#2 Working with Right Intention, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness

The second of two talks on Right Intention, Right Effort and Right Mindfulness as supports for your meditation practice. This talk is by John Cunningham, guiding teacher of Insight Meditation Cleveland, at a 6/4/21-6/5/21 retreat at Insight Meditation Ann Arbor. It's freely offered and appropriate for all levels of practitioners. May your life unfold with ease and wonder.

Transcript

So last night,

We sort of set the stage for the samadhi section of the Eightfold Path,

That is the steps of right effort,

Right mindfulness and right concentration,

And talked a little bit about how that's really the heart of this work that we're doing that was offered to us by the Buddha in the Four Noble Truths.

We talked about the first three noble truths as being descriptive,

That is,

The Buddha was telling us what he saw,

Giving us a model,

A mental model,

That we could then investigate for ourselves not to be accepted blindly as this is the truth,

But rather an invitation to look for ourselves to see is this true for us.

And in the seeing to develop some wisdom,

Some capacity to see,

Yes,

This model does work for me,

And now what do I do with that?

And that's where the prescription of the Buddha in the Eightfold Path comes forward and offers to us a mechanism that uses the very essence of our being,

Things that are very natural to us,

And works to align them into making them right or correct or useful or skillful.

So things like wisdom,

Which is right view or thought and right understanding,

To align ourselves with right intentionality,

To be able to align those things in a way that are skillful for us,

So that we're always having the way things are in the world,

We're always seeing that,

But so much of our life,

It's diluted,

It's not clear,

We're not seeing things the way they really are,

It's the invitation of the Buddha is to look to see the way they really are.

And for that process,

He gave us the sila or ethics part of the path,

Right?

Rightness,

Livelihood,

Right action,

Right speech,

So that we begin to align our behavior in a way that leads to a calm and peaceful life,

To a way that prepares the ground,

Prepares our psychophysical ground for being able to do the kind of work to develop deeper wisdom.

And so that's where this samadhi or mental training,

Mental discipline,

If we can call it that,

This section of the path comes in.

It doesn't mean we have to be living a spotless life to move here,

But rather that the intention to live in a skillful way with sila or ethics is in our purview,

At least.

And then that opens the door for us to begin this process of working with the samadhi part of the path.

And as we did this morning,

It's helpful to investigate what does that look like for us as we start on this path?

What does effort look like?

What is effort to begin with so that we can begin to see,

Now I know what effort is,

How do I align that so that it's skillful or correct or right effort,

What the Buddha was talking about?

What is mindfulness?

What does that mean?

Again,

We talked about how many different ways it's used in common language these days in the common world,

But what does it mean from a Buddhist perspective?

What is right mindfulness or skillful mindfulness?

The same is true with concentration.

Concentration is just neutral in and of itself,

Right?

It doesn't matter.

A sniper is very concentrated,

But how do we take this capacity of the mind to concentrate and align it so that it leads to wisdom?

And again,

Ultimately that's what we're doing with this prescriptive part of the four noble truths,

Isn't it?

We are using this prescription to try to find how do we bring about the end of suffering?

How do we understand and live in those narratives of the first three noble truths?

So what I'd like to do is look a little more deeply at each of these three elements of the Noble,

Of the Eightfold Path.

And as I talk about them,

See what makes sense for you.

So again,

As with everything we do here,

It's not to be believed.

It's not something to file away cognitively as if now you know something,

Or rather to investigate for yourself to see,

Is this work for you?

So Right Effort,

The first of these three,

Is it's applying energy in a particular way.

We talked about this in our practice this morning,

This gathering of energy and applying it to whatever it is that we're doing with the mind,

Mindfulness or concentration,

How we're working with the mind.

Or we can use the same thing in our Seela Path or other parts of the path.

It's this gathering of energy and applying it to the situation.

As we talked about this morning,

It's not too hard to do that for a short period of time.

The challenge comes in when we try to do it in an ongoing way.

And this is where another part of Right Effort is fortitude,

The ability to apply energy consistently,

To develop some momentum,

To develop some staying power to this energy.

We talked about how curiosity and keen investigation,

These qualities of really looking,

These kinds of mental factors,

Of really being interested in what we're doing helps to develop that energy and helps to maintain the application of that energy over time.

And as we apply energy in these situations,

We're both directing,

But we're also course correcting as we go along when we apply energy.

It's a little bit like driving a car.

If you think of how you drive a car,

What you do with the steering wheel,

You are applying focus and energy to move the car.

But as part of that process,

You're constantly doing little course corrections to adjust so that you stay on the road that you're trying to drive down.

So we kind of do that with Right Effort as we develop this capacity to apply energy in a continuous manner through fortitude and persistence that we'll be doing some course correction.

And we'll get into what that looks like from Right Effort perspective.

The outcome of Right Effort,

It acts as a catalyst to help propel not only itself,

But all of the various elements of the Eightfold Path.

First of all,

We develop confidence.

When we see that we can apply energy and develop some consistency,

It doesn't have to be a lot,

But as we can develop some.

First of all,

We see we have the ability to do that.

So instead of thinking we do or wondering if we do or feeling that we don't,

We see,

Yes,

It is possible for this mind and body to actually apply energy and to hold that energy for some period of time.

We develop confidence in our ability to get results from it.

So oftentimes that manifests as I had a good meditation or had a bad meditation,

Some judgment associated with it.

But underlying that is this quality that there is something that's different when we're able to apply energy and we begin to feel the sense of growth and development that comes out of it.

It also fosters a sense of curiosity.

As you become comfortable applying energy,

The focus of the mind as to what it's doing is a little bit less on trying to hold the energy and more on what you're doing with that energy.

So again,

If I could use driving or being in a car as a metaphor,

When you first start driving all focus and all attention is on keeping the car on the road,

Not running off the road,

Not getting hit,

Getting to your destination.

It's all on that.

Once you become comfortable driving,

Then you can begin to take in more of the world around you.

So all the effort is not on just keeping the car in the lane,

But now you can begin to see the world around you,

Your horizon broadens as you look out.

And I know when I first started driving,

One of my first driving experiences was driving from Alabama to Ohio with my dad.

And he let me drive as much of the way as I wanted to.

And when we got on the freeway,

I noticed that I was constantly looking at the next white line off to the left.

I spent my all my attention making sure I wasn't crossing that white line.

That's how I drove.

And then as I get familiar with driving and comfortable with it,

My horizon expanded,

I could notice the everything up my head.

The white line was still part of the experience,

But it was not the major thing anymore.

I paid attention to the mirrors,

Which was a good thing.

So that's what we do.

As we begin to get comfortable with our application of energy with our with right effort,

We begin to be able to use that to develop a sense of curiosity.

And then that in turn propels us forward on our path.

The Buddha talked about four different types of effort.

And this is what we were starting to work with this morning.

Excuse me,

And I talked about course correction,

How right effort leads to course correction.

It's through these four that we end up doing course correction.

So the first thing the Buddha talked about was avoiding unskillful mind states arising.

So keeping at bay the unskillful mind states that want to arise in us,

It's easier to prevent unskillful mind states from arising than it is to stop them.

The question is,

How do we fill our mind?

What is it that we're doing?

How do we spend our mind?

Our mind is needed sometimes to navigate life.

We have to decide,

I've got to get food,

How to prepare food,

I've got to take the garbage out,

I've got to pay my bills,

Those are all navigating life and our mind is very,

Very well adapted and useful for that.

But I know for myself,

Way more than half of my mind is not needed for that kind of activity.

It is really not needed at all.

It's still there,

But it's not needed.

The question is,

How do I spend that mind?

What do I do with it?

Part of that is looking to see what habitual patterns have we developed over the years that sort of direct our thoughts in certain areas.

Another part of it is what inputs do you feed your mind with?

What are the things that you allow to come in through your sense stores?

And do you regulate those or pay the attention to what's coming into the sense stores?

So I think of things like news programs and different forms of entertainment that we have available to us through the internet or through television,

Even through radio.

And what are they bringing into our mind?

What's the quality of the information that's coming into our mind?

What do we do with it?

I find for myself,

I need very little news in my life to be able to make intelligent decisions in response to world conditions.

I don't need a lot.

I certainly don't need to digest it on an ongoing basis,

Hour after hour,

Day after day.

And furthermore,

I find for myself that when I expose myself too much to the way the condition of the world is presented in the news,

I find that it is problematic for me.

It leads to unskillful mind states arising.

So I found for myself that avoiding unskillful mind states is to not watch TV news,

For example.

I don't actually don't watch hardly any TV.

And part of it is because the things that were arising in me when I used that as an input didn't lead to the kinds of outcomes and mind states that I felt were skillful.

So that idea of avoiding these unskillful mind states is to meter what's coming in in the first place so that you don't have this constant set of inputs that's driving your mind in certain directions,

Guarding the sense stores so that we regulate what comes in there.

The other thing is to realize that when these things do come in,

That there's a lot of mental persistence to them.

Persistence is that quality of something staying around after the stimulus is gone.

And I noticed it today just looking at the screen for the Zoom with everybody there on the screen,

When I would close my eyes for some number of seconds,

Up to 30 seconds after I still had this image,

Almost a reverse image of the Zoom screen with little squares in it where people are.

That's optical or visual persistence.

The mind does the very same thing.

If you think about something,

That thing is going to stay with you.

We probably all had this experience.

I know days that I've done a lot of reading in the yard,

When I lie down in bed at night,

I'm reading mentally.

I remember years ago doing that with cards,

Playing cards for several hours.

And when I went to bed,

I was playing cards in my mind.

So that persistence of mind is another thing we need to be careful of,

Because that will stick around.

So if we're guarding our sense stores,

We're avoiding letting these skillful mind states arrive.

The second one is the elimination or ending of skillful,

Of unskillful mind states that have arisen.

As we talked about before,

That's harder to do than to prevent them from arising,

But they do happen.

So the first thing to do is to see that the unskillful mind states have a kind of enchanting power over us.

They charm us into getting entranced into whatever it is that they are delivering to us.

And in this mesmerizing effect,

Oftentimes we don't even know that that's what's happening.

We're just caught up in the story.

And when we're caught up in the story,

It is not easy,

First of all,

To even see that it's a story that we're caught up in.

And secondly,

To stop the story,

I know for myself,

I've had times in meditation where I've been thinking of something to come or a past experience that I've had that was pleasant,

And then being aware,

I'm trying to meditate here,

I should let that go.

And the resistance to letting that go,

Because my mind,

I wanted to hold on to,

I wanted to keep it.

But the quality of mindfulness becoming aware,

As we,

As we're sitting in meditation,

Or even in our daily lives,

As we're,

We become aware,

This is,

This is where my mind is right now,

This is what's going on in my mind,

As we become aware of that,

That's a moment of awareness actually breaks the charm of the stories of the mind,

It suspends it for a moment.

And we have a choice at that moment,

We can either drop the mindfulness and let the story continue,

Or we can choose to take another direction,

And keep the mindfulness present in the story,

Let that fall away.

So it's a useful tool to help to end the mind states,

When they've arisen.

It can also be helpful when we become aware of a mind state to see for ourselves and just reflect is this a skillful mind state.

And again,

We want to look back like we talked about in the question and answer session before to see what's the root of this.

Is this something that's being driven by greed,

Or aversion,

Or delusion?

Is it something that's manifesting out of that?

Is there a strong sense of I or me associated with this mind state?

Or is it something that's rooted in skillful intentionality or skillful roots,

Something that's coming out of a sense of generosity,

Compassion,

Clear seeing,

Knowing what leads to what.

So as we begin to see those things,

We can see how these ones are the unskillful mind states,

There's no need to energize those further,

They won't lead to any of the things that I that I seek.

And recognizing that power of mental persistence,

To know if I allow this mind state to continue,

Not only am I prohibiting awareness and the cultivation of peace and freedom in this moment,

But I am going to be propagating it into the future.

We're not trying to do this in a way to scare ourselves or,

Or look at it as a negative thing,

But just the reality that there is this mental persistence.

And if I think these kinds of thoughts and foster these kinds of thoughts,

More of them will be likely to come forward in the future.

And is that really what I want?

So that's the second type of effort is to eliminate unskillful mind states as they as they arise.

The cultivation of skillful mind states,

The arising skillful mind states is the third type of effort.

So this is where we actually do some work to cultivate mind states that are skillful.

And we can do this at any point along the way,

The way it's,

Again,

It's that idea of course correction.

So it can be very momentary.

As we see,

We are avoiding an unskillful mind state,

And I'll replace that space in my mind,

I will spend my mind skillfully instead of unskillfully here.

So some of the things that can be useful here,

Meta practice,

Loving kindness practice,

Just repeating the phrases,

Calling to mind those that we care about those that are neutral,

Our own selves,

Our world,

And just offering well being.

It's a great way to spend your mind when you don't need your mind for anything else.

It can just become almost like a,

Like a mantra to just do meta practice in the background.

Another practice that I personally like is taking the precepts and the refuges,

Noting the refugees.

So just having phrasings for yourself,

I take refuge in the Buddha,

The Dharma and the Sangha and knowing what that means to you.

So in this moment,

There's a sense of well being and container ship that comes from knowing about Buddha nature,

Having the incredible fortune to be aware of that,

Knowing the Dharma knowing that it exists,

That it is there for us,

What an incredible gift that is to us to be able to have that available to us.

And having that as the underlying foundation that we can rest in.

And then the amazing quality of Sangha of connection of ourselves,

Of our community here,

Of the bigger community,

And ultimately of all beings everywhere that this sense of community,

We're all in this together.

And taking that as a refuge,

It's a wonderful way to spend your mind.

The precepts with your own phrasings of them so that you have a way of recognizing these these tools that the Buddha provided,

They offer us skillful living,

A prescription.

So watching our speech,

Working to not harm others in any other beings,

Telling the truth,

Being truthful and honest with others.

The avoidance of too much sensual activity of any kind where we're satisfying through greed,

Our sense desires,

Just moderating those and avoiding intoxicants.

When the Buddha said it was intoxicants,

I like to think of that as both activities and substances which cloud the mind.

So too much of TV or YouTube can be an intoxicant the same way as alcohol or drugs could be.

So really just seeing that we can take these precepts,

Which just reminds us of these ways of being,

Seeing opportunities connecting with others and to be of service,

Just keeping that front of mind for you.

And it can be very simple.

I know yesterday,

My wife and I went to lunch at a restaurant not too far from where we sat outside and I had the opportunity three different times just to be of service to people.

There were two people and one lady was with a walker trying to get up on the sidewalk over the curb and it was one of the tables was annoying so I was able to move it a little bit for her.

Another person was trying to get around that very same tables.

I moved the table again.

Another one of the wait people from the restaurant was coming up to serve people on the outside seating area and the door was,

Her hands were blown,

The door was closed.

I just went over and opened the door for her.

They're not big things.

They're not being done for credit for,

You know,

Hey,

What a great guy,

He opened the door for it.

It's not like that.

But it's saying,

What is life need in this moment?

What is being asked in this moment and being able to be there to respond to it when it's needed?

For myself,

There's a phrase I like to keep in my mind.

I like to have the phrase rest in the question,

What does this noble being need in this moment?

Where the noble being is anybody who happens to be around me.

I like the word noble being because it gets rid of the appearance of the person which I might have an opinion about or anything else about them is that internally in your core there's this nobility and that's what I'm looking to see.

Does it need something else?

99.

9% of the time it needs nothing.

That noble being needs nothing just to be left alone.

But that 0.

1% of the time maybe there is something that's needed.

And if it works,

Then maybe we respond to them.

Another one is spending time in nature.

When you're able to spend time out doing a walk or something else,

Just enjoying your relationship to nature,

That's kind of a cleansing process that comes to that.

And just as we cleanse our mind like that,

It opens the door for skillful mind states to arise.

And then the fourth type of effort is the maintaining skillful mind states as they have arisen in us.

So continuing the idea of skillful speak as we cultivate it in the precepts to really work as we're speaking to maintain that skillful speak.

Saying things that are truthful,

Timely,

Inappropriate,

That's the only time we'll say them.

Avoiding harsh or angry speech,

Avoiding gossip and backbiting,

Avoiding idle chatter,

And cultivating a kindly tongue to those around us.

So as we keep this on our mind,

We're living from this mindfulness,

This state of skillful speech,

The tongue will respond appropriately.

It will not go out on its own with harsh speech if the mind state is one of peace and calmness.

Wanting ourselves to fully feel the connections that we fostered with the arising of skillful mind states.

So even though you may be saying the metaphrases and not feeling them,

Maybe reflecting on who you're doing the metaphrases for will bring a feeling of kindness to your heart.

Another wonderful one is the sense of human frailty that we see around us.

If we're able to see it as not an intentional assault on us,

But just this universal samsaric condition that we live in,

And that we share with all beings,

That we have this human frailty that we try,

We try our best,

And yet still,

We fail in different things.

We're just not strong beings in a lot of areas.

And as that's true for me,

I see that in the world out there around me.

That awareness of others around you opens the heart to compassion.

Think of times in your own life when you've seen somebody struggle,

And without any intentionality or anything that you're assigning to what they're doing,

Your heart just opens to them,

That natural capacity of the heart that to alleviate the suffering of the world.

This is what the Buddha talked about as compassion.

And so we can foster that by paying attention to the world around us,

And what's going on for people around us,

Not assigning intentionality to what we're seeing or doing,

But rather,

Can we see they too are suffering as we are,

And that my heart can open to them in their suffering the same way as it can open to me and my suffering.

And this is maintaining those skillful mind states as they arise.

So this is very useful to pay attention to these things,

That course correction of these four types of effort as we go about our meditation,

But also as we go about our daily lives.

The next,

The next of these paths,

The next of these steps on the samadhi part of the eightfold path is right,

Correct or skillful mindfulness.

Again,

We talked about mindfulness this morning,

We talked about how it's used in so many different ways nowadays,

It's hard to get a definition that that fits well,

But fortunately,

The Buddha was very,

Very specific about what mindfulness is in the context of this,

This part of the path,

And how to do it,

What are the steps to do it again,

Just like the with the novel eightfold path,

He gave us this wonderful model with both a descriptive and a prescriptive section to it.

The teaching,

Which many of you know,

Already and have studied the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta,

Foundations of mindfulness,

Is probably,

I would say,

It's probably the most common of the Buddha's teachings that I'm aware of,

I've seen it,

So many books written about it,

So many talks given on it.

So many people study it.

And it's the kind of thing you study for a long time.

I know,

I studied this for two years with my teacher,

Going through line by line,

Word by word,

Understanding what it meant and practices around that.

I know several of you on the call today have studied it for at least a year,

Maybe longer.

So I think we can get a lot out of it without having to study it that long.

But the point is,

Is the depth of it and the gift that it has to offer is intense.

So the sutta opens,

The Buddha says,

The sutta says,

Then the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus as follows.

This is the only way,

O bhikkhus,

For the purification of beings,

For the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation,

For the destruction of suffering and grief,

For reaching the right path,

For the attainment of nibbana,

Namely the four arousings of mindfulness,

The four foundations of mindfulness.

Just pretty,

Pretty good way to set this up.

This is this is like this is the heart of the practice right now is learning how to do this.

He says,

What are these for?

Bitcoos manufacturers contemplating the body in the body,

Ardent,

Clearly comprehending and mindful,

Having overcome in this world competence and grief.

He lives contemplating the feelings in the feelings hardened clearly comprehending and mindful,

Having overcome in this world kinds of just this ingredient.

He lives contemplating consciousness in consciousness are clearly comprehending and mindful,

Having overcome in this world covetousness and greed.

He lives contemplating mental objects in mental objects,

Ardent,

Clearly comprehending,

And mindful having overcome in this world covetousness and greed.

So these are the four foundations of mindfulness that the Buddha talked about,

The four places that it is worth spending our mind to come closer to understand.

The body,

Physical form,

And all that goes with that.

Feelings,

That feeling tone of things being pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neutral,

And the states that arise that support those.

The consciousness,

The awareness that we have,

How our awareness is occupied,

And mental formulations,

Different ways that the mind works,

And the way the Buddha structured it is around different sets of models,

Which we'll mention.

We won't have the time to go into them,

But we'll mention the models that he talked about as being in that fourth foundation of mindfulness.

So mindfulness of the body,

The Buddha spent a long time in the sutta talking about that.

And when we do breath meditation,

That's really that mindfulness of body that we're working with.

But he talked also about mindfulness of body posture,

The different parts of the body,

The body elements,

And the dying of the body,

All those were covered in the foundation of mindfulness.

So there's many different aspects of the body that we can work with.

The most foundational kind that we work with,

For the most part,

Is that mindfulness of breath.

And we can do it in very specific ways when we pay attention to the breath.

We talked about this this morning,

Paying attention to the size of the breath,

The short or long,

To the softness or harshness of the breath,

Knowing that we're breathing.

That's what the Buddha says,

Knowing that I'm breathing with hardness and clear comprehension.

He says,

Paying attention to the body in the body.

What does that mean,

The body in the body?

What's what is what the Buddha is telling us there,

Is he's saying,

Put away the rest of the things,

This is just the experience of body that we're paying attention to here.

It's not whether we like it or not.

It's not the stories we build around the body.

So even the breath,

We pay attention to that sensation,

Even the story that it is breath is a mental formation,

Isn't it?

It's a story about it.

There is no breath.

That's a word.

It's a concept.

There is an experience,

But the word on top of it complicates it.

It puts boundaries on breath that are not there in an experience.

So when the Buddha talks about this,

He's talking about us coming down right to the very essence of the experience.

So when you begin to pay attention to breath,

You can note this is breath.

This is long,

This is short,

But the underlying quality is what we're really trying to ultimately get to what is that experience.

Mindfulness of feelings.

Again,

Our work there,

We talked a little bit about this with one of the practices this morning,

Is the idea of something being pleasant or unpleasant or neutral,

That awareness,

That knowledge of that arising in our experience,

Because that knowledge,

That experience of something pleasant or unpleasant,

Is part of that capacity that we have to crave that second noble truth.

If things were not pleasant or unpleasant,

If everything was just neutral,

And have a form to it,

Or if we were clear on all of it,

We would not have the catch point for ourselves to materialize to life or not like.

So it's that quality,

Something's pleasant and arising of that self to own something and grab at it or push it away.

So it's good to know,

What are these?

What are what are the feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness,

Watching them come and go watching that changing nature of them.

The mindfulness of consciousness,

This capacity that we have to be aware,

And the space that's there is kind of just an open space that life seems to happen in.

So we can be aware of how is that occupied?

What's going on in there?

The Buddhist is to be aware when there's greed present.

And to notice for ourselves,

When greed is present,

If we can use it as a way of learning,

We can see,

Wow,

That I am greed right now,

That it's filling the space,

It's filling the awareness is just this greed.

There is no difference between the greed and the rest of my experience right now.

That's what's true.

A version can see this sometimes even more strongly with a version.

We really don't like something,

We're really angry about something,

Really fearful about something,

To see what that's like,

And how that fills our space,

And how we become that in these certain moments.

You think about times you may have yelled at somebody,

Spoken very harshly to them,

Or done things that you later regretted.

Who were you in that moment?

How did that materialize?

That's not who you take yourself to be.

Because that aversion fills the space.

And as it fills the space,

It begins to control the levers for the hands and the tongue and other things in ways that can be used on skillfully.

So being able to see that that awareness and how consciousness gets filled with these things is something that we need to understand how that happens,

If we ever hope to change it.

Or with delusion,

Is this filled with delusion,

Not knowing what leads to what,

So that we're acting without any clarity about the outcomes of the actions that we're taking.

And then whether consciousness is strong or dull.

So there's times we're acting,

But we're doing it in a very rote manner,

Which is going through the motions.

There's other times where we might be very intentional about our actions.

And again,

That process is independent of whether the actions are skillful or unskillful.

Right?

Somebody who murders somebody can be very intentional and skillful,

Not skillful,

Very intentional and knowledgeable about how to go about doing that process as they kill somebody,

Premeditated.

That's the same tool that's at work is when we try to be cultivating peace and the end of suffering.

So that's the mindfulness of consciousness,

The third of the foundations of mindfulness.

The fourth foundation is mindfulness of objects of mind.

And you'll notice as we go through these foundations of mindfulness,

They begin to get more esoteric as we go down.

So mindfulness of the body,

I mean,

It's the body's here,

It's clear,

We can pay really close attention to it.

And we know we're paying attention to it.

The feelings are a little bit more nebulous,

But they usually are front and center for us consciousness,

That's harder to grab onto,

Right?

We can only see consciousness by what it's filled with.

And then these objects of mind.

These are,

Are even more challenging for us to grab on to.

And the way the Buddha structured this mindfulness of objects is by inviting us to be mindful of some of the models that he offered to us.

So the first one is the hindrances.

And we don't have time to go into those today.

But basically,

It's the things that block our capacity to be open,

To be mind,

Truly mindful in the Buddhist sense of the word,

To be concentrated,

To keep our mind stable,

To keep our efforts skillful.

And they come in two pairs,

And then a standalone.

So the first pair is wanting things to be other than they are.

That's greed and aversion.

I'm not okay with the way things are,

I want it to be this way that I want,

Or I want it to not be this way that I don't want.

So that pair,

Either being on either side of that will fill our space,

Right,

It'll fill our mind as we as we go through the battles of trying to make life align with the way we want it to be.

The second pair is around our energy level,

Sloth and torpor,

On the one hand,

Very low energies,

And restlessness and remorse on the other side,

Too much energy.

So this imbalance of energy can also throw us off sloth and torpor,

We all know what that's like to try and some of us may be experiencing it now in the early afternoon.

You know,

You try to try to say,

Keep your mind focused and aware.

And the body gets tired,

The mind gets tired,

And it's like a blanket layer over on top of us.

Or the other side,

This restlessness,

Where the mind gets agitated,

And it's hard to corral it,

And we try to pay attention to the breath or something else in the mind just going all over the place.

So either of these energy levels can throw us off as well.

And then the last one is doubt.

And doubt is where we,

We have,

We don't have the faith that we need in our practice to be able to give it the energy that is needed.

It undermines our ability to,

To have right effort.

If you are not secure in your,

In your path and what you're doing,

How can you generate the kind of energy needed for right effort.

And doubt can manifest in a number of different ways.

It can be a doubt about your own ability to succeed at something or how you're doing it today.

It can be a doubt in the whole practice.

Is this something you want to,

You know,

Spend my time on?

So it can manifest in a lot of ways,

But it's a kind of,

A kind of questioning that's,

That's pointing away from clearly investigating.

Clear investigation is also a questioning,

But it's trying to see how things are.

Doubt is a kind of a pushing away questioning.

So it's questioning,

But it's like walking away at the same time.

So these are the hindrances.

The next set of mental objects that the Buddha invited us to investigate is the aggregates of clinging.

And if you remember from our talk yesterday,

When we talked about Dukkha,

The Buddha defined Dukkha as being these five aggregates of clinging.

So this form,

This body feeling,

The feeling tone,

We've talked about mental formations,

Our thoughts and emotions,

Consciousness,

The awareness that we have from,

That it comes into our different physical senses in the mind.

And as we,

As we work with these aggregates,

What we're doing is we're paying attention from a mindfulness foundation.

We're looking to see how these things arise and fall away.

We're not trying to get rid of them or change them in any way,

But just to see these are what come up in our experience.

These come up over and over again.

We watch them.

This is my sound coming up.

This is my feeling tone coming up.

It's coming and going away.

So we kind of see that ever changing quality exists there.

Associated with that is the senses,

Our six senses.

So just as we do with form,

With the aggregate of clinging,

We can look at any of the senses and the inputs that come from those.

Those often will call to us,

Right?

So sounds will call us to them.

Body sensations will call us to them.

So when we're working with these as a mindfulness foundation,

We can begin to see how they arise and how they fall away.

What is true when they're here and how quickly they arise and fall away.

So it's just another way for us to be exploring this experience,

The psychophysical organism from a mindfulness perspective to see not so much what's there,

But what is it that's not there that we thought was there?

What did we take to be the case?

That's not the case.

So maybe that you think a pain in your body feels like it's going to be there forever.

It's always been there.

But if you really start paying attention,

You see it comes,

It goes.

Now it's just uncomfortable.

Now it's not.

Now it's a pressure.

Now it's a pushing.

Now it's a vibration.

You see this natural change in it that comes and it helps to dismantle the view of superlative that comes as we have a version of things that it will always be this way.

Another set of the mental objects that the Buddha invited us to look at was the seven factors of enlightenment.

And this would be a whole retreat on its own,

But they're just their qualities of mind states,

Qualities of mind that we can both cultivate and enjoy that are essential parts of our,

On our path to enlightenment.

And they include mindfulness,

Keen investigation,

Energy,

Joy,

Tranquility,

Concentration,

And equanimity.

And so I just,

I just named them here,

But we don't have the time to really dig into them and look at them in more,

In more detail at this point.

But I do encourage you to,

To look at them at some point and see how you could use them in mindfulness meditation.

And then the Four Noble Truths is the last one that the Buddha talked about.

And we spent a good deal of time in this retreat,

Looking at the Four Noble Truths and being mindful of that.

So that this set of tools that the Buddha offered in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is how we should be paying attention mindfully in the context of this,

This element of the Eightfold Path.

And then the last one that we're looking at is Right Concentration.

Right Concentration really has,

Has a couple of different aspects to it.

The first is the one pointedness of mind,

The concentrated mind,

Which is often referred to as Samatha meditation,

It's that practice that we have when we call the breath to our awareness,

And then just stay focused on the breath.

So we're still controlling the mind,

We're still regulating what we're paying attention to.

And when things come in that are not the breath,

We set them aside and bring ourselves back to the breath.

There's a lot of development in the teachings of the Buddha around developing concentration to deeper and deeper levels,

And a series of concentration levels called the jhanas.

Again,

We don't have time to go into that here.

They are worth exploring.

The Buddha talked about these as being essential for us to ever develop that capacity,

A concentrated mind to get us to the point of moving into the second type of meditation,

Which is the Pasana or insight practice.

So my own experience with jhanas is they take time to develop to recognize how they are,

What they are,

But that they also require longer periods of time to develop,

They don't just happen quickly.

And if you're interested in those,

There's a few retreats,

Teachers that teach jhana meditation.

And so I'd encourage you to look into one of those if it's something that you want to pursue further.

Essentially,

What we're trying to do with our concentration meditation is to clear the mind of the five hindrances.

So we talked about those hindrances as being imbalances between energy or wanting things to be other than they are or doubt.

So what we're really trying to do is through this concentrated mind,

Set those hindrances aside so that the mind is clear and not bothered by the hindrances.

When that happens,

When the mind is not bothered by the hindrances,

We now have an environment,

A mental environment that we can move into the pasana practice.

And the pasana practice is really using that concentrated or one-pointed mind instead of just staying focused on the.

.

.

Oops,

Sorry,

Wind blew my doors open here.

Instead of staying with the concentrated mind on the breath,

It's rather to stay with whatever is going through the mind.

So different experiences move through the mind as we become aware of,

For example,

My doors blew open.

So just being aware,

This is what's happening now,

Doors blew open.

So instead of staying on the breath,

I'm aware now the doors blew.

I may be aware of the impermanent nature of that process.

They blew open and now they're open.

I may be aware I didn't want that to happen.

There's a sense of stress or dissatisfaction that the doors did blow open.

I may be aware that it didn't happen to me.

The doors just blew open,

Had nothing to do with me.

So these different qualities of the conditioned phenomena of this existence can come up for us as we're doing this positive practice.

And again,

As we talked about this morning,

As through this positive practice,

That we ultimately come to these insights,

We slowly dismantle our views of how things are and open the door to freedom for us.

This is the tool that allows us to begin to see the sense of self and how it manifests.

And in turn,

How the self reifies in each moment through greed and aversion and leads to Dukkha.

And as we see through that,

You know,

These,

These,

This condition of being human has this incredibly that when we see something clearly,

Again,

To the idea of wisdom,

When we see it clearly,

We act from that knowledge.

And so as we develop the wisdom about the sense of a cell for an irony,

We begin to act from that knowledge and freedom will begin to arise for us.

So we've talked a lot today and yesterday about these models and gone into some pretty good detail about things.

What we did,

If you remember,

We talked last night about these models of the Buddha as being like a prism.

So we've taken our experience in our path,

We've taken that and kissed as you would do with white light,

Shining it in the prism and seeing the different colors,

We've taken our experience and shined it through the prism of the four noble truths,

Through the eightfold path,

Through talking a little bit about the foundations of mindfulness,

Through the four ways to work with effort.

It's a model for us to break this thing apart.

We now have to reconstruct our street mind,

Right?

We've let ourselves come back to our street mind,

Knowing things a little more deeply,

Because we have this exposure to this.

It behooves us to practice these things,

Friends,

It behooves us to work with this eightfold path,

And particularly in the section around Samadhi,

To work with effort,

To know what effort is for us,

To begin to understand that,

To know what mindfulness is,

And how even if you do nothing more than mindfulness of the breath,

To know that there is this prescription for how to be mindful and what to be mindful of.

And this development of concentration and one-pointedness and cultivating the space that we can then move from a fixed object of meditation to letting our experience flow through that field of concentrated awareness,

And setting ourselves up for insights.

So,

Back with our street mind to pull this stuff all together and to live from that space.

Struggle is good.

If this is not a place of struggle for you,

Dig deeper.

We should be struggling with these things.

We should be right at the edge of our practice.

That's where the learning comes.

So,

As we continue to dig,

We need to work closely to see that we're right at the edge of our practice and working at that edge.

And then to realize,

As we talked about last night,

As we develop our effort,

Our mindfulness,

And our concentration,

This team of mental disciplines will cultivate more wisdom for us.

And as we cultivate more wisdom,

I begin to see things more clearly and will invite us to live a more skillful life,

Which will invite us to spend more time,

More energy with our practicing more clearly,

Which will be getting more wisdom.

So,

The cycling upward of clarity.

And as we do this,

This sense of an irony as the subject of everything will begin to loosen and begins to hold less tightly to us.

Our relationship to the world begins to flow more easily,

And life becomes more of a witnessing of an effervescence than a doer trying to do everything.

I'm saying yes to what life is offering,

Whether it's something that's pleasant or unpleasant or neutral,

Saying yes to it and allowing ourselves to open to it,

To accept it,

And to see what leads to what to help us determine what the next action is.

And as that next action happens,

It's almost as if we're watching it instead of the doer of it.

We come to a place we mentioned before this idea of effortless effort.

So,

We have this step on the path of right effort,

We come to a place where effort begins to take over itself.

It's propagating itself,

And we find we're doing things in a skillful way.

As the mind is trained and disciplined,

It begins to act in certain ways.

You begin to connect with people in certain ways.

The self begins to take the role of a servant,

A valuable trusted servant instead of the master of every moment.

This is an idea of effortless effort is the flowing forth of your life in the world in a skillful way.

We had a question earlier about intentionality in the sense of an eye being connected.

You begin to see that there is intentionality happening,

But you're witnessing the intentionality.

It's no longer your intentionality.

You watch the body act,

But it's not you acting.

And you watch skillful things arising,

But you're no longer trying to take credit for those things because the one who wanted to take credit for them is now in a posture of bowing to what is instead of being the one who's trying to drive the ship towards aversive or greedy desires.

Reviews

Thank you!🙏🏼

Thank you John 🙏🏻

So helpful. Thank you