What Does Mindfulness Lead To?

What, really, is mindfulness? It is perhaps best understood by contrasting it with its opposite, which is forgetfulness. Most of us are robots, performing most of our daily activities while thinking about something else. We don’t need to pay attention to brushing our teeth, taking a shower, grocery shopping, because these chores are handled automatically. We can instead ponder what we will be doing later in the day after we arrive at the office, the store, the classroom or wherever we spend most of our time. And once we arrive at our daily destination, instinct again takes over and we do a lot of stuff on automatic pilot because we are good at it and we are actually thinking of what comes next instead of what we are actually doing.

Such is the life of forgetfulness, never experiencing the actual moment because we feel we don’t need to and we can use the present moment for contemplation of other moments.

We read of tragedies every day if we read newspapers. Man backs up riding lawnmower, runs over his child, severs both of her feet. Baby left in car during church service, dies. Child drowns in pool, was thought to be indoors. Motorcyclist killed, driver never saw him. These events were the result of forgetfulness, people going about their business like robots on automatic pilot, contemplating something other than what they were actually doing.

Those of us who have avoided such tragedies have done so primarily out of sheer luck. All of us have backed up a vehicle without knowing if any one was back there. We’ve all lost sight of a child for a few moments. We can’t criticize those whose forgetfulness brought them great anguish because we know that we have dodged similar bullets.

But those who never make an effort to cultivate mindfulness of the present moment are asking for trouble. A fellow I knew in college asked me one day to go with him to a convenience store. As we pulled into the store parking lot, a car began backing out of its spot and I assumed my friend would stop and then take the vacated spot. Instead, he plowed into the other car and said: I don’t understand why things like this keep happening to me! I have so many wrecks! I don’t understand why my luck is so bad! 

Cultivating mindfulness has far-reaching benefits. As we learn to pay attention to the present moment, we create a safer world for ourselves and every one around us. As a side benefit, the earth appears to be more and more beautiful. I know a guy who can’t tell a pine tree from an oak tree. All trees to him are just big green things and he acknowledges that he has never given any tree a second glance. He has the same attitude towards people. He even says he never pays attention to the present moment except to watch his step when obvious hazards appear or when driving a car because his only interest is mathematics and that’s what he thinks about almost all the time.

Mindfulness and how to cultivate it are explained in detail at howtopracticezen.com. The explanation is crafted to follow the Buddha’s comments on the subject and I have tried not to be a teacher but a repeater of what the Buddha said. I know most people will never read the Majjhima Nikaya, the Digha Nikaya, or any of the other discourses of the Buddha so I have tried to introduce the Buddha’s teachings to a wide audience, using currently available technology. So I refer the reader to the website to learn more about how to cultivate mindfulness on a daily basis.

I may be wrong (duh!), but I have concluded that the daily cultivation of mindfulness has benefits that go far beyond what might seem apparent to a rational mind.

We can all agree that it is entirely rational that a mindful person will have less accidents and is more likely to avoid a tragedy than a forgetful person who does not pay attention to the present moment because he or she has better things to think about. (My mathematician friend tore down a fence recently while pulling into a retail store parking space and received a $3,000.00 bill for damage from the owner of the store. I don’t think fences cost that much and I suspect he whacked the store as well.)

I believe that the daily cultivation of mindfulness as taught by the Buddha can raise one’s consciousness to a level that we rarely experience, a level that many people would call ESP (extra sensory perception).

A few months ago, following Thich Naht Hahn’s advice to contemplate the present moment whenever sitting at a traffic light (and thereby withdrawing from the daydream of the moment), I saw the light turn green and the car in front of me pulled away. But instead of following that car, my foot froze and I could not apply any pressure to the accelerator. I thought “Go!” but the car would not respond and the car would not respond because my body refused to apply the gas. Two questions flashed through my mind: What is happening? Why can’t I go?

A car traveling at a very high rate of speed, at least 60 to 70 miles per hour, then shot behind the car in front of me, passing through the space I would normally have been in. That would have been an unsurvivable “accident” and I realized instantly what had almost happened. I was less than a mile from my office and I pass through that intersection frequently.

At the moment I needed to stay put, I stayed put and my conscious mind had nothing to do with it; it was telling me “Let’s roll!” I think that the mindfulness of the moment, thanks to Thich Naht Hahn’s advice, saved the day. Out of the corner of my eye, the driver who had no intention of stopping was spotted by my subconscious mind and the subconscious order to freeze over-rode the conscious order to hit the gas. If I had been listening to talk radio, or a music station, instead of mindfully contemplating the present moment…

I went from being a practitioner of mindfulness because it is the foundation of meditation to being a practitioner of mindfulness because it is the foundation of meditation and because it has benefits far beyond that. Every day of mindfulness practice since that day has been a bonus day. I have resolved to deepen the cultivation of mindfulness and to urge other practitioners to do the same.

There is no downside to the cultivation of mindfulness and its upside is unlimited.

What does cultivation of mindfulness lead to? It leads to more and more cultivation of mindfulness and hence increasing mindfulness. Mindfulness is pure awareness, awareness uncluttered by forgetfulness. A mindful mind is a mind that is still. As a Taoist sage once uttered: The universe surrenders to the mind that is still.

And when the universe surrenders, we have attained our goal of World Domination. (That’s a joke). Mindfulness leads to pure awareness, and that is Nirvana.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Present Moment Awareness and more with Insight Timer

I see quite a few tweeple in the twitterverse who tweet every day that they are beginning a meditation with Insight Timer or have just ended a meditation using that app. I have always used a stick of incense as my timer but today I finally decided to give Insight Timer a try and I was pleasantly surprised. Not only could I select any length of time, I could even ask it to ring a bell at any interval during that length of time.

So I set the length of time at thirty minutes and the interval for the bells at ten minutes apart. I counted exhalations from one to ten, practicing conscious breathing or what Venerable Ajahn Brahm calls Present Moment Awareness for the first ten minutes. At the sound of the ten minute bell, I segued into metta and at the sound of the next ten minute bell, I tried to drop the inner chatter and fell into shikantaza, or what Ven. Ajahn Brahm calls Silent Present Moment Awareness.

I have followed those three practices for years every morning. At howtopracticezen.com, those three steps are called the steps of Beginning Zen. Counting exhalations corresponds to Seeking the Ox, metta corresponds with Finding the Footprints, and shikantaza correspond with First Glimpse of the Ox. This was the first time I know for sure that I spent ten minutes in each practice.

The first ten minutes begins the development of mindfulness by creating happiness, the happiness that lifts us from the bottom dharma realm, the tenth dharma realm where unhappiness rules.  

The second ten minutes deepens mindfulness because the mindfulness generated in Present Moment Awareness is carried into the metta meditation where loving kindness lifts us from the ninth dharma realm of the hungry ghosts who are created by the absence of metta, just as hell-dwellers are created by the absence of happiness.  

Mindfulness deepens further as we drop our inner chatter and dwell in Silent Present Moment Awareness for the final ten minutes of our morning practice. This practice generates feelings of generosity as our loving kindness expands in the silence, lifting us from the eighth dharma realm of animals where greed dominates.

With each subsequent practice, we rise through the remaining dharma realms, beginning in Intermediate Zen where we begin by practicing the four steps that collectively develop mindfulness of the body as taught by the Buddha in the Anapanasati Sutta (which develops the peace that serves as the antidote for the fighting of the asuras who exist in the seventh dharma realm of aggression, thereby lifting us from that dharma realm and corresponding to Catching the Ox).

This is followed by the four steps that develop mindfulness of feelings which practice develops the morality that serves as the antidote for the absence of precepts of the humans who exist in the sixth dharma realm of sense desire, thereby lifting us from that dharma realm and corresponding to Taming the Ox.

The next four steps develop mindfulness of the mind which practice develops the jhanas that serves as the antidote for the desire of the fifth dharma realm gods (of the six worlds) who desire to continue living in the world of sense desire, thereby lifting us from that dharma realm and corresponding to Riding the Ox home.

The final four steps of Intermediate Zen develop mindfulness of mind objects, practice develops the immaterial attainments that serve as the antidote for the desire of the Arhats to continue to exist in the immaterial realm, thereby lifting us from that dharma realm and corresponding to Self Alone, Ox Forgotten.

So for our evening practice we can set our Insight Timer for seventy minutes, with a bell every ten minutes. This allows us to repeat the morning practice of Beginning Zen and the four steps of Intermediate Zen.

Of course, if we get into the jhanas we will not hear the bells and we will go way beyond seventy minutes of sitting. But this is a good way to cultivate the three steps of Beginning Zen and the four Anapanasati Sutta steps of Intermediate Zen, laying a solid foundation for the more advanced practices of Advanced Zen where we turn the “super power” mindfulness developed in Beginning and Intermediate Zen to the Doctrine of Dependent Arising (Step eight) and to teacher-assigned Zen koans (Step nine).

So tonight I’ll use Insight Timer for the first time for seventy minutes for ten minutes between the bells. Thanks to the magic of the Insight Timer, many of us will be spending that seventy minutes together.

And why not add another twenty minutes, with ten minutes directing our super power mindfulness to the Doctrine of Dependent Arising (the Buddha said an enlightened Arhat sees that doctrine forwards and backwards) and ten minutes directed to a teacher-assigned koan? Those are token times, but they train us for those retreat/sesshin days when we can cultivate for much longer periods of time.

Why Theravada and Rinzai Zen Should Merge

The Anapanasati Sutta teaches the sixteen steps the Buddha followed to develop the mindfulness that led to his enlightenment. It is well-known to Theravada monks and nuns (to use a Western term that doesn’t really fit; these “monks and nuns” worship no one), but not to the ordinary people who live in the Theravada countries including Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and the Viet Nam/Cambodian border area.

Rinzai Zen and its traditions of koans is equally well-known to the “monks and nuns” of China, Japan, Korea, and most of Viet Nam, but the practices are not well-known to lay people. 

Such a bizarre circumstance! The Theravada school knows how to penetrate Zen koans but never tries! I have spoken with only three Theravada monks and one nun in person, asking them if they had ever tried to penetrate a Zen koan, and each of them told me: “We don’t do that.” Why not? “We are not Zen practitioners.”

The Rinzai Zen school tries to penetrate koans, but knows nothing about Theravada mindfulness! When I ask Rinzai Zen teachers: “Why don’t you teach Theravada mindfulness to your students?” they reply: “We are not Theravada practitioners.”

So nowadays I spend a little time every day, making contact with Theravada and Rinzai Zen teachers, urging the former to teach their students to apply their mindfulness to koans and asking the latter to teach their students Theravada mindfulness so that they can develop the mindfulness needed to penetrate koans.

If this quixotic quest succeeds, the walls between these two schools will come down. If a Theravada teacher teaches his or her students to tackle koans with their mindfulness, and if a Rinzai Zen teacher teaches his or her students how to develop mindfulness by following the steps of the Anapanasati Sutta and to apply that mindfulness to koan study, then both teachers are teaching the very same thing and the labels “Theravada teacher” and “Rinzai Zen” teacher will no longer apply.

A few Soto teachers use koans as well…