RIGHT MINDFULNESS
Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling
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A person goes to the forest
or to the root of a tree or to an empty place and sits down. Having
crossed the legs, one sets the body erect. One establishes the presence
of mindfulness. (MN 10) One is aware: “Ardent, fully aware, mindful, I
am content.” (SN 47.10)
When feeling a neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling in the body,
one is aware: “Feeling a bodily neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling …
one is just aware, just mindful: 'There is feeling.'” And one abides not
clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
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Of the three kinds of feeling tone—pleasant, painful, and neither-pleasant-nor-painful—it
is this third, neutral feeling that is the most challenging to the
practice of mindfulness. Feeling tones arise in a steady stream, just
like the stream of consciousness; the practice is to pay close enough
attention to the textured sensation of each moment. The object is one
thing (sight, sound, etc.), and the feeling tone that arises with it is
another.
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Sit quietly for
some stretch of time and attend carefully to all the neutral sensations
in the body. You might even scan systematically from head to foot
looking for all the feeling tones that are occurring. Some are obviously
pleasant, some are clearly painful. What about the rest? These are the
neutral sensations—you feel them, but they do not feel good or bad. They
are just there. Feel what it's like to feel what is just there.
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RIGHT CONCENTRATION
Approaching and Abiding in the Second Phase of Absorption (2nd Jhāna)
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With the stilling of applied and
sustained thought, one enters upon and abides in the second phase of
absorption, which has inner clarity and singleness of mind, without
applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of
concentration. (MN 4)
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The mind is
capable, through training, of becoming more concentrated than is usual
in ordinary daily experience. The Buddha describes this as a natural
process, unfolding as the body and mind become gradually happier and
more tranquil while the mind is focusing upon a single object. In the
second phase of this process, discursive thinking gradually fades away
as the feeling of pleasure and well-being grows stronger and deepens.
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As you sit
quietly and focus on your breathing, the thoughts and memories and plans
that so habitually inhabit the mind begin to settle, and the mind
becomes calmer. At a certain point thoughts may cease altogether.
Awareness of sensory experience remains strong, but it is no longer
mediated by words, images, or concepts. The need to re-engage the mind
with an object and hold it there is no longer needed, so these functions
drop away.
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Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Mind and Abiding in the Third Jhāna
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