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Mindfulness (sati) |
The meditation practice of maintaining awareness of one's body and consciousness |
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Do I Mind?
It's all there in the Satipatthana ("Foundations of Mindfulness") Sutta: The direct path to awakening calls for maintaining awareness of body, feeling, mind, and thoughts—and not just when we're sitting in meditation. Whether eating, drinking, chewing, urinating, defecating, walking, standing, falling asleep, waking up, talking, or remaining silent, we must remain fully alert, the Buddha said. More » -
What's So Great About Now?
"BE MINDFUL." "Stay in the present." "Bare attention." We've all heard one of these phrases. And if you're more experienced in insight practice, these may be the watchwords that chime in the back of consciousness from morning till night, reminding you that everything genuine in the spiritual path is to be found in the now. But then one day you're sitting in meditation, trying to observe the rise and fall of the abdomen, or a thought, or pain, and it all seems terribly dreary. Suddenly a question floats like a bubble to the surface of your mind: "What's so great about the present moment, anyway?" More » -
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Do the Thoughts Ever Stop?
THE BIGGEST HINDRANCE to our meditation is constant intrusive thoughts. This is normal for everyone and from the beginning you should expect it. The nature of our mind is to think, and it is childish to imagine that we can simply turn that process off when we wish to. Our minds have been almost completely out of control for most of our life. Recognizing this can help us to be practical and patient—it may take us some time and a lot of skillful practice to tame the crazy “monkey mind.” My own meditation practice was helped when I came across the instruction that while I have thoughts I am not those thoughts. When you stop to examine your thoughts you start to see that they have a life of their own, they come and go, generally in a random, idiosyncratic way. Recognizing the constancy of our endless thinking process is said to be one of the important early steps we take on the meditation path. More » -
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Evolution's Body
In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha says, “This body is not mine or anyone else’s. It has arisen due to past causes and conditions.” The Buddha intuited some type of evolutionary process that creates our bodies, and his essential point is that they are neither formed nor owned by us. We now have evidence that our bodies arise from the forces and elements that make up the entire universe, through a complex chain of interdependent events. Internalizing this understanding can help liberate us from the powerful sense of ownership and attachment we have to the body, which is a cause of tremendous suffering, especially as the body grows old and we must face its inevitable destiny. More » -
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Back to Basics: Is Meditation Enough?
We all have preconceptions, we all have points of view. Not only do we have ideas, but we have opinions and countless judgments, especially about other people. We may hope to free ourselves from such a tangle, but usually what we find is that we just exchange one set of preconceptions for another. The practice of mindfulness-awareness meditation does not take place in a vacuum. It happens within a certain context and point of view. In the Buddhist tradition, meditation is often presented in the context of view, meditation, and action. Each of these three is essential, as a system of checks and balances. More »
