to attain something and the fear not to obtain it. When there is too much wanting we will soon reject mindfulness practice, since we will not be able to enter authentic relaxation. Wanting agitates the mind, and so do hope and fear.

The Buddha taught four foundations of mindfulness which are set out in a progressive order and serve as foundations to discover liberation:

• mindfulness of body
• mindfulness of feelings
• mindfulness of mind
• mindfulness of Dharmas

The mindfulness developed with these practices is always the same: to be aware of what is. But the methods used to develop and keep the mindfulness change and become increasingly more subtle.