Satipatthana 5 - The Quality Of Mindfulness

Amongst the instructions on meditation, those detailing the quality of attention may be the most important. This Dharma Talk explores the quality of mindfulness by comparing different translations of the text to encourage you to find the words that inspire and guide you best. It is the fifth session in a series on the Four Foundations of Mindfulenss, the Satipatthana Sutta, covering the entire teaching in small, simple steps and was taught to a live class on Zoom in 2021.

Transcript

So today we continue the exploration of the introduction to the Satipatthana Sutta,

The four establishments of mindfulness discourse of the Buddha.

And I think next week we'll actually start on the specific practices in the Sutta,

But we're still working on the foundational understanding we went over.

Mindfulness itself we went over,

Which is Sati in Pali,

Or Dukkha,

The dissatisfaction,

Suffering.

Last week we went over part of this initial refrain where the Buddha speaks about being aware of the body in the body,

The feelings in the feelings,

The mind in the mind,

Which is a shorthand we can say.

It's coming into a non-conceptual direct experience.

Many other ways to explain it,

But that's one that might be helpful because the phrase body in the body is like,

What does that mean?

Is it a typo?

I know I'm not the only one who's wondered that sometimes.

And so we're looking at the same passage from last week,

But different words.

So let me put,

Again,

I'm going to have three different translations,

Very short sections,

But I think it's quite interesting how this wording is varied.

Would someone be willing to read the first little paragraph or first half sentence that ends with T and H for Thich Nhat Hanh?

Nancy Stewart,

Please.

A practitioner remains established in the observation of the body in the body,

Diligent with clear understanding,

Mindful,

Having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life.

Thank you,

Nancy.

So even before we look at the next two translations,

This part that we're looking at is this establishment of observation of the body in the body is diligent with clear understanding.

We've already looked at mindful,

Having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life.

So notice how these different words land,

How does diligent land with you?

Clear understanding,

Mindful,

Having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life.

How does that one land?

I know for me,

When I get to that part,

I go,

I'm not there yet.

I'd like to,

But I have a long ways to go.

And so whatever your reaction,

Some of these words might inspire you,

Some might feel daunting,

Some might just leave you in a sort of shut down or it sounds too religious,

Too ambitious,

Who knows what.

And it's important to recognize and bring this mindfulness even into how we're receiving the words of the sutta.

Mindfulness can be mindful of any and everything,

Including our responses to suttas.

And while I want us to recognize the whole range of responses we have to the different words,

Please pay careful attention to any of them that brighten your mind,

That uplift your heart,

That feel inspiring or you feel a resonance with,

Because these are words that are worthy of holding in your sort of inner vocabulary of practice.

So would someone be willing to read the second sentence?

I guess that is from Ajahn Sujato.

He's one of the Mendicant meditates by observing an aspect of the body,

Keen,

Aware and mindful,

Rid of desire and aversion for the world.

Thank you.

So here the words are keen,

Aware,

Mindful is the same,

And then rid of desire and aversion for the world.

A little different from abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life.

So again,

Notice how do those these words land?

Do you feel allergic to any of them,

Inspired by any of them?

Does it give you insight into the texture,

The aroma,

The fragrance of the kind of practice we want to be cultivating?

Would someone be willing to read the third sentence?

Nancy.

Apiklu lives contemplating the body in the body,

Ardent,

Clearly comprehending it and mindful of it,

Having overcome in this world covetousness and grief.

Thank you.

So again,

The only common word is mindful.

We have this world,

I think the world in two of them,

But covetousness and grief,

Craving and distaste,

Desire and aversion.

All different words,

All pointing to our liking,

Disliking,

Pushing,

Pulling away,

Wanting to change or hold on to things.

I pulled out a few definitions because I know I find it helpful.

Ardent,

Ardent,

Of course,

There are many definitions even of words in English,

Let alone coming from other languages into English,

But ardent,

Expressing or characterized by warmth of feeling,

Passionate,

Displaying or characterizing strong enthusiasm or devotion.

What if we bring a strong enthusiasm or devotion to our practice with warmth of feeling?

I know when I hear the word ardent,

I don't,

It sounds kind of hard to me,

But then I read this definition and I thought,

Oh,

That's,

That's actually really accurate for a kind of quality of practice or motivation of practice.

And then diligent,

Marked by persevering,

Painstaking effort,

Constant in study or effort to accomplish what is undertaken,

Industrious,

Assiduous,

And then keen,

Having or showing alert competence and clear understanding.

Alert,

Clear.

Yeah,

This is quite aligned.

I know when I saw the painstaking effort and diligent,

I thought,

I don't know.

I tend to bring that assumption in and it hasn't helped me.

It's letting go of the need for it to be hard and painful that has actually brought a lot of support.

And so I found someone,

Someone was mentioning Joseph Goldstein did this wonderful series of,

Sherry,

I think it was you who mentioned a few weeks ago,

Joseph Goldstein did,

I think it was three years of teaching,

But it was three like almost 50 course,

Dharma talks on the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta.

And in some of the introduction,

As he was talking about this section,

He quoted Ajahn Succitto,

Who is an English monk,

Studied under Ajahn Chah in Thailand,

Is now I think an abbot at one of the monasteries in that tradition in the UK.

But I love this,

Ajahn Succitto's version of this ardent,

Diligent,

Overcome of covetousness and grief.

His way of speaking of this is allowing our collectedness to develop naturally through enjoying embodied presence,

Enjoying embodied presence.

And that when there is this,

This pleasantness,

Our attention naturally adapts,

Tensions naturally release,

Preferences,

The desire or aversion,

The covetousness and grief,

These things naturally unwind when there is this enjoying an embodied presence,

This very here and now-ness.

This settling back into the body,

Into the moment,

And the spaciousness of settling into this moment allows for an unraveling of the preferences,

Of the distractions.

He calls it samadhi,

Usually translated as concentration,

But it could also be collectedness,

Tranquility,

The art of enjoyment,

The careful collecting of oneself into the joy of the present moment.

There's nothing we have to do or change or fix,

And by releasing any sense of ought to obligation,

That's where the joy comes from.

Not from a,

Oh it's sunny out kind of joy,

Or there's a happy song in my head kind of joy,

But this quiet,

Most of our lives we are usually stuck in some degree of I need to fix this,

Get this done,

I have to get this,

Push away that,

More of this,

Less of that,

Need to fix,

Change,

And just the very fact of having preferences at all,

Of feeling this sort of hamster-wheel-ness,

That in and of itself is a tension,

It's an energy that drains us,

But most of the time it's so familiar that it's like the hum of a fridge,

We don't even know it's there until it settles,

Until it turns off,

And a lot of people experience this on retreat.

I know I experienced it quite deeply in the monastery,

As much as I had still a lot of preferences,

But there was something about having a schedule,

I wasn't thinking,

Well what do I want to do next,

What do I have to get done,

I just had to follow the schedule because there wasn't much time for anything else most days,

And it was only about three or four months after I left the monastery that I started to notice there's like a background hum of tension that I haven't,

It's weird,

What is it?

And then I realized,

Oh,

It's not even the big preferences,

The big push-pulls,

It was a simple fact of what am I going to do next,

What do I need to get at the grocery store,

I mean I was traveling quite a lot,

So I had a lot of details to think of that I hadn't had to in a very long time,

But it just made me tune in much more keenly to this,

The background hum of the small,

Not just preferences,

But even the sense of me,

The sense of I have to figure this out,

Of how am I moving myself through the world,

And it's mostly subconscious,

It's mostly automatic,

Yet there is a subtlety of ease that is so enjoyable that comes from this release,

Overcome covetness and grief that is supported by the keen,

Ardent,

Maybe diligent,

I notice as a comment,

Diligent is the most austere of the three characterizations,

Is it not significant that each of these teachers come from different lineages?

Two of them are Theravada,

The one trained in Sri Lanka,

One trained in Thailand,

And then Thich Nhat Hanh,

I must admit,

I find that there's different nuances in each of them,

And so it's actually Thich Nhat Hanh who's usually diligent,

And he tends to be quite gentle with most things,

But then again he's using diligent as a translation from the Vietnamese and the Chinese through the Sanskrit,

Maybe to the Pali,

And diligence and perseverance,

Forbearance is a hugely valued quality in Vietnamese cultures,

As I've learned that I must admit I never fully understood to appreciate the forbearance aspect,

I feel like I've always missed a subtlety of what my Vietnamese monastic siblings were getting at when they used words like forbearance and diligence.

Same thing like,

You know,

Happiness,

The translation from Vietnamese into happiness in English is,

There's a lot of ones,

But often it was an lạc,

Which are the words of peace and contentment,

And it's more refined than what in English,

Happy can mean a lot of things,

Doesn't always sound that deep,

Right?

But for some people,

Happiness might have this really profound resonance to it,

And for someone else it's going to sound really superficial,

So this is where getting an embodied sense,

Getting a resonant sense of what is meant,

Then you find the words that help you connect to that.

So I think as I've tried to say a number of times,

I'm not throwing in all these definitions in different terms to get really academic and theoretical,

But because I want there to be options and I want you to notice which words make you go,

Oh I get it,

Or oh when I drop that this word,

When I,

You know,

For me if I drop,

Yeah diligent doesn't really help me,

But keen,

If I drop the word,

A keen attentiveness,

For me that kind of wakes me up,

It brings a bit of,

Oh okay,

Let's go,

I just,

I like the word,

I like the sound of it,

And so if you find which words resonate for you and help you get into this direction of the art of refined enjoyment,

The joy of the present moment without fear or tension or obligation,

This is what we're going for.

So for all the practices that are going to come,

Which I think the sutta has like 25 different formal practices,

So we're just going to go through them one by one,

Bit by bit,

But to remember that this is the quality that we're wanting to cultivate,

This art of enjoying the embodied present moment.

So I'm going to invite a few sounds of the bell to let this settle in,

You might want to read over the definitions a few times,

Oh just noticing a comment of someone who likes the word diligent because it tells me that yes this is work,

Be kind and forgiving to myself,

Diligent comes with compassion,

It's about not giving up,

Absolutely that's a way that this is a fantastic word to use in practice because as much as it's enjoying the embodied present moment,

It takes work to keep showing up and to keep releasing that I want it this way,

I don't want it that way.

It's a gentle labor but it does require persistence,

Perseverance,

Energy.

Okay.

Arijuana Gong Gong Thank you for your listening,

For your attentiveness.