MIDL Talk 2: The Four Foundations of Mindfulness

A series of talks on MIDL Mindfulness training given by Stephen Procter explaining how to develop your meditation practice.

Mindfulness Meditation in Daily Life (MIDL) practice is designed to be brought into your everyday life. When practicing this style of Mindfulness Meditation there is no difference between sitting in formal seated meditation and your everyday activities. Systematic training during seated meditation is used to develop Investigation, Mindfulness and Concentration to a refined level so that the Mindfulness meditation practice transfers into everyday activites. This is a Soft path, it is the path of Softening Into, accepting whatever your are experiencing. It is a practice that leads to deep, unconditional peace that is not dependant on life situation or circumstances.

Transcript

In the previous talk on MIDL we discussed the three MIDL pillars that provide the tools for practicing mindfulness meditation within our daily life. These three pillars are flexible attention training, Softening into training and also allowing stillness training is the third. To cultivate and develop these three pillars of MIDL we need to apply them towards specific areas of our experience during meditation. These areas are known as the four Satipatanas which were first mentioned by the Buddha in his discourse called the Satipatana Sutta. These Satipatanas create the framework for what is more commonly known today as mindfulness meditation. To understand the four Satipatanas and how they fit into MIDL practice, Let's first understand what Satipatana Sutta means. A Sutta is a discourse or a talk. Sati is mindfulness and a Patana is a foundation or domain. So a Satipatana is a foundation on which we cultivate mindfulness on or a domain area in which we apply mindfulness towards to develop understanding about ourselves. In the Satipatana Sutta the Buddha suggests four areas of human experience that we should turn our attention towards. These four areas are used to develop our mindfulness meditation practice with the purpose of fulfilling the Noble Eightfold Path. These areas are clearly defined by the Buddha as first foundation is Kaya, Body. The second foundation is Vedana, Feeling tone. The third foundation is Chitta, Mind. And the fourth foundation is Dharma or Dhammas, Conditional processes. When beginning our MIDL mindfulness meditation training we intentionally cultivate the first two MIDL pillars on these four foundations to cultivate investigation, Mindfulness and momentary concentration supported by the MIDL softening into skill. This is initially done by grounding our awareness within the sensei quality of our body and observing our attention move towards distractions. Once the first two pillars have been developed we then turn them towards investigating the four foundations to develop wisdom. Let's look at the first foundation of mindfulness, Kaya. The Pali word Kaya is most commonly translated as body but what it means to us as meditators is how we experience our body. How do you experience your body? As sensations. So a more accurate translation of Kaya is bodily sensations or the experience of our body. So literally learning to immerse our awareness within our body, Ground our awareness within our body, Becoming sensitive to all the various sensations within our body. During meditation these sensations appear to us as a range of softness to hardness, Coolness to warmth, Wetness to dryness, Tension, Vibration, Expansion to contraction. This is how we experience our body and breathing during meditation as these different changing elemental qualities. This sensei quality of Kaya also includes the contact of the world with our other four senses, Our eyes, Ears, Nose and tongue. So Kaya covers the contact with all five of our senses and it's the sensei quality that arises when the world touches us. It touches us through sights, Sounds, Smells, Tastes and of course through touch in the body. The fifth sense of our body also has a special quality over the other four senses and that is that it also responds to the touch of our mind. I will be talking about the importance of this in a future talk. The second foundation of mindfulness is Vedana. The Pali word Vedana can be best understood as feeling tone, Flavor or taste. It may be harder to understand Vedana because Vedana is a lot more subtle than Kaya. Vedana is a pleasant feeling, Unpleasant feeling or neither pleasant nor unpleasant feeling that sits below all perceived sensate experience. We tend to spend most of our life reacting towards Vedana but never understanding it. Vedana sits behind all our desires, All our fears. Vedana sits below our anxieties, Our sadness. It sits behind our anger. Vedana sits behind all obsessive thinking, All likes and dislikes. Vedana is a driving force that if we do not understand it takes away all choice within our life. If not understood it drives our life causing us to live a reactionary life rather than a life through wisdom and understanding. It is a task of the deeper survival part of our mind to attract us towards what it perceives to be safe experiences and to repel us away from dangerous ones. To signify that something is safe and attract us towards that experience our survival mind produces and releases a pleasant feeling within our body. To signify that something is dangerous and push us away from an experience our survival mind produces and releases an unpleasant feeling within our body. When you feel a pleasant feeling arise within your body what is your relationship towards it? Of course more, Give me more. When you experience an unpleasant feeling arise within your body what is your relationship to that? Go away less yeah. This is how the habitual survival part of your mind controls you. Since you like pleasant feeling and want to experience more, Since you dislike unpleasant feeling and want it to go away, Then when your mind produces these feelings you have no choice but to follow the path of habit. Through producing pleasant and unpleasant feeling within your body your habitual survival mind can literally control your life. You have no choice. This is why the second foundation of mindfulness, Vedana, Is so important to observe and understand. It is both the driving force for your life and the weak link in the chain that leads to equanimity. But you can only understand Vedana through deep personal experience. You cannot understand it by thinking about it, By listening to a talk or reading about it in a book. It is experience that changes our life and only through experience can you change your relationship to Vedana. This is why we meditate because the change your relationship to Vedana is freedom. The third foundation of mindfulness is Chitta. The Pali word for Chitta is often translated as mind. It is best understood as our experience mental landscape. To understand what is meant by experience mental landscape we first need to observe how the word mind is commonly used in terms of meditation and daily life. Often we speak a mind as if it is something that moves around, Something solid that exists independent within itself. We say my mind wandered, My mind is agitated, My mind is peaceful. But during meditation the mind within itself is not experienced as something solid but rather as an ever-flowing mental landscape. Think of your mind as being more like the weather. Now in normal conversation we talk about the weather like it is something. We say that the weather does this or the weather does that but really the weather doesn't do anything. The weather is a field of flowing changing events that flow and change dependent on conditions. Sometimes it is hot, Sometimes cold, Sometimes it is cloudy, Sometimes foggy, Sometimes it is raining, Sometimes windy. All these different flowing events come together to create what we call the weather. Now we have no control over the flow of the weather, The weather flows and changes dependent on conditions and also we have no control over the flow of the mind. When we observe citta, Mind, We will notice that mind also is not something solid. Mind is a field of flowing, Changing events that flow and change dependent on conditions. Sometimes the experience of our mind is as if it is windy, Sometimes it appears still, Sometimes it seems violent and stormy, Other times it may be foggy and dull, Sometimes it appears heavy and gloomy or even clear like the Sun has come out. All these changing flows of states of mind are part of the weather patterns of the mind. Within the landscape of the mind we can also experience a flowing changing patterns of thoughts, Memories, Likes and dislikes, Judgments. They are all part of the mind. Also the coming and going of our awareness is mind. Sometimes awareness is clear, Sometimes it is dull and sometimes it cannot be perceived at all. Also the meditation factors of investigation, Mindfulness, Concentration and many others like these are also part of the flowing changing weather system of the mind. So when using this foundation of citta, Mind, In your meditation practice your task is to get to know these changing patterns of the mental landscape. The fourth foundation of mindfulness is dharma. The Pali word dharma is often translated as mind objects or phenomena. In terms of MIDL practice, I prefer to think of it as conditional processes. While these are not an adequate translation, No translation is. Let's think of this in terms of understanding the patterns of heart and mind that arise due to contact between the first three foundations of body, Feeling and mind. In other words, Learning to read and understand the conditional flowing weather patterns of the heart and mind. In simple terms, Dharmas in the context of MIDL mindfulness and meditation practice is the observation and investigation of the conditional relationship between kaya, Body, Vedana, Feeling and citta, Mind. It is through understanding these conditional relationships that wisdom is cultivated and fading of enchantment of identification with these processes occurs. In simple terms, What is important during meditation is not what we are experiencing but rather how we are relating to that actual experience. It is within this relationship that all conditioned patterns arise or cease. An example of observing the fourth foundation in action during our MIDL seated meditation could go like this. We may find a cozy place within our home to sit in meditation intent on practicing mindfulness of breathing, Closely observing each breath as it comes in and out and starting to feel very very pleasant and peaceful. Then someone in our home makes a sudden loud sound that jolts our attention away from our breathing. We instinctively tighten up and the nice peaceful feeling collapses. We may now feel very unpleasant within our body because of the jolt and very irritated at the person that made the sound. Can't they stay quiet? Don't they know this is my meditation time? I have had it with these people. They have no consideration at all. And the feeling of irritation grows and the commentary in the mind grows and flows. In this example we become so intent on following the breath and attached to the idea of becoming peaceful that we didn't observe the aversion that arose within our mind on hearing the sound. We also didn't observe the change in the feeling tone within our body from pleasant to unpleasant. We definitely didn't notice that the emotional reaction that arose within our body was not due to the sound but rather to the aversion within our mind to the unpleasant feeling it released to signal danger. Because of ignoring the four foundations we are now trapped. Trapped in a meditation practice that is a constant battle with anything that threatens to take our peacefulness and pleasant feelings away. Noise, Discomfort, Thinking, Pain are all our enemy. We do not realize that in meditation we have seen a reflection of our life. In this way our meditation practice does not deepen to the extent that it changes our life. Because of our lack of investigation no wisdom can arise. Instead we become caught in a cycle of habitual reaction of running away from pain within our life and of seeking pleasure within life or meditation. We are identifying with and living within the conditional cycles of the four foundation instead of cultivating wisdom needed to be free from them. We are trapped within a cycle that leads to living a reactive habitual and potentially destructive life. So what would be the other option in terms of MID or mindfulness meditation and the four foundations? In this example we may find a cozy place within our home to sit in meditation intent on practicing mindfulness of breathing. We may sit very still closely observing each breath as it comes in and out and starting to feel very very pleasant and peaceful indeed. Then someone in our home suddenly makes a loud sound that jolts our attention away from our breathing. Because of MID training we notice the movement of our attention away from the breath towards the sound. We then observe the instinct of tightening up of our body with interest. Because of our MIDL training we then turn our attention towards this tightening resistance within our body and separate it into sensations. Tight, Tense, Hard. Doing this we are observing the first foundation of mindfulness, Bodily sensations. We then observe that there is a general feeling of unpleasantness, A sense of dis-ease literally within our body. Doing this we are observing the second foundation of mindfulness, Feeling tone. We then observe a mental aversion, A pulling away from the unpleasantness of the experience and also a restlessness within our mind. Within this we notice a longing for the nice peaceful feeling of our meditation. Doing this we are observing the third foundation of mindfulness, Mind. On further investigation we notice a feeling of irritation arise and observe its relationship to the unpleasant feeling within our body and the aversion within our mind. We observe how our body and mind respond by tightening and resistance to the unpleasant feeling, Especially the raising and locking of our diaphragm and the shifting of the breath up into our chest. Doing this we are observing the fourth foundation of mindfulness, Conditional processes. We then use the MIDL softening into techniques to first re-engage the diaphragm with free slow deep breaths. Then we soften into the aversion we are experiencing to the unpleasantness both mentally and physically. We soften deeply, Very deeply, So deeply that our mind understands that right now is safe. Everything softens, Relaxes and dissolves and we return to the mindfulness of breathing applying wisdom towards the middle path of mindful non-resistance. In this way by acknowledging and investigating the distraction instead of fighting it we develop understanding of the four foundations of mindfulness, Their interaction with each other and also how to bring the cycle of habitual reaction to an end. We are not trapped but free. This same way of observing and softening then becomes part of our life, Part of our natural way of being. This is how the first two pillars of MIDL, Flexible attention and softening into, Are applied to the four foundations of mindfulness to cultivate wisdom. So how long did this process all take? Talking about the steps of this cycle in this talk takes some time but in reality it only takes a few seconds to observe and soften into our aversion or attraction to experience. This is the MIDL way. Thank you for spending this time with me. I really appreciate it. Take care of yourself and goodbye.

Reviews

Very useful. To be listened to time and time again. Thank you.

Thank you very much on your talk .
Blessings with love

Very supportive talk, I gained a lot from it.

This talk was very helpful to me as I have been very distracted by my mind over the past month and want to engage in a more centered way of living day to day.

Great information presented in an easily understandable way. Very helpful, thank you 🙏