“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.