PRACTICAL INSIGHT - MINDFULNESS

PRACTICAL INSIGHT - MINDFULNESS

: by Most Ven. Henepola Gunaratana Maha Thero

 (Extracted From - Newsletter 2009 – “Buddhist Publication Society”)  

"You may have heard that you should be mindful all the time, whether you are at home or in the office, or on the bus or in your car, etc. You may interpret this advice to mean that you should keep your mind focused all the time on your breath, but this may lead to problems. If you simply keep your mind on the breath, while driving your car, you will probably get into accidents from not paying sufficient attention to driving.  

Some of you may think that “to be mindful all the time” means to pay attention only to whatever you are doing at a particular time. But this is what those who are seriously paying attention to their work normally do. A painter, writer, singer, etc. must pay full attention to whatever they do when they are engaged in their work. Not only human- beings do this. Cats pay total attention to their pray in order to catch them. Unfortunately neither cat, nor sheep dog can cultivate an iota of insight; they don’t remove the unwholesome roots (akusala-mula) of greed, hatred and delusion by merely paying total attention to objects.

So just paying full attention to whatever you are doing at any time is not going to eliminate the unwholesome roots, which is the purpose of insight meditation. Paying attention to just one thing is done in concentration meditation: you may focus your mind one single object for fifty years, yet the causes for the mental defilements will still remain unchanged in your mind.

While attending to special practice as observing the moral rules, learning all the sacred texts by heart, gaining deep concentration, and spending all the time in solitude, may not help you to gain liberation without first completely destroying the unwholesome roots, the mental defilements. Therefore in addition to their practice they also must remove the unwholesome roots in order to experience the bliss of emancipation from all kinds of suffering.  

  

 What is missing in focusing total attention to one single object all the time is wisdom (panna). Total attention should be coupled with wise attention (yoniso manasikara).  What is wise attention? It is attention accompanied by the three wholesome roots (kusala-mula). What are the wholesome roots? They are non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion, or in other words, letting go or generosity, loving-kindness and wisdom. This means that when you pay attention to something you always attempt to pay attention without the unwholesome roots of greed, hatred or delusion, and instead with thoughts of relinquishing, loving-kindness and wisdom. So you don’t let your mind be affected by the unwholesome roots when you pay attention to something and instead let thoughts of relinquishing, loving-kindness and wisdom dominate your mind.

You should pay wise attention to any thought, whether regarding yourself or other living beings or anything and note whether it is wholesome or unwholesome. You should wisely reflect while you are engaged in any activity: wearing clothes, eating food, drinking water, walking to someone, listening to sound, seeing an object, and walking or driving, etc.

When you pay total attention with wise attention, your greed, hatred and delusion fade away, because the opposite qualities of relinquishing, loving-kindness and wisdom are activated through wise attention. Thoughts of relinquishing, loving-kindness and wisdom have the power of minimising greed, hatred and delusion while you are engaged in any activity. When paying attention to something without unwise attention, you develop greed, hated and confusion. For instance, when you see an object that is attractive, beautiful or pleasing to your eyes, or an unattractive one, if you do not have wise attention, you may end up developing greed or resentment for the object. Or you may get deluded ideas about the object, thinking that it is permanent, satisfactory, instead of unsatisfactory or having a self instead of being selfless.

You may ask how thoughts of letting go can get rid of greedy thoughts. When you perceive the object with greed, your mind will cling to it and not open to any thought of letting go of greed, of generosity. You do not want to take your eyes away from the object. Your mind temporarily becomes blind to any thought of relinquishing. Even if you wish to let go of that attachment to it, you may do so with great reluctance. Greed has very strong super glue in it. At the very first contact with the desirable object the mind sticks fast to it. You may do so with great reluctance. Greed has very strong super glue in it. At the very first contact with the desirable object the mind sticks fast to it, and you cannot let go of that object from your mind. Letting go of that object can be as painful as cutting off a limb or some flesh from your body.

The object you perceive is where your wise attention needs to be. This is where you must learn to see impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and selflessness. Your wise attention indicates that neither the object you perceive nor your feelings or sensation regarding the object remains the same, even for two consecutive moments. You will not have the same sensation later on. You change with the object you perceive. With wise attention you will see that everything is impermanent. This knowledge of impermanence allows you to let go of your resentment. When you see with wisdom that everything that is impermanent is unsatisfactory, then you see the connection between unsatisfactoriness and greed.  As you are attached to an impermanent object you will be disappointed with the change of the object that you are so attached to. When you have wise consideration you see that which is impermanent and unsatisfactory is without self.

You must remember that haste makes waste. If you make a hasty decision and do something foolish, you will regret it later on. For instance, sometimes you are attracted to a person without giving consideration, and later on you will find many faults in that person. In any such hasty decision there is no mindfulness.

When mindfulness is well developed, then even in haste you make a right decision. The only thing that makes sense in rushing to beat impermanence is to keep back and check your own mind and see whether or not you make the decision with wise consideration. When you are mindful, you will know how to take the advantage of the current moment so that you will not regret it later on. Any mindful decision you make will make you happy and peaceful and will never never make you regret it later on. 

Always remember that mindfulness gives rise to a state of mind free from greed, hatred and delusion and full of relinquishment, loving-kindness, and wisdom. Any time you pay attention to anything you must ask whether your mind is full of these factors. If not, you are not mindful.

When you have thoughts of relinquishing, of non-greed in the mind, you will let go of any attractive sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and thought without any hesitation. It is because of their attractiveness that people become attached to them and get involved in them. The deeper they get involved in them the deeper is their suffering. When you have loving-kindness in your mind, you will not try to reject any sight, sound, smell, taste, touch or thought if they happen to be unattractive. Mindfully you will perceive then as impermanent. When any sight, sound, smell, taste, touch or thought appears and is identified as self, you will see it is an unreal concept inculcated in your mind by conditioning through generations of wrong notions, and look at it with wisdom.

Mindfulness is not the same as carefulness. It is not smartness. Anybody can be careful and smart. A man walking on a wire three hundred feet above ground is careful. Remember those gymnasts performing all kinds of balancing feats. Many thieves are very smart. But none of them can be considered to be mindful.

Mindfulness is that mind state which reflects upon itself and takes care not to get caught in any states of greed, hatred and delusion which cause suffering to your-self, to others or to both.

When we ask people to abandon greed, some people ask us how one can live without greed. This is the miracle of mindfulness: When you practice mindfulness, you can learn to do the most difficult things easily. Not being greedy, resentful, or confused is very difficult, but even though constant training in mindfulness you learn to live without greed, hatred and delusion. To be mindful is more difficult than to be unmindful, but you eventually learn to do the more difficult and wholesome things more easily than the easier, unwholesome things. For this reason the Buddha said:

“For the good to do what is good is easy,

For the bad to do what is bad is easy.

For the bad to do what is good is difficult

For the noble to do what is bad is difficult.”

(Udana 5.8)

This means that which is very difficult at the beginning becomes easy through constant practice"
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