Dear Friends, I’m on retreat until Tuesday afternoon, but I’ve queued up some emails to keep you inspired while I’m away. Bhante Gunaratana starts chapter 12 of The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English with the Gilana Discourse. One of the Buddha’s senior pupils was very ill, so the Buddha went to visit him and asked how he was… Read More »
Dear Friends, Body, feelings, thoughts, hindrances, aggregates… That’s a lot of things to think about. But it all starts simply. Bhante Gunaratana has this simple reminder about perception of breathing: When you breathe mindfully, you see the arising, existing, and passing away of the form of the breath, or breath-body, immediately as it happens. In the same way,… Read More »
Dear Friends, The next aspect of phenomena we are invited to investigate are what are called the “aggregates” – a way of describing the kinds of “stuff” that make up our experience. The list of aggregates is: material form – like your body and the things your body senses (sights, sounds, etc.) feeling tone – as we already… Read More »
Dear Friends, Gil Fronsdal wrote: Because we tend not to see clearly when the hindrances are present, the Buddhist teachings strongly encourage people not to make decisions while under their influence. If possible, wait to make a decision when the mind is more settled or clear. So if you have something big on your to do list today,… Read More »
Dear Friends, As we enter into the fourth week of our daily emails, our focus now moves to the fourth way of establishing mindfulness, mindfulness of dhammas, which can be translated as mindfulness of phenomena or “stuff”. As Mark Coleman explains in a lecture from Essential Buddhist Teachings, The other three [ways of establishing mindfulness] – we were… Read More »
Dear Friends, When the Buddha was giving instructions to his son, Rahula, one of the teachings was “Develop the meditation of appreciation. For when you are developing the meditation of appreciation, resentment will be abandoned.” This is the heart quality of muditā. In her book, Lovingkindness, Sharon Salzberg tells us that this practice of muditā is a way… Read More »
Dear Friends, Joseph Goldstein has said, “For the purpose of meditation, nothing is particularly worth thinking about.” This means thoughts can come and go as they wish, but we don’t need to become involved with them. (Joseph also says, “it’s simple, but it’s not easy.”) Bhante Gunaratana lists five ways to work with mental states, based on the… Read More »
Dear Friends, Chapter 9 of The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English is titled “Mental States”, and it delves into the specifics from the discourse, where we are instructed to know whether the mind is greedy or not greedy hate or not hateful deluded or not deluded contracted or distracted (or not) great or narrow surpassable or not… Read More »
Dear Friends, Bhante Gunaratana started chapter 8 with a recounting of the Two Kinds of Thought discourse, where the Buddha described a way we can classify and reflect on thoughts: Suppose I divide my thoughts into two classes. On one side, I set thoughts of sensual desire, ill will, and cruelty. On the other side, I set thoughts… Read More »
Dear Friends, We will spend the next few days looking at the third way of establishing mindfulness – mindfulness of mind. In Chapter 8 of The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English, Bhante Gunaratana first explores the nature of mind and consciousness. First a side-note: “mind” in this context is a translation of the Pali word citta, and it… Read More »
Dear Friends, In the Entering the Path lecture on contemplation of feelings, Bhikkhu Anālayo describes the “function” of these feelings we’ve been considering these past few days… Imagine a prehistoric human is walking through the forest when something comes up in front of them: that human had to quickly decide: is this something to hunt and kill, or… Read More »
Dear Friends, Welcome to the beginning of our third week together! As you recommit to your intention for practice, here are some helpful words just posted on Tara Brach’s Facebook page: It is helpful to start your meditation with a reflection on what matters to you. Some meditation students bring to mind an all-encompassing aspiration, while others focus… Read More »
Dear Friends, Over the past two weeks, we’ve built up our muscle of mindfulness, and in the process, we have turned to see the way things are. Things change. We are interconnected. We are not helpless victims, but we are also not fully in control. And we have these beautiful hearts than can hold all this. So let’s strengthen… Read More »
Dear Friends, I’ll start with this quote, often attributed to Viktor Frankl: Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness. Yesterday, I invited you to turn your attention to the “flavor” of an experience – to notice whether… Read More »
Dear Friends, We’ve spent 10 days looking at the first way of establishing mindfulness – mindfulness of the body – including mindfulness of breathing, body postures, actions of body, speech and mind, body parts, elemental qualities, and the changing, impermanent nature of our bodies. The second foundation of mindfulness is often called mindfulness of feelings. In English, the… Read More »
