Mindfulness is one of
the controlling faculties (indriya), which creates
success in meditation. If it's not fully understood, and
fully practiced, one can waste a lot of time in one's
meditation. I will now explain the quality of
mindfulness.
Setting Up the
"Gatekeeper" Inside
I like to use a simile
for mindfulness of a person who's guarding a door or
guarding a gate. The simile of the gatekeeper to
describe mindfulness was used by the Buddha (An VII,
63). For mindfulness is not just being aware, being
awake, or being fully conscious of what's occurring
around you. There is also that aspect of mindfulness
that guides the awareness on to specific areas remembers
the instructions and initiates a response. For example,
suppose you were a wealthy person with a gatekeeper
guarding your mansion. One evening, before going to the
Buddhist Temple to practice meditation, you tell the
gatekeeper to be mindful of burglars. When you return
home, your loving-kindness suddenly vanishes when you
find your house has been burgled. "Didn't I tell you to
be mindful!", you scream at the gatekeeper. "But I was
mindful", pleads the gatekeeper. "I gave attention to
the burglars as they broke in, and I was clearly
attentive as they walked out with your digital T.V. and
state-of-the-art C.D. system. I mindfully watched them
go in several times, and my mind did not wander as I
observed them going out with all your antique furniture
and priceless jewelry…
" Would you be happy
with such a gatekeeper's explanation of mindfulness? A
wise gatekeeper knows that mindfulness is more than bare
attention. A wise gatekeeper has to remember the
instructions and perform them with diligence. If he sees
a thief trying to break in then he must stop the
burglar, or else call in the police.
In the same way, a wise
meditator must do more than just give bare attention to
whatever comes in and goes out of the mind. The wise
meditator must remember the instructions and act on them
with diligence. For instance, the Buddha gave the
instruction of the 6th Factor of the Noble Eightfold
Path, "Right Effort". When wise meditator’s
practicing mindfulness observe an unwholesome state
trying to "break in", they try to stop the defilement,
and if the unwholesome state does slip in, they try to
evict it. Unwholesome states such as sexual desire or
anger are like burglars, sweet-talking con artists, who
will rob you of your peace, wisdom and happiness. There
are, then, these two aspects of mindfulness: the aspect
of mindfulness of awareness and the aspect of
mindfulness of remembering the instructions.
In the Buddhist
Suttas, the same Pali word "Sati" is used for
both awareness and memory. A person who has got good
mindfulness is also a person who has got a good memory,
because these two things go together. If we pay
attention to what we are doing, if we are fully aware of
what we are doing, this awareness creates an imprint in
our mind. It does become easy to remember. For example
suppose you're in danger. Suppose you come very close to
having a serious car accident. Because of this danger,
your mindfulness would become extremely strong and
sharp. And because of that sharpness of mindfulness in a
potential accident, you would remember it very easily,
very clearly. In fact when you went back home to sleep
that night you might not be able to forget it. It might
keep coming back up again and again. This shows the
connection between awareness and memory. The more you
are paying attention to what you're doing, the better
you remember it. Again, these two things go together,
awareness and memory.
If we have gatekeepers
who have developed awareness, they will pay attention to
the instructions that they are given. If they pay full
attention to the instructions that are given, they will
be able to remember them and act on them diligently.
This is how we should practice mindfulness. We should
always give ourselves clear instructions with full
attention so that we will remember what it is we are
supposed to be doing. The teacher's job is also to give
clear instructions to help us in guiding the mind. That
is why I teach in these very clear stages: stage 1,
stage 2, stage 3, etc. When we make the training in
meditation methodical, when each stage is very clear,
then it becomes possible to give our "gatekeepers" clear
instructions.
Instructing the
"Gatekeeper"
At the beginning of the
meditation when you start stage 1, you should remind
yourself that there's a gatekeeper inside -- that which
can be aware of what's happening and can choose where to
put that awareness. Tell that gatekeeper something like:
"Now is the time to be aware of the present moment."
"Now is the time to be aware of the present moment."
"Now is the time to be aware of the present moment."
Tell the gatekeeper three times. You know that if you
have to repeat something, you're much more likely to
remember it. Maybe when you were at school, if you
couldn't spell a word, you'd have to write it out a
hundred times. Then you'd never forget it after that.
This is because when you repeat something, it takes more
effort. It's harder to do. You have to force the mind a
little bit more, and mindfulness has to become stronger.
What's easy to do doesn't take much mindfulness. So make
it a little bit difficult for yourself by repeating
instructions such as: "I will be aware of the present
moment." "I will be aware of the present moment." "I
will be aware of the present moment." Again, say that to
yourself three times.
Now with the gatekeeper,
like any other servant or worker, you don't have to keep
giving the same instruction every second or two. In this
way of developing mindfulness just give that instruction
to the gatekeeper three times at the beginning, then let
the gatekeeper get on with the task. Trust the
gatekeeper to know what they are doing.
Instruct your gatekeeper
in the same manner as you would instruct a taxi driver.
You just tell them clearly where you want to go, then
you sit back, relax and enjoy the journey. You trust the
driver knows what they are doing. But imagine what would
happen if you kept telling the driver every few seconds
"Go slower… Go faster… Turn left here… Now go into third
gear… Look in your mirror Mate… Keep to the left…"
Before you completed a few hundred yards of your
journey, the taxi driver would rebel, get angry and
throw you out of the taxi. No wonder then, when
meditator’s keep giving instructions to their gatekeeper
every few seconds, their minds rebel and refuse to
co-operate.
So just let the mind get
on with the job of being in the present moment. Do not
keep interfering with it. Give the mind clear
instructions and then let go and watch. If you establish
mindfulness in this way, with these clear instructions,
you will find that your mind is like everyone else's
mind. That is, once it's given clear instructions, it'll
tend to do what it's told. It will obviously make
mistakes now and again. It will sometimes not go
straight to the present moment immediately. Or sometimes
it will go to the present moment and then wander off
again. However, the instruction, which you’ve given, it
will mean that as soon as it starts to wander off into
the past or the future there is something, which
remembers. Mindfulness remembers the instructions, and
mindfulness puts the attention back into the present
moment. For you, the onlooker, it's something that is
automatic. You don't need to choose to do it. It happens
automatically, because mindfulness has been instructed
in the same way that a gatekeeper, once instructed, does
all the work. You don't have to give any more
instructions. You can just watch the gatekeeper do the
work. This is trusting the mind, knowing the mind,
knowing its nature and working with its nature.
I encourage you to play
around with the mind and know its capabilities. One of
the first things that I was told on my first meditation
retreat as a student was that there is no need to set
the alarm for getting up in the morning. (Actually I
think we were getting up at five o'clock in the morning
at that retreat. It was a "soft retreat".) The Teacher
said, to just determine your waking time, and to tell
yourself before going to bed at night, "I'm going to get
up at five to five." (That was just five minutes before
someone was going to ring the bell.) "Don't set your
alarms." That was the first time I ever tried that. It
worked every morning. I told myself very clearly and
carefully as I went to sleep, "I will get up at five to
five." I didn't need to look at my clock or ask, "Is it
five to five yet?" I could actually trust the mind, and
when I woke up and opened my eyes and looked at my
clock, it was five minutes to five-give or take two
minutes. It's incredible how the mind works. I don't
know how it did it, how it remembered, but it did. It
works in exactly the same way if you give clear
instructions, if you program your mind: "Now is the time
to watch the present moment." " Be in the present
moment." "Be in the present moment." That's all you need
to do. Then you can let the mind do the work.
It's also important when
you're instructing the gatekeeper to know not just what
you're supposed to be doing but also what you're not
supposed to be doing -- in other words to know the
dangers on the path. It's important to know the dangers
as well as the goal because this enables the gatekeeper
to know who is allowed in and also who is not allowed
in. They need to be very clear about both types of
"people." It's not enough to just have a list of who's
allowed in. If the gatekeeper hasn't got a list of who's
not allowed in, then they could easily make mistakes.
The Gatekeeper at Stage
One
Now in the first of
these stages of meditation, Present Moment Awareness,
the goal -- who's allowed in -- is just anything in the
present moment. It can be the sound of a bird. It can be
the sound of a truck in the distance. It can be the wind
going past. It can be someone coughing or banging the
door. It doesn't matter. If it is something happening
now then it is part of the present moment awareness. It
can be the breath. It can be a Samadhi Nimitta.
It can be a Jhana. That's all part of the present
moment. So be very clear of what's allowed in and
welcome that.
Again one should also be
very clear of what's not allowed in. What are the
dangers to present moment awareness? Those dangers are
any thought, any perception, any view of the past or the
future. That is, any looking "back" or any looking
"forward". It's important to know those dangers, to
articulate them very clearly. Sometimes when I make my
resolutions I actually include the danger in the
resolution. "I'll be aware of the present moment, but
I'll not go off into the past or the future." "I'll be
aware of the present moment, but I'll disregard the past
and the future." "I'll be aware of the present moment,
and I'll disregard the past and the future." Saying that
to oneself, instructing the gatekeeper about the dangers
as well as the goals, helps mindfulness do its task.
What happens then is that when the dangers to that stage
arise, mindfulness knows, "This is not what I'm supposed
to be doing". Mindfulness discards that past or that
future thought or perception. This is what happens. As I
have been stating this is the nature of the mind if you
program it properly.
The Gatekeeper at Stage
Two
In the second stage of
Silent Present Moment Awareness, one has the goal of
silence in the present, and the danger is inner chatter,
inner thought. So one should tell the mind that's what
it's got to avoid; that's the enemy; that's the danger.
You tell the mind very clearly at the beginning of that
stage: "I'll be silently aware in the present moment and
will discard all inner chatter." "I'll be silently aware
in the present moment. I will discard all chatter." "I
will be silently aware in the present moment and will
discard all inner chatter." That way you establish
mindfulness. You give it a chance to work because you've
instructed it very clearly.
The Gatekeeper at Stage
Three
In the third stage,
Silent Present Moment Awareness of the Breath, one
instructs the mind three times to be aware of the breath
in the present moment. "I will be aware of the breath in
the present moment and will discard all other
perceptions and thoughts." What are the dangers? It's
everything other than the breath, which includes: the
sounds outside, the feelings in the body, people
coughing, thoughts about anything else, lunch or dinner,
or whatever. Everything else other than the breath is a
danger. So one should tell oneself: "I will be aware of
the breath in the present moment and discard all other
perceptions or thoughts." "I will be aware of the breath
in the present moment and discard all other perceptions
and thoughts." "I will be aware of the breath in the
present moment and discard all other perceptions and
thoughts." Again, having told the mind very clearly both
what it is supposed to be doing and not doing, you find
you can let the mind do its work. One just looks on.
When a thought other than the breath comes up, when
you're perceiving say the sound of a lawnmower outside,
straight away the mind knows it's not supposed to be
doing this and it turns away automatically. One is
training the mind in mindfulness. It's fascinating to
watch the mind when it is well trained. It does what it
has been told without having to tell it again. Because
it's already been told, it remembers the instructions.
It knows what it's doing and the meditation becomes
smooth and has the appearance of effortlessness.
The meditation is not
effortless though. You're putting in the effort but at
the right times, at the times when it's really going to
bear fruit. In just the same way as growing a tree.
There are times when you put effort in and times when
you let things be. You plant the seed in the ground.
Then you water it and fertilize it. But most of the
time, when you're growing a tree, your job is just to
guard it to make sure that nothing interferes with the
process. The seed has got the instructions; it just
needs to be given the chance. In the same way don't keep
interfering with the mind. Don't keep prodding it and
pushing it and telling it to do things, because
otherwise after a while it will just rebel. "Leave me
alone. Look, I'm trying to do my job. Get out of the
way," says the mind. And if you don't leave the mind
alone quickly, your meditation's shot!
The Gatekeeper at Stage
Four
In the fourth stage of
the meditation, Full Sustained Attention on the Breath,
mindfulness is to be told to be aware of the whole
breath in every moment and not to allow other things to
intrude on this smooth, continuous awareness of the
breath. "I shall be aware of the whole breath,
continually and just disregard anything other than the
breath in every moment." "I shall be aware of the whole
breath continually and disregard everything else." " I
shall be aware of the whole breath continually and
disregard anything else." If you instruct the mind very
carefully and clearly, you're giving mindfulness a
chance. You only have to tell yourself the message three
times at the beginning and just see what happens.
If you've got a very
forgetful type of mindfulness, in other words if you
give yourself these instructions and after one or two
minutes you find you're just drifting off to "Goodness
knows where", there are two possible reasons. One, you
didn't instruct yourself carefully or clearly enough as
to what you're supposed to be doing; or two, you really
have got very weak mindfulness. If you really have weak
mindfulness then every three or four minutes you should
repeat the instructions. There's no need to repeat the
instructions every ten or fifteen seconds. Repeating of
the instructions as often as that causes a disturbance
in meditation, which never gives meditation a chance to
work and which eventually just gives rise to
restlessness and despair.
You should give yourself
the instructions very carefully, and you'll find you
will remember them. So little by little you develop
mindfulness. You will notice that this thing we call
mindfulness starts off with a huge territory to be aware
of: the present moment. There's a huge amount of things
you can be conscious of in the present moment. Then it's
developed and refined down bit by bit. Instead of
anything in the present moment, it becomes that which is
silent in the present moment, discarding all that
belongs to chatter and thought. Then instead of just
silence in the present moment, everything is discarded
other than the silent awareness of the breath in the
present moment, just awareness of the "in-breath," and
the "out-breath". Then everything is discarded other
than the full awareness of the breath, from the very
beginning of the in-breath to the end of the in-breath,
from the very beginning of the out-breath to the end of
the out-breath. The Diagram in Chapter Three, "The Basic
Method of Meditation: Part Two" presents this
progression in graphic form. You may want to go back and
take a look at it.
Samádhi -- Sustained
Awareness on Just One Thing
The difference between
Stage Three and Stage Four, awareness of the breath and
full awareness of the breath, is that for awareness of
the breath you just have to notice part of each
in-breath and part of each out-breath. Once you've
noticed part of the in-breath then the mind can go
wandering off somewhere else, but it has to be "home"
again in time to catch the next out-breath. Once it's
seen the breath going out, then it can go off again and
observe other things, until it has to come home again to
catch the breath going in again. Awareness still has
places where it can go. It's still got some "width". It
is tied to the breath, but on a long leash. You can, at
this third stage, be aware of other things as well as
the breath. But for full awareness of the breath you
need to completely lock the awareness into the breathing
and be aware of nothing else. That's why that fourth
stage is so important in this meditation. It's where you
really grab hold of your meditation object. You have
continuous awareness with it. The awareness here is
refined onto one small area of existence, just your
breath. This is what we're doing with awareness. We're
restricting it. Instead of allowing it to go all over
the place, we're focusing it in. And it's with the
focusing in of awareness that awareness starts to become
strong. It's like using a magnifying glass to start a
fire. It's concentrating all the energies onto one
thing. This ability to sustain the mindfulness, to
sustain the awareness, to sustain the attention, is
called Samadhi. A good definition of Samadhi
is: "Sustaining your attention on one thing". No need to
call it "concentration", because concentration misses so
much of what is really important in the meaning of
Samadhi.
Samádhi is the
ability to sustain attention on one thing, and many
people can do that in their lives. Take for example a
surgeon performing an operation. I've talked with
surgeons, and they tell me that sometimes they spend
hour’s just on one operation. They're on their feet all
the time, but they say they never feel tired because
they have to sustain their attention on the end of their
knife, or scalpel. If they don't, the patient might die.
Just one little mistake, one lapse of mindfulness and
their patient can die. They can get sued or lose their
jobs for killing their patients. Surgeons performing
operations have quite a lot of samádhi. They sustain
their attention on what they're doing. Standing there
they don't feel any pains or aches in their legs because
all their attention is on the end of their knife.
Surgeons can get into states of Samadhi because
they have to be right there in every moment. It's
difficult at first, but once they get used to it, it
actually becomes very pleasant. There's only one thing
in the world that they're concerned with -- just this
part of that operation which is happening now. This
example tells us an important message about samádhi. The
message is this: if it's really important, you can do
it.
Looking for the Dangers
in the Meditation Object
I like to teach
Samadhi by urging the student not only to emphasize
the importance of the meditation object at each stage,
but as I've said before to combine this sense of
importance with a wariness of the dangers to the
meditation object as well. With each of the stages,
always know the danger -- the enemy to the goal of that
particular stage. Again at Stage One the enemy is the
past or the future. At Stage Two it's inner chattering.
At Stage Three observing things other than the breath.
Whatever the enemy is, see if you can identify that as
the danger to that stage of the meditation.
For example, if the
enemy is the thinking mind, then the danger is
insinuating thought, which creeps up on you and then
grabs hold of you like a python. Once the python has
it's coils around you, then you are lost. Remember that
simile of the snake given in Chapter Five and be alert
to the danger. As I also mentioned in that chapter, if
you've lost quite a few points from your driving license
in the last few months because of radar traps, you know
that radar traps are a big danger to you. It means that
when driving you become very mindful of the speed
limits. If something is a danger to you, you become very
mindful of it. Whatever it is that is taking away your
success at meditation, identify it. Identify the main
danger for you in each of these stages.
For example suppose you
repeat to yourself three times, "I'll be silently aware
of the present moment and not get involved in thinking".
At the end of that you may want to become more precise
and say to yourself, "The 'snake' I've got to really be
concerned about is thoughts about food." Whatever your
particular "snake" is, keep a lookout for it. Be wary of
it. If you instruct yourself at the beginning what your
particular "snake" is and you instruct yourself clearly,
intently, then you will find that part of your
mindfulness throughout your meditation will always be on
the lookout for that which is a danger to your success.
Many of the problems in
meditation do not originate at the beginning of the
meditation period. They creep into your meditation
somewhere in the middle. I like to give the following
little technique to new meditator's. I tell them: "Just
breathe in and breathe out three times and watch every
breath. Just three breaths that's all." Now most new
meditator’s can do that without any problems whatsoever.
They can watch three breaths -- breathing in, breathing
out, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in,
breathing out -- with full awareness. Then I say: "Now
just do that for not three breaths but three hundred
breaths. Do it for a whole hour." Of course they can't
do it. Why can we do three breaths but can't do three
hundred breaths? The reason is we can start out without
any problems and with full awareness but we cannot
sustain that awareness. These "snakes", these problems,
they creep in usually after we've begun meditation. When
you begin meditation it can be very clear. Yet when the
bell goes you may ask, "Wow where did that hour go"? You
were snoozing, or you were just thinking about so many
different things. You can start out watching the breath
and you can finish up thinking about your holidays
overseas. Somehow, somewhere the "snakes" come in. Or if
you'd rather, the "radar trap's" got you. So you need to
tell yourself what your main problem is and to "psyche
yourself up" to do something about it.
If you've been
meditating long enough, you know your problems; the
things that you've really got to look out for. Psyche
yourself up, by saying, "Look out for this one". For
example, if it's giving orders that's your big problem
say, "Watch out for that one". Really watch out for it.
Then when you're meditating, you'll find that when an
order is about to be given you will spot it coming. You
sidestep the "snake" before it gets its coils around
you. You slam on the brakes before the "speed camera"
flashes. You've avoided it because you've seen it
coming. This is where mindfulness starts to really kick
in and become very sharp and very powerful. One learns
to sidestep the dangers. You've given clear
instructions, sidestepped the dangers, and the
meditation really starts to become deep. Mindfulness
then does become the controlling faculty of your
meditation. It's one thing to define what mindfulness
is, but here are clear instructions on how to be
mindful, how to set it up, how to program yourself so
you are fully mindful.
Arousing Energy
Of course another factor
needed for mindfulness is energy. In each of these
stages you need energy, and the way that energy is
aroused is by learning to put everything you have into
what you're doing now. Don't keep any thing back for the
next moment. It's one of the mistakes, which people make
-- especially with mental energy. They think, "Well if I
really push myself hard now, if I put a lot of energy
into this moment, I'll have nothing left for the next
moment". It doesn't work that way with the mind. You
actually arouse energy. You initiate energy. The more
energy you put into this moment, the more you have for
the next moment, and the more you've got for the moment
afterwards.
With mental energy you
actually build up the force. With physical energy it is
the opposite. You've only got a certain amount, a
certain store of physical energy. So if you use some up
now, you haven't got as much for later on. With mental
energy, there is a limitless store, and if you put a lot
of energy into what you are doing right now, you'll find
the next moment, the next five minutes, the next hour or
whatever, you're really awake and very alert. You're
sharp because you've built up that energy. That's why
Ajahn Chah, my Teacher, used to say that whatever you're
doing put a hundred percent effort into it. If it's
listening to a talk, put one hundred percent effort into
listening. If you're sitting meditation, put one hundred
percent effort into sitting. If you're walking, put one
hundred percent effort into walking. If you're eating
your lunch, put one hundred percent effort into eating
your lunch. If you're resting, put one hundred percent
effort into resting. Really sleep as perfectly as you
can. Whatever you do, put one hundred percent effort
into it. Then you find that you build up energy. You're
awake you're alive. If, however, you think, "Oh, I don't
really need to put energy into this sit", then you get
dull. You don't enjoy it so much.
Even put energy into
eating your food when eating. See how much you can
notice of what you are doing. Then you'll enjoy it more!
What's the danger to mindfulness when you are eating
food? Usually it's thinking about something else. Then
you don't even know what you are putting into your
mouth. No wonder so many people suffer from indigestion!
Whatever it is that you are doing, know what you are
supposed to be doing. Put full effort into it. Know the
dangers and avoid those dangers.
Turning Up the Lights
As one builds up
mindfulness and it gets very sharp, one realizes that
one has been living in a world, which has been very dim,
with not many lights. As one gets more and more mindful,
it's like someone turns on the lights in the room, like
the sun comes out and the surroundings become
illuminated. That's why being mindful becomes a very
joyful experience. It's very pleasant to be mindful
because you see so much more of what's around you. It's
like "spotlighting" reality. Reality really starts to
open out to you. You not only see the colors; you see
the shapes and the textures. You see everything there.
It appears very beautiful and wonderful. That's why when
mindfulness really starts to get strong it generates a
lot of happiness and bliss.
People who aren't very
mindful, who are dull, who cultivate dullness, who sleep
a lot, develop depression. They live in a gray world. I
went to England some years ago. Every time I go to
there, it's in November, December, or January, and it's
so miserable then because it's just so gray there. The
sun is far in the north because it is wintertime. Only
about nine or ten in the morning does its start to get
light. By three or four in the afternoon it's dusk
again. Everything starts to get very dull, and often the
clouds are all gray, and you're in this drizzle, and all
the buildings look gray. The street is gray. You look up
at the sky it's gray. It's gray from the top to the
bottom. You look at the people there. What do they wear?
They wear gray suits and overcoats. You look at the
expressions on their faces they're gray too. You know
what tea they drink? Earl Grey! Ha! Ha! It's all gray.
It's very gray and miserable and depressing. That's what
a person with very little mindfulness is like. It's like
living in a sort of London in a perpetual winter. It's
just gray and miserable in the mind. There's no sort of
light. There's no energy there. One doesn't see very
much.
Again when one has a lot
of mindfulness it's like going out into a garden in the
brilliant sunshine. It's energizing it's beautiful.
There's a lot of energy and happiness there. If one can
develop that mindfulness, that brightness of the mind,
and then focus it on a small part of the world, then one
sees deeply into the nature of that. The experience of
bright and focused awareness is wonderful and amazing!
You see much more beauty than you ever imagined.
So this is a useful
simile for mindfulness: turning up the lights of the
mind. One becomes more deeply aware because one actually
starts to sustain mindfulness on one thing instead of
letting mindfulness go all over the place. When that
happens, mindfulness illuminates that object and builds
up it's own energy. One really starts to "see" into
something very deeply and wonderfully!
Building Up the "Muscles
of Insight"
This practice builds up
the "muscles of insight". Just take any object. It
doesn't matter if it's a little fly walking on your robe
or whether it's a leaf on the bushes outside or
whatever. Just stand there, or sit there, and watch that
one leaf. Let mindfulness illuminate it until awareness
gets so strong on that one little leaf that you see so
much of what's going on, on that little leaf. It's not
just a green leaf; it's a whole world in there! Then
you'll understand the power of mindfulness. When you can
sustain mindfulness on one thing, you will know how it
illuminates and releases a lot of the beauty in that
object. It becomes fascinating just how much you can
see! How much interest, how much wonder, how much awe
there is in just a tiny leaf! That's where you start to
play with mindfulness. You start to play with this power
of mindfulness that is blissful and can see so deeply
into things. But if when you're looking at a leaf, you
start wondering about what you're going to have for
dinner; then you can't see very clearly into it. Or if
you start looking into a leaf and you start getting
dull, sinking into sloth and torpor, or if you're
wondering -- "Are people looking at me? Do they think
I'm somehow strange?" -- then all those distracting
thoughts will obviously break the spell and break the
sustained attention. However if you can sustain your
attention on one thing, which is what you're learning
with this practice of mindfulness and meditation, then
it's amazing what you will see in the world. The world
will start to open up and become very beautiful and very
fascinating and very wonderful. And that's just the
world outside!
If one develops the
ability to sustain mindfulness, to sustain attention on
one thing for long periods of time, then one generates
the ability to bore into something with insight and to
see deeply into its nature. If you're one of those
persons who wants to discover some of the deep truths of
existence, if you don't want to just take it on faith
from the books or from the teachers, if you want to find
out for yourself, then this is how you find out. This is
how to get enlightenment experiences. You develop this
powerful mindfulness and point it at some interesting
and rich sources of wisdom - - especially at the mind.
If you can sustain attention on your mind, "bore into
it" as it were, then you will find a whole treasure
chest of priceless jewels of deep insight.
So to summarize so far,
this is the way of mindfulness: what it actually is, how
to develop it and, in particular, how to set up
mindfulness at every stage of your meditation. Give
yourself clear instructions; know what you're supposed
to be doing. When you give yourself clear instructions
and just sit back and watch this mind do its job,
keeping you at your work, it becomes fascinating. That's
all you need to do.
Letting Go of the "Doer"
At times I've described
this type of quiet meditation as letting go of the
"doer" and sometimes that's been quite confusing to some
people. What do you mean "letting go of the doer?" This
is what I mean. We do a little bit of doing at the right
time, and then we let go and allow the doing to happen.
Little by little we can let go of the "doer". We can let
go of all that chatter, all that ordering (which is
ninety percent of the thinking mind), of always giving
ourselves instructions, telling ourselves what to do,
getting on our backs when we fail. Thinking, thinking,
thinking, thinking, thinking! That's one of the biggest
problems for meditator's, and this is how to overcome
it. There's time to think at the very beginning of each
stage by giving ourselves clear instructions. Then we
can let go because we see the mind doing all the work.
We understand, we realize, we don't need to say anything
any more. We can be quiet.
The Different Levels of
Mindfulness Revisited
As our meditation
develops not only does the area which mindfulness covers
get less and less and less, but mindfulness increases
and gets sharper and sharper. One of the marvelous
things about meditation is that, as we sharpen the
mindfulness we find it has different levels. This is the
final thing I want to discuss here about mindfulness,
the different levels of mindfulness.
We actually find out
that mindfulness of daily life is just so dull and
useless for wisdom. It has got very little sharpness or
depth at all. When we start developing meditation, we
get sharper and more agile. By sharper and agile I mean
we can sustain attention on very fine areas of
existence, and the attention is very bright as well.
However as we develop the meditation deeper and deeper,
we find we have to develop mindfulness to become ever
more subtle, agile and sharp. As the meditator develops
these different levels it happens so often that they
lose the focus of awareness. For example if the breath
is one's object, one loses the breath, and often people
ask why. What has happened here? What has happened is
that the breath has become soft and subtle, but the
mindfulness is still too coarse. It hasn't been able to
keep up with the development of the breath. If that's
happened, one should go back to the stage before. This
can happen at anytime, but especially when one has
full-sustained attention on the breath at Stage Four.
Sometimes the breath
disappears and a Nimitta can come up, but you
can't sustain that Nimitta. This is because the
quality of mindfulness necessary to sustain a Nimitta
has to be very refined, and you haven't built up that
level of refined mindfulness yet. So you have to go back
to the stage before the Nimitta comes up. Go back
to full awareness of the beautiful breath, which is a
coarser object than the Nimitta, and let the
mindfulness develop further on that. But if your
mindfulness is fully developed at the fifth stage, when
the Nimitta comes up, mindfulness can handle the
more refined object. You will find as this mindfulness
becomes more and more sharp and agile, it can sustain
attention even on the most subtle objects. But first you
have to learn how to sustain attention on the coarser
objects. At each of these successive stages the
mindfulness has a higher quality to it, far more agile
and sharp than at the previous stage. To return to the
simile of the mindfulness of the surgeon, the
mindfulness required to hold a Nimitta is like
the skill required of a surgeon operating on the brain,
while the mindfulness required to hold the breath is
like the skill required for peeling potatoes. You need
quite a different refinement at the subtle level. If you
move straight from peeling potatoes onto being a brain
surgeon, you're going to make a lot of mess. The same as
if you move too quickly from the breath onto the Sam
dhi Nimitta. You're going to lose it. You're
not going to be able to keep it there.
With development, you
can experience immovable mindfulness. The mindfulness
that is on one thing entirely -- very clear, very sharp.
It doesn't move at all. The Buddha said this reaches its
peak in the fourth Jhana. That's the peak of
mindfulness, where one has complete equanimity. You're
just fully aware of one thing, fully aware, unmoving.
That's as powerful as mindfulness can get. Once you know
that type of mindfulness, then you know how ridiculous
it is to think you can become enlightened without
Jhanas. Without such powerful mindfulness you can't
get the powerful insights. So you begin to realize for
yourself what mindfulness can be, and the sort of
mindfulness you need to become enlightened. The powerful
states of mindfulness, not the coarse ones, are the ones
that will dig deeply into the nature of things.
So you can see that
there are many different levels of mindfulness, and
mindfulness isn't just one little thing, which is, there
in daily life and which is the same in deep meditation.
Know that mindfulness has many different degrees of
power, subtlety and penetration. There are many types of
knives -- blunt ones and sharp ones, some for peeling
potatoes and some for operating on brains. That's just
like mindfulness.
This has been an
exposition of what mindfulness means in Buddhism, in
Buddhist meditation. Know how to develop it and how to
make it very sharp and very agile and how eventually to
generate that mindfulness which you can use to dig deep
into the nature of your mind and uncover the beautiful
treasures of "impermanence", "un-satisfactoriness" and
"non-self" (Anicca, Dukkha, Anattá). It's amazing. You
can say words like "the great treasures" of Buddhism and
people think: "They can't be treasures. How can
suffering be a treasure? How can impermanence be a
treasure? How can non-self be a treasure? We want
something really marvelous and uplifting like beauty,
transcendence, cosmic consciousness, or the essence of
all being."
This is why people don't find the
treasures; they don't know what they're looking for.
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