Day 5 What is Mindfulness - 4 Foundations of Mindfulness-Not McMindfulness

Today we will explore what mindfulness is in the context of what is known as Satipatthana. That is the foundations of mindfulness, the four foundations of mindfulness. Sati, as we've discussed before, comes from the root word in Sanskrit, smriti, which means memory. And so what we're doing is we're remembering. What are we remembering? What are we recalling?

What are we recollecting? Or what are we recognizing? We are recognizing or remembering how mind's attention moves. And so, to simplify that, it means that we are coming back to the here and now, what is present here and now. So along with sati, there's another word called sampajanna. Sampajanna is samprajnata in Sanskrit, which means with clarity or with clear comprehension, with knowing. So there is a quality of what is present and what is not present, and being able to distinguish exactly what is present and what is not present.

And so when we say Satipatthana, patthana really means the base. It comes from the Sanskrit prastana. It's where you place something on, so the foundations of mindfulness. Now, there are four foundations of mindfulness: body, feeling, mind, and objects, or mind objects. So when we say four foundations of mindfulness, for those who may have studied this before, or for those who may be aware of this, even in passing, that when we say four foundations of mindfulness, somehow we have to go through each foundation in order to have mindfulness.

That somehow, the way that it is listed out, it goes from gross to subtler, from body to feeling to mind to mind objects. But what the Buddha is pointing out are just different points that the mind can anchor on. That's it. We don't need to have this graduated kind of process of, now we're mindful of the body, now we're mindful of feeling, now we're mindful of mind, and now we're mindful of mind objects.

So the Buddha is providing many different ways in which the mind can latch on in order to come back to the present moment. So when you see this process as a cohesive, holistic approach, you will notice that you are already doing this in the meditation. And I'll get to that when we see how these four foundations work.

So first the Buddha talks about Kaya Upasana. Kaya here is body. Upasana means to be aware of, to study. And in the approach to Kaya Upasana, in the approach of mindfulness of the body, he provides some interesting meditation techniques, first and foremost of which is the Anapanasati meditation object. Anapanasati literally means, Anapana is breath, out breath and in breath: the mindfulness of the in breath and the out breath.

Now, for whatever reason, over the centuries, over the couple of millennia, there's this silly idea that when you are having mindfulness of breathing, you must focus on this point below the nose or just above the lip. Or when you are breathing, you're aware of the movement of the belly going up and down. But these are later additions, later renditions. You go back to the original Sutta, you go back to the original text, and it has nothing about focusing on a single point here, or about focusing on the movement of the belly as you're breathing.

Instead, what the Buddha says is: Long breathing in, he knows he's breathing in long. Short breathing in, he knows he's breathing in short. Long breathing out, he knows he's breathing out long. Short breathing out, he knows he's breathing out short. In other words, we're just aware of the movement of breath, in and out. Breathing in, he knows he's breathing in. Breathing out, he knows he's breathing out. That's it.

And it says, breathing in, he tranquilizes bodily formations. Breathing out, he tranquilizes bodily formations. That is a huge thing. How could people miss that? That is huge. Breathing in, he relaxes. Breathing out, he relaxes. It doesn't say, breathing in, he notices this point, whatever this thing is called here, for those of you who know biology, or breathing out, he notices the movement of the belly in and out. It doesn't say that. It just says, breathing in, he tranquilizes bodily formations.

Breathing out, he tranquilizes bodily formations. Passambhaya, that's the origin that we were talking about of this word relaxation, tranquility. Passambhaya. So, as you progress through the practice of mindfulness of breathing, then certain things happen. The mind becomes collected, gets more disenchanted, dispassionate, has insight, and so on. So actually you're experiencing the jhanas as you go through that process. But because we have inherited, so to speak, bad habits from misguided practitioners, we leave that alone, because of our own sort of practices that may have been misguided as well.

And then the Buddha goes into the mindfulness of the body in relation to the body parts. So he likens the body to a sack with two openings at each end. That's what the body is. Don't ask me what the two openings are. And he says, in the body there are these organs. He names the different organs: the skin, the hair, the nails, the liver, the spleen, whatever it is, the digestive system, the heart, the lungs, all of that. And what he's doing is saying, this is a process to become aware of the body, so that one loses pride in one's beauty or loses lust for other bodies.

So he had a son, the Buddha. His name was Rahula. And at the time when Rahula, I believe, was somewhere around 18 or 19, he was instructed by the Buddha to do the mindfulness of the body practice of looking at the various organs of the body. Because Rahula was at that age where he was, or he could have been, lustful, and he could have identified with the body in a certain way due to his youth.

So to become disenchanted and dispassionate from that, he instructed Rahula to take up this particular mindfulness practice. Then there is another kind of mindfulness practice of the body, in relation to seeing the body as elements. So in other words, this body that we have is made up of the four great elements. The food that we eat, that's the solid material, that is the earth element. The water we drink, that is the liquid, the water element.

The body is made up of various kinds of tissues. It's made up of various kinds of blood and phlegm, and all of these things, the tears, the oils of the joints, and these kinds of things. These are the liquids. The body has various airs moving and coursing through it. That is the gaseous, right? That is the air element.

And the body has heat and temperature. That is the fire element. And so why do we look at the body in this way? Again, to see that the body is just this body. We are not the body. There is no self in relation to the body. There's no identification with the body. The body is whatever it is, because it's made up of various causes and conditions, namely food, water, nutriment, whatever it is.

We've all probably heard that statement. What is it? Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, whatever that is, that's what the body is. It's made up of earth material. It's made up of water. It's made up of air. It's made up of fire. And so the Buddha is instructing those who want to get into this practice to start to learn how to detach the sense of self in relation to the body.

Then there is another practice that the Buddha talks about, which is the contemplation of the body as a corpse. Now, this practice is a very interesting practice, and it can be a very disconcerting practice for those who are not ready. The Buddha actually says to go to a charnel ground, to go to a place where you see dead bodies.

If you ever have the opportunity, I tell this to everybody: if you ever have the opportunity, go to Varanasi. You will see dead bodies at Manikarnika Ghat. This is a special area or place on the bank of the Ganges River. And you will see that the fires, the funeral pyres, are being lit 24-7. That is immediate reflection and understanding and experience that death has no schedule. It happens any time. And they are busy as ever.

Death waits for no one. So, if you've seen or you have an opportunity to look at this book called Craving, which is one of the books in the Dependent Origination series that I've written, there's a photo of this fire, this blazing fire. You might see a little kind of inverted hand. That's actually a dead body being burned that I took a photo of when I was in Varanasi.

With permission, of course. But you can see that, and you realize how fragile life is. And you start to see how the body is in a process of deterioration. Once you are born, you already have an expiration date, you just don't know what that date is. But we often live like we're going to live forever. We often act and think and speak as if death is happening far off somewhere.

It can't happen to me, right? That's how we think. We don't even have a recollection of what death is in day-to-day life. Now, on retreat you do, because you do the five recollections. And the reason why we do that, as I mentioned before, is to see the immediacy of what you're doing. It's important to see this for ourselves.

So the Buddha instructs a practitioner to go to a charnel ground, or somewhere like that, or maybe in one's own mind, to imagine and see the different various levels of decay of the corpse. And it goes all the way from seeing a body that is bloated and green and decaying, down to where it's just bones, or a collection of bones, and then it becomes just dust, and then there's nothing.

That's the nature of this body. So when we say mindfulness of the body, the Buddha is instructing us in many different ways with regards to meditation objects. But the mindfulness of the body can also happen while you're in meditation, and it is in tandem with sensation, it is in tandem with feeling and mental objects. So mindfulness of feeling, when we talk about mindfulness of feeling, we're talking about Vedana Upasana.

Vedana. What is Vedana? Vedana comes from the word Veda, to know, to experience. So there are many kinds of feeling. So sometimes by default we will say feeling, we will call it feeling, but it's not just an emotional feeling when we say feeling. It's a sensation. It could be a physical sensation. It could be a mental feeling.

It could be a feeling that's happening in the body or outside of the body. So the way the Buddha talks about this, he says there are pleasant feelings and unpleasant feelings. And there are neutral feelings. There are worldly feelings and otherworldly feelings or unworldly feelings. That's another word for it. How you interpret it, but basically the Buddha is talking about when he says worldly feelings, the feelings that arise dependent upon the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the body, the physical sensations.

The unworldly happens generally in the mind. For example, experiencing jhana, experiencing loving kindness, or experiencing joy of the first jhana and the second jhana. He talks about feelings in terms of pleasant and unpleasant. How do we define what is pleasant and unpleasant? Well, that which is pleasing to the eye, pleasing to the ears, pleasing to the nose, pleasing to the tongue, pleasing to the body. That which feels good, that is pleasant.

That which feels bad is unpleasant. And that depends on or conditioning. It just depends on your conditioning. Neutral feeling, there can be different kinds of neutral feeling. A feeling of equanimity is in some sense pleasant, but it is neutral. It is just feeling. You haven't projected onto it any kind of labeling of pleasant or unpleasant.

There is just this feeling. So when we talk about mindfulness of feeling, a feeling can be an experience of warmth in the heart when you're experiencing loving kindness. And so now you're mindful of the body or the bodily sensation, the somatic sensation of warmth in the heart. You're mindful of the experience of being uplifted. So that's an experience.

That's a feeling. You're mindful of the body experiencing the loving kindness. That is a mental feeling. You're aware of the body experiencing a sense of expansion. That's also a feeling, a mental feeling. And then we talk about something known as mindfulness of mind. What's known as Chitta Upasana? Chitta. What is Chitta? I like to translate Chitta as mindset.

So in the same way that we have moods that are kind of the overarching umbrella of various similar kinds of emotions. Like you say, that person's in a good mood. Their disposition is generally joyful because they have different emotions to that joy coming and going in the mind through the day. So a mindset is a collection of different kinds of mental experiences coming together to create that mindset.

So in this case the Buddha talks about a mind that is expanded or a mind that is exalted, a mind that is not exalted, a mind that is surpassed, a mind that is not surpassed, a mind that is liberated and a mind that is not liberated. So what do we mean by that? A mind that is exalted and not exalted.

A mind that is constricted or a mind that is expansive. A mind that has dullness or a mind that has no dullness. There are many ways in which you can describe what's happening in the mind. So for example, when you say an exalted mind, it is a mind that has jhana, a mind that is experiencing jhana. Knowing that you are in the first jhana because there are these factors present that make up that jhana. Namely, the vitakka and vicara, that is the thinking and examining thought.

The piti, that is the joy. The sukha, that is the cat. No, not the cat. That is the feeling of comfort. The feeling of ease. And the ekagata. That is the feeling of the mind being unified and collected. So these are all different factors. These are all different mental states in and of themselves. Combining together to create the first jhana.

To bring up the first jhana. You may notice I'm in the second jhana. the thinking and examining thought have gone away. Or the mind is surpassed. What does it mean when we say the mind is surpassed? It has surpassed contact with the form realm. It has gone beyond into the formless. So that could be infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception or non-perception.

We'll go into those details a little later. But the mind being liberated or not liberated, what does that mean? Well, there are two ways of looking at it. When you have let go of a hindrance, in that moment your mind is liberated. So your mind is liberated from that hindrance. Your mind is liberated from that distraction. Or your mind has experienced stream entry.

The mind is free of any kind of doubt in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. That it has full experiential confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. That it no longer attaches to rites and rituals with the idea that that will take them to Nibbana. It's no longer attached to the idea of a personal self.

It may still identify. It may still say, this is me, this is mine, this is myself. It may still take things personally because that's the conceit. That's the deeply rooted, ingrained sense of egoic conceit. But the intellectual understanding informed by the experience that this whole thing that we're experiencing in terms of life is an impersonal process. This happens when you experience cessation. This happens when you have a very deep experience after listening to the Dhamma or while listening to the Dhamma.

Some people do have that experience. They have an experience of the mind dropping completely because they're listening so intently on what's going on. Their mind is reflecting and they experience cessation. By experiencing cessation, what happens is the mind is able to see that even consciousness is conditioned. Feeling, perception, and consciousness are all conditioned, and therefore there is no underlying, permanent, unchanging self in any of that.

And so one starts to see, in terms of the mind, as an impersonal process. One starts to realize that the life that one has is just arising and passing away, due to causes and conditions. So that is liberation in terms of stream entry. And the mind is aware of that. Or the mind is aware that's not happening.

The mind is not yet liberated to that degree. So now we've got mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feeling, and mindfulness of mind. Now when you are meditating, obviously, let's say in the beginning, as we were talking about, you bring up the feeling of loving kindness. You have an intention of loving kindness. Loving kindness is a feeling, right? It is a mental feeling.

It is an experience. The sensation in the body you may experience as a result of it or in tandem with it, that is to say, the warmth in the heart or the feeling of joy in the heart, the feeling of warmth through the body. That could be a bodily experience. So there's the mindfulness of the body, the mindfulness of feeling. And as your mind gets more collected, it starts to drop into the first jhana. And you're aware of that. You're aware the mind is quite collected. You're aware the mind is exalted. You're aware the mind is unconstricted, non-constricted.

So now you have mindfulness of mind. Mindfulness of mindset or mind states. Dhamma Upasana with the long line on top of the A that denotes its plural. So it's the mindfulness of phenomena, of mental phenomena specifically. This is different from the mind states of the jhanas and so on. So when we talk about Dhamma Upasana, what are we talking about? Namely, what we're talking about are a few things. It could be the five hindrances, it could be the enlightenment factors, or it could be the four noble truths.

These are all special phenomena that arise when the mind is observing. We've already gone through what the five hindrances are, right? We talked about that yesterday. When you are recognizing there is a hindrance present, there is sloth and torpor, or there is restlessness, craving, or there's aversion, or there's doubt. What are you doing there? You've regained your mindfulness. You're mindful of Dhamma. You're mindful of a phenomenon.

So you see how cohesive this practice is. You don't need to just go and say, I'm now going to be mindful of this, and then I'm going to be mindful of that, and then I'm going to be mindful of that. No. It's happening in the practice. You are experiencing it in the practice. You may just not be aware of it, but know that when you are practicing in this way, you're not just fulfilling the four foundations of mindfulness.

You're also fulfilling the rest of the series of the 37 requisites for awakening. You're practicing the Eightfold Path. You're bringing up the enlightenment factors. You're developing the faculties and the powers. You're developing the basis for accomplishment. There's a whole lot that you're doing under the hood. So don't think that you're not being mindful when you're practicing, when you're doing this process.

You see, nowadays what we have is something known as McMindfulness. We are mindful of the taste of the food. We're mindful of, when we're drinking the water, we're mindful when we're walking slowly. All of these kinds of things don't fully bring the picture of what the Buddha was talking about when he talked about mindfulness. So mindfulness of phenomena. We talked about the hindrances.

There are the five aggregates. There is something known as the five aggregates. The five aggregates are essentially synonymous with the four foundations of mindfulness in that sense. But they are essentially the mind or elements of the mind and the body. That's what they are. So there's the body or form. There can be an aggregate of form that is this physical body or this table also has form. This Buddha statue has form. This cup has form. This glass has form. These flowers have form. So it's not just mindfulness of form in terms of my own form, so to speak, but form outside as well.

Mindfulness of the aggregate of feeling, of sensations, of experience, whether it was in the past, it's in the present, it's in the future, whether the feeling is something I'm experiencing internally or somebody else is experiencing external to me, far or near, whether the experience of feeling is subtle or gross. So when we talk about feeling, here again we're talking about sensation, we're talking about experience, being able to see that experience as just experience, that form as just form.

Perception. Perception is that which labels the mind, or the experience of the mind, I should say. So in other words, it's the part of the mind that labels. In other words, when I say, look at this cup, now there is a seeing of the cup. But knowing that it is a cup, knowing that it is a black cup, knowing that there are golden ornamentations on the cup, that's all perception.

The labeling of what you are seeing or experiencing is perception. So he sees the color red as red. He sees the color blue as blue. He sees the chair as a chair. That's all perception. It's rooted in memory. Then there is mindfulness of formations, mindfulness of the formations aggregate. Formations, very simply put, are just choices, are intentions.

Formations are very subtle, very nuanced, and we'll go deeper into them when we talk about dependent origination. To understand formations, notice your intentions. Notice the quality of your choices and intentions in every given moment. If your intentions are heading towards the wholesome, then the formations that have arisen are wholesome. If the intentions are rooted in the unwholesome, then the formations that are coming are rooted in greed, hatred, or delusion.

So formations can be my formations, or formations can be his formations, or her formations, or his formations. There are formations that are near and far, gross and subtle. All levels of formations. And then there's mindfulness of the consciousness aggregate. When we talk about consciousness as consciousness, we're not talking about some ethereal consciousness that is the substrate of everything. We're talking about consciousness that is dependent upon contact between the sense base and the sense object.

So in other words, when you're looking at me, the eye is making contact with my form. And the light is bouncing off and your eyes are taking that in. And there's an awareness of you, experiencing that. That's the attention that you're paying attention to. The attention that you're paying to me is allowing that consciousness to flow. As soon as I tell you, stop looking at me and look at the statue of the Buddha, what has happened?

Now your attention has moved from me to the statue of the Buddha. And so now the contact that is arising is arising dependent upon the I, your eyes. So a new arising of consciousnesses come up, dependent upon the new attention that's being sent out or paid. So here we start to be aware of awareness itself. Awareness here comes from the word vinnana. Jnana is knowledge, V is divided.

amongst the sense bases. Eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, body consciousness, mind consciousness. So those are the five aggregates. You have the five hindrances and the five aggregates. Then you have something known as the seven enlightenment factors. We've already gone through it. So when we are meditating, state of mind. We may be in what's known as quiet mind. That's the object we're taking on.

And so that is the experience. That is the vedana that we are experiencing in that moment. At that point, there is no bodily feeling. Or if there is, it's very, very faint, very, very subtle. And while we're there, our mind is basically very quiet, very still. And the irony is that everybody wants to meditate to get here. But nobody wants to stay there.

Because once they are there, they're like, what's next? What do we do now? Nothing is going on for a long time. I might as well stop this sitting. That is counterproductive to the practice. That space where there's nothing going on, you want to just stay in that space and do nothing. Just stay there. Things will come back to show you new formations, new perceptions, and then again it will die down. Now, I've told you this to some of you, and I might have talked about it yesterday, but you might come to a point where you're bombarded too much. So what do you do? You bring the mindfulness of tranquility, of equanimity, of collectedness, and that starts to balance out that restlessness.

You may be aware of the experience of boredom as sloth and torpor. So you bring a little bit more interest, you bring a little bit more joy, a little more energy, and that balances it out. Just the mere intention of that helps to clarify the mind, to balance out the mind. Sometimes that might not work always, so you might have to take a step back and go to radiating whatever it is you were radiating before.

In this case, I would suggest equanimity. And so as you radiate the equanimity, again the mind becomes quiet. And you may have to do this a few times, but that's fine, because what you are developing after that is something known as disenchanted. So we will revisit all of that. But these are some of the hints that I'm giving you as you're in your meditations.

So the seven enlightenment factors. Mindfulness, investigation of states, energy, joy, tranquility, collectedness, equanimity. Being aware of them, bringing them up. That's the mindfulness of phenomenon right there. The Dhammanupassana that happens. And then finally, the four noble truths, the mindfulness of the four noble truths. How does that happen? Actually, when you are meditating and you are doing the six Rs, you are becoming mindful of the four noble truths as they happen.

For example, when you have a hindrance present in the mind, that is the first noble truth of suffering. There is a distraction that's taking the mind's attention away from its object, bringing disturbance. That's the suffering. That's the dukkha. That's the first noble truth. The second noble truth is the cause and condition, the samudaya, the origin, the cause and condition for the suffering. What is that cause and condition for that suffering? Desire to do something about that hindrance, to push it away, to be upset at it, to pull it, to suppress it, to do whatever it is. And why is that happening? Because you have undue attention to that hindrance.

This is what I'm talking about. When you have a painful experience, people will tell you, no, you just have to observe and look at the experience. You're giving unnecessary fuel for that experience. That's the samudaya, that's the origin, that is the cause and condition for it to continue. Whatever you continue to ponder upon, that you become. That is the Buddha's words.

Whatever you continue to pay attention on, that continues to persist. And so by letting that go, when you're releasing and relaxing, you're letting that go. You're abandoning the second noble truth in that moment. And what do you experience? You experience relief. You experience a mind that is spacious. A mind free of that hindrance. A mind free of suffering of that hindrance.

That's the third noble truth. By you utilizing the six R's, right effort, which is the heart of the Eightfold Path, in which the entire path is encapsulated in those four right efforts that the six Rs are applying. By you doing that, you are cultivating the Fourth Noble Truth. So don't feel like you're not making progress just because it's been a busy meditation.

It feels like things are going on in the mind, and I have to constantly do the six R's. Fine, that's fine. You are coming to terms head-on with the Four Noble Truths. You are teaching yourself how these Four Noble Truths work when you let go, when you see, you observe, you let go, you experience relief, and you come back to your object.

You are applying the Four Noble Truths. So this entire practice is not segregated of body, feeling, mind, and phenomena. They're all happening together as you continue the practice. Of course, when you talk about the mindfulness of body, he does give you certain kinds of objects of meditation to do as standalone practices. But in this case, what we are practicing with are the brahmaviharas.

And it is mentioned in the Finger Snap Sutra that if one had in their mind just a finger snap length amount of metta or compassion or any of these brahmaviharas, his mind is not devoid of jhana. His mind is inclining to a jhanic state. If anybody's heard this sutta, but there's a sutta called The Pot Full of Food. It talks about the various kinds of generosity of giving to a person, giving to an animal, giving to a person, giving to somebody who has stream entry, and so on and so forth. And it says all of these, the greater than all of these is the mindfulness or awareness or meditation

on metta. So this is why we're practicing metta. This is why we're practicing the brahmaviharas. The level of merit that you generate by just doing that. You may not see that immediately. You may not understand that. You may not even believe that. And that's fine. Do it. The more you do it, the more you will see how it unfolds for you in your own actions and in how the world responds to you.

The ability to develop and cultivate metta should not be underestimated. And as you develop this metta, it transitions to compassion, it transitions to joy, it transitions to equanimity. And that equanimity, later on we will see, comes from understanding the conditioned nature of sensation and experience. It comes from understanding impermanence and suffering and not-self. Anicca, dukkha, anatta. And that equanimity, once you develop and cultivate, later on, as it becomes more refined, leads to the quiet mind, leads to what's known as the pabhasarachitta, the luminous mind.

And as you continue to relax into that, not get up from your seat just because nothing is happening. Not get up from your seat because, oh, an hour has gone by, two hours have gone by, nothing's going on. Keep sitting. Keep sitting. As you keep sitting for longer, you give your mind the space and the time to further unravel, to further unravel more subtler and subtler formations, to further unravel so that you develop a certain sense of disenchantment and dispassion. And before you know it, cessation happens. The mind just completely drops. That's all I have for you today.