Good morning.
So in these mornings together,
We're going through the 16 practices of mindfulness of breathing.
And before diving back in,
I'd like to say that one of the purposes of Buddhist practice is to help us free us from all the ways in which the mind gets entangled and gets caught.
The ways in which the mind gets kind of constricted,
Caught by our thoughts about something,
Our feelings by the events of the world.
The awareness,
It gets caught in some kind of relationship where there's a compulsiveness.
And when that happens,
We're not really in charge.
We're not free.
So given that,
The idea is to help us free ourselves from clinging.
So then the question is,
What is it that prompts us to cling?
What are the conditions that bring us to clinging?
What I discovered in myself is how much the very simple experience of unpleasant or pleasant conditions,
Clinging or aversion.
There's often a very simple desire to have something or want to keep something that's pleasant.
And there's often a reaction to or a pushing away or resisting to something that's unpleasant,
Right?
And this is a very simple movement in our human experience,
Going towards pleasure and going away from that which is uncomfortable.
So because our actions,
Our responses to pleasant and unpleasant experiences are kind of so basic to life,
So fundamental to it all,
It's important,
It's a very important part of mindfulness practice to see how this occurs,
To see how this works,
To see how the experience of pleasant and unpleasant triggers and prompts us to either cling or to resist.
So in the Pali text,
The pleasant and unpleasant nature of our experience,
The word is called Vedana,
Vedana.
And it usually translates into English as feeling tones.
And it's said that there's basically three general categories of feeling tones.
There's pleasant,
Unpleasant,
And neither pleasant nor unpleasant,
Which is sometimes called neutral.
So pleasant,
Unpleasant and neutral experiences.
And it also says that all of our experiences fit into one of these three categories.
So no matter what it is,
You can kind of know,
You know,
This was pleasant,
Or this was unpleasant,
Or this was neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
It was just kind of a neutral experience.
So this is such an important area,
The feeling tone area,
That it has a whole tetra to itself in the 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing.
So in the first tetra,
The first four of these 16 steps,
It has to do with the body and staying with the bodily experience,
What's happening in the body.
And you can go really far in practice by just staying very simple with the physicality of breathing,
Calming the physicality of breathing.
And perhaps just doing those first four steps,
It can be one's whole practice.
A person doesn't have to go any further than that.
And the reason that I say that is that,
You know,
Human beings are such interconnected systems,
That if you kind of go really deep in one area,
It'll affect all the other areas as well.
So if you go into the body and concentrate fully and focus on just the breathing and breathing within the body,
It's going to affect your mind,
It's going to affect your feelings,
It's going to affect what you see and what you understand.
It will shift everything just in this one tetra,
Just one area.
And I would venture to say that as we explore this next tetra,
This area,
This complete area could be a practice in and of itself.
Just aware of feeling tones.
Because so much of the way that we react in the world and live in the world,
Or feel the world can be seen and discovered through feeling tones,
Vedana.
So again,
It's a whole universe in itself.
And you can go into this particular tetrad and spend a lot of time there and find it very beneficial and freeing.
So the second grouping,
The second tetrad corresponds to the second foundation of mindfulness of feeling tones.
And how it's stated in the discourse is one trains experiencing joy.
I shall breathe in,
One trains experiencing joy.
I shall breathe out,
Training and experiencing joy.
So we've been working with breathing in,
Relaxing the bodily tensions and breathing out,
Relaxing the bodily tensions.
And it's very helpful because as we relax the body,
The mind begins to relax.
And it's a lot easier to stay in the present moment,
To stay focused on the breath in a body that's relaxed.
And then when the time is right,
Your body's relaxed,
And you've relaxed kind of more into the present moment.
At some point as we do this well,
It tends to create a sense of well being,
A good feeling,
You know,
It feels nice to be settled.
It's nice to be here,
To be connected to your body in a really relaxed way.
And that sense of well being can be pretty mild,
Or it can be really strong.
And when it's strong,
It tends to be called joy.
You know what,
There's a certain one that's even,
You know,
When there's a certain kind of delight or enjoyment,
Then the joy it turns to something more sublime.
And that's called happiness.
So the next instructions are breathing in one experiences joy,
And breathing out one experiences that joy is there.
And then breathing in one experiences happiness,
And breathing out one knows happiness is there.
And so it's interesting because some people have an aversion to feeling joy and happiness,
Like it's not a spiritual quest.
And then there are people that are really excessively preoccupied with being happy and joyful in meditation.
So it's good to not either push it away or to reach for it.
But rather when it happens,
When the joy happens to allow for it,
And just to make space for to feel it more fully.
Feel it rather than get excited about it like,
Oh,
I feel so joyful.
And then there's a clinging.
So it's more as we settle back into our breath in the body,
The joy and the sense of well being supports the mind to just be more concentrated in the present moment.
It feels good to be here.
And it's sometimes you know,
At some point,
It's better to be here than to be thinking about your taxes or whatever you have to do today.
Why would you not stay here when it feels so good,
Right?
So as you get more present and relaxed,
It tends to bring a sense of well being and a sense of joy.
And that joy is a good thing to experience.
And the instruction is when you experience that joy when it's happening,
Just experience it,
Take it in.
Don't grab on to it,
Oh,
I want to have this experience more and more.
There's kind of an art to taking in the meditative joy,
So that actually deepens the practice.
So that the joy actually spreads and becomes more full.
So I'll,
I'll stop here today and take any questions or comments that you have.
Thank you for your kind attention,
Your participation in this practice of exploring this discourse on mindfulness of breathing.
