BTB: Four Foundations of Mindfulness
Janet Gilmore
Dear Sangha,
Happy Easter everyone! Here's an introduction to the next on our back to the basic series -- Four Foundations of Mindfulness. It turned out to be a lot to write and talk about. We'll see how far we get in our discussion tomorrow. It might be best to break it up into a couple of sessions. Come join us online or in-person if you can!
with love and gratitude,
Janet
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
Jimmie and I were recently discussing the original teachings of the Buddha, the sutras that were written down around 300-500 years after the Buddha's life and death. All of the original teachings of the Buddha were memorized by some of his students with apparently astounding memories. Over the following generations, they were passed down as chants before finally being being written down in The Pali Canon, which contains over 10,000 discourses and sermons (the sutras) as well as the rules of the monastic community (vinaya) and the Abhidharma, a very dense cataloguing of the workings of the mind. In our discussion, Jimmie said that, for him, studying the sutras directly provided more insight than studying the later commentaries (known as shastras). I have had a quite different experience. To put it bluntly -- to me, they are dense and boring. To be more polite about it -- the sutras are repetitive by design (for memorization purposes). They get to the point and stay there, and that dryness, inherent in the method of preserving the teachings, conveys the concept but loses the very essence of what all the Buddha's teachings are pointing to: the direct raw experience, presence, luminous awareness that is always fresh and isn't possible to convey in words. \
When it comes to the subject of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, I found it helpful to return to the Buddha's teaching on the subject, found in the Satipatthana Sutra:
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?
Herein (in this teaching) a monk lives contemplating the body in the body, ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating feelings in feelings, ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating consciousness in consciousness, ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief; he lives contemplating mental objects in mental objects, ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief.
And how does a monk live contemplating the body in the body?
Ever mindful he breathes in, mindful he breathes out. Breathing in a long breath, he knows, "I am breathing in a long breath"; breathing out a long breath, he knows, "I am breathing out a long breath"; breathing in a short breath, he knows, "I am breathing in a short breath"; breathing out a short breath, he knows, "I am breathing out a short breath."
"Experiencing the whole (breath-) body, I shall breathe in," thus he trains himself. "Experiencing the whole (breath-) body, I shall breathe out," thus he trains himself. "Calming the activity of the (breath-) body, I shall breathe in," thus he trains himself. "Calming the activity of the (breath-) body, I shall breathe out," thus he trains himself.
I actually can appreciate the original teachings more now than I could in my early days. I have more patience. And for this topic, it reads like a guided meditation and useful instruction.
Mindfulness = Pay Attention
Still, I find the sutras hard to chew through and my mind gravitates to shorter, pithier, fresher approaches that cut to the chase. My favorite summary of Buddhism and even a pointing out instruction of mindfulness is a short poem by Jane Hirschfield.
Everything changes
Everything is connected
Pay attention
The first two observations can be deduced (eventually anyway) from the radical instruction to pay attention. That's what the Buddha taught. As Buddhist practitioners, we are in the business of awakening, becoming aware, becoming Buddhas. We don't have to renounce the world to do this. Instead, we can be curious about our internal life. Pay attention to everything. The Buddha was a scientist of the mind and we are being encouraged to adopt this same curiosity and determination to discover the truth for ourselves -- be continually curious scientists and let mind be our laboratory. The scientific method is to pay attention. We study our thoughts, our feelings, our world, our suffering, our confusion, our fears and failures, our anger and desires, our interface with our world through our own bodies, uncovering what is really true and what we make up.
There's a lot going on in every instant of our lives and we never notice most of it. How much of our lives do we spend in unawareness, not even recognizing what is happening in our bodies, our sensations, our thoughts, our reactivity? Are we habitually assuming solidity and permanence instead of noticing reality as it is -- an impermanent flow of ever changing and interconnected experience? "Breathing in we know we are breathing in" extends to every aspect of our lives and every moment of our day.
Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation are surging in popularity these days. According to studies, nearly twenty percent of Americans meditate on a regular basis. There are over 2500 hundred meditation apps currently available on the Apple App store. Mindfulness meditation is an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The attitude towards meditation is shifting and a lot of that shift is due to scientific studies that prove the medical and psychological value of meditation. This is all good news and opens doors for people that might not be interested otherwise.
Yet with all the bells and whistles (and business models), it might be easy to lose sight of the simplicity, of the actual point of it all. The essential point is to wake up to our true nature, to discover the cause of our suffering and its cessation. And the method is to pay attention. This is the simple, on-the-spot, whatever-might-be-happening instruction: Pay Attention. No matter the specific technique, these four foundations of mindfulness are the keys to transformative results: mindfulness in the present moment, paying attention to your own body, feelings and mind and noticing how body, thoughts and feelings interweave to create your entire world.
In the Satipattanha Sutra, the buddha taught these four foundations of mindfulness:
- Mindfulness of body (kāyā)
- Mindfulness of feelings (vedanā)
- Mindfulness of mind (or consciousness or awareness) (citta)
- Mindfulness of qualities (dhamma)
MIndfulness of Body - Kaya
This first foundation, mindfulness of body, is the easiest to understand. In many or most meditation practices, this is the starting place. We notice our body in the present moment. When we start a meditation session, we are instructed (or we instruct ourselves eventually) to relax and get comfortable and notice points of posture. We may immediately notice that we actually weren't relaxed or comfortable before bringing awareness to our body. By noticing our body's subtle discomfort and tension, created by subtle resistance and clinging that was happening all along, there is an automatic relaxation response. That very recognition is almost a daily experience for me whenever I sit to meditate. And that itself is worth the effort of meditating.
Some schools of Buddhist practice focus almost entirely on this one method, mindfulness of body, and there is a basis for this approach in the sutras:
There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centered on the body. —The Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya,
As we begin to pay attention to our body we notice our breath, the essential activity of the body that keeps us alive moment to moment and yet something we hardly ever allow our attention to rest on. How can anyone become bored in meditation if we fully pay attention to our breath as it is actually happening and notice all that is involved.
Our breath contains multitudes, not to mention the subtle sensations of the body and all that it reveals about interconnection, dependent arising, pain, reactivity and impermanence. All of this is included in this first foundation of mindfulness practice.
Here's a koan-like mindfulness of body technique from Thich Naht Hanh that might be useful for our current world situation:
Breathing in, I am still water. Noticing the temporary nature of governments, I breathe out.
Mindfulness of Feelings (Vedana)
Around 25 years ago, I attended a 12-day Goenka style insight meditation retreat in Kaufman, Texas. The first few days of that meditation retreat focused on mindfulness of body, including many hours a day of focusing only on breath meditation, training in concentration and calming the mind. After a few days, we were then given instruction on body scanning and taught to meticulously and systematically examine the body, "part by part," noticing gross and subtle sensations, during each hour long practice. We were guided to notice the impermanence of each sensation and to notice that each sensation falls into one of three categories: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Whichever category they fall into, as witnesses to our feelings and sensations, we could bring equanimity or non-judgmental awareness, instead of our normal reactivity (craving, aversion or ignorance). This technique is leading us into the second foundation of mindfulness -- mindfulness of feelings and sensations. And the instruction is the simply observe that feelings come and go (impermanence) and that our natural response is to feel them as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) and that the chain of reactivity need not continue into clinging, resistance or spacing out (ignorance) but we can train in bringing a sense of "one taste" to all experience.
A few years ago, I heard a podcast where Martine Batchelor, a Korean Buddhist teacher, was being interviewed about her work and exploration of this second foundation of mindfulness, which many say get less attention than the other 3 foundations feelings get lumped in with the body's sensations, such as sights, sounds, touch, taste, which tend to direct our attention outwards. Batchelor uses the phrase "feeling tone," pointing out a more subtle approach, that is present in each and every moment of our experience. We might be able to flash on and become aware of the feeling tone that is always present. In this way, we notice the seeds of our emotions, such as subtle sadness, irritation, tenderness, vulnerability or resistance, way before they become full-blown. Just hearing about this angle on it, the feeling tone phrase itself, prompted a way of working with second foundation of mindfulness that has had a lasting and profound impact for me.
I think of this as a pre-verbal sort of noticing. Just let go of the stream of thought-babble that is going on anytime and ask -- what am I feeling right now? No need to even know where these feelings come from or have a long justification or story around it. Also no need to get rid of or change the feeling tone. That is not the point. Noticing is all that is needed. The spin off and embellishment -- whether trying to run for cover, get rid of, subtle resistance or in the case of a pleasant feeling tone, cling to or get more of, is the where suffering starts. This very subtle but useful approach has had a profound effect, allowing me to pay attention to subtle feeling states on and off the cushion.
Mindfulness of Mind (Citta)
After mindfulness of body and feelings, we turn our attention to our mind -- our mental state. It may be helpful to note that the sanskrit word, citta, translates to mind (sometimes mind/heart), not brain or head, which is where we might automatically think our mental state lives. Here, we pay attention to whether we might notice mental states that are slightly below our level of awareness when we are lost in thought or activity. We notice states such as worry, distraction, dullness, confusion, restlessness, sleepiness, lustful. We may notice that we are weaving a tale of anger or self-righteousness, a fantasy of what we want and hope for or a nightmare scenario of what we fear.
Again here, the point is not to change or alter anything but to notice that we actually have a mental state at any given moment.
There is a song written by Butch Hancock that brings this third foundation of mindfulness to life:
My mind's got a mind of its own
It takes me out a walkin' when I'd rather stay at home
Takes me out to parties when I'd rather be alone
My mind's got a mind of its own
Recognizing our mind has a mind of its own is the third foundation of mindfulness.
Mindfulness of Mental Objects or Dharmas (Dhamma)
Herein a person contemplates as impermanent and not as permanent, the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings . . . the feelings born of visual impressions, sound impressions, smell-impressions; (etc.) . . . the corporeal phenomena . . . water, heat, skin, flesh, blood, sinews, bone marrow, (etc.) . . . visual consciousness, auditory consciousness, olfactory consciousness, (etc.). . . . Contemplating them [all] as impermanent, the meditator abandons the notion of permanency . . . [and] by relinquishing, the meditator abandons craving. The Buddha, Satipatthana Sutra
The purpose of calming the mind in Buddhism is not to become absorbed but to render the mind able to be present with itself long enough to gain insight into its own nature and functioning. --Francisco Varela, The Embodied Mind
These four foundations of mindfulness refuse to stay in their lane and seem to bleed into each other and overlap. That is also true of the nature of reality that we are beginning to see when we practice mindfulness. The fourth foundation of mindfulness as a category seems the hardest to pin down and somewhat tricky to understand. My best current interpretation is being mindful of how our real-time thoughts are corresponding (or, more likely, not corresponding) to the nature of reality (dharmas) that we are discovering through all this practice and study of the Buddhas teachings (also called dharmas). My current favorite way of encapsulating the fourth foundation of mindfulness is "thinking about thinking.”
As is said in Tokme Zangpo’s, 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva:
If you don’t go into your own confusion,
You may just be a materialist in practitioner’s clothing.
Constantly go into your own confusion
And put an end to it — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.
Another way I see the fourth foundation of mindfulness is in terms of right and left brain experience. If the first three foundations are more oriented towards giving our left brain a break and putting emphasis on right brain or raw, non-conceptual experience, then this fourth foundation gives us the opportunity to merge raw experience with our thoughts and concepts and reconcile the two.
One approach for this is through analytical meditation. We might spend a few minutes in a meditation session simply noticing what happens when we ask ourselves open questions like:
- Where does the thought i am having right now begin?
- Where does it end?
- Where does it live?
- Where is the self that believes all this?
- Where is the witness?
- Where is my mind? What is its color, its shape, its boundaries?
- What is this?
Or we may contemplate a teaching like the four reminders that turn the mind to the dharma (precious human birth, impermanence, law of karma and the defects of samsara) and see if we can find the truth in them and if so, ask if our thoughts are consistent with these truths.
Or we may contemplate the nature of impermanence and see how mindfulness of body, feelings and mind bear that out, Or no self. Or emptiness. Or boundless, love, compassion, joy.
This fourth foundation is where we run experimental tests of all the Dharmas (teachings and phenomena) within the laboratory of our own mind.
CAPACITY FOR MINDFULNESS
What emerges from all of these four foundations of mindfulness, individually and cumulatively, is our capacity for paying attention. Some call this consciousness or awareness. Regardless of what we call it, we all have this capacity built-in. And no one knows how that works.
In a recent podcast, Ezra Klein interviewed Michael Pollan about his new book, A World Appears, and introduced the interview this way:
"Here’s the paradox of our consciousness: It is the only thing we truly know — and the only thing we have actual firsthand experience of. Yet we don’t understand it at all. We don’t know what it’s made of. We don’t know how it works. We don’t know why it exists. And the closer we look at it, the weirder it gets. The more we try to describe it, the more our language begins to fail.
I find it delightful that something so close to us can remain so mysterious. That a central question about the universe is happening inside of us, all of the time. "
Practice Practice Practice
”Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?" asks any random person. "Practice, practice, practice," answers the seasoned musician. Just like this well-known joke, the four foundations of mindfulness are meant to be practiced. Actually experienced. Not talked about or picked apart or mulled over or debated. On and off the meditation cushion, daily, 24x7 or as much as possible. A daily practice yields the discovery of vast and infinite worlds. Words, thoughts, emotions, preferences and judgements are always masking the infinity of infinities that lie in the present moment of awareness. There is no way to put into words what the actual experience is like.
And contrary to my earlier complaint about the original sutras, I find these last few paragraphs of the Satipitthana Sutra to be ever-fresh, relevant and essential:
Verily, monks, whosoever practices these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for seven years, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge (arhantship) here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning.
O monks, let alone seven years. Should any person practice these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for six years... five years... four years... three years... two years... one year, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning.
O monks, let alone a year. Should any person practice these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for seven months... six months... five months... four months... three months... two months... a month... half a month, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning.
O monks, let alone half a month. Should any person practice these four foundations of mindfulness in this manner for a week, then one of these two fruits may be expected by him: highest knowledge here and now, or if some remainder of clinging is yet present, the state of non-returning.
Because of this it was said: "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.”
Here are the cliff notes: Pay attention. This is the only instruction that will liberate.
susan lachat
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susan lachat
Dear Sangha,