So over the last several weeks,
We've really been walking through these four foundations of mindfulness.
And it begins with the body.
If nothing else.
If nothing else.
Just practice being in your bodies.
You know,
Move away from always thinking and planning.
Move away from analysis.
Come back to the raw experience of being here.
The body is our refuge because it is always living in the present moment.
Always.
And after we explored the body for a week,
Then we went into exploring feeling tones.
Pleasant feeling tones,
Unpleasant feeling tones,
Neutral feeling tones.
It's amazing how quickly the mind moves towards or away.
From feeling tones or goes into simply ignoring what's happening.
It's amazing to watch that,
To be aware of that.
Then last week we looked at states of mind.
Recognizing.
When the mind is contracted.
Recognizing when there is expansiveness or peacefulness,
Recognizing agitation,
Recognizing confusion.
Recognizing clear seeing.
And then rather than.
Becoming our thoughts or emotions.
Now I'm done.
Just knowing them as they arise.
And today we arrive at.
.
.
What is often considered the most difficult foundation to understand.
And that is mindfulness of the Dhammas.
What does that mean,
Right?
Why does the Buddha suddenly shift from the body and feelings and mind to dhammas?
What exactly are we supposed to be mindful of?
So instead of thinking of dhammas as things,
Think of them as the patterns.
Or the principles that shape our experience.
Dhamma,
When you translate it from the Pali,
Means the truth or nature.
So the patterns that we have taken to be true.
The beliefs,
The principles that shape our experience.
So.
An image that is helpful for me.
Imagine that you're standing beside a river.
And at first,
What you notice is the water.
Then you may notice whether the water feels cold or feels warm.
And then you may notice your own reaction to the river.
Liking or not liking or there's a agitation that comes from the strong current.
Or a peacefulness of the flow of it.
But if you stand there long enough at the river.
Something else becomes really obvious.
You begin seeing the current.
And the current was always there.
You simply weren't noticing it.
And this is what the Fourth Foundation asks us to see.
Not what's happening,
But the currents underneath what's happening.
I feel certain that we've all experienced this,
But have you noticed how,
Like,
Certain situations.
Consistently produce the same reaction.
Like,
For example,
Somebody criticizes us and we become defensive.
That's a pattern,
That's a current.
Someone ignores us and we feel hurt.
Or we make up a story about it.
Or something really familiar for many of us,
We don't know what's coming next.
There is uncertainty.
And you know what comes with uncertainty?
The pattern.
Anxiety.
Anxiety appears.
Or the habit pattern of controlling.
And at first,
These situations may seem like isolated events,
But eventually mindfulness begins noticing something really remarkable.
And that is,
Oh,
I've seen this before.
It's the same story.
It's the same assumption.
This fear,
This grasping,
Maybe there's different people or different circumstances,
But it's the same condition.
It's the same response.
I know this response.
And seeing that pattern,
That's the beginning.
Of wisdom right there in that moment.
Sing it.
So in modern psychology What this seeing is known as is metacognition.
Like the ability to become aware of the process of our own mind.
Over 2,
500 years ago,
The Buddha pointed to something very similar.
He invited us not only to notice our thoughts,
But to notice the conditions that continually produce those thoughts,
The background.
Mindfulness.
Becomes less about content.
And more about pattern recognition.
We stop asking,
You know.
What am I thinking?
And begin asking.
What keeps creating this?
What keeps creating this?
And this is kind of.
.
.
Where the understanding of dependent origination comes alive.
Like nothing appears out of nowhere.
Every reaction has conditions.
Every habit is conditioned.
Every fear is conditioned.
Every belief is conditioned.
And those conditions when they exist,
When they are alive.
The pattern appears.
And when the conditions change,
The pattern changes.
And the conditions change through recognition.
There's no permanent self.
Directing the process.
Only causes and conditions unfolding.
I feel like.
.
.
This particular aspect of mindfulness,
This pattern recognition.
Brings us to the most profound and radical teaching of the Buddha.
The Teaching of Not-Self.
This is Sam.
A favorite teaching for me.
You know,
Many of us here,
Not self,
And the image is that the Buddha is saying that we don't exist.
And that is not what he's pointing to.
The teaching is to look carefully.
Where is the solid permanent self?
That we've been defending all these years.
You know,
And we can.
See how they're like When anger appears,
For example,
We didn't order anger to appear,
It just appeared.
When anxiety appears,
We didn't manufacture anxiety.
When joy appears,
Can you make it stay?
What we actually discover is this ongoing stream of conditions arising and passing.
That's all that they're doing all the time.
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Memories,
Habits,
Beliefs,
Each influencing the next.
What I have discovered and sometimes remember and sometimes forget is that the self looks much more like a process than a thing.
It's a process,
The self.
And this is incredibly freeing.
Because if these patterns are conditioned,
They can also be unconditioned.
Not through force or becoming a better version of yourself.
This is the way that people think that it actually goes down,
But it's not that way.
Just through awareness.
Awareness of a pattern interrupts the automatic.
Response to it.
Mindfulness creates choice.
And for perhaps for the first time,
We recognize that we don't have to.
Complete every habit.
That our conditioning begins.
We don't have to do that.
This is really powerful when we come to this on our own.
So this recognition,
This pattern recognition,
Where does all this leave us?
And this is the.
Beautiful thing about this path.
It leaves us exactly where the Buddha began.
With mindfulness of the body.
With feelings,
With mind states,
With patterns.
These are not four separate practices.
They're one practice.
That becomes progressively deeper as we practice it.
And we start noticing what's happening.
And how we're relating to it.
We notice the quality of the mind.
Then we start to see the invisible architecture that keeps recreating the experience.
That's mindfulness at the Dhammas.
Is wisdom seeing itself.
So I'd like to end with something very,
Very simple because we're all a pretty cerebral bunch here.
And all this talk about conditioning and habit patterns and dependent origination,
Not self.
I think it just kind of evokes this,
Like,
We're going to figure this out.
You know,
Like we need to figure this out.
And we don't.
We don't need to figure anything out.
We simply keep practicing.
Sometimes you will recognize the pattern happening.
Sometimes you won't.
Sometimes you will see the conditioning very clearly.
Sometimes you'll be completely caught in it.
And that is part of being a human being on this planet.
The way that I practice the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is so simple.
When I am lost in thought.
And I see it,
I come back to the body.
When I am overwhelmed by emotion.
Come back to the body.
If the patterns that are operating are too complicated,
Come back to the body.
The body doesn't ask us to solve anything.
It just.
.
.
Invites us to arrive again here.
Again and again and again.
It is our refuge from the beginning of these teachings,
2,
600 years ago.
And is the teaching of today.
Still 100% completely relevant.
So I offer this for your consideration.
