As a result of the calming of the body (kaya samskara) which is the fruit of the fourth practice of anapanasati and mindfulness of the body (the first establishment), joy naturally arises. The fifth practice of anapanasati, which introduces us to mindfulness of feelings (the second establishment), allows us to become even more fully aware of this joy, without getting carried away by it. To begin to move the body in asana, sloughing off the stresses and difficulties of our day, can be a wonderfully joyful experience. Joy helps us to come alive, to open our hearts. Think of how an exuberant, joyful child reaches his arms up and out to the sky. Take your arms up and keep your fingers together. Then spread them wide. Go back and forth a few times and notice, if you can, the changes you experience physically in the shoulders, upper back, and chest, and psychologically in your heart. This is the openness that joy can nurture. And this heartfelt openness is necessary if we are to be able to stay awake and aware to all that life brings.
But joy, the Buddha taught, is not enough. We need to go beyond joy to happiness, the sixth practice of anapanasati. The word translated as happiness is sukha, and as you might have guessed, it is the opposite of dukkha. Sukha is the “good space,” the axle aligned in the center of the wheel, balanced and harmonious. It is also often translated as “ease” or “comfort.” While joy remains—like the exuberant child, a bit overexcited—happiness, according to the Buddha, is the calmness of satisfaction, satiation.
The example the Buddha used to explain the difference is that of a man dying of thirst in the desert. Suddenly he sees an oasis with a pool of water in the midst of some trees. Joy and excitement arises and he races to the water, throws himself down at the water’s edge, and scoops up the cool refreshing water. Until the very last moment before he actually drinks the water, joy is present. But once he has finally taken in the water and slaked his thirst, he is happy, and the stimulating excitement of joy is gone.
With the arising of the peace of happiness, the next two practices of mindfulness of feelings turn our attention to all feelings that arise, whether produced by the body or the mind. The term mental formations includes all feelings, perceptions, and mental phenomena. However, in the practice of the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, the mental formations referred to within the Second Establishment are primarily feelings, although perceptions do indeed enter into the equation since perceptions condition many feelings. However, perceptions, along with the remaining mental formations including thinking, imagining, reasoning, and so forth, are in fact the primary subject of the Third Establishment of Mindfulness. As our concentration develops, the ability to remain mindful of even difficult mental formations allows for the calming of the mind and body to arise. At this point, body, breath, and mind become unified in peace and calm.
When we broaden our approach to the Second Establishment of Mindfulness, the mindful observation of feelings, we find that the Buddha meant something quite specific when he referred to feelings. The word translated as “feelings” is the Pali word vedana. Another common translation of this word is “sensation,” and this, along with the following quote from the Satipatthana Sutta, gives us a clue as to just what is meant by the Buddha when he encouraged us to observe feelings:Whenever a practitioner has a pleasant feeling, he is aware, “I am experiencing a pleasant feeling.” Whenever he has an unpleasant feeling, he is aware, “I am experiencing an unpleasant feeling.” Whenever he experiences a feeling which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, he is aware, “I am experiencing a neutral feeling.”
We in the West often use the words feeling and emotion interchangeably. But in the Buddha’s sense, here we see that feelings or sensations precede emotions. The Second Establishment of Mindfulness concerns itself with sensations, while emotions are more the province of the Third Establishment. Of course, it isn’t that cut-and-dry in our actual experience, and there is a lot of overlap. But the instructions are useful for helping establish what the emphasis in our practice should be at this stage of anapanasati.
Feelings or sensations are of three types. They can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. These feelings or sensations are what arise through the contact our senses make with the world. They are extremely important to become aware of, because they condition how we act and how we perceive our relationship to our experience of the world.
The “sense doors” of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and mind continually make contact with sense objects that stimulate the arising of a feeling or sensation. Our problem is that we are usually completely unaware of this feeling because it arises so quickly. And because we are unaware of it, a whole drama of emotion, action, and reaction can arise—all conditioned by the initial feeling. This is why slowing down is so helpful. This process of reactivity is so quick—nearly instantaneous—that we remain blind to it unless we take the time to slow down and stop.
As the Buddha pointed out, it is these feelings that condition our whole world. We spend huge amounts of energy trying to create and prolong pleasant feelings, we push away and destroy unpleasant feelings, and we become immured within or oblivious to the neutral feelings. This grasping, aversion, and ignorance are the three roots of suffering that can taint the experience we have of life itself (thus they are also called the three poisons). It’s important to develop mindfulness of feelings because when we are not mindful, we become slaves or automatons; the feelings give rise to moods, emotions, perceptions, ideas, and addictions that lead to unskillful behavior and suffering.
For instance, I could say that I enjoy chocolate. I might even say on occasion that I crave chocolate. But in fact, through practicing mindful chocolate-eating, I have discovered for myself that my craving was actually for the sensation that arose when chocolate made contact with my tongue. This little example may seem obvious or terribly mundane, but in fact it opened up a profound realization for me. The pleasant feeling that arises when chocolate comes into contact with my tongue is actually quite fleeting. By the third or fourth bite, the intensity is greatly reduced. The pleasantness is quickly tinged and often replaced by the unpleasantness of dissatisfaction. And then craving for something else comes up. With this awareness, maybe I decide that it isn’t worth as much of my my effort, money, and caloric consequences to acquire and eat chocolate as often as I had in the past.
None of this means, of course, that I will not ever again indulge in chocolate. But what it does mean is that never again will I look to chocolate to provide anything more than a pleasant taste sensation. I can eat less and be more satisfied because I am no longer looking to chocolate (and with continued practice, any impermanent phenomena) for what it cannot provide. This is another taste of the freedom that the practice of mindfulness engenders.
Years ago, there was a popular country and western song called “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.” Without mindfulness, we get caught in looking for freedom from suffering in all the wrong places and ways. And all these unskillful ways through which we attempt to lessen our suffering—drugs, sex, money, power, war—have their root in feelings. So if we can see the feelings at their origination, and if we can see them clearly for what they are, we can free ourselves from blindly reacting to them. We can free ourselves from the suffering caused by greed, hatred, and ignorance. Without awareness of feelings, we merely react. With awareness, we can choose how to respond. We can be free to act with love, compassion, and understanding.
The seventh and eighth practices of anapanasati encourage us to become mindful of our mental formations and, through our mindfulness, calm them. While practicing, this means becoming aware of a feeling as it arises as well as any reactivity to the feeling. For example, lying on the floor, completely relaxed, you can become mindful of the pleasantness of that experience and of any tendency to try to hold on to or prolong this pleasant feeling. If the feeling as you lie there is neutral—neither particularly pleasant nor unpleasant—you may begin to become aware of how the mind moves away from “nothing happening” and begins to create and get carried away in
fantasy and daydream, or maybe even sleepiness! If an itch begins to arise as you lie there, you notice the unpleasantness as well as the strong urge to eliminate the itch. When standing in WARRIOR TWO, you may become aware of an unpleasant sensation in your shoulders. Notice too your resistance and aversion to the sensation. Can you begin to see that this reactivity itself is the cause of much of your discomfort? It becomes ever more clear through practice that while the sensation may be uncomfortable or even painful, most of the anguish and suffering we experience comes from our resistance to feeling the sensation.
In the face of unpleasant feelings, it is all too easy to cut oneself off from the experience, but this in itself creates tension in the body and mind. We make the feeling into an enemy and fight against it. Instead, we can see into the feeling, becoming one with it. This is why the Buddha said we must “observe the feelings in the feelings.” We do not stand outside of them, but rather breathe into them, soften into them. We see that we are the feelings. It isn’t really a matter of “becoming one with them” because they are who we are—at that moment. And yet, we can learn not to identify with them as “self.” When mindfulness is not present, feelings proliferate and condition a whole chain of mentality that ends in a strong, ironclad sense of self. When mindfulness is there, the feeling is no longer all that there is. Awareness itself changes the whole situation. We can now see the impersonal forces at work. We see that all these states are not truly “us” but simply phenomena arising and constantly changing into something else and passing away. Thich Nhat Hanh refers to the “rivers of feelings.”
In a yoga class, standing in WARRIOR TWO, at this moment I am the sensation in my shoulder, the deep breath that continues to flow in and out, the teacher’s voice telling me to hold the asana for three more breaths, the slight groan of resistance that slips from my lips, and the music playing in the background. And in the next moment I am something else. “I” am always whatever and all that is happening.
I hope you can see that what is occurring with this second tetrad of practices is merely a deepening of what has gone before. In one sense, it’s always the same instruction, and in another sense it’s different. The practice of mindfulness is simply to pay attention to whatever is happening. All of it. Nothing is rejected. The motto, once again, is “Accept everything, hold on to nothing.” And conscious breathing (anapanasati) is the fertilizer and the vehicle for maintaining mindfulness. So, in the above example from a recent yoga class, there was mindfulness of the sensation as an unpleasant sensation, mindfulness of any tendency to want to turn away, and mindfulness of the breath that enabled me to stay with the feeling and move in even closer. All of this is nonconceptual in the moment. I wasn’t thinking of “doing” anything.
But then, of course, I lost the mindfulness for a moment and all sorts of thoughts came in: “This woman is a sadist. How long is she going to keep us here? I can’t do this. I won’t do this.” And then mindfulness arises again and all of it subsides. The seventh and eight practices of anapanasati, awareness of mental formations and the calming of the mental formations, intermingle. I do not force the thoughts from my mind. What actually seems to happen is that when I become mindful of the thoughts and my breath, the thoughts simply subside.
When I return to the sensation, I simply pay attention. There is no trying to make it be anything other than it is. As I have mentioned earlier, when we first begin to practice, it may seem to be “I’m paying attention,” but with continued practice even that self-consciousness begins to be seen through. “Right Samadhi” means that there is no separation. There is just awareness—but no one who is aware!
Sometimes my students ask me why anyone “would want not to feel.” This shows that they haven’t really understood the teachings of the Buddha. From my readings of the sutras, it is clear to me that the Buddha was a man of deep feeling. The evocations of him pausing to look at the sunset, expressing his pleasure at its beauty, or turning to look back at a village he knew he would never see again are heart wrenching. But it is also very clear that he wasn’t caught up by his feelings. They did not cause him to suffer, because he really, profoundly knew their true nature.
I’d go as far as to say that unless we are mindful of our feelings, we actually do not fully experience them. The Buddha’s yoga practice encourages us to go ever more deeply into the feelings. Typically, we tend to think that we have two strategies in the face of strong feelings. We can somehow try to suppress them, but we know that this is ultimately not healthy. Or we can express them, and all too often unthinkingly dump and rant and cause all sorts of mischief and pain to others and ourselves. We now know that merely expressing every impulse that arises is also not healthy. The Buddha offered us the third option of simply knowing, just experiencing the feeling. Rather than trying to get rid of an unpleasant feeling, we can know it by actually and truly feeling it.
And if we can truly know the feeling, feel it fully, with awareness, we can be free from having it condition our mind and our relationship to the world. It isn’t the feelings that we become free from, but the conditioning they create. We are no longer “driven” by them. Otherwise, before we are really even aware of the initial feeling, a whole train of mental activity including ideation, projection, interpretation, and imagination overtakes us and we are drowned or swept away, losing our very life in dispersion and ignorance.
In fact, while I’ve spent most of my time and words on pleasant and unpleasant feelings, when we begin to seriously examine our experience, we see that most of our feelings are actually quite neutral. We tend to fixate on the “sensational” aspects of pleasant and unpleasant feelings, and remain blind to the vast majority of feelings that are neither. What this means, of course, is that we remain blind or ignorant of the vast majority of our life! If it doesn’t clobber us over the head, we remain unaware.
An example of this is a student who tells me her back is “killing her.” With questioning and deeper exploration, we discover together that the painful sensation is actually limited to an area of about three square inches in her lower right lumbar. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything happening throughout the rest of her back at all. Yet, her fixation on the unpleasant sensation made her lose sight of the reality. And when I encourage her to really go into the pain, she reports that it isn’t something solid and unchanging but in fact is in constant flux. Its boundaries are soft and diffuse; the sensations ebb and flow and change in quality almost continuously. This is not to minimize and make light of her pain, but simply to point out how we fixate on a feeling and immediately make the feelings into an “entity” that we then attempt to eliminate or separate off from ourselves. In growing intimate with the sensations, she was able to relax her resistance to the feeling, and her suffering, though not all of the pain, was greatly reduced.
Thich Nhat Hanh points out that the “neutral” feelings can in fact become the seeds of increasing joy and happiness. An example he gives is when we have a toothache, we are very clear that to not have a toothache would be very pleasant. But when we do not have a toothache, we do not touch the joy of having a “nontoothache.” This is a gentle reminder that the conditions for happiness are right here, and what we need to do is simply become mindful of them. Returning to our breath, opening to what is happening, we can be free where we are.
Please remember that any and all asanas can be approached from any or all of the Establishments of Mindfulness. Sequence One above, for instance, can be practiced with the focus on feelings. The following sequence I have created does offer what I hope will be an opportunity to explore more intense feelings, primarily from practicing longer holdings, but there are some more challenging postures included too.
The point of this practice is not to torture yourself. Honor your ability and physical condition, but do challenge yourself, with respect and compassion. Let the sensations be your teacher as you maintain mindfulness of your breath and of the sensations, as well as your reactivity. But there are no points for
being macho about it.
We begin practice because we aspire to some goal: a more flexible and relaxed body, a calmer mind, or freedom from suffering. It would be disingenuous not to admit to that. But the best thing we can do with that goal is to shelve it and turn our attention to what is happening now. In this sense, we walk the path, create the path, and complete the path, moment by moment, breath by breath.
MINDFULNESS YOGA: SEQUENCE TWO
THIS SECOND SEQUENCE of Mindfulness Yoga follows the second group of four exercises relating to the Second Establishment of Mindfulness, feelings, as described in The Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing.
As in the introduction to the first sequence, I suggest you read through the entire practice first before doing it so that you can get an understanding about how to work with mindfulness of the feelings in the feelings. If you are a beginner to the practice of yoga-asana, or you merely wish to practice a shorter sequence, you may want to skip the asterisked asanas.
Again, the timing and breath suggestions are just that—suggestions. Based on the average of 15 breaths a minute, the entire sequence can take anywhere from 45 minutes to over an hour and a half, depending on your rate of breathing, if you follow the minimum suggested breath repetitions.
Mindfulness Yoga Page 16