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, November 3, 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)
Reflection
We often forget
that the practice of mindfulness meditation is the practice of
contentment. We are ardent because we are interested in what is
happening, fully aware because we are looking openly at it, and mindful
because we are examining our experience with equanimity rather than
under the influence of desire. When we no longer desire what is
happening to be any different than it is, we are content.
Daily Practice
Practice
mindfulness as an exercise in contentment. Mindfulness begins with
bringing deliberate attention to the objects of experience and thereby
bringing heightened awareness to the moment. Mindfulness proceeds by
disengaging the habit of favoring some things and opposing others, and
then regarding all phenomena equally. When desire is replaced by an
attitude of equanimity, contentment settles in the mind.
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)
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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