Right Mindfulness
Photo by Austin Neill
“And what is right mindfulness? There is the case where a person remains focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. They remain focused on feelings in and of themselves... the mind in and of itself... mental qualities in and of themselves—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. This is called right mindfulness.”
As the Buddha said, Right Mindfulness, the seventh factor in the Noble Eightfold Path, is remaining focused on the body, on feelings, on mind, and thoughts or “mental qualities.” In other words, being mindful means being aware of the totality of human experience, in order to see whether our actions create suffering or alleviate it.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Right Mindfulness
Before I go into the talk, I just wanted to tell you a little bit about what's happening this morning at the monastery and the reason why it doesn't feel like the subway today here. Somebody said that to me the other day, you know, I like coming to the temple, but sometimes on Sunday it feels like I'm going to the subway. So enjoy the fact that it doesn't today.
At the monastery, Gokan, one of our novice monastics, is becoming ordained. He's doing what's called shukke, tokudo. Leaving home, it means, literally. And we don't do many of these ceremonies. So it's definitely a cause for celebration for us, for the order.
For those of you who don't know, the way that we take up the monastic path, the monastic study, is that somebody, when they say that this is what they want to do, they first have to become a student, and then they take jukkai, the Buddhist precepts, and then they become a postulant. And for postulancy, you put on a black robe, but you don't take any vows. And actually the robe looks like this, looks like mine.
So you're beginning to take on some of the responsibilities of a monastic, and people begin to see you, and therefore interact with you in that way. But you're really, you're trying it on, and seeing if this is actually how you want to live your life. You do that for a minimum of a year, but it's usually longer. It could be two, three years.
If you want to continue, and your teacher determines that it's a good idea for you to continue, and the Sangha agrees that it's a good idea for you to continue, you become a novice. And this is what Gokhan and his partner, his wife, Sean, are right now.
At that point, you vow to develop the monastic vows, and the way that we frame them in our order is a vow of simplicity, which is similar to a vow of poverty, so the monastics can't make money. They're supported, and they have a little stipend, but they can't work and make money. And it is to live a life of simplicity, few possessions.
A life of service to all beings, to the community, to the teacher, to the residents at the monastery, if that's where they're living, to the residents here, if this is where they are.
A vow of stability, which means any significant life changes need to have taken place at that point in their life before they can take full ordination. And so marriage, certainly raising kids, all of that needs to be taken care of.
A vow of selflessness, which you could say is all of our vows as Buddhist practitioners, but they very much take on the intent to live a life of selflessness in every way and to accomplish the Buddha's way, to live as the Buddha did.
As a novice, you're developing your commitment to those vows, your relationship to those vows. And then the step that he is doing today, in fact that he's finished most likely, is that full ordination, that full commitment to the order. And it is to the order, so it's not necessarily to a place, in our case. He could be at the monastery, he could be here, he could be sent somewhere else.
It is really saying, and this is when his head is shaved, the monastics, the ordained monastics, shaved his head last night. And his teacher shaves just the last little bit as part of the ceremony. And there's a chant, a gatha, that is chanted. That day we do it all together, but then the monastics do it every five days.
He's really saying that his commitment is to the Dharma, to this community, to this teacher. That all other pulls, all other desires, are superseded by his aspiration to wake up, and to help everybody else to wake up.
And so it is a significant step in other ways, a very ordinary step, a very human step, a very human way to live a life. So congratulations to Gokhan, and may his vows be fully, fully realized.
Balancing Desire and Awareness
So this is from the Sadaka Sutra, which translates as the Sutra that happened at Sadaka. I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was living among the Sumbhas. Now there's a Sumban town named Sadaka, and there the Blessed One addressed his disciples, friends. Suppose, friends, that a large crowd of people comes thronging together, saying, the beauty queen, the beauty queen. And suppose that the beauty queen is highly accomplished at singing and dancing, so that an even greater crowd comes thronging, saying, the beauty queen is singing, the beauty queen is dancing.
Then a man comes along, desiring life and shrinking from death, desiring pleasure and aboring pain, and they say to him, now look here, mister, you must take this bowl filled to the brim with oil and carry it on your head in between the great crowd and the beauty queen. A man with a raised sword will follow right behind you, and wherever you spill even a drop of oil, right there he will cut off your head. Now, what do you think, friends? Will that man not pay attention to the bowl of oil, let himself get distracted? No, Lord, he won't. I have given you this parable to convey a meaning, and the meaning is this: the bowl filled to the brim with oil stands for mindfulness immersed in the body. Thus, you should train yourselves. We will develop mindfulness immersed in the body. We will pursue it, hand it the reins and take it as a basis, give it a grounding, steady it, consolidate it, and undertake it well. This is how you should train yourselves.
I came upon this by accident. You know, and every once in a while, you come across a sutra, it's just quirky enough, you know, and you read and you think, what? The beauty queen? And then I thought, well, you know, maybe he needed to get their attention. He was speaking to monastics, actually. Probably a bunch of young guys, you know, mentioned the beauty queen, and you got them. And I was thinking, what was the translation? I mean, was the translation really beauty queen, like Miss Bodh Gaya? But, you know, if you think, I mean, you think it's hot here. Somebody was saying how hot it was last Sunday or the Sunday before. You think it's hot here. Imagine India in the summer. It's 104 degrees and it's 90% humidity. And the monastics are probably, you know, they're tired, they're cranky, they're wondering why they're there, what they're doing there.
And he needs something. He needs something, not just to grab their attention, but to actually show them their mind, show them their thoughts, show them a way to see themselves more clearly. And look at how well he sets the stage for this parable. You know, there's this crowd thronging, and maybe intoxicated with pleasure. Could you have made up a name like the Sumbas? That's perfect. And he comes along, the person comes along desiring pleasure, not wanting death, not wanting discomfort in any way or pain. And now, you know, if we make it a little bit more neutral, a little less sexist, let's say that you're the man, you're the man or the woman. You want pleasure. You don't want pain. You certainly don't want death.
When we forget, or when we just don't feel like practicing, ask yourself, can I really afford to be mindless right now?
So every single one of us, at some point, everyone in this room has at one point avoided pain and desired pleasure. More than once. And let's say, you know, let's say he's not a beauty queen. You're... It's the release of the iPhone 7. And you already have 5 and 6, but you're not going to turn away from an offer. And you're part of that crowd thronging the Apple Store. And you're waiting for the doors to open.
As I thought of that image myself, I remember this commercial. It was years ago. I mean, it was probably eight. And I was in Mexico, and we had what was called Cable Vision. And so it was American TV. And there was this commercial where this woman is at the Kmart, at a Kmart store at 5 in the morning, because there's some sale that's going to happen. And she's kind of pressed against the glass, and the camera's on the other side of the glass. She's pressed against the glass, and she's just saying, open, open, open, open. And I remember even at that point, at 8, thinking, you know, that is so American, you know, that glorification of desire. I didn't say it to myself like that back then, but this image of that want, actually, and that, that's good, that's funny. I mean, it's entertaining, and that it's good. It's what we want.
And so you're waiting for the doors to open. And then they do, and there you are, and there's this crowd. And it's uncomfortable, really, to be in this crowd. But it's also worth it. You're willing to do what it takes to get what you want. And it turns out the crowd actually is there to help you. They're not so out of it as it seemed at first.
And so one of them says, you know, take this bowl of oil and place it on your head. And you think, you know, it's a little weird, but if it's what it takes, I'll do it. And be thankful that it's oil and not water that you don't have to spill. And even that willingness and that want, to me, that's our power and that's our weakness. That desire, that all-consuming desire, that drive, because we will go to great lengths to get what we want. And most of what we want is not very relevant. It makes us feel dissatisfied because it's insatiable, that desire. But if what we want is to be clear, if what we want is to be awake, then actually most of the work is done. It's getting yourself to that point to realize, that is actually what I want, to be free from want. And this is the power of intent.
Focus Under Pressure
When I was writing about that, and so I was looking, what's the difference between intent and intention? And most of the time, the terms are used interchangeably, but intent implies clear reasoning and great deliberateness. And actually, intention, what they had in the dictionary, was like a man's plans to marry. So it's not very deep. But intent implies that great deliberateness. So we may do a lot, you know, for an iPhone, we may do a lot to be the best at what we do, to be attractive. But we will also do a lot to be clear, when that's what we really want.
But here, you're still working on it. So you're heading for that iPhone, and you have that bowl of oil on your head. And you've been charged to balance it all the way until you get to your object. And someone will be watching you with a sword. And of course, this is the sword of wisdom, is the sword of Manjushri, is the sword that cuts, that kills and gives life. And if you spill even a single drop, your head is gone. And the Buddha from the sidelines asks, would you be distracted in such a situation? Placed in those circumstances, would you really stop paying attention to what you're doing? I mean, it's your life on the line. Of course not.
And it just seems like a quaint story. What we don't realize is that our life is on the line all the time. I remember going to Cirque du Soleil and seeing an act where a gymnast was on a balance beam, balanced between two guys, two big guys. And so they're walking back and forth, and she's doing all these flips and somersaults, and what a gymnast does. And the balance beam is about this wide. And I remember thinking to myself, for her, a slip of attention could mean her life. And her act lasted, I don't know, maybe eight minutes or so, maybe less. But she does that every day, sometimes twice a day. And for her, being distracted for just a moment could mean her life.
And then I thought of my day, my work day, all those moments in which I just check out, I'm not there, and don't even notice that that's what's happened. And it seems that it's with little consequence, but is that really true? We don't realize that it is our life on the line, that oil is spilling all over the place. And we wonder why we have a hard time walking without losing our balance, without falling. Why we feel so unstable, why things seem so precarious, the whole thing. But we look around and everybody else seems to be in the same boat. They seem to be slipping and sliding all over. So we think, maybe this is just the way it is. Maybe I just need to make the most of it. And the Buddha is saying, no.
It's not acceptable to live like that. It's not fulfilling to sleepwalk through your life. It doesn't feel good. It certainly doesn't do good. So here, take this bowl of oil and put it on your head. And balance it very carefully. This bowl is mindfulness. It's mindfulness immersed in the body. We were talking yesterday in the Zazen posture clinic about embodiment and how challenging that is. We think that Zazen is the hard part. It's actually the easy part of practice. It's embodying what you see in all of your life.
So the Buddha is saying you're immersed in mindfulness in your body. You give it the reins. You look for it when you can't find it. You pursue it as diligently as you would pursue your strongest desire. And once you have it, give it your grounding. Make it the basis for your actions. All of your actions. Steady it, he says, consolidate it, and undertake it well. And that is how you should train yourselves.
And mindfulness is everywhere, nowadays. It's mindful therapy, mindful eating, mindful teaching, mindful learning. Mindfulness for mind-blowing sex. Huffington Post, you know, leave it to them. And I was reading this New Yorker article about this app, Headspace, you may know about it. And all these other apps, which their purpose is to help you be mindful throughout your day. And Budify collects data via daily mood check-ins. I'm guessing that maybe a signal goes off, and then you have to write how you're feeling at that moment, so you can track your moods. And Calm offers meditation exercises with soothing nature scenes in the background. And Arianna Huffington has an app that's called GPS for the soul. I guess if you have misplaced it, you can find your way back to it.
Mindfulness Beyond Distraction
And, you know, I'm not against technology at all. I'm against its abuse, and I think it's so easy to abuse it, actually. I mean, I don't want to rely on my cell phone to tell me how I'm feeling. I'd rather figure it out for myself. I'd rather be immersed in my body, in my mind, so I can see, what am I feeling? What are these thoughts that I seem to keep having? What are they about? So being in touch, being embodied, being present, is what mindfulness is. Except we've extracted it. We've taken it out of its context.
So right mindfulness is part of the eightfold path. And it goes right before concentration. And it comes with all the other factors, the other seven factors of enlightenment, concentration being one of them, the last one. Right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, and right effort. Then right mindfulness and right concentration. And I was reading a Tibetan teacher recently who was saying, mindfulness is noticing, is remembering first to notice, and then is noticing what is happening in front of you at a given moment. But then there's the next moment in which that is let go of as well.
So it's good to notice what's in front of you, but then there's the extra, or there's the further step of realizing, yes, but the one who is noticing is empty. And that takes it, to me it takes it to a completely different level. You know, one is having an appetizer and saying that you're full, you're satiated, rather than eating the whole meal.
And so the Buddha says, so the definition of right mindfulness is to remain focused on the body in and of itself. Ardent, mindful, and resolute. Remain focused on feelings, focus on the mind, and on mind qualities. Putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. This is called right mindfulness. So remaining focused and putting aside greed and distress. Wanting the feeling that you have to be other. Wanting the body to be younger, to be healthier, the mind clearer. Putting aside, for that moment, my craving. And putting aside distress, accepting the way things are, again, in this moment.
Tara Brach, who's a pretty well-known teacher, speaks of radical acceptance, complete acceptance of what is. And if really, if we could do that, so much of practice would be taken care of. Because how much, when you look at what's happening, in your zazen, for example, how much of it is you fighting what is happening? The fact that your mind is distracted, the fact that you're feeling something that you don't want to feel, the fact that you're just physically uncomfortable, or that you're bored. How much of it is not accepting what is at that moment?
But in order to be able to accept, first you have to know what's going on. You have to be able to see it. And of course, you can't, if you're distracted, if you're preoccupied, you can't see. Therefore, it requires that meticulousness, truly imagining having that bowl of oil on your head and balancing it. It seems like a lot of work. And in the beginning, it is. And the more you do it, as with anything else, the easier it becomes, the less effortful.
This is the direct path for the purification of beings, the Buddha says, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and distress. So first he's saying, it's interesting, first he's saying, you put it aside, that pain and distress. And then he's saying, well, actually, being mindful, they will disappear of themselves. And this is the attainment of the right method, the realization of unbinding, the realization of freedom. In other words, the four frames of reference.
You may know it by the name, the four foundations of mindfulness, the Sutta Pottana Sutra, which is a foundational sutra in the School of the Elders, the Theravadan School, which in the West has become the Insight Meditation, and uses mostly at the beginning physical sensation, the breath very specifically, as the point of focus. And Thanissara Ubhiku, who translated this sutra, the Sadhaka Sutra, he says that the Sutta Pottana refers to both the how and the what of your meditation. Because Satti means mindfulness, means reference, or the ability to keep something in mind. So that's the how, how to concentrate, how to focus, how to use your mind during meditation.
And having the ability to do that, which is rare, in my opinion, maybe more rare than ever before. We don't even remember our own phone numbers. And we want to hand over more of our awareness to our phone, to our watch. And it will happen, and I know that. It's too compelling, the technology. So maybe it just needs to be used well.
Fully Present in Life
Patana means foundation, condition, or source. So it's the what. What are you placing your attention on? The focus of your experience. And so that's the four foundations. The body, the mind, feelings. Actually, the body first, feeling second, then mind and mental qualities. And the mental qualities include basically all of your experience. It's a list of the five hindrances and the five aggregates and the six senses and their objects. But it basically describes all of your experience. What stops you from experiencing? What obscures the natural clarity of the mind? And how that experience actually happens? What happens at the moment in which I touch something? What is happening in the mind? What's happening in the body? To put that experience together and turn it into touch, which I then immediately have an opinion about. So it's being present to all of it.
And the interesting thing is it ends with the Four Noble Truths. So it comes right back to where it all begins. This is suffering. This is the root of suffering. This is the path to its end. This is its end and then the path to its end. And again, if we understood that completely, we wouldn't have to practice. But we don't. We don't understand it completely. So we do, we practice.
And so you take this object, the body, let's say, and you keep it closely in mind. And every time something takes you away, a thought, so just as you, some of you just received the instruction, in this case, the focus is your breath, and every time you see a thought that takes you away, you very, very gently but clearly see that. Set it aside, come back, come back to the breath, to that fulcrum, to that grounding for your awareness. And you very quickly see how difficult it is to do something as simple as count to ten. I mean, it's a very simple instruction. It seems we should be able to do it without problem. How difficult it is to do and to sustain.
And as I said to some of you earlier, you see how rarely we are present in our lives. How much of our life we actually have been missing. And perhaps if you are here, that's not okay with you. Maybe you don't want to miss your life anymore. You don't want to be disconnected from yourself and from others. So in that sense, yes, it is better to use an app to meditate, than not use it. Because also there are many, many people who will never walk through these doors.
I taught a meditation class in a library, and it was billed as mindfulness meditation, because I was told that's what people want, that's what they're interested in. And so I did a very simple version of our Zuisei instruction. And a couple of the women who were there actually said, you know, I've been to the monastery, but it was too much. The stillness was too much. But I really want to do this, she said.
One of them said, I really want to, I feel so stressed, I'm always in such a hurry. I really want to be with myself. Sometimes it is too much. Whether it's too much religion, too much stillness, too much incense and chants, too much dress code, too little hair. Sometimes it is too much. A few years ago, I told some of you the story. I had to go down the block, and I was coming back, and there was a young woman just walking in front of me, a Jewish Orthodox woman with a stroller. And I'm walking behind her, and I have all my bags and stuff. And I was just thinking to myself, I looked up and she was wearing a wig. And I thought, I was like, what is the wig about? And at the time I had an ass, so I didn't know. What's the wig about? That's so weird. And then I thought, you're bald. What the hell are you talking about? I mean, that's weird. So sometimes, you know, it is, this is too much.
And for some people, it's not. It's okay. It's enough or it's just right. So it doesn't mean that we have to chuck everything. But well, maybe it's that, you know, I guess for myself, I'm feeling there is an entry point for some people where maybe mindfulness is enough. But just to know, just to know that there is more, that there is more to that picture, to that package, which is not a very good way of referring to it. And so to know, and this is in the Sutra, to know when you're breathing, that you're breathing. To know when it's a long breath and to know when it's a short breath. Are you aware that you're breathing, actually? Are you aware when your breathing is tight and is shallow? Are you aware when you hold your breath? Are you aware when you're walking that you're walking? Most people are not. Most people are looking at their phone.
And people then go to the monastery and they do oriochi, our formal meal, which is a pretty detailed, pretty involved ceremony. And people cry because they've been eating 40, 50 years of their life, three meals a day. And it's the first time for some of them that they've actually seen their food. How does this happen? How does this happen, that we do things all the time and we miss them completely? Thank you.
And then also, just to be careful, you know, that mindfulness alone, you can very mindfully kill. The military knows this. You can very mindfully make a million dollars and leave a wake of corpses behind you. But remember that if you're doing this as a path of liberation, you're doing it to overcome sorrow and lamentation, pain and distress. You have that bowl of oil on your head because you want to be free of suffering. And if you want to know, is this working, is practice working, is meditation working in your life, that's it. That's the measuring rod. Are you suffering? Is it creating more suffering for yourself and the people around you or not?
And people say, but it's so hard, it's not easy. I mean, if you've been using your mind for 40, 50, 70 years in a particular way, expect that it's going to take a little while to use it a different way. But it might help, it might help to remember that it's your life on the line. That that moment that you missed, you don't get back. That's why, you know, the stories of Zen masters sitting up in trees, or at the edge of ravines. I see that they were doing what they thought they needed to do in order to stay awake.
Thus, you should train yourselves, the Buddha said. We will develop mindfulness immersed in the body. We will pursue it. Hand it the reins, take it as a basis. Give it a grounding. Steady, consolidate it, and undertake it well. Mindfulness is the grounding, it's the basis for concentration. But it's also the basis for realization, for insight, for knowledge, for understanding, for wisdom and compassion. Not because being mindful will automatically make you wise and compassionate and equanimous, but because without it, it's very unlikely that you will be any of those things. Without being immersed in the body, you can be immersed in the mind. Without seeing your mind clearly, you can't let the body rest, not to speak of feelings, which to me are completely integrated. And so you could say, and you're bringing the two into harmony, the body and mind. And you're letting them be what they have always been, which is unified.
So at that moment, when practice feels too much work, or there are other things, you know, people say all the time, I'm too busy to practice, too busy to meditate. And there was a teacher who said, do you have time to breathe? That inhale and that exhale. That's it. At that moment, be fully present. At those moments when we forget, or when we just don't feel like practicing, ask yourself, can I really afford to be mindless right now? No.
Right Mindfulness, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.