Dear Friends,<\/p>\n
Chapter 9 of\u00a0The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English<\/em> is titled “Mental States”, and it delves into the specifics from the discourse, where we are instructed to know whether the mind is<\/p>\n The Entering the Path<\/a> class describes this section as “recognition without self-deception”.<\/p>\n Bhikkhu\u00a0An\u0101layo it’s just about recognizing – we don’t have to do anything about it at this point. We need to first recognize it. He says,<\/p>\n If as soon as I recognize that I’m angry, I immediately bash it out, and next time I recognize, I immediately bash it out, next time, I won’t recognize it anymore, because I have trained myself in the fact that recognizing any defilement in myself, I’m going to bash myself. It’s a negative experience. …<\/p>\n We have to learn, first of all, to simply be aware of a defilement in the mind and accept that condition.\u00a0It doesn’t mean that we want to be angry or try to encourage it. It just means we are training ourselves in honest recognition. …<\/p>\n If we lose this element of honest recognition, we start to deceive ourselves and expend a tremendous amount of energy rationalizing, explaining it away, or worse, turning it back on ourselves with self-criticism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This moment of simple recognition is the basis from which we can get out of unskillful states. Just holding it is the task of mindfulness.<\/p>\n In a talk from the Essential Buddhist Teachings<\/em>\u00a0course,\u00a0Mark Coleman suggests using the phrase “is like this”, e.g. “Anger is like this. Greed is like this.” This is a way to notice what’s happening without getting caught in the story.<\/p>\n An\u0101layo also reminds us that the instructions say to know when the mind is not in unskillful states. We don’t want to only notice when there is greed, hatred, and delusion, but also when these states are not in the mind. What does it feel when anger is not in the mind?\u00a0An\u0101layo calls this “a foretaste of liberation”.<\/p>\n Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem\u00a0So Much Happiness<\/em><\/a> describes how this can be difficult to do:<\/p>\n It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. But happiness floats. Since there is no place large enough As an exercise,\u00a0at the end of the day make an inventory of as many unskillful and skillful states as you can remember. For the times when unskillful states were not present, how did that feel in the body, heart, and mind?<\/p>\n I welcome you to share your reflections in the comments, or send me an email<\/a>.<\/p>\n With best wishes, Dear Friends, Chapter 9 of\u00a0The 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\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[102],"tags":[135,36,311,142,140],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2018","tag-bhikkhu-analayo","tag-mark-coleman","tag-mind-states","tag-naomi-shihab-nye","tag-third-foundation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1047,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/1047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nWith sadness there is something to rub against,
\na wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
\nWhen the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
\nsomething to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.<\/p>\n
\nIt doesn\u2019t need you to hold it down.
\nIt doesn\u2019t need anything.
\nHappiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
\nand disappears when it wants to.
\nYou are happy either way.
\nEven the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
\nand now live over a quarry of noise and dust
\ncannot make you unhappy.
\nEverything has a life of its own,
\nit too could wake up filled with possibilities
\nof coffee cake and ripe peaches,
\nand love even the floor which needs to be swept,
\nthe soiled linens and scratched records . . .<\/p>\n
\nto contain so much happiness,
\nyou shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
\ninto everything you touch. You are not responsible.
\nYou take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
\nfor the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
\nand in that way, be known.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nAndrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"