Post # 27- Practicing  Buddhist  Meditation at Home - Insight  Meditation (Mindfulness)

Are you visiting this Blog for the first time? It would be good if you could visit the  1^st Post to know about this Blog and then read the others in sequence.  

We discussed serenity meditation in Post # 26. A meditator emerges from these states of concentration, with a mind that is clear and its faculties fit and proper for developing vippassana (insight). What we are discussing now is Vippassana (Insight).  Here the meditator goes directly into insight without a deep Samadhi but needs to develop at least initial concentration to proceed.

Vippassana is unique to Buddhist practice. It helps to develop mindfulness. We saw that we need to develop the skills required to be aware, be mindful and have clear comprehension (sihiya, sathiya, and sathi sammpajanaya) of experiences of the present moment, as they unfold to proceed on to insight meditation. These are the initial attainments needed to proceed on. 

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is non-judgmental observation. It is that ability of the mind to observe without criticism. With this ability, one sees things without condemnation or judgment. One simply takes a balanced interest in things exactly as they are in their natural states. One just observes. The three fundamental activities of mindfulness are- mindfulness reminds us of what we are supposed to be doing; sees things as they really are; and sees the deep nature of all phenomena.

In Post # 3 we discussed that the environment around us is full of sense objects emanating sensory stimuli, such as shapes, colours, sounds, smells and tastes etc. as signals.  These signals attract our attention and as we associate these details with past experiences, recognition dawns. Simultaneously with dawning of recognition an emotion or feeling arises. The natural tendency then is to give vent to or fulfill these emotions with an action. These actions manifest as thoughts, or words or physical deeds. They get impressed in the mind as life experiences. This is natural and happens without one's conscious doing. These life experiences are called Sankaras (conditional formations or fabrications). These Sankaras either wholesome or unwholesome, condition our Bhawa (re-becoming force). This Bhawa conditions our Samsaric process - birth, death and rebirth. Therefore in order to shorten the Samsara we must control the Bhawa forming Sankaras.

The objective of this Initial Training

As beginners to engage in this practice at home, we may start by meditating on the four foundations of mindfulness. This process is explained in many talks and in many books. We try to become aware of mind-body experiences as they unfold in the present moment. These present moment experiences are what we discussed in the earlier paragraph. To start with we may keep our awareness on the nature of our existence (the present moment experiences) by being mindful of the body as a body. That is by fixing our awareness on what the body feels, knows, and experiences etc. in the present moment. Similarly we may fix our awareness thereafter on what the mind feels, knows, and experiences etc. in the present moment.

We saw earlier that these experiences manifesting as emotions and then as actions create the Bhawa forming life experiences and that they have to be controlled. We must therefore develop the necessary skills to control this process. We also saw earlier that it is possible to intervene in this process to control our reactions and thereby the Sankara formations.  The skills developed by insight meditation can be used first to exercise Yoniso Manasikara (acting mindfully with clear  comprehension  and wise discernment according to Dhamma) to intervene as necessary in the present moment. This intervention can control the Bhawa forming Sankaras. These sankaras are described in the Dhamma as Punyabi Sankaras (wholesome life experiences), Apunyabi Sankaras (unwholesome life experiences), or Arnnenjabi Sankaras (life experiences that condition rebirth in higher divine abodes). Initially you may use Yoniso Manasikara to eliminate Apunyabi Sankaras with the aim of avoiding future births in bad or unhappy realms. Then with your Dhamma practice advancing you may want to shorten the Samsaric journey altogether and therefore you will attempt to eliminate all other new Sankaras as well. Elimination of further new punyabi and arnnenjabi sankara formation by practicing Yoniso Manasikara  you will be freeing your mind of new sankara  formations thus impacting on the samsaric process. 

As the accumulated sankaras from the past still remain active and become causes for the continuation of the samsaric process, you will need to eliminate the influences of the  remaining older sankaras by destroying the traits of clinging to them. For this you will need to advance to higher levels in (direct) insight meditation. Thus you attain the release from the samsaric journey altogether..

The skills you acquire by this practice will also help you to be more mindful in getting about your daily chores skillfully and efficiently. For example a simple routine activity like brushing your teeth can be done either mindfully with necessary awareness of external stimuli or brushing with force of habit and with a wandering mind. Either way you will end up having brushed your teeth. If you try both ways you will experience that the end result is different in the two methods with only the former giving the intended result. We normally tend to do most of our daily chores by the latter method? On the spiritual side being mindful in our endeavours, according to the teaching,  will help us to progress in reaching world transcending states (marga pala). This is Samma Sathi (right mindfulness) in practice.

The Initial Training

Ven. Dhammajeewa Thero explains this process in a reply to a question from the audience at a Dhamma Talk. The question was-  Is it practicable to be in intense mindfulness while engaging in daily activities?  The Ven. Thero said that, if what you develop in sitting meditation can be called ‘intensive’ mindfulness, then what you develop during walking meditation may be called ‘semi-intensive’ mindfulness. The ability you need from these practices is to exercise ‘extensive’ mindfulness, in getting about your daily chores skillfully and efficiently amidst the many distractions from the external environment in daily life.

The way I understood this explanation is that by using the process described in the Ana Pana Pabbaya (mindfulness of in and out breath) of the Kayanupassana Bhawana (mindfulness of body as a body), you will gain intensive mindfulness skills. To practice this you will first take the recommended sitting posture,  and try to become aware of the feelings or sensations or activities of the body. As a guided practice you will fix your awareness to start with, on feeling the breath as it enters and leaves the body. This is the only activity that the body is engaged in at this moment. (It has to be mentioned here that in regular insight meditation you do not select and fix awareness on any particular feeling but on any feeling that is dominant at that moment. We will discuss this later). In order to develop some initial concentration on the breathing, as Joseph Goldstein, the insight meditation teacher explains, you might want your mind to participate by- knowing that ‘I am breathing in’ as you breathe in and similarly knowing that ‘I am breathing out’ as you breathe out.  As you engage in this process your mind will gain some initial concentration on this mind object and you will be engaging in breathing with awareness. You are however prone to get distracted during this exercise by other external stimuli such as sounds, body feelings or thoughts etc. The mind usually responds to this distraction by savoring these sensations or feelings and creating a chain of thoughts and emotions which lead to sankara formation. The need is to recognize as soon as possible that the mind has strayed due to an external signal employing Sathiya and bring it back to the breathing. This is exercising Sathiya or mindfulness. If by the time of realizing that the mind has strayed and some emotion etc. has developed then you deal with it using Yoniso Manasikara to refrain from letting that emotion translate into an action as described earlier.  After that you bring back the attention of the mind once again to the breathing process. This is practicing sati (mindfulness) You are now gradually developing the skills for being aware, being mindful and having clear comprehension (this aspect will be elaborated in a later post) of experiences of the present moment. As the stimuli from outside in this situation are limited because sitting meditation is normally in a confined external environment, you will be able to develop this ‘intensive’ mindfulness fairly easily.

In the next part of Kayanupassana Bhawana described as - Eriyapatha Pabbaya (awareness of the posture), you will  engage in Walking Meditation to develop ‘semi intensive’ mindfulness. Here again you keep your attention on the actions of the body while walking ( right foot forward and left foot forward etc.) and stay being aware of what you see, hear, feel and thinking, due to the environment around. You will then be developing the said ‘semi-intensive’ mindfulness. When the mind strays due to such external stimuli or thoughts that arise, you have to quickly recognize that the mind has strayed and bring the attention back to the walking actions. As the external environment in this situation is more open than before, the external stimuli will be much more than before. You therefore need greater skills to be mindful of the actions of the body. As the awareness is now somewhat ‘shared’ with more external signals, the mindfulness on the body action will be less intensive than in the case of the sitting meditation. With this ‘semi intensive’ mindfulness, you are again developing skills for being aware, being mindful and having clear comprehension of experiences of the present moment, perhaps in a less intensive way.

With the skills thus gained in developing ‘intensive mindfulness and ‘semi intensive’ mindfulness you are now able to exercise what was referred to earlier as ‘extensive mindfulness’,  to engage in your daily household activities. That is you are able to do your household work efficiently and skillfully with more attention to them, while coping with the many external signals and thoughts that arise. You will also be dealing with such distraction adequately by exercising Yoniso Manasikara. The challenge for this household practice is engaging in sitting meditation and walking meditation at home where the other members of the family are not so initiated to Buddhist Bhawana. You may have to find the time in the morning before the others wake up to engage in this training?

This is the part on insight meditation relating to right mindfulness. I will deal with the part related to developing wisdom through insight meditation in the next Post.