It is a truism to say that nobody likes suffering and everybody seeks happiness. In this world of ours, human beings are making all possible efforts for prevention and alleviation of suffering and enjoyment of happiness. Nevertheless, their efforts are mainly directed to the physical well-being by material means. Happiness is, after all, conditioned by attitudes of mind, and yet only a few persons give real thought to mental development; fewer still practice mind-training in earnest.
To illustrate this point, attention may be drawn to the commonplace habits of cleaning and tidying up one’s body; the endless pursuits of food, clothing, and shelter; and the tremendous technological progress achieved for raising the material standard of living, for improving the means of transport and communications, and for prevention and cure of diseases and ailments. All these strivings are, in the main, concerned with the care and nourishment of the body. It must be recognized that they are essential. However, these human efforts and achievements cannot possibly bring about the alleviation or eradication of suffering associated with old age and disease, domestic infelicity and economic troubles; in short, with non-satisfaction of wants and desires. Sufferings of this nature are not overcome by material means; they can be overcome only by mind-training and mental development.
Therefore, it becomes clear that the right way must be sought for training, stabilizing, and purifying the mind. This way is found in the Maha Satipatthana Sutta, a well-known discourse of the Buddha, delivered well over twenty-five hundred years ago. The Buddha declared thus:
This is the sole way for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the destroying of pain and grief; for reaching the right path, for the realization of Nirvana, namely the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.
You may have heard that you should be mindful all the time, whether you are at home or in the office, or on the bus or in your car or in somebody else’s car, etc. You may interpret this advice to mean that you should keep your mind focused all the time on your breath. While driving, if you simply keep your mind on the breath you probably will get into some problems, such as losing your attention to your driving or forgetting your driving and you may have an accidents.
Sometimes you may think “to be mindful all the time” means to pay attention only to what ever you are doing at that particular time. This, of course, is what any person who is serious enough in his/her work normally does. An artist, painter, writer, singer, composer, thinking, speaker, shooter, cook, etc. must pay attention to whatever they do at any time they are engaged in their work.
Not only human beings do this. You may have noticed cats paying total attention to their prey in order to catch them without disturbing their prey by making any mistakes. Tigers, lions and crocodiles pay total attention to what they are going to catch. You may have noticed cranes standing on one single spot for a long time to catch a fish. Sheep dogs pay total attention to the movements of sheep so they can run very quickly to direct the herd in the right direction. Unfortunately neither cat, crane, nor sheep dog can remove their greed, lust etc., or cultivate an iota of insight by merely paying total attention to their objects.
Paying attention to whatever you are doing at any time is not going to eliminate your greed, hatred, and ignorance. This, in fact, is exactly what you do in tranquillity meditation or concentration meditation. By paying attention to one thing at a time you cannot get rid of your psychic irritation. You may focus your mind on one single object for fifty years and still your psychic irritation will remain unchanged in your mind. One person may observe all the moral rules. Another may learn all the texts by heart. Someone else may gain concentration. Another may spend his/her entire life in solitude. All of them might think that they can experience supreme liberation from all psychic irritation, which no ordinary person can attain. But none of them can have that experience without destroying all the psychic irritation. Therefore in addition to all they practice they also must remove all their psychic impurities in order to experience the bliss of emancipation from all kinds of pain.
How to advance from scanning body sensations (Goenka method) or following the blood stream in the body to a sense of unification of the mind (ekaggata). Different strengths of samadhi: khanika, upacara, appana.
Source: www.rightview.org
Nowadays people are concerned with wellbeing, health and healing, and a lot of literature and courses are available on massage, yoga, Tai Chi and Qi Gong techniques. In place of these, there is one meditation exercise we can learn – the contemplation of the body, or mindfulness regarding the body, known as “Kayanupassana” in Pali.
Kayanupassana is not concerned with health or healing of the body. It is more concerned with healing of the mind, with spirituality. But because the body and the mind are closely related and the mind is very powerful, it does cover healing of the body and health and can have a very powerful healing force regarding the body.
Three things to note in Kayanupassana are, one, concentration developed in the mindfulness of the body is very strong, very powerful. Two, you do it yourself. You do not need somebody to put needles into you. You undergo the healing through your own mind. Three, it goes beyond the conceptual level. Concepts bring about many limitations. For example, the concept of time and space, when looked at in terms of the mind, does not exist as time and space, and contact can be immediate. Of course, you have to really believe in it. If you don’t believe it, the limit already exists in the mind. If you go into meditation, you forgo and go beyond these limits and your mind works on the level of realities. It by passes a lot of concepts and gets in touch with the actual energies that are involved in creation
Use the body to be free from the body
Let us look at what mindfulness of the body is all about. It uses the body to develop deep concentration, to develop insight. It makes use of the body to develop detachment, freedom. Meditation in mindfulness of the body is the emphasis. In one of the suttas, the “Dasuttara Sutta”, to the question of what is the one thing that should be developed, Sariputta replied, “mindfulness regarding the body”. Another sutta, the”Kayagatasati Sutta” can also be translated as mindfulness regarding the body. The Buddha enumerates very many advantages to be gained from mindfulness of the body, starting from the conquest of fear, to the development of the various psychic abilities and finally to a state of mind which is ready to penetrate into the true nature of things.
Once you can read your mind correctly, you can catch hold of defilements and kill them off: That’s insight meditation. The mind becomes razor sharp, just as if you have a sharp knife that can cut anything clear through. Even if defilements arise again, you can dig them up again, cut them off again. It’s actually a lot of fun, this job of uprooting the defilements in the mind. There’s no other work nearly as much fun as getting this sense of “I” or self under your thumb, because you get to see all of its tricks. It’s really fun. Whenever it shows its face in order to get anything, you just watch it—to see what it wants and why it wants it, to see what inflated claims it makes for itself. This way you can cross-examine it and get to the facts.
Once you know, there’s nothing to do but let go, to become unentangled and free. Just think of how good that can be! This practice of ours is a way of stopping and preventing all kinds of things inside ourselves. Whenever defilement rises up to get anything, to grab hold of anything, we don’t play along. We let go. Just this is enough to do away with a lot of stress and suffering, even though the defilements feel the heat.
SEEKING HAPPINESS
You may have heard that you should be mindful all the time, whether you are at home or in the office, or on the bus or in your car or in somebody else’s car, etc. You may interpret this advice to mean that you should keep your mind focused all the time on your breath. While driving, if you simply keep your mind on the breath you probably will get into some problems, such as losing your attention to your driving or forgetting your driving and you may have an accidents.