7. skillful mindfulness
a mindful mind is precise, penetrating, balanced and uncluttered. moreover mindfulness leads to, insight, clear and undistorted inner seeing of the way things really are. wisdom is the crown of insight. the ultimate secret of lasting happiness and peace. practicing mindfulness makes quarreling with the world seems ridiculous.
the four foundation of mindfulness
1. mindfulness of body -
- mindfulness of breath - one can start developing insight on impermanence and game of desire by merely focusing on how desire of calmness arises when you inhale and exhale and how it gets interrupted by each other. how we cling to that calmness, how it changes into interruption. how when we try harder it creates tension, if we try even harder it turns into pain. and how the whole process is out of our control.
- mindfulness of posture - we can develop clear evidence of impermanence while observing simple act of walking. for example first you intend to lift the right foot, but when you lift it intention is gone. the sensation you had before lifting is gone. when you put right foot down than - that sensation is gone and other sensation is arises. the point is when you can watch your mind while not just sitting in cushion, but standing, sitting, lying down you can take this vigilance to everyday
- mindfulness of the parts of the body investigating the parts of the body helps end any mistaken notion we have about body. this meditation is more like a biologist looks at the body without adding any disgust or romantic notion towards any part. dissecting body in the parts like hair, nails and … seeing their ever changing impermanence. and slowly you start to stop obsessive clinging towards it.
2. mindfulness of feelings :
we tend to think I feel, without realizing feeling is impersonal phenomena. they come and go due to condition that triggers them. and we start to learn to let go. and this was buddha’s invitation to come and see. the knowledge we get by being mindful about our own feeling called direct experience. once we are mindful that all being has the same feeling as we do, how can we hurt anyone ?
in a meditation session you can keep still and watch the pain. eventually it peeks and than breaks up. when pain breaks a pleasant feeling arises. you can observe how mind hang to that feeling. but as feeling arises and pass away you can observe how volatile feelings are. whenever a feeling arises that is strong enough to drawn the mind we examine it.
when we become mindful of our feeling. we no longer mindlessly react to them. we become more skillful. if a pleasant feeling arises we can subdue the underlying tendency of greed. or hatred.
the worldly feelings lieke seeking wealth, position, power, pleasure etc are feeling with underlying tendencies of greed, hatred and delusion. these underlying tendencies makes worldly feeling so dangerous. whenever we transcend a worldly feeling we are left with unworldly feeling like feeling of peace. this detachment to greed, hatred and delusion evokes unworldly pleasant feeling. it is though you are gripping something, more you tighten the grip the more it hurts then you open your hand and you felt a great relief.
on the unpleasant feeling area, the worldly feeling would manifest as anger and hatred. but unworldly feeling leads to curiosity and experimentations.
on the neutral feeling perspective. worldly can lead to delusion or boring and unworldly will lead to impartial, unbiased and non-deluded mindfulness.
so when a feeling arises we first notice wether it’s worldly or non worldly and then decide wether to let go or pursue it.
the key is to just watch the feeling not try to stretched it’s duration. paradoxically more we try the quicker it fades away.
3. mindfulness of the mind -
the more we observe the rise and fall of the mental qualities, the more volatile you know them to be. seeing this you gain the insight on impermanent phenomena called mind. moreover you discover there is no permanent entity, no one is running the projector, all is flux, all is flow, all is process.
4. mindfulness of mental object -
mental objects like thoughts have several categories like fetter, hindrances, aggregates, factor of enlightenment. in sitting meditation while practicing with intended object, such as breath, we quickly becomes mindful of any thoughts that arises. that thought becomes temporary object. and than we come back to breath. once our mindfulness is strong we see the four noble truth experientially, then we naturally begin to observe the factors of enlightenment .