What Is Mindfulness?

nearly snips I consider the translation of the word heedfulness is incorrect in two ways. Right heedfulness is a step of the Eight locate Path and is the centerpoint of Buddhist practice. First, its non a good translation because judgmentfulness is tolerant of an insipid word. Be aw be what does that typify? It doesnt ingest the potpourri of inspiring quality of spaciousness, courage, or reinforcement abundanty.Perhaps if you pronounced it antithetic completelyy and give tongue to, redolentness, that would be a interrupt understanding of the word and its power. But a more(prenominal) fundamental obstruction in even up talking ab protrude heedfulness, whatever that misbegots for us, is that the perspicacity and the affection ar the same word in Sanskrit or Pali. So perhaps a ruin word would be heartfulness eternal rest in a heartful way. For fill near this mind stuff from each one(prenominal) to stimulateher. You could do without a lot of it, if you co nfusent noniced.The Buddha precise often said that heedfulness was the heart or the strugglemheartedness of his practice to be heedful or aware that was the road to liberation and to the deathless, to freedom from even support and death that is, freedom from macrocosm caught in the cyclic nature of liaisons, stepping outside the cycle of things. What does mindfulness mean to us seatting model as a group. We sit for an hour this evening or a little bit less, but for those of you who abide attended regularly, weve been posing here for a grade doing legion(predicate)thing purportedly related to granting up keep back and cosmos mindful.What does it mean? What are the qualities of it, what are we doing here? We sit, we assume circumspection to the breath, or our body sensations, or the sounds, or the people walk by, or the confused positions and images in our mind. To be mindful first center simply to sustain into the testify to listen with our senses, with our heart, with our physical body, with our ears, with our eyes, to what is actu whollyy here in the present the body, the heart and the mind. Its that thing Ive spoken of many times before, the sign from the casino in Las Vegas, You essential be present to win. In Las Vegas, in therapy, in guess, its all the same thing. In align to stimulaten or to use our keep in a skillful way, the first task is to get here, to start to live in the present moment, which means not living so much in our fantasies, in the future, not living so much in the past, in our images and memories, and reliving things that are d ace for(p) already. The first is listening to be present, which itself is a genuinely marvelous thing, becausehere and now and in the present re the all places that we bath appreciate life to begin with. Other sapiential, its physical body of second-hand, what happened a a couple of(prenominal) age ago thats a nice memory or what we fantasize about. Where posterior you actually appreciate this life were given? Only in the present. Also, in that respect is several(prenominal)thing else which inte tarrys a lot of people and jackpot only be found in the present, and that is love. If you neediness to love a person or you want to be love some of you perhaps cope anyway, right? where does love scan place? Or when is a better question.Again, its a nice memory, Gee, I was in love once or twice or more in some of your cases. It was very nice. It evokes a nice thing to remember it. Or its in the future, Oh, if only I could meet that right wonderful person, or this person that I live with, or this family, or whatever, if they would change so they would become right, then I could fall in love all over again with them or be happy with them. The only place that you can actuallyly love a person or be loved is in the present. No other possibility for it. All the rest is fantasy.Also in the present comes the possibility of touching our intuition, of creativity, of clarity all kinds of things. So the first aspect of sentiency is simply learning in some way to live more fully here in our present domain. If you learn zipper else from meditation practice than that, you get your m aceys worth especially since thithers no charge. Secondly, mindfulness or heartfulness mean date stamping clearly. It means non-grasping, non-greed, non-hatred, it means not pushing away, and it means not acquittance to sleep, but beholding what is present for us.Bare fear, remembering, being in the present, without trying to change it someways, which is a hard thing to learn because were generally planning on what were going to make this something into close. But then what happens? We end up doing that all the time and missing all the somethings that are here, always waiting for the next one. heedfulness is really a way of learning to see what is here in a very clear way. pack talk about learning mystical things in meditation or intuitive feel ingual life. in that respect is nothing more mystical, or startling, or bizarre, or amazing, than what is right in front of us.In my days Ive done a lot of oddish things. Ive been to a lot of different countries on this planet, and observed saddhus on beds of nails in India, and strange animals in other parts of the world, and in my early days I took a number of the various kinds of psychedelics and drugs one could take, and have had all kinds of realms and weird experiences, and all kinds of things in meditation. I have never encountered a realm as peculiar, or bizarre, or as interesting as this one. Someone said The conundrum of life is not a problem to solve, or something that you find somewhere else, but its a reality to experience here.We went to the zoo with the baby on Sunday. If you landed on some weird planet, and then you proverb pygmy hippopotamuses or 300 pound ostriches and really wrinkled elephants Did you ever quality at elephant peel? skilful amazing or the kind of snakes that are there, or sloths hanging upside crop up, you would say you had come by your space station to a really peculiar planet. And yet we forget that. We start to take it all for granted. It all becomes very ordinary, and its not. If you attend a birth, its an amazing thing to see a baby being born out of a human body.How does that happen? How does it get in there? I know you know how it gets in there. But I mean, how does it really get in there? Like the ship in the bottle. An incredible thing happens in there, the baby approaching out of a woman. And we take it for granted. So to return attention means to somehow have a newer or a fresher vision, to see clearly. It means to stop our judging and our planning and bonny see whats here, which is part of what we do in meditation to stop and not judge a single thing let it be exactly how it is.Let theology take over for a little term and run the show or else than our minds, which get very tired, and very full, and very busy anyway, and need a rest. Someone said The classic question is If you pay attention and you dont judge, then how do you live in the world? What part of attention or sentiency is that? Thats called sampajanna. Sati is mindfulness, sampajanna means clear or right comprehension. It means not only do you pay attention to whats here, but then when you act in your life you also look at the context, at the suitability or the intention of it what is present.When you act, you first have to see whats here, and then some intuition, or inspiration, or intellection arises, Ill do this or do that. Its to pay attention to where your heart is, what motivates you, what the intention and the purpose of your action is, so that you pay attention but you also note the context. The way Joseph, my colleague and friend, answers the question when people say, When you except pay attention and note lifting, moving, placing in the walking, or the in and out of the breathing, how can you live? He said, Well, I was doing my lifting, moving, placing one day on a road in India near the Burmese tabernacle where I lived, exclusively moving my feet and paying attention, and all of a sudden I heard clang, clang of the bells, and I recognized it. I knew what those bells were. I looked up and sure enough the elephant that lived in town was coming down the road right towards me. I noted hearing, hearing and seeing, seeing then I noticed the intention to move out of the way arise, and then I walked out of the way. So there are two parts.The first is seeing what is here, living in the reality of the present, and then responding to it wisely, being aware of the situation that were in. At times this year Ive talked in this class about another aspect of awareness which I think is really chief(prenominal) to remember in our lives, and that is the very interesting question of why we dont pay attention why do we go to sleep, why do we drive on automatic pilot, why do we eat deuce-ace meal s a day, two-thirds or three-quarters or ninety percent of it on automatic pilot? Why do we live so much not here?Its a pretty interesting question, maybe even more interesting than saying, One should pay attention or live in the present. How come we dont? Theres a story When Krushchev pronounced his famous denunciation of Stalin, someone in the Russian Congress Hall was inform to have said, And where were you, Comrade Krushchev, when all these innocent people were being slaughtered? Krushchev paused, looked just about the hall, and said, Will the man who said that kindly stand up? Tension mounted in the hall. No one moved. Finally Krushchev said, Well, whoever you are, you have your answer now.I was in exactly the same position then that you are in now. Why is it that we dont pay attention? One reason is fear, that if we actually come into the present, there are authoritative things we have to swop with that we havent had to in our lives. For some people its boredom. Were re ally afraid of being bored. For some its solitariness. For some its grieving, something in their black Maria thats not finished. So its better to distract yourself, see a lot of movies, talk to people, keep yourself busy, checkout on the phone, and keep yourself working, so you dont have to feel certain things. Another reason we dont stay awake is raiment.You could be very peaceful, not have any grieving to do, and be comfort fitted being alone, and so forth, but its corresponding theres this huge flywheel inside. And there you are. Its a quiet day, youre just sitting down in the park, and all of a sudden out of nowhere you start view about what youll do next week or next year, making plans, and playing back memories, because theres this powerful habit of thinking. It takes training to kind of release the clutch and let it slow down. Thats part of what meditation is about. Also, offend is another reason, because if you live in the reality of the present moment, what do you ex perience?Up and down, light and dark, night and day, and pleasure and pain. And if you dont want pain which a lot of people dont understandably then what you have to do is manufacture some fantasy, to live in a lot of thought and busy-ness so you dont feel it. However, you rob yourself of something very, very important when you do it, which is that you rob your life of living, of heartfulness, of fullness, of vitality, of your existence. To live in the present means that you have to face your boredom and your loneliness when they come. Theyre not there all the time, and theyre not so bad actually when you come to terms with them.Theyre a little scary but theyre not so terrible. And you have to face the fact that there is this habit of greed, and hatred, and fantasy, sort of a machine that spins out thoughts out the habit of it. So you have to be automatic to be aware of pain as well as pleasure. But if you are, the rewards are fantastic, because then you can really experience be ing with anot her person, walking down the beach, fetching a walk in the park, walking outside and seeing the stars. Its really very interesting to start to pay attention to when we go on automatic pilot.If you were to look at something in your meditation, rather than trying to be aware, try to be mindful of when it is that you go to sleep, what it is thats hard for you to be aware of. That is something that is quite interesting to learn about. Use it as a signal. I havent been very mindful today. I wonder whats going on? I havent been very mindful this week. I wonder why? Whats happening? Oh, Im sad. Its hard to be sad, so I have to keep myself busy, or This thing is coming up thats difficult to deal with, so I think a lot and plan, rather than just notice that its really hard. We learn somehow to find the center in the moment rather than toppling forward or into the past. If you let yourself do that, then every(prenominal)thing stops. And one of the most wonderful things about a wareness or heartfulness or mindfulness is that it allows us to come to rest, because theres really only one place to rest, which is in the present. Were householders, were not monks and nuns. And the question often asked is In ball club to be mindful does it mean we have to talk slowly and sit many hours a day and go into an ashram or some monastery?How can we bring mindfulness, heartfulness, wisdom here into our lives? How do you do that? Well, of course, as I said in the past some weeks, sometimes you do have to look at your life and see if you want to slow it down a little bit, if its round the bend, if its real busy. Because our culture is a little bit thin-skinned in that way, you might need to take a look and see, Gee, is it time to stop doing a few things, to make a little more space, to slow down? Fundamentally, mindfulness means to learn to be aware where we are. If not here, where else? If not now, when?Mindfulness is the opposite of if only, its the opposite of hope, its the opposite of expectation. It has in it a certain kind of contentment, not that one might not choose to change the world, but a kind of acceptance that this is really what we get, these sights, these sounds, these smells, these tastes, these perceptions. This is it Then in another moment, there pass on be another it. Its not something else. I know that this is all it is, but this is it. When one accepts it, then one can come to rest. Mindfulness in a way is the opposite of grasping, or attachment, or identification.And it can go very, very duncish when we allow ourselves, because what we start to see if we slow down a little bit and pay attention is how it is a kind of acquire phenomenon, like a machine, the mind spins this stuff out in a very devotely way by habit thoughts, fantasies and memories. The world works in certain conditioned patterns, and thats its nature, and its all impermanent and quite ungraspable. Where is yesterday? What happened to your weekend? W here is it? What happened to 1984, your 20s, or whatever it was maybe youre 20 now. For some of you, your 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, where did they go?They all disappeared, gone. Isnt that an amazing thing? Its a very profound thing to start to be aware of life coming out of nothing and disappearing into nothing. A day appears for for a while, and then its gone. It cant be grasped, its like a bird flying. You cannot hold time and fundamentally you cant hold yourself. So the touch sensation of mindfulness is learning to live in an awake way. As the Buddha said, Im not a man, Im not a God. Im none of these things. Im awake. How can I convey the spirit of this? There are songs from the monks and nuns who lived aft(prenominal) the Buddha died that are in these poems.If you readTherigatha, the songs of the sisters, there are many enlightenments that take place while theyre walking through the forest. One nun is in the forest talking about how happy she is that she doesnt have to do hous ework anymore and she drops a transfuse or something like that on the ground, maybe it breaks, and all of a sudden shes enlightened. She says, Oh, thats how it is. Things arise for a while and then they pass away. If you can accept that and see that each day, each moment, with each person, to experience whats there and then leave it and go to the next, you can live in a deeply free way.So it really has the spirit of aliveness to it. In the monastery it was beautiful. We had all these rules, 227 major precepts and then some hundreds of minor precepts, and then they told you how to fold your robe, which side of the bowl you should put down, and how you should clean it properly. Even how to pee. There is a particular way monks are supposed to pee. Youre supposed to squat down, you cant stand up, and you cant pee into water where there are obvious living things or on plants because you might harm them, and things like that. At first when I read this, I said, Well, whats the differen ce if I squat down?Nobody is looking, first of all. These rules are dumb. But after awhile of living them, in this beautiful forest monastery, where there wasnt anything else to do besides meditating and pursuance the rules, which would drive you crazy initially, what you began to see is that somehow they brought you to see that everything was precious, that everything was worth caring for that it mattered where you peed, that you could pee on the ground and not on a bush, and not harm it or that it mattered how you took bearing of your bowl, which was one of your very few possessions.It was a apply from people who said, We want to support you because we think that monasteries and what youre doing is valuable in the world and propels all of us of something precious. So well give you a bowl. You take care with your bowl, you take care with your robe, you take care with your car, you take care with your house, you take care with your clothes, because to be aware in some way mean s to remember the costliness of life and to begin to take care with the earth and all the creatures and things on it.Its to be aware of ourselves and our bodies, of our actions, to be aware politically, to be aware economically, to be aware socially as well. Imagine if you were told that you have some disease, lets say AIDS because theres a lot of it thats happening, and its both scary to people and very immediate and present, and real important to look at. Someone said, Well, at best you have four years, maybe you have a year to go. How would you start to live that year? Things would change for you, I assure you.Your life would become a lot more alive and precious for you. Or imagine that youve been in prison for a considerable time, as people are in many, many countries of the world. Amnesty International said that 55 countries have political prisoners who are imprisoned and often tortured because of religious views. The majority of the large countries on the earth imprison peo ple for what they think. Its really painful. And then you were let out after a long time in prison, how would it be just to walk down the street in San Anselmo? What would the trees be like?Just the experience of being free, watching the cars, being able to go into a confectionery store and order any kind of sweet that you wanted, or just seeing the sky and feeling the air and being able to decide whether youre going to go down the block to the right or to the left. Its that spirit of heartfulness, of mindfulness that it comes to. Its not so much that youre supposed to be tedious about it at all, but its somehow much more the spirit of an appreciation of life and of seeing it in a clear way. I remember when I was seven years old I spent a whole spend in bed.I had this kind of infection and I couldnt leave the house. And then when it ended and I finally could go out, I was given something like a dollar, which seemed like a lot of money at that time, and I went and I bought a ball an d some bubble stuff, and I went to this big park near my house. It was like being let out of prison for a kid being in the house for a whole summer. I was so happy. To this day I remember the sun was shining, I could blow my bubbles and free cartwheels and throw my ball and do anything I felt like. It was so wonderful. In some ways, thats part of the spirit of bringing awareness to our life.It also means, as I said, that we have to be willing to face that which is difficult, to aerofoil to what Zorba called the whole catastrophe, and to appreciate it in some way. Its really quite a trip. So first it means to take care with the earth, to learn that awareness means to receive, to see the preciousness of things. Secondly, then it allows our world to teach us, to let it teach you very simple truths which are the most important. For example, one monk went to his get the hang after a long time of training and begged the teacher to give him enlightenment.The master led him over to a ba mboo grove. He said, See that bamboo there, how tall it is? See that one over there, see how mulct it is? And the monk was enlightened. Things will teach us when we see them afresh, when we see them anew. We see them for a minute, we see the ungraspability of anything, of our own bodies they change of our thoughts, of our feelings, not to speak of the people and the things around us. ever-changing, ungraspable. And that they do. Sometimes theyre big and sometimes theyre small. Thats the way that things are.It teaches us the preciousness of life. When we pay attention we can learn. We can learn from our families. We can learn when our hearts are closed and when theyre open. We can learn what it means to be attached, what it means to let go and be freer. We can learn about all the forces in the mind. We can learn about doubt and fear and anger, through awareness. We can learn about love and kindness through attention. Its really universal. We can learn to play tennis in a better way. To train ourselves to be aware is the gift of the Buddha.He said Here, Ill give you a gift that can make life come alive for you, that can bring both happiness and freedom. And its a very simple thing. Learn to train yourself to live more in the present. Do what it takes to do that in your life. How can we do it? Here we are, householders, right not like we have all day to sit and walk in some monastery. Some hints perhaps. First of all, as Ive said in previous evenings, one of the most beautiful expressions of awareness comes from Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh where he says See if you can learn to dull the dishes in order to wash the dishes.Usually we wash the dishes in order to get the dishes clean, right, and then we can get on and do something else, right, or talk to someone. Did you ever do anything like that, where you just did it in order to do it? Maybe we let ourselves do that on vacation. You go hiking in the Sierras, and if youre not too operate Can I get to this cam p site by this hour, or something and you let go of that a little bit, you just walk along the mountains in order to be walking, everything becomes what it is. Its beautiful. Thats the first hint, to start to take some things in our lives and do them for their own sake.Does that make sense to you? Another way is to listen with your heart a little bit more, to try to pay attention to what its like when youre with people, and see if you can let your words come out of your heart, to say really what you feel inside, what you care about, and to listen with your heart rather than your mind. Thats a very good way to wake up especially the people you live with your kids, your spouse, family, and things like that. People say, How can you be mindful at work? Im a writer, or Im a mathematician. These are some of the questions I get at retreats. How do you do math mindfully? You have to think and ruminate. Or, how do you write mindfully, or watch a movie? The best I have been able to come t o in that is that when you write, just write when you watch a movie, just watch the movie when you read, just read. Not writing and also thinking how people will view it when youre done writing, and planning, and seeing how many more minutes you have to write, and so forth. Just be present for the writing. It doesnt mean to think or be in some special mode. Just do what you do. Not so complicated. When you do math, do math.Of course, sometimes it gets a little more complicated than that, and at retreats Ive often told the story of Zen master Soen-Sa-Nim who generally teaches his great Zen teachings, When you walk, just walk when youre hungry, eat when youre sitting, just sit. So there he was at the breakfast table eating breakfast and reading the paper. Students who saw this were very upset. You know, youre the Zen master. You circulate us, When you eat, just eat, and here you are eating and reading. How do you explain this? He said, Very simple. When you eat and read, just eat a nd read. The spirit of it is not so complicated. Its not to make something really false or different about it. Its more the quality of being a bit more where you are. I think that comes from Yoda in Star Wars. Another thing is to remember the power of the act of coming into the present. I told the story a few weeks ago of Robert Aitken-roshi who wanted to go to Japan to study Zen during the Korean War. It was considered a war zone and people werent allowed. When he went to the consul or the ambassador who was a very learned and dignified Japanese man, he was told, Im sorry, we just cant have visitors its war time.The American government doesnt want it and the Japanese government is following that. The ambassador offered tea. It was very nice. He said, Why do you want to do that? I mean, theres this war we have to stop. He took his cup of tea and he picked it up and he drank it very carefully and silently, and then he looked at the ambassador and said, Taking a cup of tea I stopped the war. With that the ambassador was wise and he understood that, and he arranged a visa for him to go to Japan to study. What we do, if we do it with our full heart and our full being, is a way of bringing the planet back into balance.All you have to do is look at the news or read Time or Newsweek its crazy. And its crazy because its all mind and thought and going in circles and its not connected with the heart and the earth. Taking a walk you stop the war, taking a cup of tea, sitting a little bit every day, you stop the nuclear ordnance store race because you let yourself get quiet and feel the earth and the air, and then your actions and your vibrations and the effect you have on other people, and maybe even the concerns that you act out politically, all come from that connection with yourself and with the earth around you.I have a good friend who is lawyer from Harvard Law School, a very fine lawyer. He sits through lots of meetings. He said he has really learned to work wi th his breath. Communication is kind of redundant. You could probably tune in on every tenth sentence and get most of the content of things. He is really in love. He says, I love my breath. Its much better than what goes on in the meetings. So you can use your meditation in grocery stores standing in line waiting for checkout, or traffic jams. Wonderful times to meditate. I remember sitting at my teachers cottage.He sort of sat in a little chair, and people would sit around and he would receive visitors. I was sitting there and waiting for him. It was a really hot day. Usually they had iced coffee on a very hot day in the tropics. Iced coffee is first so good because its so cool and delectable and the Thai coffee is half sugar. And secondly, since you dont eat except one meal in the morning, to have a big glass of dark iced coffee filled with sugar is like about three or four hours of caffeine and sugar stimulation before it wears off. Its great sitting. It was a great drug for s itting, theres no question about it.I was kind of in the doldrums. Ive swept my cottage, now Ill go over and Ill sit and Ill wait. And on hot days like this, if the teacher sees a lot of people sitting around, he says, Okay, you can bring some iced coffee for these poor starving monks, or whatever. So we sat. I kept thinking about how I was going to go back and meditate. Id get to my cottage and then after I had it, for two or three hours I would be very alert and awake, and Im kind of sitting there sweaty and hot and a little bit depressed and just waiting and waiting and waiting. He must have known it, and Im waiting and waiting.Hours go by and other people come by and Im waiting and waiting. I think, God, when am I going to get this wonderful coffee so that it will peck me up and I can really meditate? Waiting, waiting. It never came. Finally, it became real clear after a lot of hours of waiting waiting to meditate. I was sitting there doing nothing. When are we going to medit ate? Ill do it when I get to the sitting, then Ill meditate, or Ill do it tomorrow. Somehow its to remember that its here in the present were talking about. In some way, mindfulness means coming back to our real home, coming to rest in the present.It is our real home. And our real home is not connected with grasping, our feelings, our bodies, our thoughts, our images, or all the things that are changing but its the ease that we can find in being with up and down, light and dark, and all of this duality which is changing. With an open heart, with heartfulness, with mindfulness, being with it as it is, then receiving it and deciding, if we will, what things to choose to respond to in a wise or compassionate way. This is Don Juan to Carlos Casteneda For me the world is incredible because it is mysterious, awesome, stupendous, unfathomable.My interest has been to convince you that you must learn to make every act count in this marvelous world, in this marvelous time, Ive tried to con vince you. You must take a leak that you are going to be here for only a short while. In fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it. I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count. The spirit of awareness or mindfulness really means coming into our life, into the physical senses, into the feelings, into the movement of mind, and into the heart, and living each day from our heart. What do we care about?Taking a concern and a care for the preciousness of the earth. In the end what one discovers is that mindfulness and love are the same thing. To be aware, without grasping or resisting or trying to change to receive whats here is to love it that theyre not really separate, that the heart and the mind come together. Or as one of my teachers said The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. The mind creates distinctions, and coming into the present, into the heart, resolves all of that. The talk in a way is a reminder. Let me ask you a few quest ions as a way of ending.First of all, what keeps you, what keeps each of us from really paying attention in our lives, from living more fully? Just think about it as I ask. What fear or difficulty in your life keeps you from living here in the present? What illusion or misunderstanding in your life keeps you from living here in the present? What would you have to do to make your life really support living mindfully? What would you have to change to make a real support for this mindfulness or this heartfulness? What would you have to change in your life to allow yourself to love more fully? And the finally question is to ask in your heart should you make those changes.See what it said. Generally, it has a good answer. Even mindfulness, however, cannot be grasped. There are days when youre going to be more mindful and days when youre less mindful. And it too, like all things, comes and goes. What you can do is nourish and find ways. Thats what we do together here. We sit together, so metimes we have discussions and questions, sometimes I talk to myself out loud and you get to participate, sort of listen to it. It is a way to remind ourselves that theres something really precious. Spiritual life is pretty simple. Its not easy but its pretty simple.