Second talk on Mindfulness given to Metta Institute.

Mindfulness 2 – Metta Institute

Second talk on Mindfulness given to Metta Institute.

By Zoketsu Norman Fischer | July 31, 2007

Abridged and edited by Ryūsen Barbara Byrum

 

I would like to review a couple of things that I said yesterday about the process of mindfulness. I was saying that it's a little shocking, maybe – when you sit down and you have nothing to do and just pay attention – how much goes on, and how much dumb stuff goes on. Even some disturbing stuff goes on, and you think, "Where did all that stuff come from?" I was saying that a lot of that was there anyway, but that the mind is muffled most of the time – distracted most of the time – at almost a subliminal level, and so you don't notice what's going on.

The point of settling ourselves is to allow the stuff that is there to be noticed. Thich Nhat Hanh has the great image of a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice that is all stirred up with pulp. And you set it down and don't do anything with it, and then it settles. When it settles, you can see the orange juice is clear.

So that is what this process is. It's not so much to produce something that isn't already there, as it is to become aware of the pattern of what is there. And the more you are aware of what's there – what was there all along – the more you discern the patterns that cause it to arise.

I was using the metaphor of the mind as an ocean. The surface waves and ripples, which are subject to whatever wind is blowing, are like emotions – constantly agitated. A little deeper, the currents go by without so much agitation. And then at the bottom of the ocean, it is just clear and deep, without much movement. All of it is our consciousness. Most of the time we are only aware of the ripples and the agitation, and we only see so far. When the mind settles, we see a little more deeply. We see the deeper patterns that are controlling those ripples that are on the surface. If we become still more quiet, we can see the universal patterns of mind that are true for all of us – not just my individual situation and my set of circumstances, but the deep patterns of mind that are driving my particular set of circumstances. When I see them in myself, I realize that everyone is driven by these deep patterns, whatever the specificity of someone's karma, issues, or history may be.

The mindfulness sutras are both called the Satipatthana Sutta. Sati means mindfulness, and patthana is usually translated as "foundation." But it is an interesting word – and I am going into this because I think it's really important – that suggests a very concrete place, almost like a physical location, a ground upon which something is established. So Thich Nhat Hanh translates the word as "The Four Establishments of Mindfulness."

This is interesting in itself. The Buddha and the original people who practiced this saw mindfulness as a concrete, almost physical location in the mind and in the heart, a place of craft where you could do some work. Roll up your sleeves and do some work. We have no concept in our cultural life of the craft of working with the mind and heart as if it were actually "stuff." But that is exactly the sense of it. To work with the mind and heart is something very practical, very grounded, very real. It is touchable, concrete, and located in a place.

The idea, I think, is that there could be an infinite number of places for this work. But for purposes of our being able to be effective in speaking about it, working with it, let's designate four places – four different stations, so to speak – where we can work with this very concrete experience we are having that we call our life. So there are four locations, four benches, in the workshop. Four stations where we can work, where we can develop the craft of living with our thought and emotion.

It might also be worth noting that what we call thoughts, what we call emotions, what we call consciousness, what we call perceptions, are not so much distinguished from one another. To be sure, distinctions are made, but the distinctions are really not so important. In our culture a huge distinction is made between emotions and thoughts. Huge distinction. We are starting to soften that distinction, and it is really good that we are; but I think we are all deeply embedded in our conditioning to believe that thought can figure things out. Thought is like the boss, a mastermind, who can look at the world and figure it out. So if we are sitting on our cushions dismayed at our lack of "progress," that's because we are convinced that our thought should be able to get control of the situation and work it out. We go to school; we learn it; we've got it down; we ought to be able to master this. Emotion, on the other hand, is messy, irrational. We should have control of our emotions.

So in our way of thinking there is a firewall between emotions and thoughts. But in Buddhist psychology, there is no such firewall. Basically the idea is that there is a field of awareness, and within that field of awareness there is a flux of stuff coming every moment. The point of the categorization of all the stuff in Buddhist psychology is not so much to investigate as it is to heal. So everything is looked at from the perspective of healing. But it is important that it is just a bunch of stuff arising in the field of awareness. Every moment is an event made up of numerous aspects, and it doesn't matter so much what we call them. Thoughts, physical sensations, perceptions, emotions, feelings – there is an acknowledgement that in every moment there is always all of that stuff arising. The sum total of it goes into making up a moment of experience, a moment of consciousness. They are all at every moment mental, emotional concomitants of consciousness.

This means that in the Buddhist way of looking at the mind, at the heart, there is a willingness to accept and examine the whole range. In other words, we are not only saying, "This is the good stuff." To know the field is to assume a variety in it, and to be open to it, rather than saying, "This is me. I like this. This is not me. I don't like that. I refuse. That can't be there. No, no, no, no." This is the usual way that we look at our mind, with a whole lot of sense of the way it should be. We have an idea of who we are, and within that there are certain kinds of things that can be in our heart – things that are in-bounds and things that are out-of-bounds. And so if something out-of-bounds should chance to appear, we either refuse to notice it, or if we do see it, we condemn ourselves for it, thereby conditioning ourselves not to see it if it would appear again. Yesterday I tried to draw the distinction between mindfulness and self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is a very narrow band within this whole area of experience arising in every moment. Self-consciousness is a very narrow band that selects and accepts and desires certain kinds of experience and basically wants to eliminate and not see other kinds of experience.

Mindfulness, then, by comparison with our usual way of being with experience, is expansive and sometimes even shocking or disturbing at first. But then it is liberating, because you realize, "Oh, that's there, too, in me, in here, just like other people. Nothing in anyone is foreign to me. So I don't need to be shocked, amazed, or condemning of other people, because it has also been seen in here as well." So it is a very wide and accepting field by its nature, by its definition.

There are four workshop benches of mindfulness. There are many different translations and senses of these, both in Asian commentary and now in English, where various words are used to translate them, depending on the interpretation. But I will use the words mindfulness of the body; mindfulness of feelings; mindfulness of consciousness; mindfulness of dharmas.

Mindfulness of the body is most simply appreciated by being aware of the nature of the body. To be aware and to feel and to sense that the body is the earth. To be aware and to feel and sense that the body is not really a thing as much as an ongoing flow or process of change on a moment-by-moment basis. To be aware that it is impermanent, and so on. If one were truly aware with full intention, to the fullest extent of just that, it would be enough to keep you going for many lifetimes. Deep knowledge and wisdom. Just to know what it means to be an embodied human being. So that's the first one.

The second one is mindfulness of feelings. Although the word "feelings" is often used to translate the Pali word vedanā, it doesn't mean emotion. It means something a little bit more basic than emotion. To give you an idea of it, the word means not only feelings, but a gut reaction, an almost subliminal gut reaction that we have on a moment-to-moment basis to anything that comes into the field of awareness. The same word is also used to denote bodily sensations. So bodily sensation is a vedanā: cold, heat, pain, discomfort, pleasure. Physical sensations.

Mindfulness is taught in many, many ways. One way is to focus in particular on the sensations that arise in the body while you are sitting, or at any time, but especially while you are sitting. So to pay attention to cold, heat, pain, itchiness, there is a technique that is often used of scanning the body. Starting at the top of the head, see if you feel any sensations at the top of the head, the forehead, the cheeks, the jaw, the shoulders, and so on, going all the way down through the body and coming back up again. Keep constantly looking with the eye of awareness for sensations in the body, so that you can become aware of vedanā, of these gut reactions, these subliminal things that are always going on.

Now I want to repeat that the point here is simply to be aware, not to analyze. So when you notice that you are analyzing, you label it. You know it's going on, and you are clear that that is not the job, not the task.

So that gets us into the third foundation of mindfulness, which is mindfulness of mental or emotional states. It is on this level that we are talking about what we usually call emotion. Here is where we are labeling a state of mind – unhappy, dismayed, confused – with whatever labels we want to use to characterize a thought or state of mind in a particular moment. I will read you what it actually says in the sutra about this one. This is contemplation of consciousness.

Here, bikkhus, a bikkhu knows the consciousness with lust as consciousness with lust; consciousness without lust as consciousness without lust; the consciousness with hate as consciousness with hate; the consciousness without hate as consciousness without hate; the consciousness with delusion as consciousness with delusion; the consciousness without delusion as consciousness without delusion.

The matter-of-fact dispassion of this is really remarkable, when you figure that this is the Buddha talking to monastics, who, of course, are not supposed to be going around having minds full of hate and lust. And yet, for the purposes of mindfulness, none of that is referenced. If there is lust, we are aware that the consciousness is overcome with lust. If there is no lust, we are aware of that. It doesn't say that one is better than the other. It just says, "When it's this way, know that it is this way. When it is that way, know that it is that way."

The idea is that whatever state it is, you would be aware of it and know it for what it is, and to be clear about that. Not justifying, not rationalizing, not evaluating, not denying – but just "This is what it is." As long as I am honestly aware of what it is, that's my job. It is all I have to do. Just be aware.

Thus the practitioner dwells contemplating the consciousness in the consciousness internally or contemplating the consciousness externally.

This formula is repeated throughout the sutra over and over again, because we want to be careful to practice awareness constantly. This would be the idea, that we would be practicing awareness all the time. In meditation would be, maybe, the most intense time for practicing awareness, because we would have suspended all other tasks. Ideally we would be practicing awareness all the time; but the danger would be that we would become so inwardly focused that we would lose track of being in this world.

So we are aware of these things arising within us, and we are aware of things arising within others all around us, so that it is not a matter of internal focus only. We are aware internally and we are aware externally. Much of what we would be aware of, for example, is sound, which is not exactly internal. Or visual perception. Our reaction to external stimulation. So it is both internal and external awareness. And we are aware of how that arises. What causes it to arise? And when it passes away, what causes it to pass away? Be aware of that.

Then it says – and these are all formulaic, repeated throughout the sutra – "doing this not attached to anything." No craving and no confused views. Not clinging to anything in the world. So, in other words, just be aware, without preference, without clinging. And, of course, when there is preference and clinging, be aware of that. Preference, clinging, avoidance – you can be aware of that. There is already a measure of healing, and a measure of salvation, so to speak, just in the awareness. And that's how the practitioner dwells, contemplating the consciousness in the consciousness.

So in the sutra we have lust, hate, and delusion. We would label or understand the state of the mind that we have. That's the job. Just to understand it. Just to see it, and every time we label and are aware, there is a kind of letting go in the very awareness. That's the thing. When you are aware of something in this way, there is a letting go in the awareness – a willingness to just be there with whatever it is. To know what it is and be there for the next moment – whatever is there.

The last of the foundations is called the foundation of dharmas. This is the one that is the awareness of the deepest of human patterns, the deepest patterns of mind, which I would say are not only human, but the deepest patterns within being itself. What does this amount to? When it comes to discerning the deepest healing truths at the most fundamental level of our lives, the first thing is that we are aware of our confusion. We're aware of our distraction. We're aware of our resistance. That is how we enter the deepest level of our hearts, of our minds. So we are thinking that this resistance shouldn't be there. We're frustrated because we're trying to make the resistance go away. We're having all sorts of self-judgment and self-struggle with these distractions and resistances. But the resistances are the foundation of truth. That is how we are going to get to where we need to get to, by uncovering and being aware of all the ways in which we are running away.

So we need all that. When you are confused about your confusion, that's difficult. But you can just resist and be aware of it; and just be confused and know it; be angry and know you're angry. Whatever it may be, whatever way is your way of holding yourself back from embracing this experience, we need to know that and allow that to be there fully. That is the gateway into the truth.

Whatever your confusions, whatever mess you're in, that's your treasure. You are exactly in the mess you need to be in, whatever it is. It is only when you appreciate that mess that it will lead you directly to the truth that you need to see – that this is your gateway into the truth. Everybody has a unique mess, right? Your mess is not the same as mine.

I find this remarkable that the Buddha talks about anger, laziness, lust, desire, fear, confusion – all the categories of stuff that that keep us away. Now we're at the deepest level. Now we are going to get to the most healing of all truths. These are our treasures, in whatever combinations are unique to us. This is one of the secrets and joys of meditation practice: When you can enjoy and appreciate your attachment, your anger, your confusion, your stupidity, and say, "Wow! That is amazing!" I have been doing this practice for forty years, and I still say that. "Wow! That's amazing! I really appreciate that. I'm really impressed with that." When you can look at it that way, it is really kind of fun and beautiful. In other words, what a freedom, just to be aware of it. How smart is it to have somebody there who is giving you a hard time – whether it is yourself or somebody outside of you? Someone who says, "That shouldn't be happening. That's no good. That's not what I want right now." And yet there it is. How far does that get you? Nowhere. So the only real way is to let yourself be aware. And then it changes the barred door into a door that can be opened.

So that is how it begins – the doorway to truth. And then, if you are willing to go through that door, the next thing that happens is that you begin to become aware of the whole process of how we make confusion in our lives. You begin to set aside the usual story about me and my tale of woe and all my problems; and you begin to appreciate what is happening and how it happens, and the process by which things get processed and understood, and get confused. And you begin to see how it is you make trouble for yourself, and how others make trouble for themselves and for you. You begin to take an interest in that.

And then once that happens, the next thing that happens is there arises in you, quite by surprise, all these wonderful experiences – like energy and interest in life. Imagine what it would be like to take interest in the human condition, rather than to be dismayed by it and constantly in a state of semi-despair. Imagine what it would be like to take a zestful interest: "Look at that! Wow, how did that happen? Yes, it is sad, but how did that happen? What is it? Let me understand it more deeply." And that becomes spontaneously the way you feel about life, and then you live with more awareness of and focus on what is being lived.

"Because of this it has been said that this is the only way, oh practitioners. This is the only way for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation; for the disappearance of pain and grief; for reaching the noble path; for the realization of nirvana and complete peace – namely, the four foundations of mindfulness." This is what the Buddha said, and the monastics were glad in their hearts and welcomed the words of the Blessed One.

In practice, what is important is simplicity and repetition. It doesn't help to make it complicated. In a way, everything that I said today is a little bit more complicated than it needs to be. It's as if what you are going to do here is extremely simple and straightforward. What it amounts to is simply to practice the sutra by being with the body, by being with the breath, and using the body and the breath to become as intimate with your experience – whatever it may be – as it is possible for you to be. This is what you want to do – to be close to what happens. Close to your life, as close as you can be. As intimate as you can be and as warm-hearted as you can be with whatever there is. There is nothing that can happen that you can't be intimate with and warm-hearted with, even if it is something that is definitely a bad state of mind, or painful. You don't need to be afraid to be close to it and intimate with it, because the incredible wisdom of the body and of the breath will hold you through it and be intimate with it. You can't push it away anyway, right? By being in that state of mind, you cannot get rid of it anyway. By holding it at arm's length, you only make it painful.

So just allow yourself to be aware and intimate with whatever arises. Please, please don't worry about getting this right, or wanting some pre-ordained result to arise from this. It's not about that. Trust the process. Just keep coming back to yourself. That's what you're doing, really. You are coming back to yourself over and over again. When your mind is taking you away, just bring yourself back. "Please come back. I'm here. Please come back." Like a child who wants to go all over the place, "Please come back. I love you. It will be okay. Come back." Just with that process of reaching out your hand and getting yourself to come back. In one half hour of meditation, ten times, twenty times, fifty times, a thousand times – "Come back. Come back. Come back. It's warm here. It is going to be okay."

Just whatever it is, be aware, be mindful. It's very simple if you just do it, even if it isn't always pleasant. It's always warm, it's always real. So just come back. Don't be fooled by anything. So that's the practice of mindfulness. Call to yourself and answer yourself, "I am here. I am here. Don't be fooled. Don't run away. Okay, okay, I'll come back."

That's all that you have to do. It is really simple. It's profound to know what the process is and what the possibilities are.

First of two part talk on Mindfulness given to the Metta Institute

Mindfulness 1 – Metta Institute

First of two part talk on Mindfulness given at the Metta Institute

By Zoketsu Norman Fischer | July 30, 2007

Abridged and edited by Ryusen Barbara Byrum

 

I thought of a few things to say, in general, about the practice of mindfulness – things that I have found to be helpful and interesting in the course of the practice.

First of all, we are all deeply conditioned to see body and mind as two completely different realms – the mind being more serious than the body. Of course, if something goes wrong with the body, it becomes serious, but we are conditioned to think that the mind is more serious than the body. So it is sort of surprising, then, that mindfulness seems to be a fairly thorough-going and deep spiritual practice that is based on awareness of the body. Simply being aware of the body. We can see a lot of virtues in being aware of the body – such as thinking it is good for your health – but it doesn't seem like that would be a spiritual path.

So it is a little counterintuitive, but that is what is suggested in the practice of mindfulness. If you read the whole Mindfulness Sutra, you are startled when you realize that most of it – pages and pages – are about various ways of being aware of the body and contemplating the nature of the body. All meditation techniques begin with mindfulness of the body and emphasize mindfulness of the body over and over again – not even as a step, but as a practice: constantly coming back to the body and breath.

So this in itself is a very important and deep thing to think about. Spirituality is rooted not – as we have been conditioned to believe – in the spirit and the soul and the heart and the mind, but in the body. We do want to access the spirit, the heart, and the mind, but the way to do that is through the body. So the body is not preliminary. It is the way. It's the gateway to a particular sort of awareness that is advocated in the Mindfulness Sutra and, in general, in mindfulness practice in Buddhism.

In TheFour Foundations of Mindfulness, the first foundation – meaning the most foundational of the foundations – is the basis of everything. It is simply to embrace, probably in a way that one has never before embraced, the reality that one is a body. One is made of the elements of earth. The body is literally earth. In Hebrew the word for human being is the same as the word for earth, because human beings spring from the earth. It is the basic reality, and we come back to that reality, over and over again, and we ground ourselves in it. The body is the foundation of mindfulness of our emotions; mindfulness of our thoughts; mindfulness of our deeply rooted feelings; and mindfulness of all spiritual insights and realities.

A point that seems tricky for us as Western people, especially post-modern Westerners, is that sometimes when you hear about mindfulness, and you are encouraged to practice mindfulness, it's hard to figure out what the difference is between mindfulness and ordinary self-consciousness. One could say, "Aren't we frequently – without meditation, without any of this training – aware of our emotions? It's not like we never knew we had an emotion. We're aware of emotions, our feelings, our thoughts. These are accessible to us already without this breathing. In fact, throughout our whole lives we've been quite aware of our mental states and feelings."

However, we have been aware of all this from the standpoint of self-consciousness. "I'm feeling this. I'm thinking that. I'm upset about what I'm thinking. I don't like it that much. It's awful what I'm feeling. I shouldn't be feeling this. I wish I weren't feeling this." So our standpoint has been, naturally and obviously, self-conscious: "I'm feeling this. I'm thinking that. I'm aware of this." Right? That is what awareness has always been.

First of all, it's quite natural for the mind to go that way. It does seem like we are somebody. Doesn't that seem to be true? Seems pretty plausible. Everybody calls me by my name. It seems like we have that experience of being somebody, not only from within, but also from all around us. Not that we have particularly examined this question deeply, but we take it for granted that everything that we think, feel, and hope for is all coming from the standpoint of myself. So, naturally, when someone tells us to be mindful, to be aware of our thoughts and feelings, we say, "Okay I will be aware of my thoughts, I will be aware of my feelings." The difference is very small, but actually huge, and if we are mindful in a self-conscious way, then, in fact, it's not that helpful. It can even be unhelpful. The practice of mindfulness could over-emphasize our self-consciousness. I've seen this happen, when meditators become hyper-self-conscious through the practice of mindfulness – or through what they think is the practice of mindfulness.

So, I want to make a distinction between mindfulness and self-consciousness. Maybe I could say it like this: Mindfulness is a more immediate, because, after all, we mediate the gut feeling of an emotion. First there is a gut feeling of an emotion, and before we even register that feeling, we immediately say, "I'm feeling this. I'm feeling unhappy." Mindfulness is a gut feeling, that which might not actually be unhappiness. It might be tension in the body. It might be a particular thought. It might be a particular mood or valence of feeling. But then we call it unhappiness, and we say, "I'm unhappy."

So mindfulness is more phenomenological, so to speak. It is more immediate, more basic. It is just an awareness of what is arising within the field of awareness, rather than personalizing it: "I'm feeling this. I'm feeling that." You can see why it has to start with the body and the breath, because those sensations are more immediate. When it comes to feelings and thoughts, I would say that it is pretty much absolutely impossible to be aware of a feeling or a thought without personalizing it, without making it a form of self-consciousness. This becomes more possible when you train in the more immediate sort of awareness, that is most easily done by being aware of the body and the breath. The sensations in the body are very detailed, and there is a lot less tendency to elaborate on them. Of course, we can do that, and we have experienced that the last few days – elaborating on the different sensations of the body. For example, "How come I can't sit up straight?" Basically it is easier to be phenomenological about taking notice without any commentary, without any personalization – just what arises in the field of awareness.

I understand that it may take awhile to get the feeling – the immediate feeling within your body and emotions and thoughts – of the difference between self-consciousness and awareness. Just to be aware of what arises in the field of awareness. So what I am saying now is just be aware that there is that difference, whether or not you can see it. Just be aware of that. So don't be so sure that when you think, "I'm feeling this, or I'm feeling that," that that is mindfulness, or that's what is going on.

I am sowing the seeds of doubt and confusion, I hope, because this is something different.

The thing that is important about this, and that you notice very quickly once you begin practicing mindfulness, is that there actually isn't that much difference between something that arises in the field of awareness which I would call "me" or "mine," and something that arises in the field of awareness that I would not call "me" or "mine." If you read the Mindfulness Sutra carefully, and think about what it is saying, this is what is being said repeatedly. And this is of cardinal importance for the work that you are training to do: Just being aware of the thoughts and feelings that are arising within the field of awareness.

In other words, arising in the field of awareness is a thought. Arising in the field of awareness is a sound. Arising in the field of awareness is something that I am seeing. These things are equally arising in the field of awareness, but I usually say that the thought is "mine," whereas the perception of looking at you is not me. Hearing the sound of the bird is not me. But from the standpoint of awareness itself, or mindfulness itself, it is all something that is arising in my consciousness. Consciousness is also something that arises, and it is just as much an experience as a thought. Consciousness itself is an experience. That becomes a very important thing, because we live pretty much imprisoned by the skin – by this little bag of stuff that we think is me.

With mindfulness there is an understanding that there's an inside and an outside, but the distinction between inside and outside is not as important as we have made it. You can imagine what the practice of mindfulness would do for your capacity to listen, to empathize, to intuit what's going on around you – with an intimacy that is not really possible if your outward awareness isn't really focused on another. With mindfulness you are focused on just what arises within the field of awareness. Sometimes it comes from inside. Sometimes it comes from outside. Either way, it is just as immediate, just as important, and just as much one's own. So that's important, also, to realize.

So this is a pretty radical shift: to stop living the flow of your experience from the standpoint of oneself, and begin to live the flow of experience from the standpoint of what arises and passes away. What arises and passes away. It's a really big shift, so it takes a lot of training. I think that everybody should be able to complete the training in this. Everyone should really try to get a glimpse of the distinction that I am trying to make. It's so difficult to make this distinction clear, because of our language and our whole way of looking at things. It's almost impossible to make it, but you will see it in the course of this retreat.

It's not about setting yourself up as an observer. That's exactly self-consciousness. I am an observer over here, observing what is going on inside of me. [Rather,] in a sense, you could say, this is a drastic disappearing – allowing what is being experienced in the field of awareness to be there, with a knowing of what it is. And sometimes that could be a thought; it could be a feeling; it could be an emotion. It could be a memory; it could be a visual object. It could be a sound; it could be a smell; it could be a physical sensation. In fact, it's all things, constantly in a flow, sometimes one of them succeeding the other in rapid succession. It's letting that flow take place, without conditioning it too much by saying, "It's about me."

So, maybe in this week you have already glimpsed this. When you see yourself being excessively self-conscious, you know what that is, and you shift your attention from that to just what is happening. It's difficult to do, and it is not as if one can tell oneself to stop being self-conscious. But you begin to see self-consciousness as something arising in the field of awareness.

So, in this kind of business [training people to be caregivers for the dying], people talk about the way one is constantly evaluating oneself. Did anybody experience that? "How am I doing? Oh, this is really good. I'm doing this right." Or, "No, I'm not doing it right. I had it there for a minute, but now I'm not doing it right. I can't do this. I don't know why I ever signed up for this course. It's completely against anything I have ever done before, and I am lousy at this. Everybody else can probably do it really well, but I can't do it. What am I doing here? It is too embarrassing to get up in the middle of this and go screaming out of here, so I probably won't do that. But I am just going to have to grit my teeth and get through this somehow."

You might have had these thoughts cross your mind, which is kind of a desperate situation. Instead of that, just notice these things arising in your mind. Notice how compelling they are. You can imagine how liberating that would be, not always having to fall for every dumb story that your mind comes up with! To be able to decide, even: "I like that dumb story. I'll go with that." Or not. This would be great. This would be freedom, and that's what the mindfulness practice will help you with.

Now, let's be honest about this. There is an implied faith in all this. In the Mindfulness Sutra, the Buddha begins the whole discussion by making this ringing declaration: "All your human problems will be brought to rest simply by giving up our sense of control, our sense of ‘I have things that I want and like; and things that I don't want and like; and I want to get the things I want and like; and I want to get rid of the things that I don't want or like; and I am in charge of that process, and no one else is going to be in charge of it but me.'" I'm paraphrasing or maybe exaggerating, but this is the way we live, right? That's normal.

Mindfulness is saying: "No, I am not going to do that. I am just going to see what arises in the field of awareness." Period. I am going to devote myself, at least for these seven days, just to see what arises in the field of awareness, without making it mine; without conditioning or controlling it by my needs. I am just going to see what is there as honestly as I can. This implies that I am not going to apply the same kind of control and censorship to what is going on inside me and all around me.

There is an implied faith that this is a worthwhile thing to do. That the letting go of my usual set of controlling mechanisms is somehow going to result in another kind of process of my living, and the result will be a happy and wholesome improvement over how I have been living. So there is a kind of faith in that, because, otherwise, without some faith in that, why would you ever do it? It would be terrifying to give up that level of control, which is so intimately involved with almost every thought. To give that up and open up your hands, and to be aware of it, and to just let it be there.

Think about that. If you don't have some provisional faith in the process, that it is worthwhile and that it may be beneficial, it's hard to give yourself to it. You really don't want to give up that control. So it is something that you ought to reflect on. "Do I trust this process of awareness, of mindfulness, enough to take the risk of allowing whatever is there to be there, and just to be aware of it, without pushing it away because I don't like it? Just be aware of what is there? Am I willing?"

Now, the next thing I want to talk about is the actual technique of meditation. There was a 13^th century Japanese Zen teacher who, in discussing meditation, carefully tells his readers about how to sit up straight, how to hold your shoulders and arms, how to breathe, and so forth. Very technical, simple instructions. And then he says, "When you are doing meditation, you should think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Non-thinking. This is the essential art of meditation."

So those are the instructions that he gives. When you first hear that, it sounds a little strange, and it is hard to get much out of it, but there is a very profound and simple instruction that is being implied here. It has to do with all that I have been saying about mindfulness, especially why it is so important to be mindful about the body and the breath. And why mindfulness of the body and the breath create a shift in the way that you receive everything that happens.

Normally there is a lot of thinking that goes on. Notice this? When you are sitting in meditation, it can drive you crazy! Your mind is going on and on and on, and you think, "It doesn't usually happen like that." But actually it does. I think if you look at ordinary, everyday consciousness, there is a certain muffled quality to it. It is almost as if somebody has put a thick blanket over your brain, and only very little gets out. All this thinking that you are experiencing – and that may be driving you crazy while you are sitting – is going on anyway all the time, only it's muffled – you don't hear it. And now, in meditation, there is nothing else to do. No distractions, no tasks, so now you notice it. But there is a lot of this that goes on all the time – 24 hours a day, not only when you're conscious, but also when you're not conscious. This is going on, wearing a mighty groove in your life – like a superhighway going right down the middle of your life.

That is what Dogen is calling thinking. He says, "Think not-thinking." This is a different kind of thinking from the superhighway. It's a totally different kind of thinking. Because if you withdraw a certain amount of attention and a certain amount of energy from this habitual, almost unconscious, process, and, instead, with patience and persistence and loving-kindness and tenderness, you take that energy and you place it on the feeling of the body and the breath, over and over and over again, what you are doing is wearing down the gargoyles on that superhighway. And you are making another kind of thinking possible. This is what Dogen means by "Think not-thinking."

So that thinking – that has been part of your life all this time, that you might never have been aware of, which is out there in the bushes, in the hills, in the sky – will be able to come into view. You won't be stuck only on this one track of the superhighway. That's why when you bring some attention to the breathing and the posture, and you do that with a lot of persistence and faith, eventually things emerge from deeper levels of consciousness that have been there all along, but have been literally inaccessible because of this one-track groove.

So that's the instruction. Thinking is not the problem, but you have to think not-thinking. A different kind of thinking. The kind of thinking that, to whatever extent is possible for you, is freed up from your ordinary habit. When you have that measure of freedom, there's more spaciousness, and other things can arise that are very important for you to experience. They are not created by the practice. They are created by your life. But with this practice, they are given the space to arise, and you can be aware of them.

That's why I am bringing up Dogen, because meditation instructions sound like you are being told, "Okay, what you want to do is to be all the time aware of the breath; all the time aware of your body; and do not have any thoughts." And then you are frustrated, because you notice that thoughts are coming all the time, and you think, "I'm not doing this right." But that is not what is being suggested. What is being suggested is that the positive, intentional effort that you are making is to come to the breath and the feeling of the body. That's the effort you are making, over and over. But the point of that effort is to simply create a space inside, to allow whatever is there, whatever thought, whatever feeling, or sound, or sensation – and these are all one piece – to let it be allowed to just arise in the field of awareness.

Meditation – mindfulness – is a form of thinking, but it is much more spacious; much more intuitive; much more creative; and much more satisfying than the usual way that we think.