A Dharma Teaching on Satipatthana Practice
I've been reading about the meaning in ritual in different cultures and different groups, different traditions. They bring meaning in a collective way, a shared experience. One person defined ritual, which I really liked, as bringing a past and a future meaning to the present moment, to the present moment circumstances. We understand where we've been, and the conditions that led up to this moment, and how this moment is in direct relationship with the future.
Let this presence, this choosing presence, be a ritual of meaning that is available in every moment. We're not just opening our senses. We're becoming present to the very moments that are meaningful to our life. Others define ritual and the meaning within ritual to illuminate the sacred. As tradition says, what isn't sacred? Presence, mindful presence, is illuminating the sacred.
Speaking of rituals, we'll ring the bells three times, and these three bells are invitations to take refuge. Some say that this is a ritual, no matter where we're coming from, whatever tradition, faith, or place in life, that we don't have to abandon to take refuge in these rituals, in these refuges. We can take refuge in these things and still have these other things be profoundly meaningful to us. But these three refuges are the ritual that says if you practice these, then you are practicing the Dharma.
The first refuge is your own wakeful nature. Traditionally this is called Buddha nature, but it means awake to your great wisdom and great compassion... that is available to a mind that is liberated from identification, the ways of seeing and doing that prevent us from realizing this great luminous wakefulness, this great wisdom, this great compassion. This tradition says, "You don't take refuge in an idea, you take refuge in what is here." So this tradition says, "Your wakeful nature is here," and we take refuge in what is here to whatever degree that it is here. Because if we're taking refuge in that, we're not taking refuge in our habit, our identification, the cloud. So with this bell, you're invited to take refuge in the wakefulness that is already here.
We take refuge in the Dharma, and ultimately, the Dharma is the laws of life, nature, phenomena, suchness, from gravity to karma. But the Dharma is also the potential for learning and further awakening to our Buddha nature by understanding the laws of nature as they relate to our wakefulness, and as they relate to living in harmony with things in ways that bring benefit to self and others, and reduce harm in self and others. It's our learning and our practice. It's living intentionally, with care, to know ourselves, to cultivate ourselves, and to bring benefit to ourselves and others.
And the third refuge is Sangha, community, companions, friends on the path, being nourished and nourishing others who share the desire to realize wakefulness for the benefit of self and others, to have a life that is inclined to presence in working with these things. What a beautiful refuge to have companions on the path. Mutually care for each other and the path.
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Thanks for coming to the Essential Dharma study group. We're beginning a journey that goodness knows how long it'll take in studying this particular framework. I've been doing a lot of thinking about how best to create a more contained, linear structure for us to learn and practice together this immense dharma.
The dharma's so simple. It points to just transforming suffering and realizing wellbeing. But in order to do that, we want to be able to realize what's often referred to as luminous mind. Luminous mind is the mind that is awake, that is free. Ultimately, enlightened mind is luminous mind realized 24/7, but hold, hold that way, way into the future, 'cause it's also nice to have that luminous mind available to us more moments in the day.
Luminous mind is the natural state of mind that is awake, that is liberated, either temporarily or permanently with complete enlightenment supposedly. I don't know. Is one that is able to see in a way that is unattached by views, but informed by them and the rest of life.
We have this mind that has a hard time realizing and abiding in its luminous nature. We get so wrapped up and identified with our conceptual thoughts, our views, our behaviors, our patterns, our implicit and explicit biases that we bring to our experience. The most severe manifestation of that which causes us and others suffering is the clinging to these things, the identification to these things.
So our practice in the dharma is a practice to not cling and identify to the smaller sense of self that is not able to see beyond its own view, to see beyond its own habit, and to be able to position ourselves in a state of consciousness that is able to not only see what we are viewing, but also to see beyond, because we're not clinging to what we're viewing.
There's been hundreds of schools of dharma that approach things in different ways, based either on culture, a ritualized understanding of a particular approach. The dharma teachings are universal. It's like these dharma teachings are a forest, and different groups picked up different leaves and said, "These are the leaves that reflect the whole of the forest, all of the leaves in the forest." No matter how we approach the dharma, we're taking certain elements and we're using them to realize not just these elements, but this greater truth. We're studying these leaves to understand all the leaves in the forest, and that's just the way that it is.
There are certain approaches that, you know, their leaf is you just sit and you watch the mind and do nothing, and that's a method. It's called the method of no method, but it's still a method, it's still a framework when you go into it.
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So what's central to a lot of this is that all of these dharma teachings share is this: there's luminous mind and then there's the mind that's everyday mind that we are very familiar with. And we want to figure out a path that takes us from this identified mind to luminous mind. There's a linear way that we can do this.
One method that's directly and indirectly taught in pretty much all schools is teachings around the four foundations of mindfulness. So I've been trying to figure out what is the most healthy entry point for our linear path that really does contain an approach, not only for these four foundations that we'll get into, but that are the general approach to all things dharma. And how do we teach the four foundations and practice the four foundations in a way that teaches all of the dharma?
So we're gonna start at the four foundations of mindfulness. Start at the four foundations of mindfulness, mindfulness of body, feelings, mind, and dharmas. We're going to develop a framework, or learn a framework, that holds all of these four foundations that include 14 elements. 14 elements, and we're going to understand how all of these elements are approached. We're gonna understand what they mean in context of the path. We're gonna understand how we're supposed to take meaning from them, the states of mind that approaches them, and we'll kind of follow this in a linear way that will illuminate how we approach all dharma practice.
So no matter what we study, we can study it, understand it, approach it, comprehend it, contemplate it from this general framework, which is the framework that we're asked to study all dharmas.
The four foundations of mindfulness traditionally are divided into four categories:
Something called feeling tones: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, worldly, and unworldly.
These are dispositions of mind, a mind that is contracted, a mind that is not contracted, that is liberated, a mind that is transcendent of our karmic conditionings, and a mind that is bound by them. So it's these general states of mind. It doesn't mean your thoughts, but it does often mean just what is on the mind, which can include thoughts.
The fourth category, which is called mindfulness of Dharma. These Dharmas, these five Dharmas, are:
These are Dharmas that are extremely relevant to realizing mindfulness. So these are categories of Dharma teachings that are extremely relevant to our practice, worth knowing in every moment of our experience, that are worth cultivating.
I like to remind myself and others that this includes all Dharma teachings. Everything we study in the Dharma, all of these lists, we can say, "That can go here." But these other ones are the dominant ones that have been kind of agreed upon with different translations of the Satipatthana Sutta that are most relevant. By the way, four noble truths includes the Eightfold Path, so that's in there, too.
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This model, what Bhikkhu Anālayo calls the direct path, we're calling the promise. This practice promises liberation. This practice promises that if we look at these conditions, anxiety, unhealth, stress, all of these different things, non-realization, that if we practice this path, it is a direct path to be able to empower ourselves to transform the dukkha into happiness.
"Thus, I have heard on one occasion, the Buddha addressed a gathering of monks. 'Friends,' he began. 'Venerable sir,' they replied. And the Buddha says, 'Friends, this is the direct path that leads to the purification of hearts and minds, the overcoming of unhealthy stress, depression, anxiety, or the transformation of suffering and discontent, for the attaining of the noble path, for the realization of health, well-being, freedom, and awakening. This is specifically the four foundations of mindfulness.'"
So for all of us, if we're experiencing depression, anxiety, discontentment, from existential crisis, from anything. This is saying, "Hey, this is the way to realize the Four Noble Truths. This is the way that we can put ourselves in the position that we can liberate ourselves from these things and realize these things."
The ground and the method are what Bhikkhu Anālayo calls the definition. The definition goes like this: What are these Four Foundations of Mindfulness? Hey, friends, regarding X, so this ground, X means one of these, or D, we'll just call it. Regarding D, body, feelings, we abide contemplating D, diligent, clearly knowing, and mindful, free from desire and discontent in regard to the world.
This is huge. We're gonna spend a lot of time on figuring out what in the world does all of that mean, to not only the Four Foundations, but to the whole Dharma. This definition is the ground in which we approach our practice. It's kind of like the prerequisite. It is the steady ground that we stand on. If we don't have these elements taught throughout the Dharma, throughout all of the teachings, we don't necessarily have a solid Dharma practice or foundations practice.
The method, which Bhikkhu Anālayo calls the refrain, goes like this: In this way, regarding contemplating D, the Dharma, in the Dharma, we abide contemplating internally. We abide contemplating the Dharma externally. We abide contemplating both the Dharma internally and externally, which is a huge thing that we'll spend a lot of time on.
We abide contemplating the nature of arising in the Dharma, body, feelings, mind. We abide contemplating the nature of passing away, of both arising and passing away. And then mindfulness, that there is this D, Dharma, is established just to the extent necessary for bare knowledge, this is huge, and continuity of mindfulness. And we abide independently without clinging to anything in the world.
So that ground, that first part, and this method, the how, not only allows when it's applied to all of these Dharmas, these 14 elements, these Four Foundations, not only does it allow us to look at them in a particular way, it actually is the way that we practice that reveals luminous mind from the mind that is identified. They define how we approach the whole Dharma, the whole practice.
And so the results of this practice is what Bhikkhu Anālayo calls the prediction, and he predicts, or the Buddha does: "Friends, if we develop these four Satipatthanas in such a way for seven years, one of two fruits can occur. Either we realize full awakening here and now, or that luminosity of mind, or if there's even a trace of clinging left, we enter non-returning having established the necessary conditionings for full awakening."
So, either this will illuminate if we're karmically predisposed, we can practice for a second and realize this awakening. Or more realistically, because we have learned how to approach our life from this framework, and if we're committed to it, it will lead to awakening. Because we saw it to a certain degree, there is no going back from unseeing it.
This is one of the beautiful things about Dharma and mindfulness and these teachings. It changes the way that we view things. And once we see it, it's become so obvious that it's hard to unsee it and go back to being satisfied with the way that we were seeing things before. And so when they say you've become a stream enterer, stream enterer or never returner, well even more extreme, this is a person who they've unseen enough that eventually they will be led to realization.
And then they give timeframes from seven days to seven years depending on our disposition, but he didn't say seven decades, so that's good. It's a little shorter.
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Our whole practice is informed by the intentions that are related to this promise. So if we're practicing mindfulness with no intention, not realizing that this practice is to transform suffering and lead to the liberation and the happiness of awakening, we don't have a Four Foundations practice. We have to have meaning to the ritual, that we're practicing right now.
Has anyone just practiced meditation or tried to show it mindfully but forgot why you're doing it? You just go into the practice. We need to in order to have a certain amount of clear knowing and direction, we need to remember this promise and this direct path, what we're doing.
In the teachings of the four foundations of mindfulness, they give us these extremely relevant areas to contemplate, because we get so identified to them, with them, that they prevent us from seeing fully, right? Or two, if we look at them in a particular way, they will reveal our luminous mind. They will reveal our liberation. So we're not doing anything with these foundations. We're using them as a way to change our seeing, the way that we perceive things from mindlessness to mindfulness.
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The engine of our practice is going to be these Dharmas and it's going to be the method, the objects of contemplation. So, why study the four foundations of mindfulness as the primary thing? Is because it is like the, like the Buddha said, it is the direct, a direct path to liberation. It is a direct path to realize the liberation from suffering and to realize the happiness that comes from liberation, the joy and the freedom and all of that.
But not only that, it informs how we approach all of the Dharma. If we learn how to establish a way of seeing that is outlined in this vast teachings of the four foundations of mindfulness, we will be able to look at all Dharmas, meaning all the elements of our life, and the teachings in a way that help naturally prevent identification to wrong view, and unhelpful and the conditions that lead to that, and naturally allow us to realize the luminosity of our awakening.
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I'll stop there. I know this is an overview for some of us, but I invite everyone as we explore this, to not see it as an overview, but see it with fresh eyes because we're gonna delve into each of these so deeply it's gonna be awesome. May we all realize our own luminosity.
Every moment is a moment to develop peace for foundations of mindfulness. May our practice not only benefit us, may it help us benefit all those we come into contact with in this world that so desperately needs this kind and compassionate, wise relationship to it. As Stevie Wonder said, "Love is in need of love today. Send yours in right away."
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This teaching is part of an ongoing study group exploring the Four Foundations of Mindfulness as outlined in the Satipatthana Sutta. For deeper study, the teacher recommends Bhikkhu Anālayo's book "Satipatthana" and Joseph Goldstein's "Mindfulness."
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