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Month: May 2016 Page 2 of 3

Heartfelt Mindfulness

Answering the question ‘What is mindfulness?’ is relatively easy in theory. From a study of the Mindfulness Sutta (Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta) we could say that it means being attuned, directly and continuously, to the following areas of experience, combined with the intentions which I name thereafter:

(kaya) our bodily form in its postures and all its activities,
(vedanā) the feeling-tones (pleasant, unpleasant, or neither) in all our experiences,
(citta) our mind-states, negative and positive, both superficial and profound – including mental-emotional dispositions or attitudes, and hence including thoughts. And,
(dhammā; or, in English: dhammas) the interplay of form, feeling-tones and ‘mind-states.’

However, the practice depends on the cultivation of quite precise intentions. In Buddhist mindfulness we give this dedicated attention to our experience because we undertake to become peaceful, awake humans; people who know things as they really are. Also, it supports our undertaking to treat ourselves and others well. Knowing things as they really are and treating ourselves and others well, these things support each other. They’re reciprocal endeavours, if we practice with heart.

All of this is necessary and valuable for humanity; but another undertaking emerges as the practice takes hold and deepens (though, in some it is strong to begin with). That is, we undertake to serve the truth, to place ourselves under how things are. This is to say, a yearning awakens in us for the deepest insight into the essential nature of consciousness, for the simple reason that we grow to love the truth.

(Of course, modern science and deep contemplative practice share a commitment to how things are. They differ in the domains of their study, and the methodologies appropriate to their different domains, but they do – at their best – share a love of truth.)

In practice, there is a lot of variation in how we apply and experience mindfulness. The differences stem mainly from the stages of development of the practice within individual practitioners, but they also arise from the difference of temperament in the cultures in which mindfulness has taken root. What mindfulness ‘is’ depends, then, on where you are in the journey of learning to be mindful, and who you are.

There are differences in the quality of mindfulness which arise, also, dependent on the choice of words used to transmit mindfulness. I have been reading an author, lately, for whom I have some respect, but he writes that mindfulness involves ‘disinterested observation.’ I avoid that language.

When I began mindfulness practice, I had an attitude, common among beginners, which fostered a type of distance from the processes of bodily and mental activity.

Once a practitioner told me that she had given up her Vipassana practice, now that she’d found Focusing. I asked her why, and she said that the ‘observing thoughts’ approach had made her too distant, and even dissociated, in her relationships; whereas Focusing had brought her warmth back.

It might be that the ‘distancing’ effect is unavoidable for beginners, because in the first place it tends to be thought which is doing the mindfulness. Nevertheless, I think that this needn’t be very strong, if a different kind of teaching is given, and so a different kind of training is practiced. I have seen ‘mindfulness’ referred to as ‘heartfulness,’ and I think this is a very important emphasis. I have noticed that the Pāli Nikāya texts can legitimately be translated in a way that brings intimacy in, softening the language so that the ‘disinterested observation’ danger isn’t there. (I’m not saying that we don’t need a kind of dispassion, but that’s a point for later.)

For the purpose of fostering heart in our mindfulness, I recommend that you know your experiences in a bodily way. Even your mental processes can be known from the bodily angle, rather than ‘watching’ from a privileged distance (as though there was a meta-layer of yourself; that is, a distant ‘witness’). The ‘stand back and watch it all pass by’ approach is not a wholesome one, in my view; no matter how often it is taught.

Even so, when all this is said and done, as I said, there will be in the early stages of mindfulness practice a tendency for ‘thought’ to do the knowing of kaya, vedanā, citta, and dhammā. This dynamic does change; yet, we can facilitate the change with skill (yoniso manasikāra), by learning both Focusing and mindfulness.

Mindfulness practice can develop into something more holistic, and eventually is found to be more akin to ‘presence’ than to thought-directed attention.

Next: Using phrases in our mindfulness.

To be Intimate with Mind

So, I’ve given some indication that the practice which we in the West call ‘mindfulness’ is a more complex task than simply remembering to pay attention to the sensory life of the present moment.

By now, too, I have indicated that the Buddha thought that skilful mindfulness (yoniso manasikāra) could lead to the realization of a radical vision of the deathless element, the result of which is that the ‘King of Death will not find you.’

That’s no ordinary journey. It is not about doing better business, playing better sport, or being a better soldier or better school teacher; though, mindfulness is nowadays applied to each of these, and more.

And, I’m sharing with you some basic information about the kind of skills you need, the skills of combodied enquiry. If you want to know whether death really is, as some say, the end of everything, you’ll need research skills.

Even more: I’m conscious that I’m inviting you on a journey which will involve snake handling, and so I need to share the skills that have helped me: a) to avoid snakes where possible; and, b) where avoidance is not possible, to handle the snakes you meet.

I’ve started with an introduction to Focusing, and now I’m talking about mindfulness training. Both of these skills make us calm and clear, like good snake-handlers.

Now, I wish to more formally introduce you to a foundational Buddhist training – from a source which I name The Four Placements of Mindfulness. I also refer to it, for short, as The Mindfulness Sutta.

(It’s most commonly translated as The Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Its technical name is the Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta. The term ‘sutta’ refers to certain texts from the earliest layers of Buddhist literature. They started out as chanted texts, but were written down eventually in the language of Pāli.)

I started studying this mindfulness text in 1975, when I realized, with anguish and consternation, that I didn’t know what the mind was, (and, indeed, whether there was really any mind, at all!) Would I survive this great hole which had opened up in me?

Due to my previous lack of skill with the mind, I felt that I was in danger, and that I needed a method to fathom my ignorance experientially, intimately.

Because I didn’t know anyone who was studying or teaching the practical skills of Buddhadharma, I started with a tiny booklet on the Mindfulness Sutta, of less than fifty pages, which I found in the university bookshop, in the neighbouring city. This book provided me with the skills I needed to begin an exploration which is still continuing more than forty years later.

If your unaware of the Mindfulness Sutta, it’s one of two most prominent meditation texts of early Buddhism (the other being the Mindfulness of Breathing Sutta). Both of these have had an enormous impact on Buddhist meditation, in all schools, in many lands, and over 25 centuries. They are both being studied closely in the West today. When you wish, you can download my translion of the Mindfulness Sutta, in pdf form, here.

The word satipaṭṭhāna is the name for an approach to self-awareness aimed at establishing sati, remembrance or mindfulness. The term sati comes from the Vedic (Sanskrit) word smrti, and is related to the verb sarati = to remember or to keep in mind. In the practice of Buddhism, mindfulness is a contemplative practice; to remember what is important to keep in mind.

‘Sati’ is often weakly interpreted by Western meditation teachers as non-judgemental awareness, or bare attentiveness; and so, in this light, Western psychotherapy has tended to emphasise mindfulness as the skill of being present with whatever arises in one’s immediate experience.

Of course, psychotherapy (a town of which I count myself a member) commonly sees mindfulness as a support for changing our life in positive directions; in particular, as a support for cultivating healthier patterns of thinking and feeling.

These two outcomes are beneficial. To be sure, non-judgmental awareness and the capacity to cultivate good mental health are important aspects of satipaṭṭhāna. I got that benefit, myself.

However, the Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta goes further. It has, as its context, the desire for a distinctive kind of freedom, freedom from the deepest conditioning of human perception. This freedom goes by many names, the most common English term being enlightenment. In the sutta, it’s called ‘nibbāna.’ This context is explicitly stated at the beginning of the Mindfulness Sutta, and at its conclusion.

Hence, the original text, presents the processes of mindfulness with this specific guiding intention: the desire for full awakening; the desire for realization of the unconditioned, for full, felt comprehension of the deathless.

Now, please listen carefully. Notice what your thoughts are telling you now. They are only thoughts. Be aware of the sounds in your environment. Be aware of your breathing. This aspiration is not beyond you. You can take such an intention seriously; and your life can only benefit. (Even if it entails snake-handling.)

The role of Buddhist mindfulness, then, is to keep consciousness grounded in the present moment in a specific and appropriate way, a way that will keep your awareness on the path of this full awakening to what life actually is on the deep level – the level of truly understanding human life in all its beauty.

So, what, more precisely, does this training for living a wakeful life (or, as some say, an awakening life) involve?

Becoming thoroughly familiar with your body, speech and mind, at four levels of deepening subtlety. These levels are four placements of skillful attention. That is, at the levels of experience called: form, feeling-tones, mind-states (emotionality); and, most subtly, in the interplay of these.

As we become familiar with this interplay, we become more insightful and freer. It’s here that you can finally understand the experience referred to by the word ‘mind.’

The Present as Path

Invincible, unmovable, see clearly whatever is present now –
this, right here – and so develop wisdom.
Today, right away, do what needs to be done.
Who knows? Death could know you tomorrow.
There’s certainly no bargaining with Death’s great hordes.
But one who lives ardently, day and night,
Such a one is an auspicious day, the peaceful sage announces.
An Auspicious Day, Bhaddekaratta Sutta (MN131). Translated by Christopher J. Ash.

When I first sought the historical Buddha in the early Buddhist Nikāya texts, I was troubled by my inability to accept the cosmology in those texts. The Nikāya Buddha believes in literal rebirth; and, presumably the historical Buddha accepted rebirth.

I wanted not to make my enquiry dependent on a rebirth theory. I still see no necessity to do so, forty-plus years later. On the other hand, living in the present – that made and makes sense to me. (Of course, the irony of living in the present is that you meet death while living.)

The irrelevance, to me, of the common belief in ‘rebirth’ hasn’t been an obstacle to understanding. Because I look on these texts as not only a great wisdom tradition but as an oral literature which is to be engaged in dialogue, then I have found it possible to extract the honey from sentences which would otherwise be difficult to feel nourished by. Sentences such as the following (in the Sutta of Conveying the Nature of Reality): “Immovable is my freedom. This is my last birth. Now there is no cycle of becoming.”

When I look upon these texts as reflecting something about human experience in the present, I can look past the ‘rebirth’ belief, and ask, “What in human experience, now, might this refer to?” Then I am curious about experience, and not about what the secondary texts say about ‘the three lives theory,’ and other such doctrines.

I have a body which can guide me in the feel of the language in the texts. I can know immovability, now – if I have the necessary passion to know. I can know the dissolving of ‘identity’ now (which is surely all that is reborn – our habits). I can know the end of identification with what comes and goes (becomes).

Don’t I know where to find ‘birth’? Don’t these texts show me where to find birth, death and liberation? It’s in human experiencing – in my mental states, with their self-representations, and the hunger, grasping, in clinging. Where else to find the dynamics of dukkha, but in the present?

The Nikāya Buddha wanted to find a way out of an unsatisfying continuity of experiencing. Haven’t I, too, found myself in unsatisfactory cycles of becoming – repeating the ‘same old, same old’? Haven’t I, too, found myself asking the kind of questions that the Nikāya Buddha asks at the beginning of his quest: “There must surely be more to this? Is life only continual rounds of grasping for happiness, only to have it dissolve; and then to seek again?”

So, surely, what this practice is about is the life I am living now, not the one I may live some time in the future. When I first understood that I didn’t need to be a believer in rebirth (at least, not in any traditional form), in order to understand the essential nature of consciousness, I committed myself to interpreting these texts as documents pointing to the liberation of consciousness from its self-made limitations.

In regard to freeing the mind, these are texts of self-evident sophistication, emphasizing the cultivation of present awareness, ‘traceless, like the sky.’ The Buddhist way provides valuable tools for dissolving layer upon layer of habitual identification with false ways of being; allowing an open, spacious, groundless ground to emerge. Then, as it says in the Mindfulness Sutta, one goes about ‘independent, not clinging to anything in the world.’

To be free, though, you necessarily undertake the humiliating recognition of delusion in yourself, and take responsibility for the harm that flows from your delusions. The wheel of birth and death – that is, the stranglehold of materialistic personality – is very hard to escape.

Our dukkha involves the interplay of ignorance, unconscious shaping factors, consciousness, identity, sense domains, contact, feeling tones, craving, grasping, and becoming; resulting in ignorant conceptions of birth, old age, sickness and death, which in turn feed back into that dynamic mesh. This is dukkha.

It’s no wonder that the Nikāya Buddha is portrayed, in the days after his enlightenment, sitting on the banks of a river, saying (more or less): “This is deep, subtle, difficult to see. Surely it would be vexatious to try and communicate this to people addicted to sense pleasures.”

However, here is the key: dukkha is fabricated out of our present-moment, lived experience. You and I have that available always. Always, it’s all there is.

Yet, dukkha is derived from experience, and is not basic to it. And, the two fundamental meditation texts in the Nikāyas – the Sutta of Breathing in and Out and the Mindfulness Sutta – teach us to use our present moment living body as the ground for the contemplative enquiry. This is the spirit reflected in: “Immovable is my freedom.”

As Hakuin Zenji said in his Song of Zazen:
Nirvana is here, before your eyes,
this very place is the Lotus Land,
this very body the Buddha.”

Frogs, Mindfulness, and the Implicit

“But, Practitioners, those who practise mindfulness of death with the thought, ‘Oh, may I live for the time I need to chew and swallow one mouthful of food… or, for the time it takes to breathe in, after the out-breath; or, to breathe out, after the in-breath… to keep the flourishing one’s teaching in mind. Much, indeed, could then be done by me!’, of these practitioners it can be said that they dwell carefully. In respect of destroying the taints, they practise mindfulness of death intently.”
– Nikaya Buddha, Mindfulness of Death Sutta.

I’ve spent some time introducing the felt sense and Focusing. Now, I’d like to talk about another important element useful in self-care and enquiry: the kind of attention which is called ‘mindfulness.’ Some speak of a “mindful revolution” in the U.S, led by the establishment of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction clinics. So, while my following reflections are mostly on specifically Buddhist mindfulness, I will also mention some Western originators of ‘mindfulness.’ (A version of this essay has been published on the positivity blog.)

Buddhist Mindfulness, the Implicit, and Frogs

Let’s begin with a simple idea that mindfulness is present-centred awareness. Mindfulness must be at least this, which surely includes sensory awareness. Rain falls, birds call, and we are awake for the sensory experience. Well… it would be good if we were awake for this.

I remember being on retreat, once, years ago. I had been sitting in meditation since five o’clock in the morning, and it was late at night. I was meditating, but I hadn’t noticed how deeply I had gotten into my ‘stuff,’ my angst, my internal struggles. At some stage I realized I was causing myself more trouble than it was worth, by trying to figure out my emotional problems. I thought to myself, “Oh, well – give it up, Chrisso. Listen to the frogs.” I listened. There were no frogs.

No frogs?” I thought. “Listen again.” I listened, again. For a moment there was that same silence, and then a crescendo of frogs rose to greet me. Or, you might say, my present-moment awareness returned to greet them. They, after all, hadn’t gone anywhere.

Mindfulness is correlated with some level of presence. It needn’t be a great presence, like that of some Buddhist teachers I’ve met. After all, a burglar can be mindful – indeed, needs to be mindful, especially if the occupants of the house are at home. You might need to be mindful to follow my line of thought in this essay. If your mind goes ‘somewhere else,’ you’d have to double back a few lines, to pick up the thread. You remember your purpose, right?

This seems a good place to assert the origin of the early Buddhist word ‘sati,’ which has come to be translated as ‘mindfulness.’ The word means ‘remembrance.’ Sometimes, from secular Westerners, you will hear that mindfulness is “bare attention.” That has some relevance, and might be useful.  However, there are two common difficulties which arise with such an idea, for the newcomer: they might think that while they are mindful, they shouldn’t have any explicit thoughts about the past or the future; and, they might think that they shouldn’t guide their experience one way or another. Both of these are misconceptions.

If we imagine what it is to not be mindful, what would that sound like? Forgetting what you’re doing, right? Clearly, I was absent in some kind of way to the frogs, that night. The purpose of my sitting in meditation into the night was to enjoy simply being present, but I forgot my purpose, and instead tried to figure out my problems. I was unmindful of my purpose – to know and appreciate the truth of my experience.

night silent, frogs’ chorus;
just a sliver of a moon.

So mindfulness suggests the quality of presence, and that presence isn’t something abstract – it’s a bodily-felt quality in one whose attention is present in the body and therefore with the senses. Furthermore, I’m saying that presence is never without intentionality; not without clear comprehension of your purpose in a situation. This awareness of meaningfulness needn’t be consciously imposed on experience, it can be found in the bodily feel of presence itself.

If you drive a car, you’ve probably had the experience of missing your turn-off. “You were supposed to turn off back there.” You were ‘somewhere else.’ So, distraction and mindfulness seem to be antithetical. The driver who forgets their destination, because their mind is turning over concerns and yearnings, lacks mindfulness.

An unkind observer might call them ‘mindless,’ but for our purposes let’s call that ‘being unmindful.’ That is, lacking the capacity to remember what we are doing, or why we are doing it. Lacking recall of the appropriate bodily feel (intentionality) for the task at hand. This intentionality, being a bodily participation, will include much that is implicit, not explicitly brought to mind.

You can hear in this example, that more than sensory awareness is needed for mindfulness. That “why we are doing what we’re doing” means that more is implicit in the present moment awareness than purely sensory awareness. Let’s notice, here, that I have introduced a concept that process philosophy commonly uses: that of an implied order of reality. Words that will come up in this context are: implicit, implicated, implied; and, ‘explicit,’ ‘explicate,’ ‘explicated.’ For now, if I say implicit, just think; ‘present, but not visible.’ That’ll do for now.

It’s not hard to get a feel for this, if you think again about driving a car or riding a bike. Remember how much you had to think about, explicitly, when you began to acquire any technical skill, but how those details work now implicitly. To try to remember explicitly everything you need to do to drive a car, would now make you less efficient in driving that car.

So, now back to that paradox: present moment awareness has the past in it, implicitly. When I am present so is the past. Let me give you an example. As I am writing this blog post, I stop every so often to get a feel of ‘where I am.’ This ‘where I am’ has in it the feel of everything that I have sent to you so far. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t have the feel of what comes next.

That ‘feel’ carries much more in it then I can put into words. I sit with the feel of it – and with all that is implicit in the feel – and look for the words to say it. That’s writing. There’s no way that I could remember all the explicit things I’ve said to you from the first paragraph, and no way I can know all the explicit things I will say by the time I get to the end of this post. Yet this ‘present moment,’ if I pay the right kind of attention, it carries the whole forward with a very precise, organic order.

The clear comprehension that accompanies mindfulness carries forward our situations, because the past and the future are in the present. That it is a paradox of ‘present-moment awareness.’ The way we feel the past and the future in the present is different than our usual unit-model kind of way, where we imagine that the past and the present and the future are separate things. How on earth they could be separate and change into one another, wasn’t explained by my culture. But, the implicit order gives us a doorway into understanding a new way to have ‘time.’

We unconsciously live in accordance with this, to some degree. Consider the burglar. Why is the burglar mindful? Because he somehow knows his present unfolds the future (fingerprints left behind, open windows telling all, creaking floorboards). And because he knows why he is there, having previously planned this moment. But he doesn’t consciously have to remember every detail of his previous plans and actions. They’re functioning implicitly, in the now. Not that he knows this. If you asked him, he would probably think the past is ‘gone,’ and the future is ‘yet to come.’

There is that kind of way of thinking about time – the unit-time/serial-time, approach – and it may be useful in some contexts. However, I’m suggesting that one reason people find it hard to be mindful, is because they don’t understand the process of Great Time (Tarthang Tulku), a multidimensional kind of time; the implicate order kind of time. Indeed, to be a master of mindfulness, you need to embrace being time itself, which is also to embrace Being-time. I’ll go more into this later.

In Buddhist mindfulness, you know you are thinking, and you know when you are not thinking; and, you know what to cultivate, and what not to cultivate, in your thinking. (And, reference to the body – as in Focusing – helps with this.) Then, when you think of the future, or think of the past, you aren’t swept away. I was definitely swept away that night, and while I was in that unmindful condition, the frogs could call all they wished, “Awake-awake! Awake-awake!” And I wouldn’t hear them.

If I am present for all that is, including the frogs, I am also aware of knowing I am present for all that is. I think I’ve said enough to show that ‘bare attention’ isn’t possible without an implicit ‘more’ present, and that an aspect of that ‘more’ is clear comprehension of what you’re doing.

An Instance of Enquiry on the Go

“Many of us have difficulty seeing ourselves as a radiant and vital embodiment of beauty, capable of wonderful sensations, fine qualities, and inspiring thoughts.” – Tarthang Tulku, Joy of Being
I was mindful as I was driving, when I asked myself: “What am I not accepting, these days? Am I holding anything at bay?”
There is a way of asking any question, so that it’s not merely an intellectual question. We can ask such a question open-endedly, and then feel into what the living is like, in this body – waiting to see what comes there, in response to a question.
That’s a funny thing to say, isn’t it? As though the body is going to answer back. (Which it does!) I wouldn’t have to say it that way, if my culture didn’t have the custom of knowing the body mainly via images and representations; if my culture was more familiar with knowing more directly, with mindfulness and the felt sense.
Where the Mindfulness Sutta says, “a contemplative dwells contemplating the body in the body,” that means to know it directly, intimately, non-conceptually. So, we can learn to invite the whole of life, known and unknown, to show up in the gap after the question; to show up vividly.
In this way language needn’t be stuck in its usual ‘this-that’ ways. Language can become a living interaction, rather than something that merely carries old meanings. Language-ing can stay fresh, when its origin (the body) is included in concept formation. This naturally takes practice, and not a little shadow work:
“The senses are responsive, able to generate exquisitely beautiful feelings, but to receive their blessings, it is necessary to open pathways now constricted by confusion and stress and clogged by repressed anger and self-hatred.” – Tarthang Tulku, Joy of Being
There I was sweeping some beautiful curves on a country highway, going down the mountain, and I asked my question: “What am I holding at bay, in my life, at the moment?” And in response, my body was suddenly filled with light. I steadied myself, and once I was sure of my driving, I felt inwardly again. Sure enough, there was a whole-body answer to my question. Simultaneously present for driving and steadfast for the inquiry, I hear a whisper: ‘This beauty.’
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” – Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love.

Thinking from Interdependence

“All relationships, attitudes, and situations can keep us prisoner in a cycle of suffering if we apprehend them unwisely (ayoniso manasikāra). On the other hand, any situation can also act as a springboard toward liberation if it is considered wisely. Thus it is not the people, things, and situations that we get involved with that are responsible for whether we suffer or make progress on the path of liberation. Rather it is the way we deal with them, the way we apprehend them that is responsible.”  – Mirko Fryba (1989), The Art of Happiness: Teachings of Buddhist Psychology.

I have been articulating a process understanding of yoniso manasikāra; one which will point us back to our ‘ancestral field,’ back to our present-moment combodied experience.

I first came on the term yoniso manasikāra in Myrko Fryba’s The Art of Happiness: Teachings of Buddhist Psychology. This book is a detailed study of a therapeutic application of mindfulness, presenting Fryba’s ‘Satitherapy’ (literally, Mindfulness Therapy). Fryba was a pioneer of mindfulness-based psychotherapy. (The more recent editions are titled The Practice of Happiness: Exercises and Techniques for Developing Mindfulness Wisdom and Joy.)

We can build on Fryba’s presentation by making the body more central to the vision. So, adopting Blanchard’s and Gombrich’s thinking (that yoniso manasikāra means ‘making in the mind according to origin), but with a slightly different emphasis inspired by Gendlin, I translate yoniso manasikāra as: forming our mind by resonating with the matrix.

This is not as mysterious as it sounds. It means forming out mind by checking with our sense of the whole; thinking from our bodily-felt situation, freshly ground our knowing and our thinking.  We can ponder whatever needs to be pondered, by zig-zagging between the old terms and our open, unbounded, bodily-felt sense of the situations (or topics we engage with).

If we think from what is not yet a content, from the ‘interdependent whole,’ the result will be: novel uses for words or phrases; and, where old terms don’t work any longer, entirely new words and phrases.  Fresh perspectives can be applied to previous work in the field.

The difficulty with many expositions of the practice of mindfulness and of the way of freedom is that they tell us what is to be done, point us in the direction of the practices, but don’t articulate the ‘how’ precisely enough. I believe that practitioners can be given more concrete support to find the way to a revolution at the base of consciousness, by training attention more precisely.

Mirko Fryba: “Repeated thorough apprehension of situations, repeated direction of the attention onto the pathways that lead out of unpleasant experience, and repeated attentiveness to the good—these are important principles of liberational mind-training in general and of wise apprehension (yoniso manasikāra) in particular. Through repetition we make ourselves familiar with what is worthy of attention and make ourselves better able to penetrate the important aspects of reality.”

Now we can add: “…by attending to the bodily-felt sense of situations.” Practitioners have been trusting their felt sense, in an ad hoc way, for centuries. Not all bodies are alike, though, and only some will be skilled at accessing the felt sense. But, what is wise attention, if we don’t include the bodily-felt root of our contemplating?

Whence does wise pondering arise, but from a ‘felt sense,’ the direct referent of our speaking and thinking? It doesn’t arise in a vacuum. (See Gendlin, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning).

One day I saw a very experienced Vipassana teacher pause and sense into his body, as he looked for the right words to say what he was experiencing, and what he wanted to convey. I recognised that glance inward, and so I asked him, “What do you call what you did, just then?” His answer was: ‘Wisdom. Paññā.’

Pausing, sensing inwardly, finding the right words, resonating the words against the feel of that place in you, sensing the rightness, and receiving what comes next as a result. All this is yoniso manasikāra – bringing one’s mind into accord with the matrix.

The womb which generates grounded thinking is found in/though/as the experiencing body. This is an important reason why we practice mindfulness of the body – to touch directly the implicit ‘more’ which is found in the changing flow of present moment experience – here we find the matrix for grounded enquiry.

“The energy or the “material” out of which life situations are created is already present, but the frame of reference or “form” in which they are cast is a matter of choice. The frame of reference is determined by the matrix (yoni). The technique of choosing and applying a particular yoni, which is called yoniso manasikāra, or wise apprehension, is the foundation of all liberational strategies.” – Mirko Fryba (1989), The Art of Happiness: Teachings of Buddhist Psychology.

 

The Wherefrom of Wise Attention

“Practitioners, one does not enjoy the deathless who doesn’t enjoy mindfulness directed to the body. One enjoys the deathless who enjoys mindfulness directed to the body. The deathless has been enjoyed, by those who have enjoyed mindfulness directed to the body.” – the Nikāya Buddha, from the Anguttara Nikāya; from the Book of the Ones, Translated by Christopher J.Ash.

Yoniso manasikāra” is an important term in the early Buddhist texts (the Nikāyas). It indicates an important quality of attention. Nevertheless, when I first encountered the term decades ago, it didn’t catch me, and on reflection, I believe that is because it wasn’t an obviously experience-near term. I was always looking for terms I could apply to my actual experience. If I am going to think about death, I want a way to think freshly, openly; a way of discovery.

The conventional translation of the term yoniso manasikāra is: skilful attention. Other translations are ‘proper,’ ‘appropriate,’ or ‘wise’ attention. (All of which should be understood as having liberation as the background. That is, it’s attention that is methodical for that purpose.) ‘But, what exactly did ‘skilful’ mean?’ I wondered.

Furthermore, over the years I felt a little disquiet, at one time or another, at the very flat, prosaic sound of these translations. They made the principle sound too logical, too methodical; as though one were imposing a system onto one’s experience, from the outside (which is a not uncommon use of the Buddhadharma, of course).

‘Manasikāra’ is attention, or pondering. The Pāli-English Dictionary (PED) entry suggests to me that it is guided thought, of a kind. But, what do we base our pondering upon, or guide it by? Upon already received categories? Upon prejudices? And, where does the direction forward come from? Mere belief in other people’s priorities, however noble?

In other words, when we enquire, are we only re-jigging the old thinking, making new arrangements of previously learned knowledge? And, applying old categories to present-moment experiences? If so, ‘manasikāra’ could be a name for a procedure guided, at best, by logic (re-arranging language units according to conventions or rules); and, at worst, by untested opinion.

Then, for me, there is the matter of how our thinking is guided after awakening. Traditional approaches may help awaken us to non-conceptuality. A certain kind of freedom arises – a liberation based on the deathless may be realised. However, we don’t usually learn to think from the liberation; or, to see the relationship between the non-conceptual and our need for on-going concept formation.

Indeed, to a large degree, awakened traditional teachers usually go on thinking about life in their culture’s old terms. They often interpret their new-found non-conceptual experience from the old cultural point of view. These old concepts don’t work to think freshly, radiantly from the no-mind experience. They tend to express the liberation experience in terms of the old frameworks, and not attribute the arising of thinking to the non-conceptual.

(Of course, there are exceptions. Dzogchen thinkers  – Nyingma and Bön – have taken steps in the direction of articulating an organic relationship between language and the deathless element; where language is the creative communication of the deathless element.)

Then, there is ‘yoni.’ According to the PED, ‘yoni,’ in the word ‘yoniso,’ is a feminine noun of Vedic origin, which means: ‘womb.’ And, it’s also: ‘origin,’ way of birth, place of birth, realm of existence; nature, and matrix. It seemed to me that this hinted at something much more than imposing already-formed systems of thought, with their reason and logic. (Do we have, here, another patriarchal distortion of the meaning of a term?)

Even after learning Pāli, I didn’t twig to a deeper way to see this facet of the way of enquiry; until I read Linda S. Blanchard’s perspicacious study Dependent Arising in Context: The Buddha’s Core Lesson in the Context of His Time, and Ours. I was moved, then, to discover the relevance of the phrase to my bodily-felt life. Let’s look at this.

In a note, Blanchard quoted British Buddhist scholar Richard Gombrich. He was in turn quoting someone else. In a note (What the Buddha Thought, p. 132), he quoted: “(L)iterally [yoniso manasikāra] means ‘making in the mind according to origin’

The penny dropped. The ‘womb’ meant, here, is bodily-felt experience. The body, in its present living, is the meeting place of everything – and here, the skilful attention of the four placements of mindfulness can bring the holistic felt sense of our situations into view, and with the right support for clear comprehension, can work to carry our lives forward (and therefore, to carry the big Dharma, the big life process, forward).

A Felt Sense is More

Sometimes Buddhist teachers inaccurately use the phrase ‘felt sense’ – a term which has, in the wake of Gendlin’s work, become popularised over the last thirty years. What is a felt sense?

Not Another Word for Sensation

Sometimes, all the meditation teacher means is: ‘a sensation that you feel closely, or objectively.’ Joseph Goldstein, for instance, in his book on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, when talking about the ‘four great elements’ (Pāli: mahābhūta) – that is, the earth element, the water element, the fire element and the air element – says:

“This mindful precision helped illuminate the body as the interplay of these four elements. As we free ourselves from the concept of “body” and increasingly experience the direct felt sense of it, the mind becomes less prone to attachment and to the desire, aversion, and conceit that come from it.” – Joseph Goldstein. Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening (p. 71).

I think that what he means here, and in the several other places in the book, is just ‘directly-experienced sensation.’ A ‘felt sense’ is, of course, a type of sensation– a quite subtle and vague sensation – but it’s a special case of sensation. One which is specifically about meaning.

“A felt sense is a bodily sensation, but it is not merely a physical sensation like a tickle or a pain. Rather, it is a physical sense of something, of meaning, of implicit intricacy. It is a sense of a whole situation or problem or concern, or perhaps a point one wants to convey.”
– Eugene T Gendlin, Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method

Not Another Word for Feelings, or Feeling-Tones

I got a surprise one day, when reading a book by a Buddhist psychotherapist. He was talking about Gendlin’s work, and instructing us about the ‘felt sense’; but, in fact he was explicitly and mistakenly identifying Gendlin’s concept of the ‘felt sense’ with the Buddhist concept ‘vedanā.’

Vedanā one of the five observable, sentient processes. The word refers to the three feeling-tones – three categories of experience, which are: pleasant, unpleasant, and neither pleasant nor neutral; and, which go with any sensation or experience.

A felt sense (as Gendlin means it) is not simply the feeling-tone aspect of some sensation. Naming the feeling-tone of an actual felt sense is often useful, and so it is sometimes part of a Focusing process. Indeed, sometimes when I start checking in to see what a felt sense is telling me, I might say: “Hmm… there’s something here that doesn’t feel so good.”

That can be step. It’s certainly naming feeling-tone, but it may be just an opening, an invitation for the felt sense to show itself some more, to come into view. Or, it might be that a sub-personality ( a part) is speaking, right there; and, I’ll need to say hello to that, first. In these cases, there’ll be more steps follow from the naming of the feeling-tone. In other words, a particular feeling-tone may provide a partial angle on a felt sense – a bit of information about a felt sense – but a felt sense is always more than a feeling-tone.

It might be possible, if you want to use the Buddhist model, to say that all felt senses are going to have some feeling-tone. Of course, that’s true. But, we don’t always have to name it; and, that’s not all a felt sense is.

To give you a sense of the importance of feeling in our intelligent life, I want to communicate something about what it is. Have you ever wondered what a feeling is? To most of us ‘feeling’ means a subjective experience – a sensation (a feeling of being tired, for example), or an emotion (a feeling of being angry), or to have a belief or conviction (“I feel strongly that..”).

Normally we take a feeling as part of a fixed self, part of its make-up – even though they do come and go. The feeling tells me about ‘me,’ and about what kind of person I am. Furthermore, t looks like something of mine that springs up at the end of a chain of some that it is purely internal which is trotted out in reaction. It looks, to the ordinary untrained perception, as though it comes formed in a packet, by itself, in reaction to something separate and ‘over there.’

Let’s look more deeply into it. What if we start, in Gendlin fashion, by saying that our self-organising body is always an interaction with the environment. Indeed, that the environment is an aspect of what we call body. An environment is in a body every bit as much as a body is in an environment. So, the feelings of our subjective world are the bodily-felt aspect of that interaction. Feeling indicates how the body is going on in its situation. Feeling is the body reiterating its experiencing-checking process.

This means that, the felt sense of something is the actual living interaction – it’s the environment as it is in us and it is the body living its situation – not just some end-point package brought forth in reaction to an outside event. This is why it carries/is/feels meaning.

This is important. If we believe (as most of us do) that feelings are only internal reactions, then we miss what they are about – they are interactions; they are of the environment. The bodily life and its self-sensing of its situations are a kind of self-locating, and tell us how our life process is carrying forward.

The ‘felt sense’ is a special case of feeling, then; in that, it is the subtle, vague, yet precise feel of a meaningful inward ‘wholeness’ of the interacting.

The felt sense layer of functioning is at the unfolding edge of awareness. Gendlin says, in Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method:

“General descriptions do not convey focusing. It differs from the usual attention we pay to feelings because it begins with the body and occurs in the zone between the conscious and the unconscious. Most people don’t know that a bodily sense of any topic can be invited to come in that zone, and that one can enter into such a sense. At first it is only a vague discomfort, but soon it becomes a distinct sense with which one can work, and in which one can sort out many strands,” p.9

It’s the feel of the ‘more of the meaningfulness’ that our body knows. It’s the ‘all that about X,’ and it brings the next step forward in our life.

One can sense that it includes many intricacies and strands. It is not uniform like a piece of iron or butter. Rather it is a whole complexity, a multiplicity implicit in a single sense.
– Eugene T Gendlin, Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method, p.33.

The trouble is, once you decide that a felt-sense of something is identical to either a ‘sensation’ or a ‘feeling-tone’ (both have been translations for ‘vedanā’), then you have stopped being open to more steps from inside that vague spot in the middle of you; and, this being so, people then often grasp onto other mental factors which might or might not be in reaction to it – such as the desire for more of what is pleasant, or less of what is unpleasant. Or, some analysis, or opinion, about the feeling.

If we don’t know about the felt sense – don’t know that the murky edge that comes when we check to see how we really are about something may have something to say to us – then we will easily miss the opportunity to facilitate the unfolding of a next step in our process.

So, when you hear a meditation teacher talking about having a ‘felt sense,’ I suggest you ask (yourself or them) what they are actually referring to. It may mean nothing more than having “bare attention” of a sensation or a feeling-tone.

Giving Feeling Words

WHAT IS FOCUSING?

I’ve mentioned Focusing* a number of times, so it’s time to introduce it more formally. You’ll find a link below – ‘six steps’ – in case you want to learn about Focusing specifically. Later in this work, I’ll indicate where something like it can be found in early Buddhist practice; and I’ll also relate it to the later Buddhist mandala practice; but, for now, a short introduction:

Normally, people try to make meaning – speak, think, symbolize, express themselves, communicate and even act – from some kind of sense of themselves in situations. Usually, we do this without any specific training or skill; or, even without much awareness of their process. If we aren’t simply talking ‘off the top of our head,’ what we are depending on, in these activities, is the feel of the whole living situation.

This holistic, felt knowing of situations is a natural bodily-felt process, which can be more finely-tuned with the recognition that bodies are intrinsically relational. We can listen to our bodies and find guidance in their embeddedness in reality. (I’ll later differentiate ‘combodiment’ and ’embodiment.’)

To talk, think and act in daily life, we don’t have to know much about what is happening when we are sensing inwardly and finding a direction in what we are bringing out from in ourselves. Nevertheless, to sharpen our communication, to find the exactly the right word for our bodily sense for what we sense in there – to find the precise image, or the gesture, or whatever symbol we need – we need a special kind of attention which is different to the norms of our culture.

We can learn to speak, think, express, communicate, and so on – not just across the gap between ourselves and others, but – with the source of these activities within us. A formal process of learning some steps to do this, was developed by U.S. philosopher Eugene T. Gendlin, in the mid twentieth century. In my view, Gendlin’s formal training connects us with Being, as a source of knowing ourselves – knowing ourselves as a dynamic, spacious field of awareness, relating to the equally dynamic spaces of our situations. That’s a mouthful, I know. If it’s not clear now, it will be by the time this project is finished.

He could have called the process ‘felt-sensing,’ but he didn’t; and, his name for the formal process is called Focusing. He called it this because: a vague sense of the whole situation (which includes us in it) forms in us, and giving it careful attention brings it into ‘focus’ – just like people did with the old single-lens reflex cameras. (Now most cameras auto-focus.)

Another way of saying this: Focusing is the sequence of experiences involved in making clear what is suggested by a vague sense of knowing something, or ‘having’ something inwardly, about something. Gendlin coined the phrase ‘felt sense’ for this meaningful, vague something which has a feel of ‘more’ in it – a ‘more’ which can come into ‘focus,’ unfold, and which might be developed, if it needs.

For the more philosophic souls among us, I want you to know he called the ‘felt sense’ a ‘direct referent.’ Focusing is a term which points to a mindful process of empathy for that direct referent in us – the felt sense – through specific conscious steps which enhance our natural ability with this level of consciousness.

In Focusing we might:

• Invite into our body the feel of what wants to be said about something,
• Usually in the company of another, but not necessarily;
• Feel into that felt sense, empathetically;
• Nurture our listening inwardly;
• Express what we can of it (silently or aloud);
• And, check that expression with the bodily feel of our original ‘something in here’; and,
• Receive any shifts in the way the original ‘something’ lives in us; and/or, receive with gratitude what has been changed in us.

He developed this process when he was working with US psychologist Carl Rogers, and to help therapy clients (though it’s applicable in many fields), Gene developed six steps:

• Making a space
• Inviting a felt sense
• Getting it ‘handle’ for it
• Resonating that handle
• Asking a question of the felt sense (if appropriate, or needed)
• and, in a friendly way, receiving whatever comes from the process.

The practice of Focusing depends on great respect for the optimising impetus of the living body. So, what we learn in the process is deep listening. I think it’s worth saying, here: if you consider learning this process, and if you are focusing with a partner, Focusing doesn’t inherently involve saying your felt sense out loud. Safety is primary in this process, so you aren’t expected to speak your ‘felt sense’ out loud. You need to check with it, to see if it wants to be exposed like that. If you don’t speak it out loud – which is fine – there is still a way that you can mindfully nurture and have more space for your inner life, such that it moves forward – even with a focusing partner being present. Training in Focusing, usually includes training for the partner, because Focusing requires a very special kind of listening from both the Focuser and the Listener – a listening respectful of the awesome mystery of this interplay.

Suggested reading: David Rome, Your Body Knows the Answer: Your Body Knows the Answer: Using Your Felt Sense to Solve Problems, Effect Change, and Liberate Creativity (2014), Shambhala.

* Due to its origins, I’ll use the U.S. spelling for the name of the formal process, which is taught all over the world, because that’s how it has been transmitted. And, given that, for consistency, I may as well use the U.S. spelling (focusing) instead of British (focussing) when using the verb more generally.

Who is it Masters this World of Death and Devas

Today, I start by reminding my readers that occasionally we might seem to travel far from the subject of death, but everything that we are exploring is related to the topic of how to ‘cheat death,’ as the Nikāya Buddha says, and to live fully. The heart of the matter is in who you think you are. What dies? To resolve this in every cell, we need to master our minds.

So, that’s one thing. And, at the same time, the things we are exploring –especially this matter of how ‘conflict’ arises – is in the service of the planet, and nature. Humans are at war with nature. In the light of this, our approach to death is perhaps more than a symptom (though, it is at least that); because our avoidance of death might well be a cause of the war we wage on nature. So… back to our topic, which presently is our general conflict-oriented mental functioning.

One more thing, before we proceed: some people say, “Why would you look at this negative stuff! Isn’t the purpose to be happy?!” I agree that we wouldn’t want to be on a path of negativity, but if we are to understand how human flourishing happens, we’ll have to include a careful look at our negative habits. When we understand how they work, we can know how to cease feeding them. This necessarily brings some sorrow, but as it is ‘wholesome unhappiness,’  because it is transforming us deeply in the direction of peace.

If this practice of the wholesome would bring harm and suffering,
I would not ask you to cultivate it.
But as the practice of the wholesome brings benefit and happiness,
for that reason, I say, ‘Practice what is wholesome!’ –
– The Nikāya Buddha, Anguttara-Nikāya

Remember, then, that ‘parts language’ is just a convention to help us explore painful states of the psyche; to find the gift in our difficult attitudes and their inter-relations. In our vignette, the person has one attitude (sadness), which is being reacted to by another attitude (dislike). Though the two are inter-dependent, they are in conflict.

Unhappiness has its gifts. The Nikāya Buddha says (in a conversation with a god called Sakka, in Digha Nikāya 21):

“I speak of happiness, ruler of gods, in two ways: where happiness is to be pursued, and where it is to be avoided. Sorrow, likewise, I speak of sorrow in two ways: where it is to be pursued or avoided. So, also, do I speak in two ways about equanimity, where it is to be pursued or avoided.”

Feeling the sadness which is already there leads us forward, whereas blocking access to the sadness in oneself will not only not lead forward, but, it will bring compounded sorrow, because a person will be in conflict with themselves.

So far we have named conflict, which involves rejection of the experience of sadness. Conflict and rejection depend on self-biases working in the person. One ‘part’ (some would say, ‘self’) thinks it has the better view on things than another part, or another person, for instance. At the root of these relative biases is the deeper one of making an object of oneself, via a false apprehension of subjectivity.

(This is probably a good place to mention the Nikāya Buddha’s concept of the triple conceit, because sub-personaities depend on their being better than, the same as, or worse than other parts, or other people. Yes, in this scheme it’s conceited to be attached to being less than others.)

So, Kent and I take time to feel-know inwardly, and we find that the one who says ‘bog of stench’ is actually trying to avoid the difficult feelings. So, let’s name this as ‘preferences’ at work – the likes and dislikes of the inner actors. “Who would want to sit with the ‘bog of eternal stench’?”

When Kent searches in his body for how this shapes his way of being there, he finds some aggressive rejection of his sadness. That avoiding part is using Kent’s strength in what it thinks is a constructive move. The part is glad/delighted/pleased that it is there fighting for… for what? It’s actually fighting for its imagined way of being Kent. It has its particular self-bias, and its own style of selfishness and conceit.

If Kent can accept the bad feeling, without believing the labels given by the disliking process, then the emotion can be seen more clearly as some deep, deep sadness. Sometimes you have to sit with the disliking part for a while, listening kindly to it, before it backs off enough to let you feel into the sadness. After all, the part is made up what the Tibetans call ‘inveterate tendencies.’ That is, these patterns are veterans. These ‘parts’ have been fighting and defending the sadness since Kent was a child.

So, we can be gladdened to find that we have come upon some kind of ‘longing, hunger, thirst, or desire,’ which underlies the depression. Kent’s work means that there is a way out for sentient beings, because there is a dynamic which can be understood, and mastered. This kind of delight is a redirection of the flow of freedom.

My small excerpt from a longer process doesn’t yet show what the sadness itself can reveal about Kent’s deeper longings, but we did make significant small steps. Kent’s body has changed, just that much. There’ll be more steps.

You can see, in just these few interchanges, a kind of experiential inquiry unfolding that exhibits special skills. ‘Skilful,’ is an important Buddhist term. What he and I did was yoniso manasikāra, which the Pāli-English Dictionary means: directing one’s attention with a purpose, or thoroughly; proper attention; having thorough method in one’s thought; and, disposing the mind in accordance with the source. I like this last one, and will explain it in more detail later.

Work like this is also a skilful development of attention because it melds knowing with self-compassion, self-empathy, curiosity, and patience. The kind of patience which I mean here is a mode of what the poet Keats’ called negative capability. It about staying for what is, even if it’s not promising – not rushing ahead to find where this is all going. We stay patiently with the thread as it unfolds, small step by small step. We relish ‘don’t know’ mind, because it has space for it all.

Who will master this earth,
the world of death and devas?
Who shall select a well-taught teaching
like an expert selects a flower?

A learner shall master this earth,
the world of death and devas.
A learner selects the well-taught teaching,
as an expert selects a flower.
– The Nikāya Buddha, The Dhammapada, verse 44-45. Translated by Christopher J. Ash

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