MINDFULNESS AND THE OVERCOMING OF UNPLEASANT SENSATIONS

‘Unpleasant sensation is the greatest obstacle on the road of vipassanā [insight meditation or mindfulness]. Only when the meditator is able to overcome that obstacle can he forge forward to attain the rewards beyond unpleasant sensation.’

Those words come from what I consider to be one of the best books ever written on the subject of insight meditation (vipassanā)---The Yogi & Vipassana (Buddhist Meditation: The Sunlun Way). The author of the book, Sunlun Shin Vinaya, [pictured left], was for many years the presiding abbot of Kaba-Aye Sunlun Monastery, Yangon (Rangoon), in Myanmar (Burma). 

Most people have sought to meditate in one form or another at some point in their lives. For example, you may have sought to relax your body or your mind, but rest assured that is a form of meditation. Now, we all know what happens sooner or later. Yes, we experience some unpleasant sensation in either our body or our mind. And you know what we almost invariably do next. We resist the sensation. We fight against it. We try to expel the sensation. The result? Yes, we only drive the unpleasant sensation deeper into our consciousness.

In his book The Yogi & Vipassan Sunlun Shin Vinaya gives us some very good information and advice on the subject of unpleasant sensations:

And it is possible to overcome unpleasant sensation. Since unpleasant sensation too is subject to the law of impermanence it must come to an end some time. This end can occur in various ways. Its intensity can subside; but this would not be a true ending. Some measure of unpleasant sensation would remain. The real overcoming of unpleasant sensation takes place when the meditator dwells in the sensation watching the sensation without thinking any thought connected with the sensation, and it is consumed, it ends, it snaps, it is shed, or extinguished. It is said to be consumed when it gradually subsides till there is no remainder. It ends when the meditator follows it till there is no more of it like a road followed to the end, like a length of string felt along the whole length till not more is felt. It snaps when it breaks off suddenly as when a taut rope is snapped. It is light which has used up its oil and wick.

It sounds almost counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? We are told to dwell in the sensation, that is, to watch the sensation ‘without thinking any thought connected with the sensation’, until the sensation is consumed. In time the sensation will ‘end’ and ‘snap.’ Yes, it will be ‘shed’ or ‘extinguished.’  Yes, if we stay with--but not cling to, identify with, or own--the unpleasant sensation, and watch it choicelessly (that is, non-judgmentally, simply observing the sensation in and as the sensation ['Sensation exists']), the sensation will gradually subside. It will lose its power, intensity, grip and command in your consciousness. Such is the power of non-resistance. Such is the power of choiceless awareness and bare attention. And such is the nature of reality, for that which arises will in time cease. The 'secret' here is not to experience in depth the actual arising, duration or ceasing of the sensation but merely to ride with it. There is a world of difference between the two.

Why not put this into practice the next time you experience some unpleasant sensation, unpleasant thought, or unpleasant feeling?

MINDFULNESS---THE LIGHT THAT SHINES AND SHINES AND SHINES

‘But everything exposed by the light becomes visible--and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: "Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."’ (Eph 5: 13-14) [NIV]

Vipassanā (insight meditation)---also known as mindfulness---is different from all other forms of meditation. Only mindfulness affords insight. How important that is! Without insight, without understanding of ourselves and reality, there can be no possibility of growth or change of any positive kind.

The word vipassanā is composed of two parts---vi, meaning ‘in various ways’, and passanā, meaning seeing. So, vipassanā means ‘seeing in various ways’ ... as well as seeing things as they really are.

In the Bible passage set out above we are told to ‘wake up.’ That was also the advice given by the Buddha. Wake up! That is the meaning of enlightenment. One wakes up, and perhaps for the very first time in one’s life one sees things as they really are. Enlightenment. Insight. Light. Truth. They are all different words used to refer to the same reality.

When we practise mindfulness---that is, live mindfully from one moment to the next---everything ‘exposed by the light’ becomes visible. When, conversely, we live mindlessly, we are in darkness, so to speak. It is as if we were dead.

Now, there will be certain readers who will say, ‘Ellis-Jones, that is not what those verses mean at all. The verses are talking about what happens to you when you accept Jesus as your Saviour and Lord, and you're born again, or born from above, so that when you die you will go to live with Jesus for all eternity. It’s about being saved once-and-for-all from your sins, that is, from everlasting punishment, which is the fate we really deserve, and the fate people will receive unless they make a personal decision to turn their lives over to the Lord Jesus.’ (Note. This rather mechanical evangelical four-step ‘plan of salvation’ [i.e., confess, believe, repent, and receive], with its emphatic insistence on the supposed need for a one-time, life-changing decision, is not accepted by all Christian denominations. In my view, this so-called plan of salvation is an unwarranted imposition upon Scripture, and is completely unknown to the Bible. Rather, true Biblical salvation is an ongoing process of being 'healed,' that is, made spiritually 'whole'---and it is a past reality, a present reality, and a future reality, all at the same time.)

Well, as I see it, the evangelical interpretation, with its emphatic insistence upon a person's profession of faith in Jesus, is a gross distortion of the true position propagated by people who divide the world into the ‘saved’ and the ‘unsaved.’ More particularly, it is a carnalization, literalization and personification of a myth---and yet still the truth---in the person of the man Jesus.

You see, the reference to ‘Christ’ in the verses I quoted, as in many other verses in the New Testament, is in the nature of a metaphor referring to the light of truth that indwells and infuses the life of a person---any person---when they have come to see things as they really are, that is, when they wake up. The experience described is not one that can be experienced only by Bible-believing Christians. No, it is a truly universal experience. The ‘Christ’ indwells every one of us as our potential perfection. For the most part, this ‘sleeping giant,’ this inner power---for that is what it is---lives undeveloped, hidden, dormant, and asleep in our human spirits (minds), but it is ever seeking release and perfect expression and unfoldment in our daily lives.

‘Resurrected living’---so called ‘rising from the dead’---is not something supernatural that supposedly happens at some time in the future, whether at the moment of our death or otherwise. The resurrected living expounded in these Bible verses, and of which Jesus otherwise spoke, is something in the here-and-now. It’s waking up, that’s what it is. And when we wake up, we find that we are living in a new ‘land,’ a new ‘place.’ In the Bible this ‘place’ is referred to as the ‘Kingdom of God’ and the ‘Kingdom of Heaven.’ In some forms of Buddhism it’s called the ‘Pure Land of Buddha.’ And here is some wisdom from the Upanishads:

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth,

beyond the highest, the very highest heavens.

This is the light that shines in your heart.

Chandogya Upanishad

Regardless of any religious beliefs you may or may not hold, please know this. (Note. I didn’t say ‘believe’---just know.) If you choose to live mindfully, you will see things as they really are. When you see things as they really are, you have insight and understanding, as well as compassion. Your whole being becomes suffused and illumined with light. Indeed, you become a beacon of light in an otherwise dark world. You are then living in the Kingdom of Heaven … the Pure Land of Buddha.

But pleeease don’t just take my word for it. Try it for yourself … really try it---and then you will come to know and understand.

So, wake up! Shine! Rise from the dead!

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BETTER TO NOT BELIEVE AT ALL

‘There is hope for whoever does not know what to believe.

Human belief is a combination of superstition, gullibility and mental laziness.

We need not believe anything; we need to find, to see, to know.’

Vernon Howard.

Forgive me if I return to a familiar theme. I have often said that one of the great things about being a practising Buddhist – with the emphasis on the word practising – is that there is no need to believe anything … and nothing to believe.

Now, even within Christianity there have been some enlightened souls who have written of the dangers of belief. Take, for example, that great Modernist of last century, Harry Emerson Fosdick (pictured left), who famously wrote, ‘Better believe in no God than to believe in a cruel God, a tribal God, a sectarian God. Belief in God is one of the most dangerous beliefs a man can cherish.’

Having just re-read Brideshead Revisited – a book which, despite the author’s apparent intentions, fails to convince me of the reasonableness of Catholic Christianity over non-belief – I say, good stuff, Dr Fosdick, but why believe at all? Belief is not a criterion of truth. What is real does not become any more real because we believe that it is real, nor does the proposition ‘X is true [or real]’ become any truer because we believe that it is true.

For me, the Biblical prayer, 'Lord, I believe; help my unbelief' (see Mk 9:24), would be better expressed as, 'Lord, I believe; help me instead to know and understand.' Yes, follow the advice of the psalmist: 'Be still, and know that I am God' (Ps 46:10).

The current president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Rev. Peter Morales (pictured right), the Association’s first Latino president, has stated:

‘Religion is not about what you or I or Baptists or Catholics or Jews or Muslims or Hindus believe. I would even go a giant step further: Belief is the enemy of religion. Let me repeat that: Belief is the enemy of religion.’ [Emphasis in the original]

Morales goes on to say that any religion that is focused on belief is ‘a dangerous corruption of true religion.’ True religion, according to Morales, is ‘about what we love, not about what we think.’ It’s ‘about what you and I hold sacred.’ The Unitarian Universalist movement, says Morales, offers religion beyond belief, ‘religion that transcends culture, race and class ... religion where we can grow spiritually, a religion where we can forge deep and lasting relationships, a religion where we can join hands to help heal a broken world.’ That is the kind of religion – or metareligion – that I embrace.

But what exactly is the problem with 'beliefs,' you may ask? Well, Shakyamuni Buddha referred to beliefs as being in the nature of thought coverings or veils (āvarnas). These thought coverings or veils do not reveal reality, indeed they distort reality. How? Well, they prevent us from knowing and experiencing things as they really are in all their directness and immediacy. Belief is conditioning. Knowledge is experiential.

I have always found helpful these words attributed to the Buddha: 'Do not believe, for if you believe, you will never know. If you really want to know, don't believe.' There is also this sound advice from the Pāli texts:

In what is seen, there should be only the seen;
in what is heard, only the heard;
in what is sensed, only the sensed;
in what is thought, only the thought.

Yes, we need to safely 'navigate' our way through life, but beliefs actually stand in the way and hold us back. What we really need is ... knowledge ... and understanding.

It was that great meditation master Sunlun Gu-Kyaung Sayadaw (pictured left), the founding father of the Sunlun way of Buddhist vipassanā meditation, who taught that there is so much that we can know. We can know that we are alive … in the sense of being part of the flow or procession of life. We can know that we are persons among persons. We can know that sensations arise in us, and as respects each such sensation we can know the fact of its existence … as well as the fact of its strength or weakness. More importantly, we can know each sensation - as a bare fact - as and when it arises … and as it truly is … in all its directness and immediacy.

Yes, there is so much we can know that, well, there is simply no need to believe anything at all. In any event, the very act of formulating a 'belief' causes an otherwise present reality to die away, because (as Sunlun Gu-Kyaung Sayadaw would constantly point out) the very nature of a belief is a mental construct based on an already past reality. That is, by the time a particular belief has been formulated, the reality upon which that belief is purportedly based is no longer a present reality. It is now the past. Beliefs lock us into the past. Beliefs imprison. They do not liberate. They are chains that bind us.

You may ask, ‘Is that all there is to life? Is there no more than that? Just life as it arises? As we see and experience it?’ Well, I suspect that we cannot truly know more nor less than that, but either way it is enough for me. Direct and immediate contact with reality – of that we can be truly mindful. And for that we should be truly thankful.



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NOTE. The purpose of this post is twofold: first, to direct readers' attention to, and encourage the reading of, an article, namely a Q&A session with Michele McDonald, published in the leading magazine tricycle; second, to endorse and recommend the purchase and use of Ms McDonald's CD-set Awake at the Wheel: Mindful Driving.


Driving mindfully? Isn't that dangerous ... driving a motor vehicle whilst in a state of samadhi bliss? Well, that is not exactly what is meant by mindful driving.

Michele McDonald (pictured left) has been teaching vipassanā meditation for 30 years. She is the cofounder of Vipassanā Hawai’i. She is also the first woman to have taught a formal retreat in Burma.

If you want to treat yourself to something really useful – I hate that word ‘useful’, but anyway – buy her 2-disc audio CD set Awake at the Wheel: Mindful Driving. (I love that title. Mindfulness is, as Jon Kabat-Zinn often says, 'falling awake.')

The 2-CD set includes introductions to mindfulness meditation specific to driving, and nearly 2 hours of exercises that can be learned in the car and used anywhere to enliven the mind, awake the senses, and enjoy the journey again.

In a 'must-read' Q&A session published in tricycle (for which this post, and my blogsite, are no substitutes) Michele McDonald describes vipassanā meditation or mindfulness as the state of ‘being in the present moment, feeling and hanging out with your own experience rather than just thinking about it, with patience ... [and] a genuine interest’.

Yes, but what does that mean, ‘being in the present moment’? We say that all the time ... almost mindlessly. Well, according to McDonald it means being ‘present and engaged with what's happening’. Yes, a mind-body experience from one moment to the next.

So, why the CD? Says McDonald, ‘I see so many people on their phones in the car, Bluetooth or not, or texting, eating, or putting make-up on—never mind whatever else might be going on in their heads! Most of us act out the urge to get more and more done in the car, instead of attending to what is really happening as we drive.’

A ‘mindful’ mind is a mind which is not distracted by what is happening from one moment to the next.

Remember, everything is happening from one moment to the next. That is life. Sensations come and go. They arise ... and they disappear as quickly as they arose. So do sights, sounds, thoughts, feelings, moods and all other phenomena. Everything is impermanent ... BUT everything is happening in the present, continually arising and disappearing.

So, you’re driving. You see a traffic light ahead turn red. In a state of mindfulness you ‘notice’ the light turn red. You see the change in the colour and contemporaneously – yes, in the same moment – you are aware that you are noticing the light turn red. So what?

‘Mindfulness will help you notice seeing, see the red light more quickly, and to brake,' says McDonald in the Q&A session published in tricycle. 'Your response times are going to be quicker and will allow you to assess any dangers on the road and respond more intelligently and spaciously.’

I have always hated driving in traffic, and I will do almost anything to avoid it ... like, for example, getting out of bed 2 or more hours earlier in the morning in order to miss the traffic. Perhaps I need to drive more in the traffic. In one sense, it doesn’t really matter. Traffic or no traffic, where else can we ever hope to find ‘enlightenment’ but in whatever presents itself as ‘the moment.’

Drive mindfully. The life you save may be your own, or mine ... and besides, driving mindfully is living mindfully.

Please read the Q&A session with Michele McDonald published in tricycle.
Tricycle, published by The Tricycle Foundation, is the leading journal of Buddhism in the West.
Acknowledgments are due to Tricycle. All rights reserved.

THE AWARENESS OF AWARENESS

Awareness – choiceless awareness – is an integral part of mindfulness, but mindfulness (sati) is not simply awareness (viññāna), but awareness of awareness. Yes, awareness of awareness .. a ‘two-dimensional awareness’.

The Pāli word sati literally means ‘memory’. The word sati comes from a root meaning ‘to remember’. So, mindfulness is ... remembering what is present ... remembering to stay present in the present moment from one moment to the next ... as well as remembering in the present moment what has already happened.

In other words, mindfulness is all about remembering the present ... that is, 'keeping' the present in mind. Put simply, mindfulness is remembering to be 'here' ... and to stay 'here' ... now.

In an interesting article cited at the end of this blog Dr Dan Siegel writes:

Mindful awareness entails more than sensing present experience as it generates an awareness of awareness and attention to intention [sic]. These fundamental aspects of mindfulness can be seen as forms of meta-cognition ...

There it is ... an ‘awareness of awareness’. Mindfulness remembers awareness ... as well as the object of awareness. The work of being mindful, of practising mindfulness, is the work of reminding ourselves, not just to be aware, but also that we are aware ... indeed, that we are already aware.

Many psychologists refer to this activity as being that of a so-called ‘witnessing self’ ... a special relationship of ‘self’ to ‘self’, whatever that means. I have trouble with the whole concept of ‘self’ – my power-not-oneself is the power of ‘not-self’ (anattā) – so I like to keep things simple. (Ha!) In any event, 'un-self-consciousness' (wu-hsin / mushin) or 'no-mindedness' is, for me, the 'holy grail' of all meditative practice – 'a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club' (the immortal words of the ever-quotable Zen Buddhist Alan Watts).

Now, back to keeping things simple. First, there is the person who is aware. Secondly, there is the object of awareness. Thirdly, there is the act of being aware. It just so happens that the object of awareness can be awareness itself. Remember, it is the person who is doing the awareness ... not some supposed illusory ‘self’ or 'second mind' ... and mindfulness is all about the person that you are paying attention to that person ... and not to a 'self' ... within each unfolding moment and from one such moment to the next.

Yes, there are simply different ways of seeing. That is what the word vipassanā means. The word is composed of two parts – vi, meaning ‘in various ways’, and passanā, meaning seeing. So, vipassanā means ‘seeing in various ways’ ... as well as seeing things as they really are.

Buddhist meditation teacher, and renowned authority on Vipassanā (insight meditation), Patrick Kearney has written:

Mindfulness, in other words, implies not just awareness, but reflexive awareness, awareness bending back to itself. Normally, we are aware. We don’t have to make any special effort to be aware; we are already aware. We see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think. Technically, we can say that it is the nature of mind to contact an object; to be aware of something. So far, so good. We are already aware. But are we aware that we are aware? And of what we are aware?

Have you ever had the experience of driving a car along familiar streets and suddenly realising you have no memory of the previous three blocks? Clearly, while driving through those city blocks you were aware, for otherwise you would now be dead or seriously injured. But did you know you were aware? Were you aware of your awareness? Or did this understanding occur only at that moment when you remembered you are now driving this car?

This is mind blowing stuff ... not so much what Kearney has written, which is illuminatingly profound in its own way, but the bit about mindfulness being awareness of awareness. Is there a ‘three-dimensional awareness’ ... an awareness of awareness of awareness? What about a ‘four-dimensional awareness’ ... an awareness of awareness of awareness of awareness? Stop, I’m feeling sick. It's all too much.

Resource: Siegel D J, Mindfulness training and neural integration: differentiation of distinct streams of awareness and the cultivation of well-being, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci (2007) 2 (4): 259-263. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsm034

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IS MINDFULNESS A RELIGION?

Not at all.

The High Court of Australia, in the famous case of Church of the New Faith v Commissioner of Pay-roll Tax (Vic) (the “Scientology case”) (1983) 154 CLR 120, delineated what is a religion.

In the Scientology case, 4 of 5 justices of the High Court of Australia, in the course of determining whether Scientology constituted a “religion” for the purposes of section 116 of The Australian Constitution, considered belief in a supernatural Being, Thing or Principle to be a necessary indicia of or prerequisite for a particular belief system being a religion.

Religion ordinarily involves all of the following: first, a system of beliefs or statement of doctrine concerning so-called "ultimate reality"; secondly, an associated moral or ethical code of conduct; thirdly, participation in prescribed forms of ritual, observances and other acts of devotion.

In addition, religion ordinarily involves both “faith” and “worship”, accompanied by a system of moral philosophy or particular doctrines of faith as well as a religious community which supports that faith and its organization and practices.

My 2007 doctoral dissertation sought to formulate and propose a more suitable legal definition of “religion” in substitution for that formulated by the High Court of Australia in the Scientology case having regard to salient judicial authorities from the USA as well as non-judicial authorities.

The present legal definition of religion in Australia is misleading, inadequate and unhelpful. First, the definition does not readily accommodate a number of important belief systems that are generally regarded as being religious even though they do not involve any notion of the supernatural in the sense in which that word is ordinarily understood. Secondly, the High Court of Australia has provided little or no guidance as to how one determines whether a particular belief system involves a “supernatural” view of reality. Thirdly, I am of the opinion that it is impossible, philosophically and otherwise, to postulate a meaningful distinction between the “natural” and the supposedly “supernatural”.

Now, Mindfulness does not involve or require any faith at all ... certainly no faith in a supernatural Being, Thing or Principle ... nor does Mindfulness involve any worship or impose any system of beliefs or statement of doctrine, nor any code of conduct, nor any prescribed forms of ritual or religious observances.

Mindfulness is simply the practice of the presence of the awareness of the action of the present moment ... that is, the practice of paying attention, in the present, purposefully and receptively, choicelessly and non-judgmentally, to whatever arises in the present moment ... moment to moment … both inside and outside of us.

Mindfulness does not require that you believe in one god or many gods, or become a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Christian, or whatever. People of every religion, and none, can derive lasting benefits from the regular practice of Mindfulness including Mindfulness Meditation.

True it is that Mindfulness, and Mindfulness Meditation, can both refer to a specific type or practice of meditation known as Vipassanā Meditation, which is used as a psychological and educational tool in Theravāda Buddhism (a naturalistic form of Buddhism of which there are a number of different schools). Vipassanā Meditation is also known as Insight[ful], Sensory or Thought Watching Meditation. However, Mindfulness and Mindfulness Meditation are not restricted to Buddhism, Buddhists or Buddhist meditation. Indeed, there are several different types or forms of Buddhist meditation, and Buddhists do not claim to “own” or have a monopoly on Mindfulness and Mindfulness Meditation.

Mindfulness takes meditation … in the form of deliberate and purposeful awareness of the present moment … and applies it, as a psychological and educational tool, to one’s whole life.

What about meditation itself? Isn't that religious? No. Meditation, in one form or another, has been practised by human beings for thousands of years, long before most of the major world religions were formed. Meditation is as simple, and as natural, as breathing in and breathing out ... from one moment to the next ... until the mind reaches a "median", that is, a point of equilibrium, balance, harmony and equanimity. Meditation is simply medicine, or exercise, for the mind which, by the power of its own non-resistance and calm but secure acceptance (as opposed to mere passivity), is truly life-enhancing as opposed to life-denying.

Forget about "expanded consciousness", so-called higher orders or levels of reality, and all notions of transcendence. Meditation may well bring us to a state of choiceless awareness and detached, but otherwise bare, attention that some describe as being "supramundane", "transnatural" or "transrational", but true meditation is grounded firmly in everyday reality, that is, in the one order or level of reality in which we all live and move and have our being.

Unlike religion, Mindfulness is not "organized" ... and may that always be the case. Krishnamurti often told his listeners this little anecdote:

"There is a rather lovely story of a man who was walking along the street and behind him were two strangers. As he walked along, he saw something very bright and he picked it up and looked at it and put it in his pocket and the two men behind him observed this and one said to the other: 'This is a very bad business for you, is it not?' and the other who was the devil answered: 'No, what he picked up is truth. But I am going to help him organize it.'"

If Mindfulness were ever to become systematized and organized, one could never be successfully liberated from all those conditioned responses, predispositions and predilections, and psychological tendencies that otherwise beset us. Religion "believes" ... Mindfulness "knows" and "understands". There is a huge difference between the those two things.

Mindfulness is not a religion, or even a philosophy, but rather a way of being, a way of life, a journey in self-discovery, and an education. Mindfulness, being devoid of all notions of religiosity, is entirely experiential and, unlike most if not all religions, it is empirically based.

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