The Sanskrit word smriti (Pali: sati), most often translated as “mindfulness,” literally means “remembering.” I often like to point out to my students that the other meaning of remember (and also recollect) is synonymous with yoga—to re-member or re-collect is to bring back together all the (seemingly) disparate parts of our experience into an integrated whole.
When we remember, we pay attention to what is happening. Mindfulness always arises in the context of relationship—within ourselves and with other people or things. It is not something like a technique or tool we use but an inherent power or capacity we tend and cultivate. For instance, when we see a friend on the street, we recognize her. We do not use recognition in order to “know” that it is her we see. The recognition arises in the very context of the situation. The Buddha taught that our breathing, our posture, our movements, feelings, thoughts, and the phenomena around us are all parts of the web of relationship within which we can cultivate mindfulness, so that eventually it can arise spontaneously. With practice, mindfulness will be there at all times and in all places.
Two early sutras in which the Buddha gave meditation instructions are the Anapanasati (Awareness of Breathing) and the Satipatthana (Establishing of Mindfulness) sutras. In the Southern (Theravada) tradition of Buddhism these sutras are still considered the most important texts on meditation practice. While the spirit of these texts is very much alive and present in the Northern (Mahayana) tradition, the texts are not too well known, and I hope that over time this situation will be rectified. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “If we understand the essence of these two sutras, we will have a deeper vision and more comprehensive grasp of the scriptures classified as Mahayana, just as after we see the roots and the trunk of a tree, we can appreciate its leaves and branches more deeply.” It is time for us to restore these teachings to their proper place in the tradition of meditation practice. From my first introduction to these sutras, their incredible value for asana practice has been apparent to me—lifting the physical practice of asana from a mere preparatory role for meditation into a very real and deep meditation practice itself.
Synonyms for mindfulness include “awareness” and “attention.” Books (many books!) have been written about mindfulness, awareness, or “bare attention,” and some of them make it sound a lot more complicated than it truly is. In fact, you already know what it is: but the problem is you may not believe you know or that it can be so simple! When I was in seminary, I gave a presentation of basic Buddhist teachings of mindfulness practice. I still remember how one of my fellow seminarians came to me afterward and said, “Tell me the truth. It can’t really be as simple as all that, can it? What are you Buddhists holding back?”
Ironically, the difficulty is that it is as simple as that. However, because of our deep desire for something exciting and special in our spiritual life, and our confusion between what’s simple and what’s easy, the whole shebang gets complicated—but it is we ourselves (our minds, specifically) that complicate the issue.
A student is said to have asked the ancient Zen master Ichu, “Please write for me something of great wisdom.” Master Ichu took up his brush and wrote, “Attention.” The student, apparently disappointed, asked, “Is that all?” Ichu wrote, “Attention. Attention.” Now the student became perplexed, even a bit irritated. “That doesn’t seem so deep and profound to me.” In response, Ichu wrote, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” Finally, in frustration, the student asked, “So what does this word attention mean?” Master Ichu replied, “Attention means attention.”
That is why it is said that attention is not a technique, nor is it something you need to attain. You already have the capacity of mindfulness and you practice it constantly—in one way or another. According to abhidharma, the Buddhist “psychological” teachings, the mental factor of attention (manaskara) is universal, which means that we are always giving our attention to something. However, our attention may be “appropriate” (yoniso), as when we are paying full and “bare” attention to the present moment, or it may be inappropriate (ayoniso) , as when we are attentive to something that takes us away from being fully present in the here and now.
Why do the teachings emphasize being fully aware of what is in the present moment? Because that is all that there is! As a theist might say, “God is in the details.” Or as Zen teacher Taizan Maezumi says, “Details are all there are.” If you miss this, you miss it all. Our appointment with life is always in the present moment. If you aren’t here for it, you miss your life. And isn’t that how it feels much of the time? You cannot live in the past. It is gone. You cannot live in the future. It is not yet here. And if you are not paying attention to what is happening right now, you are swept away by the present and lose your life, right here, right now.
In the Bhaddekaratta Sutta the Buddha taught:Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is
in the very here and now,
the practitioner dwells
in stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows
how to dwell in mindfulness
night and day
“one who knows the better way to live alone.”
Someone who “lives alone” in this context is not the secluded monk in the woods but the one who can live in society and not get lost in self-centered thoughts, desires, projections, and judgments. And notice the qualities of stability and freedom, which reminds us of Patanjali’s definition of asana as that posture which is stable and easeful.
Mindfulness—the quality of mind that embodies “bare attention”—is the observing of things as they are, without choosing, without comparing and judging, without evaluating, and without laying or adding any of our projections or expectations onto what is happening. It is the ability to see “just this.” One image used to describe this quality of mind is to imagine awareness to be like the sky. All the thoughts, feelings, and sensations—indeed all our experiences, both physical and psychological—are like clouds passing through the sky. We tend to identify with the clouds of thought, projection, craving, and aversion and ignore the sky. Our practice is to cultivate “big sky mind” and to allow all the changing phenomena to pass through awareness, without being swept away or entangled in any of it.
Bhavana (meditation or development) is the cultivation of this innate quality of mind into a strong, stable, easeful, choiceless, and noninterfering awareness. All the techniques and practices usually taught as meditation are actually techniques to aid in the development of this all-inclusive, open, and spacious quality of mind. The “state” of meditation is therefore not actually something you do but something you simply are. At first, indeed, this “simple” practice is quite difficult. We find ourselves having to continually remind ourselves to remember! It is not easy. But with time, it grows ever more natural and effortless.
In the beginning, great effort is required, and there are many gaps in our awareness. Eventually, just as in learning to become proficient in any skill, such as playing a musical instrument, there is a certain point at which the sense of “me being mindful” disappears and only mindfulness itself is present. Just as with the virtuoso pianist, who knows no separation between himself and his playing—the practice and the playing have become one and the same, and his fingers move with effortless ease and naturalness—we begin to live our lives more simply, easefully, and naturally, because all our actions arise out of this effortless, spacious awareness that just is.
Traditionally, Buddhist meditation or bhavana is said to contain two aspects, but it is the second that is emphasized and distinguishes Buddhist meditation from most other forms of meditation. These two components are shamatha a
nd vipashyana (Pali: samatha and vipassana). And because it is the second aspect that is most emphasized, Buddhist meditation is most commonly known in the West as vipassana—insight or mindfulness meditation. However, even Zen practice, embodies this twofold mental bhavana, although the terminology is not utilized (except in the Vietnamese tradition).
Shamatha literally means “dwelling in tranquility” and is sometimes used as a synonym for concentration, since concentration—or single-pointedness of mind—leads to tranquility, calmness, and ease. Thich Nhat Hanh often refers to shamatha as “stopping,” and he relates the following story about a man and a horse: “The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man, standing alongside the road, shouts, ‘Where are you going?’ and the first man replies, ‘I don’t know! Ask the horse!’” Of course, this is our situation; constantly “on the go,” our habit energy carries us along from one experience to the next. And so, our first practice is to learn how to stop! In order to be able to see clearly, we must first stop and calm our mind—stop the habit energies, stop our forgetfulness and stop our constant running after one thing or another.
Vipashyana, which is most often translated as “special insight” or “clear seeing” into the true nature of things, is the insight that is said to lead to awakening and freedom or liberation. So we see that mindfulness and concentration, the final two limbs of the Buddha’s yogic path, are the two aspects cultivated in Buddhist meditation practice. We might say that our practice to simply to stop and see.
In practice, all meditation cultivates both of these qualities, but there is a true difference in the emphasis and ultimate outcome depending on whether one emphasizes concentration or mindfulness. When we meditate, it is mindfulness that is simply aware of the objects that we will pay attention to and concentrate upon. Concentration is the holding of our attention steady on the chosen object of meditation. And mindfulness is also what notices when concentration falters and our attention wanders.
Concentration is exclusive. It excludes all that is not the object of attention and focuses exclusively on the object of meditation, whether it is a mantra, a visual image, or the breath. It has the quality of a highly focused and powerful laser, which is why it is referred to as “single-pointedness of mind.” To develop really deep concentration, it is helpful to create an environment that is as free from possible distractions as possible. Very deep concentrated mental states are the various jhanas or samadhis that are discussed in the various yogic texts (Hindu as well as Buddhist yogic texts).
Yet these highly concentrated states can become problematic, as the Buddha saw, when they are practiced in order to escape from suffering rather than to realize the total liberation that comes from true insight. They are indeed blissful states, but they are conditioned and impermanent. And if we become attached to them, they become a source of dukkha. The Buddha related that when he came out of these highly concentrated states during his early training, the seeds of lust, aversion, and delusion blossomed once again soon after he experienced sensual contact. We can certainly use these concentrated mental states to find rest and calm. But we do so only in order that, once restored, we can return to our dukkha, observe it, and develop the deep insight and understanding needed to realize freedom.
Mindfulness is inclusive. It excludes nothing. It is the quality of choiceless bare attention. Ordinarily, if you were practicing concentration and a car alarm went off outside your window, you would try to block it out and return to your object of meditation. But if you were practicing the bare attention of mindfulness, when the car alarm went off, you would simply notice it—as well as any hint of irritation or annoyance that arose. Mindfulness observes change itself—the variation in pitch of the car alarm, its silencing, and any associated thoughts that arise.
Whereas concentration is like a laser, mindfulness is like a floodlight, illuminating whatever is there to see. Mindfulness is the more difficult of the two qualities to cultivate because it is not reactive or judgmental. Whatever arises is seen and accepted without interpreting, evaluating, judging, or rejecting. Mindfulness is the ultimate practice of nonaggression, for it asks us not to reject any aspect of our lived experience—even the gross, smelly, and distasteful stuff we would rather ignore or deny. It asks us to accept ourselves just as we are. Not to change or justify or rationalize, but simply to see—and without indulging in guilt. For many of us this can be a tall order. But as we continue to practice, we cultivate compassion along with wisdom—karuna along with prajna—the twin pillars of Buddhism.
As I mentioned above, all meditation uses both concentration and mindfulness. With too much concentration, you may be quite calm and tranquil, but you may as well be made of stone. However, without the calming, centering influence of concentration, too much awareness may result in an overly sensitized state that is akin to that of those individuals who suffer from extreme environmental sensitivities. It can be a severely incapacitating situation, deeply fatiguing. In the realm of meditation, such hypersensitivity would not be terribly conducive to deep penetrating insight.
In all Buddhist traditions, when we first begin to practice meditation, we are instructed in shamatha in order to develop concentration and calm the mind. Many beginners often feel that they are “getting worse” after beginning to meditate, because when they start to concentrate on whatever object their teacher suggests (most often the breath) they find that their minds are very active, jumping all over the map.
In both Buddhist teachings and in the Yoga Upanishads, this tendency of the mind to jump around is referred to as “monkey mind”—and it can be very disconcerting to truly notice our own monkey mind for the first time. And yet, just seeing monkey mind as it is can be viewed as the first fruit of practice.
But if we were to attempt to practice mindfulness without first developing some concentration, it would be impossible to see whatever was arising without getting ensnared in thinking. For instance, if you suddenly noticed anger arising, without concentration to ground your mindfulness, you would probably begin to think about what you were angry about and who you were angry with, and you would actually feed your anger rather than allowing yourself to see it and feel it without getting caught in it, identifying with it and drowning in it. Once you have developed some concentration, then attention and mindfulness can be emphasized. And it is the fruition of mindfulness that leads to a deep insight into reality that is synonymous with liberation: ceto-vimutti, “release of the mind.”
INTERLUDE
CAR ALARM DHARMA
It was the concluding evening of an eight-week course in mindfulness meditation, and I had just finished ringing the bell to signal the beginning of our sitting meditation. Before the final reverberation of the bell, just outside the room in which we were sitting, a car alarm went off. Since car alarms are not an unusual occurrence in Brooklyn, I just observed the sound and stayed with the breath.
After a few minutes had passed, however, concern for my students began to arise in my mind. I began to think, “Great! The last class and this has to happen.” As the minutes passed, my thoughts grew more agitated. I worried that the students were having a “disappointing” experience and were probably getting frustrated. We had never sat for longer than twenty minutes in class before, and now, on the last day, we were sitting for thirty-five minutes and this car alarm just wasn’t stopping.
Then, suddenly, I saw what I was doing. I was running all sorts of scenarios in my mind and worrying about what their experience was or might be. And I wasn’t applying attention to what was happening right there and then. I was caught. So I let go of the thinking and sat for the remaining twenty minutes and heard the car alarm’s pitch waver over time as the battery died out. The sound was inconstant, continuously changing in pitch and volume. As I observed this, my mind grew calm and a lightness pervaded my entire being.
About three minutes from the end of the meditation period, the battery gave up the ghost
and the alarm stopped. The silence was deafening. With the cessation of the sound, there was a stillness that seemed to pervade the universe. Mind seemed to hover, completely open and receptive, with no content and no form.
After I rang the bell to signal the end of the meditation period, I learned something else from my students. All of them had had similar experiences. When the alarm first went off, they felt minor irritation and annoyance. As the sound continued, some of them began to experience real anger, and they created scenarios of the terrible and obviously obnoxious owner of the car and his social deviance. They were running whole stories about just what kind of man (interestingly enough, they all assumed a man was responsible) could be so thoughtless of others. Some of the other students were simply obsessed with their own irritation, fueling their experience with aversion until they found themselves feeling victimized and powerless.
And then all of them, at one point in their sitting, realized what they were doing and were able to simply let it all go. They said they remembered: “Mindfulness requires no conditions. We are simply mindful of whatever arises.” So they began to hear the sound free of their reactivity, and they saw that it wasn’t something that stood outside themselves. They heard what I heard, and they felt the same lightness of spirit, a calm and deep ease in the midst of the “sound and fury,” as one said. They found a taste of freedom. Freedom from their own reactivity and conditioning. They were, for the most part, a bit astonished by their own discovery, as they had all begun the course as complete beginners and had suffered every distraction as a failure on their part. More than one student reported that they would never have believed that such serenity and acceptance was possible. In fact, since the whole experience had seemed to verify what I had been speaking about throughout the course—that it is possible to let go of our conditioned reactivity and be free where we are—several of them half suspected me of setting it all up!
Mindfulness Yoga Page 9