Meditation Mathematics

A 60 minute talk on the incalculable nature of the path of practice.

Transcript

This is a poem by Weng Yi Wu from the late Tang Dynasty in China.

Visiting Kaiyuan Hermitage.

As soon as I feel the lightness of summer clothes,

I love to follow trails to monastic retreats to an orchard of fruit trees after a rain,

A terrace of incense lit by the dawn,

Where the green shade nurtures quiet days and a solitary blossom is the last sign of spring.

My official duties have kept me so busy,

My footsteps have come here to sell them.

I love the beauty of that impulse that I think many,

If not all of us who come on retreat in this way,

Even if it's our first time or we've been at it for a long time,

There's some sense of that purity of experience,

Of simplicity,

Of just the simple quiet days passing and how our busy lives kind of keep us outside of that experience so much,

Outside of the kind of protective containers like this so much.

And how the heart honors that kind of space,

This kind of protection,

This kind of time in a way that the world doesn't always value,

Doesn't always appreciate.

And I think there's also something so fun about how most of these poems are really talking about these peak experiences,

When you just feel so connected and so at ease and so relishing in the simplicity.

And that I know,

We all know from experience,

From talking with you all,

It's like that isn't necessarily the quality of heart you're all having right now,

Days into the retreat,

Starting to settle in,

And it's like,

Oh,

We come for peace and we find this irritation.

We come for,

To get in touch with our sense of goodness and all we see is our,

The craziness of our minds,

These eruptions and we come for quiet and the body is in pain and we're bored and we're restless and we're tired and we don't know what we're doing here,

You know.

You don't see a lot of those poems.

People wouldn't come always,

I think,

To the monastic retreats.

And it's hard because often it's not predictable,

But often we'll have some experience of dropping in of what we would call a quote unquote good sitting.

You know,

We had a good sitting,

We felt we were kind of really with it and we experienced something very peaceful,

Very beautiful,

Very content.

Often it's very simple.

Sometimes it's very unfamiliar and that can be disorienting or intriguing.

But it,

You know,

So often when we have some experience of really dropping in and kind of letting go of some of the pretensions and some of the things that we cling onto and identities and our pettiness and all that stuff and we kind of drop into just this awareness of what's happening and the intense vibrancy of it at times,

You know,

That often our systems are very open,

They're very exposed,

They become very vulnerable.

And so some of those conditions that have allowed for that then dissipate,

You know,

The energy then goes down because the day goes by or our concentration kind of falters and suddenly,

You know,

These,

The protection of the concentration,

The protection of the mindfulness of the energy,

Of the calm,

Of whatever mental factors are there dissipates.

And so we're exposed,

You know,

To some unpleasant sensation that's like really hard to bear and all our habitual responses come up and we're in this rage about someone sneezing,

You know,

Or something,

The feeling that someone cut in front of us in line or what have you,

You know,

Or the cookies are just like,

You know,

You get overwhelmed with excitement,

You know.

And then afterwards it's like,

Oh,

It can be disheartening,

You know,

Of like,

Oh,

What am I doing?

Is this,

If it's just these sort of like,

Oh,

These moments and then you're,

Then it's like your worst self comes out,

You know,

What we would call that.

It can be confusing,

Disheartening,

You know,

It's like,

Why are you,

Why are you doing this to yourself?

And it's,

It's humbling and that's important.

You know,

This practice,

It's more humbling than you can ever conceive of,

You know,

Beyond,

It's,

It's,

It's so beyond humbling the degree to which we start to understand what's really happening in the mind and body.

And yet,

You know,

Keep showing up,

Keep doing it.

And that,

That beauty of like some level of faith or confidence or trust or resignation that you might as well show up because you're here and then you'd be embarrassed to leave when people ask you what,

How it was.

That whatever it is,

It's like,

Keep,

You keep coming,

You keep showing up and waking up early and you know,

Being,

It's like having this,

This broadening,

A weakness to more and more of our lives.

You know,

And that's in any given moment,

Any given sitting period,

But also,

Yeah,

You know,

We're waking up early,

We're,

You know,

Going to bed late.

There's sometimes,

You know,

The energy can build in ways that we actually have more energy through the evenings and we're not sleeping as much.

This,

This awakeness,

This alertness exerts itself throughout the day.

There's something,

You know,

Even if we're have a hard time in the morning,

It's very beautiful about waking up in the dark,

Seeing the sunrise,

You know,

Hearing the sounds of,

You know,

The world around us coming alive,

Our relationship to that.

I really,

This winter when I was on the self retreat,

It was lovely waking up early and doing walking in the dark and coming inside and seeing this,

You know,

That first sunlight start to kind of peek over the hills and,

You know,

Just kind of slowly melt into the room and just this,

You know,

Beautiful,

Warm,

Golden,

You know,

Buttery light move through how often I'm,

You know,

We're not awake for that.

I don't always show up for that.

How much of life we miss,

You know?

And then this amazing thing of,

You know,

In the light,

It comes in right at this certain angle.

So it's like,

Oh,

My floor that looked clean before.

You just see it's totally covered in dust,

You know,

Or all the countertops,

All the surface that light just comes in and it's like,

Oh,

Everything's filthy.

It's amazing.

Things were fine in the dark,

You know.

And we have that,

You know,

That sense of like,

Ooh,

Right,

That part of the heart,

You know,

That,

Those memories,

Those thoughts,

Those patterns,

You know,

Sometimes it's hard,

It's hard to bear and,

You know,

This,

You know,

It's a classic.

We'll,

You know,

We'll have our day,

We'll have our lunch,

We'll take a nap,

We'll have a cup of tea and then we'll go to the sitting and the sitting will just be like,

Whoa,

We'll totally drop in and it'll be amazing,

You know,

And it'll feel like,

Okay.

So the next day it's like,

We have our lunch,

We take our nap,

You have your tea,

Go to the sitting and it's like,

You know,

It has nothing to do with what happened the day before,

You know.

There's no math here that works.

Sometimes like,

Sometimes I wonder why,

Why does math work,

You know,

Why do we,

We live in a universe that,

You know,

Triangles have the same proportions and does it need to,

You know,

Why,

It could not be that way.

And in retreat you see that,

It's,

There's,

Things don't,

You put in like one and one and it doesn't add up the same day,

You know.

There's no logic to it.

I,

A couple times it happened where I go to Burma for this retreat that I've managed for a few years now,

These three have all taught at,

Michelle's taught at for 20 years,

It's at a monastery with a,

You know,

A monastic teacher as well and I've shown up and I bring a few watches to keep track and as soon as I get to the monastery the watches just stop working,

You know.

So I have to get one there and then I'll leave and I'll,

Won't even,

I'll go on the plane and I'll see,

Oh,

The watches are back into gear,

You know.

It's like we enter this no math land.

I like that no math land.

Math land is hard for me.

And it's hard,

You know,

That unpredictability,

That undependability,

That's what this is,

You know,

It's designed to show us.

It's designed to kind of keep,

You know,

We create as much stability as we can in terms of the container,

In terms of our concentration,

Our practice and anchor,

But ultimately,

You know,

We're creating that stability so that we have some platform to observe the wildness of things,

The undependability of things,

The changeability of things,

The uncontrollability of things and not find it so overwhelmingly upsetting or debilitating or,

You know,

Frustrating and then of course we're,

We do see those parts of ourselves that have such a hard time with things not being the way we want them to be.

And,

You know,

This carefulness that we're cultivating with the heart,

With the mind of understanding,

Of course,

Of course we don't want these things to happen,

Of course we want things to be the way we want them to be.

Of course,

Pleasure is,

You know,

Preferred over pain,

You know,

It's not,

We're not crazy for that,

It's totally understandable.

And we also see the prison that we live in,

You know,

The confinement of what is an acceptable life and acceptable experiences,

Often it's very narrow range and,

You know,

The mind starting to see that the mind can have more and more understanding,

More and more peace,

More and more affection in a broader and broader range of experiences,

You know,

Edging into the,

You know,

Sometimes deeply unpleasant or deeply pleasant where we don't need to be afraid of pleasure or make it go away,

But we also see that the heart doesn't need to grasp on it,

To be invested in it as the thing that will make us happy.

Sure,

Pleasure arises,

It's good,

It can keep us buoyant,

It's partly why we do cultivate these,

The love and kindness,

The compassion,

The mudita,

Sympathetic joy,

This buoyancy of heart,

The equanimity also,

This wholesome pleasurable experiences,

You know,

To give us that levity so that when we are faced with the hardship that we have some place to go back to,

Some place of grounding as we try to manage the process of things that are harder for our hearts and minds.

It's,

You know,

It is,

Retreat is unlike kind of like the radio where,

You know,

You can turn on the radio in the car and there's a song you like and,

You know,

And you're just,

When that happens,

It feels so good,

You know,

You're cruising and you got your tunes on and things just feel right,

You know,

And then the song ends and then there's another song,

That's not a good song,

You know,

And it's,

You know,

It's okay and then,

You know,

So you're sort of kind of goes down and we just have this,

You know,

Then it's like,

Okay,

Well you change the channel and you try to find something else and you're scanning through and,

You know,

You can spend a long car ride a lot of the time just like kind of scanning through the channels to kind of keep bumping ourself up to that peak experience,

You know,

And I just,

Oh,

It'd be so great if you could have a radio station that only played what you wanted to hear,

You know,

No commercials,

No fun drives,

You know,

Just all whatever or the exact mix of what you want and then,

You know,

And then it's like when you have a playlist and you try to put on your own tunes and you have the control over that,

Of course,

That's great and you have that,

But there's also this sort of deadness to it,

You know,

You still kind of want the unpredictability of the radio,

But you always want it to play what you want it to play,

You know,

It's great because that's how we are,

It's like you don't want just to live in total control,

You want the liveness,

But you always want it to end up where you want it to end up,

You know,

And it's very deep,

You know,

For the heart,

It's like do we really want to be free or do we just want things to be the way we want them to be and most of the time it's the second and that's okay,

You know,

You have to have that compassion,

Of course,

Of course,

That's the truth,

We really just want things to be the way we want them to be and we don't have to beat ourselves up about that,

We have to understand that,

Yeah,

The wildness,

The unpredictability is very hard for us and part of the maturing of the heart and mind and the growth in this practice is that openness to seeing not only are things out of our control,

But that there's actually a much deeper peace,

A much more profound happiness that's available when we don't live in that mentality that if things are the way we want them to be,

That will make us happy because that actually never makes us happy,

It's not really sustainable because nothing ever will keep satisfying that,

But this peace of mind,

This equanimity that comes out of this practice of deepening our familiarity with the full spectrum of life,

That is what starts to cultivate this capacity for a deeper peace.

And it's sort of foolproof,

You'll never have,

Because now there's all the music,

Spotify and Pandora,

Whatever they're called,

Where there are these incredible algorithms that have figured out what you like to listen to and will keep playing music that it thinks you like,

So it's just this incredible math that has kind of tried,

Keeps trying to perfect this,

We're always going to keep you up where you want,

You're going to keep kind of getting there,

And there's no algorithm here that's going to work,

You're never going to be able to satisfy all the universe of just petty preferences that we have about every moment of the day,

And that's good,

But it's hard,

You know,

It's good,

And it is hard.

And you see,

We come up against this tension here with our practice and this method and this approach,

Which recognizes that certain conditions are supportive,

That we do try to create basically supportive conditions for you to explore the mind,

The body,

The heart in a way that feels safe,

That feels encouraging.

Some of that is just the physical infrastructure,

We have a roof over our heads,

We have beds,

We have all the facilities that we have here,

There's food that's provided,

There's teachers that are trying to help,

There is,

As best they can.

There's a huge staff that's trying to support you and help you in this,

There are the precepts that you've taken to take care of protecting one another in this space,

The protection of silence,

The renunciation of your work,

Of the other responsibilities that we have in life.

In the practice,

Yeah,

We try to create that baseline of concentration,

Awareness of the body,

Of the breath,

To keep that concurrence with the experience over time,

That starts to build some very powerful forces of stability in the mind.

And yet all of those efforts,

All of those endeavors to create protection,

To create stability,

They are all impermanent,

They're all imperfect,

And it is designed to be limited,

You know,

We're only providing so much protection,

So much,

You know,

We're not trying to have a frictionless experience here.

It's designed to have enough space,

Enough security,

Enough protection,

But that you're gonna get put up against something hard,

You know,

Something difficult,

And that this is the practice,

This is the meat of the practice.

And to be very careful with how we treat one another in that context,

You know,

Like when I made the announcement earlier about,

You know,

Encouraging people to,

You know,

Not be doing controlled breathing and to do the,

You know,

Do the kind of approach that we're offering,

You know,

We make some encouragement for there to be basically quiet in this hall,

But it's just not gonna be quiet all the time.

And you shouldn't have that expectation that it's gonna be perfectly quiet,

That no one's gonna cough,

Or no one's gonna sneeze,

Or no one's gonna fall asleep at times.

It's like,

These are gonna happen.

And really,

To very be careful,

It's like,

Don't signal to someone that they should stop something,

Or don't speak to someone about their behavior,

Or don't,

It's like,

It is your responsibility of your mind to be with your aversion.

That is the,

It is the heart of this practice.

We try to create protective conditions,

But ultimately,

We have to be responsible for our own minds to take that,

The aversion is happening here,

Not out there.

You're not gonna control everything.

You're not gonna be able to control how 100 people act,

You know,

Over two weeks.

Forget it,

You know.

But what you can see is that pain of wanting to control it,

Which is of course you do.

Don't,

You know,

We don't,

We're not judging that,

But it's like,

Oh right,

With the pain,

With that contraction,

With that wanting things to be different,

That frustration we projected out onto someone else,

Onto some other,

You know,

Situation,

If they start mowing the lawn,

That same thing,

It's like,

Ugh,

Do they have to mow the lawn now?

During the sitting,

Couldn't they do it?

It's like,

It's here,

You know,

That,

It's here.

There's a great,

You know,

Many folks seem to have done some practice in the kind of method of Goenka,

And so his teacher's teacher was this very,

You know,

Well revered monk in Burma,

Lady Sayada,

And someone came to him once at a retreat and said,

You know,

Sayada,

This person is coughing all the time,

Through the whole,

Every sitting,

And da da da,

Can we do something about it,

Will you tell them to stop?

And he said to this yogi,

He said at the end of this retreat,

You should go thank that person for showing you how bad your concentration was.

It's like,

Okay,

You know,

Just Sayada,

Okay.

And so,

You know,

We're not calling for,

You know,

That degree of,

You know,

Concentration,

But there is that thing of like,

Yes,

This is what we're here for,

We're here to explore these realms of the mind.

You know,

It's not just the fruit trees after the rain and the incense lit by the dawn,

Ah,

You know,

That part's great.

And then there's just like,

Grrr,

You know,

Or the wanting,

You know,

That impulse toward,

You know,

That which is pleasant and beautiful,

And the longing to hold onto it,

You know,

If you can imagine,

You know,

Just sometimes there are times where you're sitting in that,

You know,

There's just some bird,

Was it a phoebe the other day that was out the window?

And you know,

You can see that that's,

The world operates in this way where it's like,

Oh,

You hear that bird song,

And it's so beautiful,

And it uplifts us,

And it makes us happy,

And settles us down,

And so we get a bird feeder,

You know,

And we get the right food for the phoebe,

You know,

And so the phoebe comes and it eats and it sings,

And then it goes,

You know,

It doesn't stay,

And then the grackles come and all these other,

You know,

Whatever,

You know,

The squirrels and the chipmunks,

And so there's that pain of like,

Oh,

Like that,

You know,

It came but it left,

And the hardness of that,

And then,

You know,

The people all around the world will then trap the bird,

You know,

Will get the cage,

Will trick it to coming into the bird feeder,

And then capture it so that it won't be able to leave,

So that we have that song with us all the time.

But then it's trapped,

And it doesn't sing,

It dies,

And we've,

You know,

We've created harm through this,

You know,

Clinging to something beautiful,

And how poignant that is,

And how often some version of that is,

How,

You know,

It might not be killing a being,

But,

You know,

That we create suffering for ourselves and for others by our attachment to things,

And it's that attachment is just based on not seeing,

Right?

This isn't just like behavior modification,

Like stop being attached,

Or stop enjoying bird songs,

Or,

You know,

Just don't feed birds,

Or whatever,

You know.

It's like watching that process,

And if you were to go all the way through,

It's like,

Oh,

That this creature has died because of your,

You know,

Your attachment.

There is this important quality of moral dread that can arise,

Right,

Of like,

Oh,

I don't want to do this.

I don't want to be responsible for harming another being.

That's considered a beautiful quality of the heart,

Actually,

You know,

That would then,

You know,

Take us one step further of like,

Oh,

I'm not going to,

You know,

Kind of try to trap the animal anymore,

Because our mindfulness is strong.

We see that it's just,

It's controlling,

It's wanting,

It's this fixation on trying to control another being's life,

So that we can get what we want out of it.

Oh,

With that mindfulness,

If the mindfulness is a little stronger,

A little earlier,

It's like,

Oh,

We don't do that,

You know,

We don't try to cling on to it.

If the mindfulness is there a little earlier,

Oh,

We see that that offering of birdseed wasn't pure generosity,

You know,

It wasn't pure affection and kindness for these animals.

It was also self-interested,

You know,

We wanted this thing and so we gave for it.

Oh,

And we sensitize to that in our hearts.

What is,

It's this process of the metta practice in the afternoons of loving kindness.

So much of it is an exploration of what are these realms of the heart of love and trying to sensitize between,

Oh yeah,

Where's,

Where's the love that is totally conditionless,

Totally free.

Where's the love that has a little more conditions,

You know.

Oh,

I love you when you act this way,

When you're this type of person,

When you're sort of,

You know,

The behavior is X or Y or when I get this out of it.

Oh,

That is this purification process that we go through with the loving kindness practice and we have to see all of the other things we have to go through and,

And,

And have that discernment process of like,

Oh,

This is love with grasping.

This is love with,

You know,

Control,

Whatever.

We have that kind of deepening sensitivity.

And at that deepest level,

You know,

There's,

It's like what we were started to introduce in the instructions today,

That understanding that each moment of experience just has a pleasant,

Unpleasant or neutral feeling tone.

It's not something we create.

It's something that,

You know,

Our own individual construction is oriented toward,

Right?

So that we hear birdsong as pleasant.

But there might be times in our retreat,

And this is always like fun when this happens,

Is when,

You know,

It's pleasant,

It's pleasant,

And then it's like half an hour later,

And you're like,

All right,

You know,

You're a damn bird,

You know.

And it's like,

Oh,

It just shifted from pleasant to unpleasant,

You know,

It's not the birds fall.

It's just doing its thing.

But that,

That level of like,

Okay,

So there's the offering the food,

But like,

And that's what we're trying to get that close to experience here,

Where it's like sound,

Pleasant,

Grasping.

That's why we're paying attention.

So that's why we're paying attention.

That's why we're doing this,

Is you start to see more and more closely at,

You know,

Further not so far down the chain of events.

So before we've killed this bird,

We've done less and less harm at each,

You know,

Segment.

Until there is that,

All right,

I'll have a glass of water.

That experience of just sound,

Pleasant,

Enjoyment,

Dissipation,

Right,

Arising,

Passing,

Some other sound,

Unpleasant,

It goes away,

Sensation in the knee,

Thought,

Imagination,

Whatever,

Right,

This,

This experience unfolding,

That if we're watching it that closely,

The pleasure of it,

It doesn't,

It doesn't have like a grip on our heart in that same way.

We don't need to do something with it.

We don't need to grasp onto it,

To cling to it,

To try to control it,

To try to orient our whole lives around how we're going to keep it going,

Keep getting more of it.

It's like,

Oh,

Pleasure arising,

Passing.

And it's such a relief.

It's just a huge relief when that happens.

And that freedom in the heart of just like not going for it,

Of seeing something beautiful arise and pass away,

And not having that contraction of the heart,

You know,

Be something that just clings us to suffering in it,

Or the opposite of something unpleasant arises,

And it's like,

Oh,

We're with it,

We're with it fully,

And we recognize the unpleasant.

Maybe we recognize the not wanting,

You know,

We recognize the dislike,

We recognize,

Whatever we recognize,

If we truly see it,

We're not beholden to it anymore.

We have that freedom,

That flexibility,

That's like,

Oh,

Okay,

Of course,

Of course there's not wanting,

Of course there's not wanting.

That's the freedom that this leads to,

That we all have some taste of,

That arises out of the blue for no reason,

And it isn't by doing anything except for being with reality.

It's something I just always trust so much about this practice,

Is we're not manipulating anything.

You know,

We're just trying to be with things as they are in the present moment,

Arising and passing.

Yes,

We offer some method of,

You know,

Well,

Try to be with just this part,

Or try to be with this part,

Or here's what to do when it gets overwhelming.

The method can start to take up a lot of,

You know,

Space,

And it's useful,

But to just remember at some level,

The freedom comes just through this deepening relationship with what's happening.

And it's so pure in that freedom.

The other piece is we start to see,

Okay,

When we tell the story,

We'll say,

Oh,

I heard the Phoebe singing.

And that's how we talk about our experience,

Our life,

Like that's those kinds of stories we tell.

And in this practice,

As we start to observe more and more closely,

We see that the process that the experience actually unfolded in is almost entirely reversed.

That there is a sound,

Right,

That we experience at the Eardor.

There's pleasant,

There's a perceptive quality of the mind,

A perception arises of like,

You know,

Oh,

A bird,

A Phoebe,

And the name arises.

And visual impression arises in the mind.

The enjoyment of the song experience,

The grasping toward it,

And then the mindness,

Right,

The wanting and the mindness,

And then me,

Right?

We think this is happening to us,

But me-ness is the last part of the process.

Me-ness is created,

I,

The sense of self is created out of the contraction around experience.

It isn't the thing that experiences.

And so we watch this,

You know,

The closer we get to being able to see the subtleties of this,

It's a total transformation of how we interpret reality,

Right?

There's sound,

There's pleasure,

There's notions,

There's wanting,

You know,

This,

The mind is constantly creating the world.

Naming,

Securing,

Locking it down,

That's a Phoebe,

You know,

That's a truck,

That's this,

That's this,

This is this person,

We don't like them,

Da da da,

Right?

It's like,

That is,

It's a security against the wildness of things.

It is trying its best to control by knowing,

Amongst other things.

And so this willingness to not know,

This willingness to explore,

To see knowing happen as part of a longer process that conjures a self,

That conjures the world,

Is also part of the deepening wisdom that we have access to in this practice.

In the Iti Huttaka,

The Buddha has a series of discourses,

And they all follow this kind of same schema with just different words.

Bhikkhus,

Monks.

Bhikkhus,

One who has not directly known and fully understood conceit,

Who has not detached his mind from it and abandoned it,

Is incapable of destroying suffering.

But one who has directly known and fully understood conceit,

And who has detached his mind from it and abandoned it,

Is capable of destroying suffering.

One who has not directly known and fully understood greed,

Hate,

Delusion,

Anger,

Contempt,

Who has not detached his mind from it and abandoned it,

Is incapable of destroying suffering.

But one who has directly known and fully understood greed,

Hate,

Delusion,

Anger,

Contempt,

And who has detached his mind from it and abandoned it,

Is capable of destroying suffering.

And then ultimately he goes to the All.

One who has not directly known and fully understood the All,

Who has not detached his mind from it and abandoned it,

Is incapable of destroying suffering.

But one who has directly known and fully understood the All,

Who has detached his mind from it and abandoned it,

Is capable of destroying suffering.

Humankind is possessed by the All,

Bound by the All,

Delighted with being.

Not fully understanding the All,

They come to renewal of being.

But those who have abandoned the All,

And who by destroying the All are freed,

Have conquered the bondage of the All and overcome suffering.

This charge to truly come to understand the All,

You know,

Everything,

Is just so fundamentally important.

We can think that it's,

You know,

Craving is the root of our suffering.

And there are places where that type of language is more used.

It's like,

What is Winnie the Pooh?

It all comes from loving honey so much,

You know?

All his problems.

But that sense of like,

It's not just getting rid of craving,

It's not just getting rid of conceit,

It's not just getting rid of,

You know,

Greed,

Hatred.

It's through directly knowing and fully understanding,

Right?

It's like we're not here to have an experience where these things don't arise.

We are here to have the experience where we are confronted with them,

Where these forces arise in the heart,

And we have the tools and the skills and the momentum and the capacity and the support to show up for them,

And to truly try to understand them fully.

And it's through that understanding that we can let go of them,

Right?

The band in them,

Be released from them,

From their grip.

That it's a freedom through understanding,

Not through just wanting things to be different than they are,

Or deciding that these are not acceptable.

Of course we have,

We try to live up to high standards of morality and ethics with our behavior,

You know,

To not be acting out of these things.

But the deeper uprooting,

It requires this connection,

This relationship with our own anger,

With our own sadness,

With our own jealousy,

With,

You know,

Whatever it is,

Our own conceit.

So if we have that experience of feeling anger or feeling,

You know,

Selfishness,

And then kind of smacking our wrists,

You know,

And beating ourselves up about it,

And,

You know,

Pushing it away and going back to what we think we should be experiencing,

It's a missed opportunity.

You know,

We don't need to judge ourselves for the fact of these experiences,

Right?

They're there as self-protections.

Sure,

You know,

Ultimately unhelpful ones and potentially dangerous ones.

But we're in an environment where we can safely explore them and feel through them,

Try to understand them more fully,

And being careful to not have that agenda of like trying to understand it so that it goes away.

You know,

It's like understanding it because we're honestly interested.

We genuinely want to know about this part of,

Of course it's ourselves,

But it's human.

You know,

When we understand our own,

You know,

Whatever envy,

Then we understand it's not,

We're not afraid of it when it's operating in someone else.

You know,

When we understand our own anger and then someone shows up to us full of rage,

It doesn't feel as threatening.

It feels familiar.

It's like,

Oh yes,

I know this.

You know,

No problem.

That is,

You know,

Part of how this also translates beyond us individually.

This is from the Samyutta Nikaya,

Ananda Sutta.

Ananda was a close friend,

Monastic of the Buddhas and kind of his attendant monk and was with him a lot of the time and was,

Is held to be responsible for having memorized a lot of,

You know,

What the Buddha said and was able to pass down from that.

So this starts,

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Savatthi in Jeta's Grove,

Anathipindika's monastery.

Then Venerable Ananda went to the Blessed One and on arrival bowed down to him and sat to one side.

As he was sitting,

He addressed the Blessed One saying,

Is there one quality that when developed and pursued brings four qualities to completion and four qualities that when developed and pursued bring seven qualities to completion and seven qualities that when developed and pursued bring two qualities to completion?

That's Buddhist math.

One plus four plus seven equals two.

And the Buddha said,

Yes.

Funny you should ask.

How many different numbers did he have to see?

Is there three things that lead to one thing?

This one,

He nailed it.

Which feels like a setup,

Right?

Mindfulness of in and out breathing when developed and pursued brings the four foundations of mindfulness to completion.

The four foundations of mindfulness when developed and pursued bring the seven factors of awakening to completion.

The seven factors of awakening when developed and pursued bring knowledge and liberation to completion.

I'm going to have to do a short description of all of those things.

We'll explain more of them in detail.

But the mindfulness of breath that we're doing,

This idea that it fulfills the four foundations of mindfulness,

Which are the four categories of experience that the Buddha identified as being very powerful and fundamental places to bring this quality of mind.

So the first is the body.

And so then that's the sort of initial place where mindfulness of breath is an aspect of mindfulness of the body,

Of this breathing,

This experience of rising and falling,

Of the tension,

The movement,

The motion,

This air element largely that we experience fulfills that first foundation.

And then there is the second foundation,

Which is Vedana,

Which is what we've been talking about a little bit,

Is this pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neutral feeling tone that arises with all experience.

So the second foundation of mindfulness is the just noticing of pleasant or unpleasant or neutral.

And anyone who's been doing that these few days has some sense of that,

That there's times where it feels pleasant,

There's times where it feels unpleasant,

There's times where it's neutral.

What do we do?

It's like,

Oh,

When it feels pleasant,

We think we're doing a good job.

When it feels unpleasant,

It's not working.

And when it's neutral,

We're bored and we're entertaining ourselves elsewhere.

And then the third foundation of mindfulness,

Citta,

Mindfulness of mind,

Of mind states,

Of the mind influenced by craving,

By peace,

By joy,

By concentration and rapture and calm,

All of these mental qualities that are there,

This other foundation of mindfulness,

Which of course we're also being more and more attuned to,

Just as we're sitting watching the rising and falling of the breath or larger area of the body,

Experience of sound,

Which falls into that fourth category,

Dhammas.

Reviews

A bit of a misnomer......pun intended:) Really, a wonderful comprehensive talk. Humor included.
Thank you