Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, simply titled and#8220;Mindfulness,and#8221; by Paramabandhu, is from the comprehensive and invaluable talk titled and#8220;Mindfulness For Just About Everythingand#8221; given at the San Francisco Buddhist Center in 2006. Drawing on many years of experience as a consultant psychiatrist and Dharma teacher, he invites us to consider the lessons Buddhist techniques around meditation and mindfulness training can bring to the field of mental health and#8211; especially to problems with depression and addiction. The talk evokes the Buddha in the Satipatthana Sutta to explore the four traditional foundations of mindfulness and discuss their potential use in therapeutic contexts.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Mindfulness
[Music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [Music] If we now turn to the Buddhist tradition and have a look at mind from the set, we find that mindfulness is very important in the Buddhist tradition. So you get it as one in an oval eightfold path. It's one of the seven factors of enlightenment. They're Buddhist-like lists, as many of you I'm sure will know. It's one of the five spiritual faculties, so it's the central one of those, the one that in a way harmonizes the others. And it particularly occurs in something called the Sati Patana Sutra, which is the kind of central sutra that really talks a lot about mindfulness, and which I'll be referring to quite a bit. There's been two very good commentaries that came out in 2003, one by Sangarachita called Living With Awareness, which is probably in your bookshop, and one by Bhikkhu Analiya, which is going to be a very good commentary on it, which might also be in the bookshop. I'll just say a few words about this sutra, quite often in Buddhist sutors, you have a whole story before you get onto the main teaching. In this one, the Buddha kind of just goes straight to the point. He gets, in this case, the monks' attention, and then he says to them, "Monks, this is a direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of the true way, for the realization of Nibbana, namely the four foundations of mindfulness." So actually the Buddha is making a very big claim here. He's saying it's the direct way. The other translation is translated as the only way, although probably, anyway, Analiya, yes, that probably isn't correct, it's more that it takes you straight then, in this case, straight to enlightenment, rather than being the exclusive way of getting there. So let's have a look at what mindfulness is. There are two main words to use to translate mindfulness, and they use a bit synonymously, but they have slightly different meanings. One is sati, and the other is sampajanya. So sati is particularly refers to awareness of the present moment, or bear awareness, it's sometimes talked about, but it also has a meaning of recollection or memory. In other words, it's kind of like you understand what's going on in the present, partly because you're able to recollect the past, and particularly you understand the ethical significance of what you're about. And then the sampajanya, which means mindfulness of purpose or clear comprehension, and this is more, if you like, future regarding. And particularly, it's mindfulness with respect to what you're trying to do, what your goal is, which might be to gain enlightenment, for example. And sometimes the two have put together, they're on the sati patanas, which are quite a bit of sati sampajanya, which is usually translated as mindfulness and clear knowledge. In other words, it's knowing what you're doing and why you're doing it. So you're completely and fully and utterly present, but you also know where you're about, what you're off to, you know, and you also deeply understand the significance of what you're doing. Very rich word. In the sutures, you get various analogies for sati or mindfulness, and I'll talk you through a few of those. So one is, it's like climbing a tower. So you get this idea, you've got this tower, and you get perspective, you can sort of see, you know, like climbing half down or something like that, as I was saying yesterday, today. It's like you get it really high and you just see, see a long way. There's also a sense of detachment as well, I think inherent in that analogy. And there's the idea of the surgeon's probe. So the surgeon's probe is like going into things to gather information to find out is that a, you know, what is that cyst, or is that heart tumor, or what's going on there. Then there's a couple more to do with the idea of balance. There's a skill chariot here, and one is carrying a bowl of oil on your head beside you, not spilling a drop of this perfectly full, you're probably walking on a tightrope for a while. Then another one is a gatekeeper of a town. So the idea of the gatekeeper is that they allow bona fide citizens in, but they keep out unwanted individuals. So the idea of this is in a way of guarding the mind and having a bit of an overview of the mind. And then finally there's another analogy is having wild animals tied to a strong post. So it's this idea that it has a stabilizing effect or an un-shakeability, un-shakeable effect. So again, lots of sort of rich associations with this idea of mindfulness. So if we look at the Satya Pitana Sutra, it covers mindfulness in four main areas, usually referred to as foundations, which are body, feeling in the sense of whether something's pleasurable or unplasurable, mental states like anger, jealousy, love, and mindfulness is doctrinal formulations, referred to as dharma, such things as the four noble truths. And in a way, particularly applying those doctrinal formulations to your mind. So in other words, using them as a guide to get a sense of what's going on in your mind. And after each bit of description of these foundations that Buddha saves this, in this way, in regard to the body, or the feeling which I've wanted to use, he abides contemplating the body internally, externally, both internally and externally. He abides contemplating the nature of arising, of passing away, of both arising and passing away in the body. Mindfulness that there is a body is established in him to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and continuous mindfulness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That is how, in regard to the body, he abides contemplating the body. There's quite a few little bits there, which I'll run through. So first of all, he contemplates it internally, externally, or both. So in other words, when we're practicing mindfulness, we may aware of ourselves, or also aware of other people. So internally and externally. And perhaps a lot is not being explored so much in contemporary, darmic practice. And then the advice is to contemplate the nature of arising, passing away, and both. In other words, it's looking at what brings thing into being, and what leads to things to go away. So how come something comes into our experience? How come it goes away from our experience? And then there's awareness just for the sake of knowledge and continued mindfulness. So I think what this is getting at is about not getting lost in lots of associations, which, again, I'll come back to you later. And then finally, abiding independently, not clinging to anything in the world. And the way this is where it all leads to from the Buddhist point of view, the eventual state of complete detachment and freedom. As in the way the first three are methods of how to get there. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]