Basics of Buddhism – 4 – Mindfulness and Meditation

(For Podcast, click here.  For ITunes version, click here)

This morning we continue a series of talks about the Basics of Buddhism by continuing to discuss the Eightfold Path.  Last week, we talked about the three components of the Path: Wisdom, Ethics and Training.  This week, we’ll finish our discussion on the Training component of the Buddhist practice:

• Wise Effort:  Having a passion for enlightenment
• Wise Mindfulness:  Practicing mindfulness by being fully present in each moment
• Wise Concentration:  Practicing meditation to train our mind

Wise Effort is all about deciding that you want to make this radical way of being a priority.  I love that it’s described as passion.  This isn’t about drudgery—“oh, I have to go meditate again…” “I better be mindful”, but rather seeing it as the way beyond suffering and stress and struggle.  If you love the feeling of peace more than the feeling of distress, then be passionate about awakening.  Without effort, our mindfulness and meditation will be haphazard and ineffective.  We still might get a little relief from our troubles, but not the radical shift in experience that you might be looking for.

Mindfulness is a commitment to stay awake to the reality in each moment, to stop sleepwalking through life.  We can approach living with curiosity and non-preference, savoring things just as they are.  Then, from this place of curiosity, the richness and fullness of the world opens up and provides us with amazing gifts of clarity.  It’s important to NOT think about mindfulness as a burden to bear but as a gift that we are giving ourselves, a easily obtained, always there, totally free medication for what ails us.  Practicing wise mindfulness is one of the key processes for transformation as taught by the Buddha.  Each moment, we have an opportunity to explore what is happening within and around us at a deeper level. 

When we become mindful, we realize that our experience of this present moment is often filtered by our past experiences.  Past experiences can by helpful in some ways.  If you’ve ever burned your finger by placing it on a hot stove, you know going forward not to touch a hot stove.  However, in order to survive, our mind is designed to makes broad generalizations from the past that sometimes hold us back from seeing what is really going on in the present moment.  If you grew up with a father who was abusive, your mind might hold as a constant truth that “all men are abusive”.  We all have this tendency to draw broad generalizations about the world based on our past experience.  The practice of mindfulness helps us sort out exactly how we are perceiving ourselves and the world, and this is the powerful first step in being able to sort through what thoughts and emotions are helping us and which ones are holding us back. 

Think of a time when you had a pre-conceived idea about what was going to happening or about a certain person, and it turned out to be wrong.  Perhaps you expected a day to be difficult, and it wasn’t so bad after all.  We can start to bend the way we experience ourselves and the world but deciding how we want to experience them, and what is holding us back from that experience.

Even with happy memories, our minds can sometimes cling them, creating certain expectations, trying to recreate them over and over again, wanting a particular situation (or relationship or activity) to be just the same as it was before.  Clinging too tightly to happy memories can create expectations that cause a sense of disappointment and disillusion when things don’t turn out as well as they had in the past. I’ve heard it said, “I want this Holiday to be just like it used to be when Mom made everything perfect.”  Then, it’s not perfect, and we become disillusioned and sad.  Mindful awareness helps us recognize these potential pitfalls.  Chasing after pleasant experiences in order to be happy doesn’t work over time.  This is what the Buddha discovered 2500 years ago. 

How can we rise above aversions caused by past experiences?  How can we rise above just chasing after mere pleasure?  And equally daunting, how can we rise above ignoring any thing or any person we judge as capable of bringing us NEITHER pleasure nor pain?  Clinging, aversion and ignorance are at the core of our dissatisfaction. 

THE ANSWER IS THE POWERFUL PRACTICE OF MINDFULNESS! It’s been scientifically proven to work!  The amazing panacea of this simple practice is well-researched to be a transformative process! 

Mindfulness is a simple process designed to create a gap between stimulus and response.  We need a little time to be able to sort through our thoughts and emotions and then determine the most skillful response to any situation.  Mindfulness gives us the precious gift of the gap.

There is a wonderful teaching on mindfulness called the Satipatthana Sutta in (Sutta means “teaching or scripture”. The original teachings were actually sewn together, so the name came from the “sutures” in the papers held together).  It’s from the Pali Canon, a set of the original teachings on Buddhism.  In the Satipatthana, we learn that there are three facets of mindfulness: 

1.         awareness of what is happening internally,

2.         awareness of what is happening externally, and

3.         awareness of both at the same time 

Being mindful can help us utilize all the old emotions and thoughts that arise as tools for our awakening going forward.  If we find that we are stuck or we realize we’re having old unskillful thoughts or feelings, in that moment of mindfulness, we can say “Yahoo!  Fantastic!  I now see where I’m stuck.” We don’t have to beat ourselves up for still having old unskillful thoughts and emotions.  They may continue to arise, but each time you realize that you’re stuck is actually a joyous opportunity for a great awakening!  Seeing that you’re hooked is the vital first step.   Slowly, the stranglehold that they have over our reactions begins to loosen.

WARNING:  The first thing that often happens when we begin to practice mindfulness is that we see the dirt more clearly.  We see the dirt in the form of thoughts that race through our minds and emotions that race through our bodies.  Most of us probably begin wanting to be mindful with the hope of gaining a sense of peace, and the good news is that is possible, BUT FIRST, be prepared to have moments of “Holy Gamolly!  That’s what I’ve been thinking and feeling all these years???  That’s where I’m stuck?  Yuck!”

Mindfulness practice can occur in any moment of any day.  Here’s some practical ideas on how to integrate a little mindfulness into your life:

• Every time you walk through a doorway:  Use this simple activity to take a mindful moment.  Our minds often race ahead to where we’re going or are still processing what happened in the room we just left.  This simple practice helps create a little gap in the present moment.
• Every time the phone rings:  With our trusty cell phones with us always, imagine turning it into a mindfulness tool!  Each time the phone rings, take one mindful breath before you answer.  How wonderful to have a mindful reminder, regardless of the contents of the call. At the end of a call, take another mindful breath, aware of how conversation is impacting your thoughts and emotions. 
• A wristband:  Placing a wristband or mala beads on your wrist can be a visual reminder to take a few mindful breaths throughout the day.

Practicing mindfulness in the real world can be a challenging task.  SO, we can create a space to practice mindfulness with fewer distractions and difficulties.  This is what meditation is all about.  There are times when meditation will feel so awesome that you feel blissed out.  And there will be other times when meditation feels like the most painful thing you can imagine doing.  A word of encouragement, it gets easier over time.

One misconception about meditation is that it can only be done by sitting in the lotus position, in complete silence, for long periods of time.  GREAT NEWS!  THIS IS NOT TRUE!  Meditation includes sitting meditation, guided meditation, eating meditation, walking meditation and even lying down meditation.  There are many options to explore 

One of the most common questions people have about meditation is:  How do I stop my thoughts?  The good news is that we are NOT trying to stop our thoughts.  Thank goodness!  Anyone who has tried to meditate even once knows the frustration of trying to stop thinking.  The more we try to stop thinking, the more it seems we think.  Our mind is like a little puppy running around with too much energy, running from one thought to another, sometimes with very little connection from one thought to the next.  Most of us, we spend lots of time either rehashing the past or fantasizing about the future, either can be pleasant or painful, but both the past and the future take us away from being fully present in this moment.  We can begin by making friends with our mind, making friends with our thoughts and emotions, not pushing them away, not clinging to them, not ignoring them.  Just let them rise and fall of their own natural process.