Dawn Neal: Four Alternatives to Mental Suffering

So today I'd like to offer a few reflections that kind of distil some of the Buddha's teachings on how we can utilize mindfulness, awareness, to have a cleaner, simpler, healthier relationship with a reality. And mindful awareness, Bhavana meditation is not the only teaching the Buddha Gaze about how to reduce or eliminate suffering, the suffering our minds make, that block us, accrued us from the simpler, happier way of being. But it's a really important chunk, and it's fundamental to this tradition. So I'm going to talk about ways of establishing awareness, mindfulness in the moment, very classic core teaching of Satipa Tana, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is the most common translation of that. But I'd like to spend a moment or two talking about the purpose, so the form of suffering that the Buddha spoke about most often and taught about reducing, eliminating, ending is the way our minds make things worse, and the way our minds make things worse in particular by imputing, projecting, assuming ourselves into the reality around us, the I, me, and mine projected onto and into everything, situations, people, horizons, objects, and how this is in a way, our minds are kind of like virtual reality machines, right? There's always a story, it seems like, especially at first when meditating. And as mindfulness develops, we realize how often that story involves me at the center of things. So the context of these Four Foundations for awareness, Four Foundations of Mindfulness, is that they are ways of seeing, ways of relating to moment to moment experience to our lives that help tether us to reality, the way things actually are in the moment in a simple, freer way. So many of you, how many of you are familiar with this teaching? I just want to take a pulse. I've mentioned people online have their cameras off, so it's possible to get a real count, but that's about half, maybe two thirds. So before our Foundations, the Buddhist suggests that we attend to, in order to cultivate awareness of the moment, mindfulness are the body, something called feeling tone, Vedana, or feelings, the quality of our minds themselves, the quality of your mind in any moment. And the fourth of these Foundations is called Dhammas and Pali, and simply put, it is the core teachings, but it's not just a list of lists, it's learning to use the teachings as a way of showing up in the moment that's helpful, that's useful. So awareness of the body, this is a very sort of fly by overview. When we say that, you know, our culture, modern culture is so addicted and obsessed with external appearances, and the beauty industry, the fashion industry, the weight loss industry goes on and on and on about how to make these bodies look better, look more appropriate, look like something you've seen on social media, whatever. That is not the form of body awareness the Buddha was talking about. Okay, so let that go any moment you can, right? Instead, the teaching is about the experience of the world, the experience of our lives, of reality, with our lived experience, our embodied experience being the vessel through which we take in everything. This landing and mindfulness of the body opens up a greater vibrancy, aliveness, attunement with life as it actually is, and it also has the beneficial effect of putting your attention in the moment right now, because the body is only ever here, and it's only ever now. Our minds, they can be in a different universe, different time, place, fantasy worlds, fear worlds, whatever, with the simplicity of this body doesn't lie, it holds to the truth. There's a little snippet of David White poem that comes to mind, and I don't remember the title of this poem, Hold to the Truth You Make Each Day with Your Own Body and Don't Turn Your Face Away. It's a way to remember your own power, your own capacity, your own way of being. Okay, so second foundation, and I'm not going into all the sort of sublists within each of these. The second foundation for awareness, second foundation of mindfulness is Vedana, often translated as feeling tones or feelings, but we're not talking about emotions here. Veda actually means knowledge in Pali, it may mean that in Sanskrit too, actually. Vedana is the knowledge of the quality of experience. Is it pleasant? Is it unpleasant? Or is it in that vast category of neither pleasant nor unpleasant? And this particular foundation is often kind of, I don't know, like underrepresented, dismissed as being too simple or simplistic. However, its simplicity is its power, noticing that very simple attribution of whether experience is pleasant, unpleasant or neither. Pulls the foundation out from this whole deck of cards of planning, fantasizing, projecting, fearing, all the machinations our minds make and land us square in the moment. And it's also worth noticing that a vast amount of the human tendency to do things is based on moving towards the pleasant and away from the unpleasant. It's really humbling to see how much of one's life is structured around this. Check it out for yourselves, check it out. But again, it illuminates that and this knowledge offers the capacity for choice to let wisdom lead rather than a reflexive movement towards what's comfy and away from what's not. So much of development, depth and mindfulness practice is learning to be comfortable with discomfort, to be able to land in it and allow it then to transform based on reality, not my wishes, suppositions, fears, projections or fantasies about it. Third foundation, mind or mind states, citta. Citta also translates as heart. So I like the translation heart, mind, as it's the overall quality or attitude of how we're aware. So if you've ever picked up, those of you who wear glasses, if you've ever picked up someone else's prescription glasses by mistake and put them on, what's that like? Yeah, well it's unpleasant for one thing, but muddy, distorted, blurry. Or those of you who don't habitually wear glasses, probably wear sunglasses now and then, it's the tint on the glass. That's mindfulness of mind. It's noticing, taking off the glasses and looking at the tint, noticing any distortion. And perhaps more importantly, noticing and appreciating qualities of mind that are beautiful, simplicity, subtleness, contentment, clarity. And this brings me to a story that I don't really have time for, but I'm going to try to skate through. Some of you have heard this story before. It's about the Zen master and the psychic. The psychic is in town and set up shop. It's like looking into people's minds and making money hand over fist. I don't know where the story is set. It's kind of a fable, right? Well, one day the psychic is walking along the riverbank of the town, maybe a week or two into Thursday, and they pass the locals and master. And the psychic thinks, aha, I'll look into her mind and see what I can get. And now it's a beautiful day. There are boats on the water. There are clouds, puffy white clouds in a blue sky, maybe a kite. The psychic looks peers deeply into the Zen master's mind. And he sees boats on the water, puffy white clouds in a blue sky. And boats, nothing. Maybe that kite is the fruit of mindfulness of mind. It's the capacity to be present with a simple clarity that cannot be hooked or exploited by the forces around us or that can be a grounding point, a returning point when the mind mental activity gets all. And then finally, the fourth foundation has a list of lists, but to only see it that way actually really underestimates the power of the lived experience of this fourth foundation, Dhamma, as it's called, as a way of connecting with reality, a way of developing a profound mindfulness and wisdom. This foundation is an invitation to begin to notice and offer an alternative to the way our minds usually make things worse by noticing what hinders us, the five hindrances, how our senses are so often hooked, fettered to what we want or don't want. It's an invitation to noticing the beautiful qualities that arise in the heart, mindfulness itself, subtleness, energy, calm, happiness, and equanimity. And finally, it's an invitation to notice how we make things worse. And to drop it, the Four Noble Truths, dropping the dukkha, by noticing it, turning towards it completely, acknowledging it, and not participating in building it up. So, these four foundational areas of awareness, cultivation, mindfulness, cultivation, each can serve as a tether to reality and its simplicity, things as they are in this body, in this moment, and function as a doorway to more beauty, calm, simplicity, in a freer way of relating to reality. Thank you.