A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
Sunday, August 11, 2024
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Body and the First Jhāna
RIGHT MINDFULNESS Establishing Mindfulness of Body
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)
Full awareness: When flexing and extending limbs, wearing clothing,
carrying food . . . one is just aware, just mindful: “There is a body.”
And one abides not clinging to anything in the world. (MN 10)
Reflection
Mindfulness of
the body can be very precise and focused, as when we observe every
microsensation of the inbreath and outbreath. It can also be broader and
more open, taking in the full sweep of larger activities. The practice
of full awareness, a term used together with mindfulness, involves an
awareness that draws back, so to speak, to a slightly greater distance,
allowing it to encompass the full scope of an activity.
Daily Practice
Practice being
aware of your body in motion as it moves the limbs in dance or sport or
physical work. Feel the continuity of such movements, and allow your
mindfulness to encompass the motion as a whole. Now practice doing all
this with full awareness, dialing up your focused attention so
it becomes even more acute and precise. This is mindfulness in motion,
without clinging.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the First Phase of Absorption (1st Jhāna)
Having abandoned the five
hindrances, imperfections of the mind that weaken wisdom, quite secluded
from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, one enters
and abides in the first phase of absorption, which is accompanied by
applied thought and sustained thought, with joy and the pleasure born of
seclusion. (MN 4)
One practices: “I shall breathe in contemplating impermanence”;
one practices: “I shall breathe out contemplating impermanence.”
This is how concentration by mindfulness of breathing is developed and cultivated
so that it is of great fruit and great benefit. (A 54.8)
Tomorrow: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering One week from today: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna
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