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, October 13, 2024
Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Mindfulness and Concentration: Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling and Abiding in the Second Jhāna
RIGHT MINDFULNESS Establishing Mindfulness of Feeling
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 common neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling, one is
aware: “Feeling a common neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling.” When
feeling an uncommon neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling, one is aware:
“Feeling an uncommon 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)
Reflection
A feeling tone
accompanies every moment of experience, and it changes at every moment.
We generally just accept this and are influenced by it but without
conscious awareness. The stream of feelings flows as constantly as the
stream of consciousness, and modulates on a spectrum from extremely
pleasant through moderately pleasant, mildly pleasant, neutral, mildly
painful, and moderately painful to extremely painful.
Daily Practice
The second of
the four foundations on which mindfulness practice is established is the
mindful awareness of feeling tones. This requires isolating them in
your experience, since they are usually blended in with everything else.
Make a point of selecting just the strand of experience that carries a
feeling tone—good, bad or neutral. Not whether you like it or not, just
how it feels. You will learn with practice how to focus on this regularly.
RIGHT CONCENTRATION Approaching and Abiding in the Second Phase of Absorption (2nd Jhāna)
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)
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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