Establishing Mindfulness

This comes directly from the Dhammapada: We are what we think. All that we are, arises from our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. With our thoughts, we make the world.
So the quality of your mind determines the quality of your life. Changing how we respond to the world is often as good as changing the world.

Transcript

So I want to start out the day by sharing something from a writer.

Her name is Dani Shapiro and this is from her book called Devotions.

Our thoughts break through the practice almost instantly.

Gotta call the dentist.

When's the school picnic?

These first thoughts are all on the level of the utterly mundane.

I try to be a simple observer as the thoughts were like clouds passing in the sky but it was difficult.

I was full of self-judgment.

My first layer of consciousness felt like a trash can full of post-its and to-do lists.

It seemed impossible to quiet down.

Again and again I was overcome with an intense desire to open my eyes,

To move,

To check the timer,

To stop.

The desire felt physical,

An uncomfortable surge of energy.

On some days I was able to tolerate these surges of energy for at least a little while and when I did I began to see the endless circular monologue between them.

No wonder I didn't want to go there.

Worry,

Fear,

Doubt,

Resentment,

Envy,

Anxiety,

Comparison,

Sadness.

Apparently these were the themes and the complicated stories churning through my head.

But go there I continued to do because really what was the alternative?

I had gotten a peek of the enemy and she was me.

If worry,

Doubt,

Resentment,

Envy at all were the fabric of my life,

Didn't I need to know about it?

Beneath these painful but mostly mundane concerns lurked something deep that this simple process of sitting was stirring up.

I couldn't touch it yet but all I knew was that sitting helped and by that I don't mean that it helped me feel better.

Let me be perfectly clear,

Meditation was not helping me feel better.

It was hard and scary but it was helping me make out the vaguest beginning of an outline.

I was starting to see what was there.

I was starting to see what was there and I share this because isn't it relatable?

That's how our practice can look like.

When we begin our practice could be just that maybe it started this this day.

You can see that that description and then we start to see well what's what's here?

What's here?

Jack Kornfield used to emphasize mindfulness practice as mind fullness,

The fullness of mind.

It's full mostly of the mundane,

The utterly ordinary,

The plans,

Right?

In his apology to Socrates,

Plato said,

The unexamined life is not worth living and that may or may not be true but when I heard it for the first time it really appealed to me.

The unexamined life certainly seems less interesting.

You know we spend our lives really learning how to live.

You know we tinker with it.

We start and stop various activities and careers and educational pursuits.

We start and stop exercise routines and therapies and try out different spiritual paths and if we're lucky we discover that we can live how we want to live but even then happiness can still be kind of elusive.

So last week I shared what I believe is really important.

It's a really important reason why we meditate and this comes directly from the Dhammapada,

The words of the Buddha and he said we are what we think.

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

With our thoughts we make the world.

So the quality of our mind determines the quality of our life and changing how we respond to the world is as good as often changing the world.

You can try as I've tried and I'm sure some of you have tried to get everyone around you to behave exactly as you want them to behave.

You can try to never get sick,

To stay healthy.

You can try to never get injured.

You can try to keep all of your possessions safe from damage but try as you might.

The sources of stress and disappointment will always be there.

So meditation practice is kind of this pivot away from trying to change the world.

We can start to really look more closely at what we're doing with our own mind.

Stop responding to life in a way where we're actually adding more unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

And there are practices that we can do to break this habit of being lost in our thought and to simply become aware of our experience in the present moment.

So this technique that I offer you is Vipassana which is usually translated as insight meditation and this comes from the oldest tradition of Buddhism known as the Theravada.

And the quality of mind referred to in Vipassana practice is known as mindfulness.

And the Pali word for mindfulness is Sati.

Sati.

S-A-T-I.

And that's commonly translated to mindfulness as in the Satipatthana Sutta which we studied last year.

And that Satipatthana Sutta refers to or is often translated as the Discourses on the Foundations of Mindfulness.

So this is kind of the source for our tradition.

And I revisit it periodically because it's really useful.

It's really useful to have some familiarity with this discourse.

So Sati,

Mindfulness,

It also has been translated as awareness.

What we're doing is establishing awareness.

We're learning to live in it,

Abide in it,

Sit with it,

Dwell in awareness.

We're not doing awareness.

Like awareness is not a verb.

It's not something that we're actually actively doing.

Awareness is something that we establish and allow for.

And Sati,

Sati can be a pretty overloaded term because it also can mean remembering or recollecting.

So it doesn't always relate to awareness.

It can also mean recalling,

Like recalling priorities.

So the priority might be that we start to see what's there in the mind.

What are the top 10 tunes that are playing on repeat?

Or the priority may be to behave ethically or recall that certain types of thoughts are just not worth indulging in.

So mindfulness though generally is an awareness of what we're paying attention to.

And so during the meditation practice we talked about attention to two things today.

Sound,

That was one area,

And the breath.

And attention is like a spotlight and kind of the larger field of consciousness.

So there's the total field that we can be aware of at this moment.

There are sights and sounds,

There's sensation in your body,

Thoughts and emotions are coming through,

Appearing on their own,

And you can decide if you want to tune me out and pay attention to those thoughts.

That's something that we can do.

But that focus,

That spotlight is what we mean about attention.

So before you got involved in mindfulness practice,

You were still paying attention in every moment to something in your life.

Attention just kind of bounces around and it kind of influences,

You know,

It's influenced by what we like and what we don't like.

And whatever the character of the experience that we're having may be at that moment.

But in mindfulness practice we're beginning to train our attention.

And so in the beginning we strategically place our attention on sound or the breath.

And then the training actually becomes a practice of noticing when we're lost in thought,

How the attention gets diverted.

And also when we're successful at placing our attention on the breath.

Like,

Oh back to the breath or back to sound.

Whatever that object is that you're choosing.

So it's the practice of continually placing your attention that is the training.

So in this way it's a training in concentration.

And just to be clear,

Concentration and mindfulness are not the same.

But you need a degree of concentration to successfully practice mindfulness.

Just a little bit.

So I'm going to stop here today.

And the invitation for practice in the next couple of days is to deliberately place your attention on an object during meditation.

It could be on your breath.

It could be on sound.

It could be lighting a candle and placing your attention on the flame.

But when you do that type of concentration practice and the eyes are open,

There are more opportunities for distraction.

But the invitation is just to play with it.

And also you can play with this in your,

You know,

Out in the world in the next couple of days.

Placing your attention for a period of time,

A minute,

Set a timer,

Place your attention on sound while you're outside or on the light as it shines through the trees.

You know,

This is something that we start to play with.

But the idea of really placing your attention is part of the establishment of mindfulness practice.

So thank you for your kind attention this morning.

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