What I mean by contemplation is a kind of enquiry that draws meaning out of things, seeing things the way they really are, rather than adding meaning, whether in terms of our personal feelings or ideals. We can all at times value art, philosophy or poetry but what potential do these things really have to lastingly change our lives? I would suggest that when used for truly deep contemplation they can transform us completely. Perhaps some would agree that such contemplation is transformative but even within contemplative circles how well is this process of transformation understood?
The Buddha gives us a model for understanding both the nature and method of contemplation and explains the process of transformation, what it is and how it works. Then, of course the Buddha has a particular goal in mind. Yet we do not have to be seeking the same goal to enquire in the same way. All we do is meditate to make the mind peaceful and take another look at life with a calmer, emptier mind in order to really take it in rather than imposing all our ideas on the world. As we do this then we can see what we are doing and the result for ourselves. The mind can become happier and calmer still. We can then also compare what we see with what the Buddha describes having seen or not, as we wish. Then how we understand and express the results of our contemplation can become very important. Mastering all this can then help not only ourselves but also others. Contemplation can lead us all in a happy direction or it is possible for it to become another source of ideals or feelings that do not make us feel happy or free. It is then the further art of aesthetics, becoming aware of how we are looking, opening up to and appreciating things in different ways that can be developed to guide us. This art is more implicit than explicit in the Buddha’s teaching. The Buddha simply paints a beautiful picture of the spiritual life. A sense of beauty that is based on truth and frees us rather than binds us. The presence of the Buddha and his disciples undoubtedly added to this. In the present day we may need to paint another kind of picture to inspire the mind. Perception is the primary force in the mind. To gain control over this and take it in a good direction is what can take us to peace and liberation. The Western spiritual tradition is very rich in its creative art and intellectual expression. These skills seem to be a strength in the Western mind. I believe that the Buddha’s teaching can help us harness these skills into a genuine spiritual vehicle. Otherwise, as history shows us, these powerful skills can also be destructive. Mindfulness – Developing presence of mind
Initially we can see how the practice of Dhamma arises naturally out of the effort to be mindful, to keep the mind in the present moment, to develop presence of mind. We must be careful of the word effort however. Actually this is an effort to relax in order to return to a natural presence. It is something that we remember, not that we do. This state of presence is very pleasant and naturally motivates us to go further to strengthen it, to explore it. We get a taste, a feeling for it. As we practice mindfulness more and more then we discover what supports it and what weakens it. We learn to live simply and in a spontaneous way. Patience is the key support, it is like silence. Generosity is important too, mindfulness means giving the mind to something. We find that neutral, ordinary things develop our mindfulness best. When the mind remains still and calm it stays with the present. Until we get a sense for mindfulness in itself then we use an object of meditation to show us its presence or absence. We can use concentration on an object to strengthen it. Mindfulness becomes most firmly established when the mind is free of both the regrets that draw us into the past, and the desires that draw us into the future; the establishment of mindfulness is, at the same time, the emergence of the spirit. We recognize how important it is to have a mind free of regret so virtue and restraint becomes natural. So our virtue is not moralistic, we truly see virtue as skilful for ourselves rather than right or good, and a lack of it as unskilful rather than wrong or evil. Moreover, we restrain or compose the senses, because to seek sensory pleasure feeds the craving that takes the mind into the past or future. We learn to tolerate discomfort when this is not harmful for the same reason. Also, patiently tolerating harmless pain changes our relationship to pain and in time can change the pain itself. All this is how we can progress without trying to force the mind. If we do force it, it will resist. Yet we can also take a lot of this on faith, commit ourselves to the five precepts out of faith, for example. This can really speed us on the path. We practice in order to get into a good space, a pure space. There are lots of different spaces we can get into through our practice. Some are higher than others and therefore are more pleasant. Some are freer than others and therefore last longer. Which is the highest space? When the mind lets go through wisdom our focus naturally opens into the highest space. We can then abide in this space and hold this space open for others. There are two ways or purposes for attention, sensual interest or wisdom and compassion. Calming bodily and mental reactions of the former gives us full access to this use of mind and body for the latter. Useful questions in trying to free this space are: “Do I really need this?”, “What am I holding on to with aversion or attraction?” and “Can I find a more balanced view that could help me let go?” As long as mindfulness is the central theme then the practice will be natural and peaceful. If any other factor takes over then we have a problem, an attachment. Mindfulness is an attachment we can allow because its nature is to overcome attachment by maintaining the flow of the mind from one moment to another. The opposite of mindfulness is proliferation. Here the mind is not applied to something in the present but spinning around in the past and future, lost in itself. To simply watch the proliferation of the mind, (although seemingly this detaches it from the proliferation to become the observer of it,) is counter-productive; here we are merely watching our delusion rather than developing wisdom. The proliferation is like our automatic pilot, tuned to seek pleasure and avoid pain. More important is that we do wholesome things with our minds, not the unwholesome things that stir up our greed, hatred or delusion. In these ways Dhamma is preventative medicine, good karma (merit) is the curative medicine. We gradually see that it is worth giving up craving for the future to win perfect mindfulness because mindfulness is such a pleasant state. When we are ready then acting, talking and thinking in the opposite direction to craving is what really seems to count. As we continue we can see how presence of mind has a centre or a source, at the heart, and extends from there if mindfulness is maintained. As we practice we feel our minds closer and closer to this source, which is not a feeling but a brightness or presence. This centring enables us to see that everything is outside. Inside the mind is empty – so mind objects and real objects are essentially the same. Then it is possible to extend the inner emptiness to the outside. If we have such awareness we do not need to make the distinction between what is real or not real or what is in the mind or not (e.g. ghost or imagination), or whether stuff is our stuff or not etc., etc. We can instead make the distinction we need to make between skilful and unskilful – leading to happiness or suffering. This has many other implications. We can change our perception of mental objects in the same way as outer objects, for example, and one will effect the other. So a benevolent thought about a person in our imagination will lead us to have the same on next contact. We can also see that feelings are the results, (kamma-vipāka,) of the outgoing mind. The contemplation of feelings thus gives us the opportunity to reflect on the results of our actions of body, speech and mind. In terms of karma, specifics do not need to be resolved, a positive balance takes in a positive direction. Clearing the mind/conscience leads us to emptiness. Overall we must be careful with our analysis – if looking for meaning turns into giving importance, then we can add stress to life rather than take it away. Rather than being drawn into emotions, we need to draw the emotions into us. In this way, gradually coarser feelings are relinquished for a more open awareness. This in itself feels very pleasant. In terms of thought it is usually wrongly assumed that feelings as the motivator of the mind must also be king, but perception (knowing) is king, the first cause. The connection between thought and the deeper realisation is the mental image or words as they come back to us. The most powerful perceptions, however, are without thought. In clearing our minds we do not fight with ourselves but with the hindrances, and indirectly not directly. Although the hindrances are obstacles to the development of meditation or wisdom none of these necessarily have an unwholesome or unskilful root, they may have no greed or aversion associated, they are not bad or wrong, they are merely disturbing. This is perhaps most important to realise in the cases of lust and anger. Anger without ill will is very common and blameless. Sexual desire too is also blameless, (within the boundary of the five precepts). A committed practitioner, however, may look for situations in which both of these can be avoided, amongst others with similar commitment, either temporarily or permanently. Even a temporary deepening of their practice can have a lasting result whatever their future life situation. The mind that has gone deeper will incline more easily to further practice. Knowing and being The fruit of the practice is to become at One with the world but through the heart, not through the senses, not even through the sixth sense of the thinking and emotional mind. The senses are dependent on the body which can never itself find union or stability. Hence the need for the mind to detach from the body and the senses and abandon thought and emotion, through seeing their impermanent nature. The mind ultimately must stand independent and then embrace the world. We must not merely fall for any illusion of ultimate Union provided by the open, passive senses or by thought and emotion. Even though such experiences may help us overcome specific attachments, they will lead to further, more subtle attachment. Then through practice we come to either fully know our being or fully be our knowing. These are two routes come together to the same destination, the same freedom, of being ‘the one who knows’. In terms of the path, our being is already pure, no effort is required to purify it. So our passive state is pure. The pure state of just being can be experienced most clearly through absorption samādhi where this is all we are experiencing. The mind with wisdom, that is similarly free from the hindrances, can detach from things and the same state of being is experienced without withdrawal. Yet this wise being does not have the centre or sense of self that samādhi has – any sense of self maintains the division between subject and object. Thus it is our knowing, our active side, which is the side that potentially can be at One with everything, but its nature is that it is dependent on the objects that it knows, therefore changed by them and therefore unstable, impermanent. This knowing needs to find independence for the mind to find freedom. But this is not withdrawal. There is no independent state of withdrawal but there may occur both release and union at the same time, detachment. This is achieved through contemplation of the body. When the body is contemplated and let go of, the sense of self disappears from this being. Putting it another way – the brightness of our sense of being is a source of pride, in common parlance it is our ego. So if we do not cool this through body contemplation then our practice of mindfulness will just end up feeding this ego. It is also the second state, without a sense of self, into which unwholesome states can find no entry and that requires no effort to sustain. It is the stable state where the roots of craving have been cut, including the possibility of delighting in the sense of existence, yet this state is not annihilation. There is no sense of existence, yet there is existence. The result of all this is an existential shift in which it becomes apparent that separation is not achieved through withdrawal. Freedom and independence is freedom from desire and results in detachment. It comes about through dispassion, not through passion. Passion's feelings are always both separate from and dependent on an object. The cessation of such feeling is not an insensitive state, it is the most sensitive, it knows and sees the mind and states of mind clearly. Also note that there is a common misunderstanding here that cessation (nirodha) means ending. It actually means non-arising. So in talking about the possibility of the cessation of suffering the Buddha is not pointing at the fact that it arises and ceases but that the very causes of its arising are cut off. While there is the perception of the body as 'attractive' then, through grasping, there will always be a mingling of physical and mental feelings – one with another. With the perception 'unattractive' the mind detaches and we become the observer of physical feeling rather than the one who experiences it. While this lasts proliferation and its related suffering ceases. Body contemplation also generates natural, spontaneous compassion, bringing our spiritual and human sides together into a seamless whole. We naturally empathize, but without attachment. Let’s pause for a moment. It is true that such spiritual experiences generate interesting ideas and feelings but if we attach to ideas and over-rationalize or attach to feelings generated by such thoughts we cannot see or realise states that go beyond these conceptions. These states involve reactions or qualities that are contrary at the level of thought or feelings, like disgust and compassion for the body that can arise together. More generally, we cannot make a perception or a change of perception just through thought for the same reason. We find instead ways of looking afresh. A summary of the path is that perception, knowing, gets raised by mindfulness to the higher level of wisdom. Perception or knowing is made more powerful than thought and emotion. We do not raise up our thoughts or emotions. Analysis at these lower levels, trying to integrate thought and emotion, can block the process of a perception change. Also if we are problem-solving through thought, we end up with a fault-finding mind, holding with aversion. In the experience of body contemplation, for example, holding on with disgust or letting go are clearly not the same. Letting go requires calm. Out of that calm compassion also arises. In practical terms if we continue to care for a sick person as a whole, we do not just centre on the body, whilst also avoiding any aversion to the body, then detachment will arise. The more the realities of the body are seen the more the mind will detach from it. This is not an ‘all-or-nothing thing’, nor is detachment necessarily a stable state. The skill here is to be able to bear the body in mind at all times, not to always focus on it. Where visual (top-down) and physical feeling (bottom-up) views of the body come together is where mindfulness of body is strongest, clearest. When the body is present in the mind then it will automatically recognize other bodies as the same and empathy naturally arises. The human situation So here we are with this body which is not who or what we are but to which our mind has become attached, dependent. The pains and pleasures of the body both disturbing the mind. It is continuous awareness of this situation that defines the spiritual path for us. If we see things like this we have no need of theory or ideas. We see that we need to strive to gain freedom for the mind from attachment to the body and its related senses and feelings. We are motivated to do so seeing the impermanence of the body. We walk the middle way to minimize the disturbance to the mind and seek simplicity. This wise attention can ultimately prevent the arising of further craving. It is important to understand that suffering is prevented in this way, not resolved. This leaves the way open to seek the resolution of suffering, the mundane path, at the same time and without any confusion. Our suffering becomes our guide to the positive path of virtue, its positive nature helping us to tolerate any suffering on the road out of suffering. So in a sense it is our body and mind together but detached that show us the way, not just the mind. It is going too far to take the lead of the mind alone or to see the body as merely another object in the mind. Yet the body is a source of perception and feeling other than the mind. There is an act of faith here. Instead of creating wholesome states we pay wise attention to the body and allow them to arise on their own. We find that there is no suffering in the (empty) mind as a mind or in the body as a body. All the suffering lies in the attachment between the two. Consider in this respect how the body holds a unique existential position as part of our being but not part of our mind. We can let go of it. In terms of contemplation, sooner or later we need to look at our own body to win detachment. Although it is not possible to see through your own skin to see what lies underneath, it is possible that such an image can appear on its own, as a kind of vision. I found, for example, contemplating the hair on the head that a mental image would occur that, amazingly enough, was correct, seeing the hair as long or short as it was, or not there at all the day after shaving the head. So the mind can be aware of the body (and breath) in a way that we cannot understand from the common point of view – the mind must be different from what we had thought. This new body-image does not arise until the heart is ready, until it is still and all obstructive movement has calmed. The image is bathed in the light of the pure mind, the deathless, so if we see death through seeing the body in this way we also see the deathless and there is no fear but instead release, bliss, emptiness. As mind states re-arise we see the distinction between what is wholesome and unwholesome. We see that when the mind is not perfectly calm and open, everything that arises there is unwholesome, how we can either add to this or calm it with our deliberate thought. We also see how these operate differently, have different effects on the mind. We see how the unwholesome is tightly bound up with physical form, (due to the coarse nature of the associated feelings) the wholesome is not and may or may not be bound to form but remains bound to impermanence, to existence. In a sense we can also see that the less real things become the better we are doing. It is when we enter more into material reality, especially the reality of the body, that it becomes less real – please understand that what I am describing is a fruit of the practice, not just an idea; as merely an idea this would be dangerous. The more we try to escape the body through practices, fantasy or ideas, the more the reality has to come as a rude awakening. It is through a wisdom in which compassion also arises naturally. Then we can have the confidence to let go and see the reality that everything is in the mind, the dream-like nature of a reality where the heart is unhindered, unobstructed, not limited by desire. In terms of method we keep the breath in mind so that we have space in mind, we need to see the body in space in order to see it within the mind. We need not have the intention to see inside the body, our intention can be one of centring or of compassion. Then if we do seem to see inside directly we – momentarily at least – resolve the problem completely. The body is both very real (and naturally evokes compassion) in that we see the real nature of it – and completely unreal in that it is seen as a vision, as just in the mind (and this evokes a wisdom that will mature into release). We see the body and mind as separate things. The body in the mind rather than the mind in the body. Or we could say that desire cannot see the true nature of the body, therefore it cannot see the true nature of the mind whereas a mind free of desire sees both realities. It is as though through the body we see conventional reality and ultimate reality simultaneously. We cannot fall into denying the reality of conditions and acting without compassion. We cannot be blind to the ultimate truth that we are not our bodies. We truly become spiritual beings trying to be human, not human beings trying to be spiritual. We take all the effort and moralizing out of our practice of virtue. In terms of contemplating bodies other than our own, if we see a dead body often we see that the corpse is no longer the person. We may even see that the body was never the person in the first place. Seeing a dead body as not self can be very liberating; with enough faith our grief can even disappear. Or we can consider the effects of brain dysfunction. This can effect any of our ability or character and yet the underlying state of mind, especially of a meditator, remains stable. There is a kind of still presence there behind it all. Yet the image of the body within the body is necessary because this brings the heart, the deathless and death together in the same mind moment. Then the heart can let go. Looking for material reality. Is it real and does it really matter? Coming at this same consideration from another direction, if we reflect perhaps we can accept that our experience of material reality is not that reality itself. It is a perception constructed by the senses. The body is subjectively perhaps our closest contact with matter. Yet if we search in our minds for the body, actually we never find the real thing. First of all we find feelings, sight, sound, taste or touch that indicate its presence, but in the same way these are not the actual body. Or we can build an imagined picture of the body. We can find the subjective experiences of the elements of earth, air, fire and water, but these are not separate from the surrounding elements, so as soon as we can sense the body in this way we lose it again, but in a good sense, into the larger reality. This is how looking for material reality takes us to emptiness – but not an emptiness separate from reality. Liberation isn't merely the letting go of things in order to enter into space – it is seeing through things, seeing that there is only space. It is the non-arising of things in the heart-mind. It is the full emergence of the spirit until only the body and empty mind remain and the practitioner is left to seek a harmless way to live out their residual physical karma. So our various images of the body are constructed by the mind. The real body cannot be found, actually it does not exist in the mind. We discover no material reality in our subjective experience but we still clearly experience the results of this material existence, the karma of our existence, in terms of feelings and needs. Our ability to see the body and feelings as separate opens up the possibility of abandoning care for the body in and of itself, temporarily or for good, liberating us from both fear and desire. Yet at the same time we remain able to seek relief from painful feelings. This is non-attachment in action. Conversely, it is therefore the creation of karma that keeps our minds limited to the human form with its associated feeling; the possibility to end all karma formation is our escape from this limitation. All that would remain would be the karma of the physical body – old age, sickness, death, the result of birth – what we discover when are truly mindful of the body is that if we don't mind, it doesn't matter. Furthermore, we see that all the contents of our minds are dependent on the presence of the material body. If we understand all this we realise that to see everything that happens in the world as karma is incorrect, but to see that everything that arises in the mind is karma is correct and thus, in the perfected mind, nothing arises. I have described how meditation can form a different kind of body image, different to all the others, where the body seems very real, floating in the light of the empty mind; this image lacks any material substance, it has no feelings associated with it. In some sense this is the most real because letting go of it has a liberating effect on the heart, it lets go of the real body, completely – so it would seem that there is some kind of representation of the real body in the mind or heart and that our relationship to this, in existential terms, is the same as to the real thing. Contrast this with sculptural representations of the body that depict the changes or distortions that occur in the mind's image due to thought (the depiction of an idea or ideal) or of feelings and emotions. This can be a way in which we depict these states of mind or an understanding of the nature of a relationship between body and mind. Traditional Buddhist art usually depicts the Buddha as a serene, composed physical form with a surrounding aura showing a still, empty mind. The contents of the mind are pictured as external objects. This is a depiction of detachment. Not to overly try to explain or rationalise we can see this detachment as like some kind of magic that shows us the mind and material world are ultimately parallel existences. Truth is already transcendent. Life lies not in the cell or the beating heart. Life lies in a truth that is not apart; and transcendence is not passivity or inaction. The highest truths The most important truth to see is simply that of the suffering of existence...if we can see the suffering we will not have the suffering Seeing suffering in the present moment makes the mind want to withdraw. Then the way to withdraw is not through pain (austerity) or pleasure (even that of the withdrawal of samādhi) but by seeing impermanence (from a calm, neutral place), because that which sees impermanence and detaches (rather than withdrawing) is permanent and stable. It is through the body that we see impermanence in the present moment by seeing its mortality. Watching the mind, we see impermanence only over time but not in the here and now; this is the reason why the body is so essential for all of this. Also, ultimately, as we detach the mind from the phenomenon of the senses to return to the body, our thoughts and feelings cease – we realise that they seem to be within us but actually they are all outside this innermost space, just the same as the sense objects. We see that when the mind detaches from the senses (into samādhi) the spirit seems to emerge to the full but it is only when this same spirit detaches from the body (in the presence of the body image, rather than when the body disappears) that it finds its greatest brilliance. This transcendent spirit is the One who Knows. This spirit is still not withdrawn from things but only detached from them and is free of the defilements of greed, hatred and delusion. Thus, ultimately, bare awareness of the body and mind together (in the absence of mental hindrances) will teach us all we need to know for this liberation. To become aware of the realities of the body is the challenge. We have to work through the hindrances and attachment to feelings to be able to see it clearly – we have to overcome the defence mechanisms set up by our own misperceptions of the relationship between body and mind. Dependent Origination The Buddha sometimes refers to the body as kāya (body) and sometimes as rūpa (form). This is seldom given much significance, and yet to see the body as merely another form in the mind can be viewed as the goal of contemplative practice. This requires that the mind be unobstructed and the body seen as a nimitta or vision. To put this into an explanation of dependent origination: Ignorance (avijjā) is the misperception of the relation between mind and body that creates a deluded, absolute sense of need (taṇhā) and leads to the creation of corresponding, automatic, unquestioned, values (saṅkhāra). Through extension this becomes associated with all the senses to form sense bases (saḷāyatana). The relation between the body and the senses then means that sense contact elicits feelings, pleasant or unpleasant and these in turn become the motivators of the mind. We go beyond what we need to what we want. This is usually taken in the teaching to be the beginning of greed but if we follow the train of conditioning back to the beginning we could see that greed goes much deeper. Our wish to survive in a material form could be seen as a matter of greed rather than of need; and yet to see like this the mind must have gone beyond its attachment to the senses – essentially our independence is won by our first moment of samādhi. Consciousness is an open system not a closed one. So if it closes it gradually disappears. This is how we go to sleep and the senses, perception and feelings close down. This gives the impression that consciousness is dependent on an object. Yet it is possible to be conscious in the absence of perception or feeling as long as the mind remains open. This is samādhi. One might ask: “Before samādhi, has the mind ever experienced real freedom from attachment to the senses?” If not then our minds are inextricably caught up. Whenever the objects of the senses fade (including here those of thought and feelings), then the mind will lose consciousness. Is this not the case for the ordinary man? Doesn't this point at our situation as beings lost in saṃsāra. Yet if we see the body as suffering, as unattractive without doubt the mind will let go and experience the bliss of samādhi. After this the person will never want to experience attraction again and will instead be eager to see all the faults. At the very least, if our sense of need is seen in the context of that which needs – that is the body – then we have sanity, or more than this: we have a source of natural ethics. This is a natural way to purify the mind, to guide our life in the world. It provides conventional wisdom. But the very same act of mindfulness is also, at the same time and in the same way, a source of ultimate wisdom. The two kinds of wisdom, Dhamma and Vinaya, come together through the body. Mindfulness in action In order to apply the framework of satipaṭṭhāna to form the full picture we must first realise that within this scheme: The mind is not thought – thoughts are objects within the field of the mind. The body is not feelings – feelings are the result of having a body and (grasping) mind together. If we confuse the first and second satipaṭṭhāna – body and feeling – we can sensitize ourselves to feelings only to become neurotic. In contrast to this the flesh and bone body doesn't mind anything, it has no pain or suffering in and of itself. In terms of mindfulness in the outer world, Ajahn Chah associated the establishment of mindfulness so strongly with the body that he defined it in this way:
We develop presence of the body in the mind (citta) and this in turn effect feelings as reactions of pleasure and displeasure and the content, movements of mind (dhammas). The ultimate result of the practise is that the body is fully present in the empty mind (citta). Mental feelings (dhammas) and emotions as (the result of) the mind in the body, cease – they no longer arise within. To merely see the impermanence of a feeling or thought is not to see the impermanence of the whole process of thought or feelings as such. Seeing the body (and its impermanence) is to see this. To see all khandhas in the context of the body is to see the impermanence of them all. Thus always the body or form is the first of the khandhas to be considered. All the other khandhas are seen in the context of this. Interestingly the study of the relationship between mind and body is often assumed to be concerned with developing mental power over matter in some way or another. In the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (SN 22.59) the Buddha first points out that the body cannot be controlled, hence also the other khandhas, perhaps because the five first disciples were striving for this – to direct the khandhas toward liberation rather than letting go of them. In summary mindfulness or satipaṭṭhāna is getting into a knowing space in the present and bearing in mind the realities of our body and mind throughout our daily lives. Allowing the body to be simply present develops simple, humble presence of mind but also takes the mind much deeper over time. I offer this for your reflection. The method used in teaching Dhamma is for the listener to meditate and to empty the mind so that the teacher's words can enter fully. The teaching can then have an immediate impact on the listener, taking their mind deeper. If we recognise this as the method then when this direct effect is not happening we will be wondering why. We can be comparing our experience with that of the speaker in order to understand their message in a more indirect, analytical way.
We can be thinking, for example, "This teacher is emphasising concentration. This is difficult for me right now. I will try to remember his advice when I go out into the country at the weekend." As meditators we can realise that it is possible to consciously place thoughts anywhere within our field of awareness. We tend to do this unconsciously in the way we think. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes not - in psychology there is a growing literature on 'cognitive metaphors' that function like this. Events in the future are not literally ahead of us but if we imagine them there this makes sense so it is a useful way of thinking that orients us clearly. As meditators we can see more subtle implications of the perceived position or movement of mind states. For example there is a real sense in which more refined states of mind are higher, raising the mind in space is purifying because we are drawing it away from its attachment to its material ground.
Discovering these mental dynamics gives us all kinds of new ways to work with our minds. Also revealed is the true relationship between the mind and the body. Bringing heaven forever down to earth
Everything we experience, although it has its origin in the world, is in our mind. All our experience is subjective. The Dhamma concerns this subjective experience. The world of suffering (saṃsāra) and the world of ultimate happiness (Nibbāna) are essentially not places but states of mind. Which one of these we experience depends on the relationship between the mind and the world. The truth of the Dhamma is that which makes our subjective world perfect in every sense, which makes it free of suffering through creating the proper relationship of our minds to the world. This relationship is one in which the mind first of all finds its way to heaven on earth. We do not have to go somewhere else or wait until we die to experience heaven. We can find heaven in the blissfully empty mind (samādhi). Samādhi is the natural result of having the kind of virtue that lets go of our own desire. For it is just desire that fills our minds with all the things of the world. This heaven will not just be ours either. Our virtue will bring a little bit of heaven to anyone we come into contact with. Imagine a whole world that kept moral precepts, no killing, no stealing, no lying, no sexual misconduct, drink or drugs. This is making the world into a kind of heavenly abode, albeit an impermanent heaven. This is very different from thinking of heaven or a higher happiness as somewhere else. This can lead to a negative judgement and desire to get away from the world or a restlessness. In this respect it can really help us to reflect that ultimately, whether we want to go to heaven or not, there isn't anywhere completely separate to go. There isn't anywhere that is not somehow connected to this impermanent world because everything within this universe is interconnected in a causal web. The stable emptiness of the mind that can become our refuge, right here and now, is as far as we can go. Even this emptiness is connected to all the objects within it. This emptiness, this empty mind, has to realise the proper relationship of detachment to the things of the world in order to remain empty - it has to be an emptiness we let go into not one we reach for, not some kind of spaced-out state. Finding this detachment, this light touch on life, is a matter of seeing clearly, with the wisdom that can help us let go. Yet we also need a quality of compassion or appreciation that helps us to stay with the world and not try to go somewhere else. This balance exists within the mind, in the material world and in the relationship between the mind and the world which, coming all together, I often compare to a kind of spiritual aesthetics that can appreciate the sense of a harmonious relationship between form and space - spiritual art or architecture can evoke this sense. Furthermore through this we may form a picture of our spiritual qualities in the world to sustain a unified experience – samādhi as like the sun, wisdom like the sky... Ultimately, the relationship of detachment can become permanent, natural. This state of detachment is enlightenment, Nibbāna. This too we can realise before we die, through the wisdom that helps us let go. Nibbāna is the emptiness we let go into, it is the result of letting go of our attachment. Then, when we die, we can remain in this state after death. This is our 'original mind', the mind's most natural, stable state. It is the state that the mind abided in before it was born into the world of saṃsāra and returns to when saṃsāra ceases. Therefore no effort is required to sustain this once it is fully realised. This is bringing heaven firmly and forever down to earth. ‘Just watch your mind’
Very many teachers of Buddhism are now teaching people as they see all their ‘stuff coming up’ to ‘just watch their mind, accept and let go’. This is a good teaching if we realise that what we are watching is our karma coming up. Then we can keep moving forward but also be noting it all as the results of our actions of body and mind, past and present, seeing it all as feedback and altering our course accordingly. Where we can go wrong is: 1. If we see what is arising as our minds, not our karma and try to fix it all. Then we will have a hard job fixing the past. In a sense the practice of ‘just watching’ is a good remedy or balance to the fixing that can become endless therapy but it can be hard not to try to get rid of unpleasant feelings - after all that is natural enough. The answer is simple in theory but not so easy in practice. If we have enough patience we can we bring together the element of just watching or rather acceptance and skilful action of one kind or another to alleviate our suffering in the present. 2. If we do not make the discrimination between what is old karma and what is the active mind in the present we can: a) become the passive watcher and miss the opportunity to steer things in a good direction in the present b) fail to realise that we are already doing something to contribute to the karma that is arising through the way we are watching. As we passively watch we can then fall into the illusion that the watcher is somehow beyond, already enlightened even and we overestimate our minds, selling ourselves short of the highest goal. In the truly enlightened mind we are not watching our suffering, there is no suffering arising. What helps is if we also at times hold an object in our formal meditation – we meditate in a more active way. We use the mantra ‘Buddho’ for example. This helps us to clearly see the difference between the two sources of thought – what we are thinking in the present (our mantra) and the flow of karma, our automatic pilot as it were, that comes to interrupt us. In the active, untrained mind feeling and perception, past and present, get mixed up with each other. As we practise formal meditation past and present separate out. 3. If we watch the mind and not the body then the mind can lack feeling and also neglect the purely physical part of our existence as human beings. Also, can we just watch the body if it falls down or do we fall down with it? Expanded psychology
Given an expanded psychology there is no reason for mysticism of any kind. All the phenomena associated with the spiritual path can be explained in terms of a greater, expanded view of the mind. This includes rebirth and the existence of other realms. All this can be seen as phenomena of the mind because ultimately everything we experience is experienced within the mind. All we experience is the knowing of information or meaning. This is all there has ever been to our experience and is all there will ever be. This whole realm of information is formed in parallel with that of being. This is not some kind of inert phenomena. Truth can be as formative as matter or energy. It is just as alive if not more so than being. Although we may even use the terms of mysticism in order to evoke the special or unique qualities of spiritual realms we need not create any mystical 'beings'. This is as long as we understand that some phenomena exist just within the mind that have a completely independent existence from our own psychological processes. This is to give these things in one sense the status of beings in that they are as much a being as anything else that seems to be so. Yet we recognise that everything ultimately only seems to 'be' anything. This is a crucial point. Liberation of mind comes from realising that there is no need to be or become anything in order to survive. In fact we had better not become anything if we want to survive. Everything that is born, dies. Let me now give an example of a different view of a mystical phenomena: A person comes to a monastery to make an offering in memory of a deceased relative believing that this will assist their relative in some way. We can think of this as helping a spirit in mystical terms or we can reframe in terms of the mind. To make an offering is to do something positive in memory of someone. We add something positive to the memory which in psychological terms is that deceased relative within the mind. In terms of an expanded psychology we could understand the deceased person's spirit to be associated with this memory - the truth that the person really represents has its source in their 'spirit' and its influence also elsewhere. The surviving relative may be in touch just with a memory or with something closer to this source. Either way the act of offering is valid, having benefit for both parties. If we see the Buddha’s spirit in the same way as that of this deceased relative we see His 'spirit' as having enormous influence in the world. His Dhamma as a universal truth which lies in everything. So what might an expanded psychology look like overall? Conventional psychology concerns the realm of form. What we need to add to this is the phenomena and dynamic associated with the empty mind or space of the mind. Also the different kind of forms that can arise within the mind when this emptiness is complete or pure. If the mind is truly empty it is no longer creating or fabricating based on the data of the senses so what arises is a more direct experience of form, a pure perception free of conceptual bias. To conclude this expanded psychology is not, I would emphasise, some kind of secularism. This is is different understanding of what spirituality really is. It is a view of spirituality that still has magic but demystifies this. Greater understanding is then greater power to the mind. So I hope these reflections can help those people who cannot believe in mystical phenomena to find a new understanding of them that does not require belief. For those who already hold these beliefs maybe this can help them understand more clearly the true nature of what it is they believe in. Truth as essence If we see the mind as consisting of information the essence of the mind is truth or meaning (Dhamma). Then, if we say that 'awareness' arises out of information and 'knowing' arises out of truth, we are aiming to raise all our awareness to the level of knowing. Ultimately this brings the mind into a different relationship with the world, to a unified experience. The truth and its knower are one and the same in the case of the highest Dhamma. In other words, "he who sees the Dhamma sees the Buddha." In all other cases the truth and its knowing are separate in some way. This is because the result of this ultimate knowing is for the mind to let go and enter into emptiness, ultimately into Nibbāna (in the coming together is the letting go). Then the essence of the mind is Nibbāna. So there is only conditions in the mind there is no longer a mind within those conditions. In fact Buddha, Dhamma and Nibbāna are all the same: We see the Dhamma, let go and Nibbāna is the result. So the Buddha and Nibbāna are in this sense the same. They are both the result of having seen the Dhamma. The Buddha and the Dhamma are the same in the sense that the Dhamma is the impermanence of everything; the Buddha is time itself. Yet we have to be careful that we take the right emptiness to be Nibbāna. There is more than one kind of emptiness. Even the emptiness of the unenlightened mind (the citta) goes unaffected from life to life, the suffering arising and ceasing within it. Only the enlightened mind is free of suffering, it does not arise - this is cessation (nirodha). This is liberation through truth not just a leap into space. So the search for liberation is one of truth not just samādhi. We consequently need to stay in the realm of truth or meaning to realise the truth and not drift into the realm of being anything. It is space within this realm of truth that is liberation. Hence 'being space' is close to liberation. Very deceptively close and yet suffering can arise within all spaces but one, the space of Nibbāna. But have we come up with a view of the deathless reliant on perception and therefore bound to the senses the same as any other consciousness? No. The mind relies on perception to enter Nibbāna but does not rely on perception to stay there because it has rediscovered its original nature. The mind has not gone anywhere. The mind is in the world but not of the world, there is union and transcendence together. Original mind Realising the essential knowing nature of the mind is to get back to its original source, the original mind, there before we are born and there after we die. This is a mind that can come in and out of existence having an independent source. We can discover this through the experience of samādhi. The mind beyond the senses in samādhi is like the mind before it comes into the world. The state of samādhi can still be there when the phenomena of the senses reappear as an open, spacious, pure mind or heart free of the hindrances. Unless this samādhi is completely pure, however, it will deteriorate as the mind enters fully back into the world. So there is only one kind of samādhi related to wisdom or knowing which remains pure and we realise we have discovered the original mind. In Zen they search for this through repeated enquiry "what was my face before I was born". In Theravada we see this original mind as simply the result of letting go of everything. Letting go occurs through knowing so the mind that lets go of everything is the mind that has knowing established as a natural state, as its essence. We ultimately even let go of all sense of a "one who knows" or a centre to this knowing. One way in which we can try to keep our mindfulness or our samādhi without the wisdom of letting go is through passivity. We do not enter in to the world at all, it is not just our heart that does not. This is flawed. Our minds will just get dragged back in to the world or the world will flood back into the mind through all that we are failing to do. What is required for the heart to remain pure is detachment within activity. This is the challenge or training that true spiritual life presents us with. So in this way we can see through samādhi all the dynamics of the mind and heart. We do not need to speculate as to the nature of the transcendent mind. Then if we have faith we can open to the possibility that this mind goes beyond death. Many great arahants have tried to show this to us. They have had relics of their bones kept after their cremation and then these have multiplied or grown showing that they have not really departed. The illuminated mind
We practice meditation first of all to bring more attention to our thought process and to our feelings. In particular to help us to clarify how we really feel about things. In the longer term through the practise of meditation we can come to see the mind in a different way. Our inner light goes on and we can see objects within our mind in the same way as we see them in the real world. We see our imagination projected onto the world of the senses. When we are withdrawn from the senses our imagination is clear and bright. In this way we are then completely clear. St. John of the Cross, if I understand correctly, described the spiritual life as one of this kind of illumination being followed by 'purgation'. First of all we see our minds and heart very clearly, then we go through the process of purifying the mind. This way of operating is very much applicable to the tendency of the western spiritual quest to be, on balance, thought out rather than purely devotional in character. Rather than, in Asia, having faith in a path of virtue to purify the mind the westerner needs to be able to see moral cause and effect operating to really get the sense of knowing what they are doing and why (I am reminded of a discussion I had with the great Luang Por Pannavado who said to me that before he could really concentrate on his practice he had to understand what he was doing and why). The advantage is that this then gives the practitioner the ability to work with the mind as well as actions of body and speech in the process of purification. This, it seems, makes the process for the Westerner slower but more thorough. The process of purgation also, as the word suggests, is one of an amount of inner turmoil. We can be battling with our minds early on in the path. It can be more practical to get a hold of outward moral action to begin with. Yet there is a noble quality to this battle and it pays off in the longer term. If I understand “The dark night of the soul” by St. John of the Cross then the only pitfall we have to try to avoid is becoming attached to the process of understanding, to the intellect, as an end in and of itself. Often this is a matter of clearly delineating the intellectual domain with regard to subjective and objective sources of information and with regard to conventional and ultimate truth. This is clarified by addressing the mind and body together, the mind-body problem. The mind-body problem As spiritual practitioners I do not think that we need to argue with the view that the mind is dependent on the brain. We just need to see that the information or truth contained there still has, to a large degree at least, a life of its own. The 'extended mind' theories perhaps show us how this life extends into the world, is not separate from the world - so our mind in informational terms is not just in our head, a perception that it is useful to dispel. But actually, objectively speaking, it is still very difficult to solve the mind-body problem. Subjectively it can be solved, the mind-body problem does not have to be a problem. It is not so difficult to enter into a subjective experience that is not too heavily influenced by an objective view. Meditation can help us here. Taking the mind beyond thought takes us beyond many of our objective views toward the raw subjective experience. Yet to survive we will always need to deduce an amount of objective information in our experience. This is a confusing situation for us as human beings. It is hard to perceive life clearly the way it really is objectively and to avoid this getting mixed up with the subjective aspect. There are bound to be blind spots and biases. Accepting this fact is the only solution we need to this problem. If we can realise that the conventional truths of our life in the world are merely an attempt to sort out the information that is coming to us from different sources we can settle with a functional understanding on the conventional level. We can help each other as human beings to come to a common agreement but we need to recognise this agreement for what it is, just an agreement. It is only if we take conventional judgements as in some way ultimately true that we then blind ourselves to ultimate truth or fix ourselves in a particular conventional view. In terms of what we really know we need to keep this to simple universal truths to be able to be confident and to really see in the way we think. The Buddha gives us such truths that furthermore, very significantly, cut through our very desire to analyse the world. Less desire also means less bias in the discrimination that remains necessary. The principle truth the Buddha points out is that of impermanence. Very significantly the truth of impermanence covers the phenomenon of the mind as well as the body. So there is no need to discriminate in our experience what is real or not real, objective or subjective, in order to be able to see the truth of impermanence. Pointing out the impermanent nature of conditions and our inability as human beings to find any real security or control furthermore takes our intention elsewhere. In the search for enlightenment we do not need to analyse the world beyond the basic, functional understanding we need to survive. We are looking instead for a more stable basis for the world of truth. The truth of impermanence may be simple but to perceive the world in this way is still not easy, its scary. We need to find some kind of faith, courage or sense of a refuge to get past this fear and be able to calmly observe. It is in fact this calm and peace that is our first refuge. It is this calm that we then develop further, through the wisdom that sees impermanence, to become our ultimate refuge. Looking for truth in the right place
Most people these days look for the truth or the Dhamma on the computer. In the best case some of what they find will redirect their attention to looking for the real thing (I try in what I present to engage both head and heart) but to be honest most people I meet just get hooked on the computer presentation and it just goes to their heads. Even in terms of more personal guidance a lot of people listen to guided meditation following the advise of a stranger rather than someone who knows them or by relying on and hence developing their own wisdom. If I had grown up as a meditator in the computer age I can think I would have been the same. The computer can feel comfortable, safe and we can feel we have the advise of the experts. I understand too how convenient the computer is for people with little time. The real Dhamma, however, is part of nature. It is real, not an idea. It is to be found in nature and from our spiritual friends. It is found when we can find help to get past our own peculiar obstacles and biases, our personal insecurities. It is not by trying to avoid these. It is found when we realise the uncertainties of life, not comfort or safety. We are looking for a natural response, from ourselves and from others to each other and to the world around us, not an intellectual understanding. Then, if we can learn to see the Dhamma like this, it can always be with us. The only people I have ever met who have such deep, genuine Dhamma in their hearts are people who have had the courage to really face themselves and the truths of life in a natural, peaceful, loving setting. The whole purpose of having monasteries is to make this real Dhamma available. It is what, over many centuries, they have been designed for. All are welcome. Buddhism and Science
In terms of a philosophy of science and information theory that has parallels with the Buddha's teaching I have not found anything that it is more potentially valuable than the work of the late Gregory Bateson. I believe that his work can place spiritual truth in its proper place within our world view. A place in which religion and science can come together and enhance each other. Here are a number of quotes from 'Angels fear: towards an epistemology of the sacred', Bateson's final book which I hope speak for themselves: In terms of the nature of consciousness: “We subtract or repress our awareness that perception is active and repress our awareness that action is passive. This it is to be conscious.” Or in terms of a wider definition of consciousness: “Consciousness is the way subsystems are hooked into a larger whole.” In terms of what we can really know: Apart from Creatura (the world of information - including the entire biological and social realms in which information is embodied in material form and subject to laws of causality) nothing can be known, apart from Pleroma (the material world) there is nothing there to know. In terms of how we describe things: Pleroma and Creatura should have different languages to avoid “the errors of fundamentalism, scientism and misplaced concreteness.” we have “developed our language to fit Pleroma and tend to distort.” And in terms of the place of religion: “Religion is the sacred, integrated fabric of mental processes that envelop our lives...without such metaphors for meditation, as correctives for the errors of human language and recent science, it seems that we have the capacity to be wrong in rather creative ways – so wrong that this world we cannot understand may become one in which we cannot live.” Such metaphors include “the deliberate search for revelation in contradiction and direct attacks on purposiveness and the sense of time.” “Of all metaphors the most central and salient is the self.” “The conceptual separation of mind and matter is a by-product of an 'insufficient holism'- the old religious beliefs are wearing thin and we are groping for a new.” Many of the Buddha's teachings could furthermore be considered 'tautological': “A tautology is a series of propositions the links between which cannot be doubted. The truth of the propositions is not claimed.” In dependent origination, for example, the link between birth and death as inevitably following one to the other is the central message. If we try to go deeper then we can begin to question the propositions but in my mind we then be missing the point. Buddhism and psychiatry - Embodiment and psychopathology Just as we can discover clear body awareness to be a source of sanity in the mind a distortion of our body image can be an indication or possible cause of psychopathology. I will preset a series of quotes from the psychiatrist Thomas Fuchs1 (in plain text) with comment from my understanding of the Buddhist point of view (in italics): “it is mainly through our embodied interaction with the world that the brain matures and develops into a relational organ...it is only as part of embodied interactions that the patterns of brain activity can serve as carrier processes of conscious experience. In this way it is the living body that unites mind and brain.” “the phenomenology of the lived body is able to overcome dualistic concepts of the mind as an inner realm of representations that mirror the outside world. Instead, by the mediation of the lived body the individual is in constant relationship to the world..” In the teaching of dependent origination the Buddha similarly points at the fact that our states of mind are dependent on the body and its interaction with the world. There is a very strong emphasis in the teaching of mindfulness on the first foundation, the body. It is from here that we observe the process of mental causation and become able to transform the mind from its very root. To overcome dualistic concepts of the mind is to overcome a dualistic experience of the world and discover the happiness that comes from a unified, non-dual experience. Phenomenology is, perhaps, the branch of philosophy closest to the Buddha's teaching and most compatible with the practise of mindfulness. ..”the body has a double or ambiguous experiential status: both as a 'lived body' implicit in one's ongoing experience, and as an explicit, physical or objective body (image). An ongoing oscillation between these two bodily modes constitutes a fluid and hardly noticed foundation of all experiencing.” Both experiences of the body can become disordered: in the 'lived body' schizophrenia is extreme disembodiment, depression extreme hyper-embodiment, anorexia an example of disordered body image and a more acute dissociation from bodily experience is found in post-traumatic and dissociative conditions - embodied concepts of mental illness should describe (phenomenologically) these disorders of being in the world and investigate the circular interactions of mind, brain, organism and the environment that maintain these. Similarly in the practice of mindfulness of the body we can see how the perceived relationship between the mind and the body is the underlying cause of our states of mind with sanity lying in a light touch, not hyper-embodied nor disembodied. My understanding is that conversely sanity and further than this, spiritual development, is to form a clear body image and carry this into activity, then the body image maintains the health of the 'living body' experience and is a source of wisdom and compassion in the mind. Perhaps we can conclude with a quote from the famous psychiatrist R.D.Laing pointing at how spirituality represents the ultimate sanity: “True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality: the emergence of the 'inner' archetypal mediators of divine power, and through this death a rebirth, and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.2” To me this is a very accurate and inspiring view of the potential of spiritual practice and yet how many of us could accept that the most powerful inner archetype in the mind is the simple, humble old body! And what about the practice of body contemplation, what is really like, how does it feel? The contemplation of the unattractiveness of the body in order to cool our desire is an unappealing practice to most people. Only if someone gets seriously hooked on the experience of mindfulness are they likely to want to find a way out of the desire that keeps pulling their minds into the future. Many will still be put off thinking that this contemplation is too negative. Yet this contemplation is not unpleasant or negative is practised correctly. Most of us will only need to see the minor defects in order to calm the mind. The result can be more love rather than less, albeit a love of a different, more stable, enduring character. The best description I have found of the result of this practice comes from 'One Way Street' by Walter Benjamin: “A lover will not only cling to the 'defects' in the loved one, not only to a woman's quirks and failings; facial lines and liver spots, worn clothes and a wonky gait will bind him far more inexorably, far more endurably than any beauty. One learned that long ago. And why? If the theory is true that feeling does not lodge in the head, that we feel a window, a cloud or a tree not in our brain but in the place where we see them, when we look at our loved one we are like wise outside ourselves. But in this case painfully stretched and tugged. Our feelings churn and swerve like a flock of birds blinded in the woman's bright presence. And as birds seek shelter in the tree's leafy hiding places, feelings too take refuge in dark wrinkles, graceless movements and the secret blemish on the loved one's body, where they duck down, safe and sound. And no passer-by will guess that it is here, precisely here, in the short-coming, in the less than perfect, that the admirer's burst of love, swift as an arrow, hits home.” Although this practice is common place in Buddhism to see the process explained like this as something beautiful and natural helps to inspire and raise the practice above the level of a mere technique. This then allows us to take our body contemplation deeper still, liberation can be found by replacing the real body with an image. The following quote from the Bible brings over the spiritual quality of such a practice: Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male will not be male and the female will not be female, when you make eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in the place of a foot, and an image in place of an image, then you shall enter the Kingdom The Gospel according to Thomas Finding passages like this in the scripture of another spiritual tradition is also inspiring, pointing at the universality of this teaching and its applicability within different religious beliefs. 1 Fuchs,T and Schlimme, J.E. Embodiment and Psychopathology: a phenomenological perspective. Current opinions in psychiatry.2009.22:570-575 2 R.D.Laing - The Politics of experience |
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