Greetings,

Let's start with a quote: “Mindfulness is useful everywhere. For the mind finds refuge in mindfulness and mindfulness is its protector.  Without mindfulness there can be no exertion or restraint of the mind.” ~The Buddha.

This month we will be exploring Right Mindfulness. There are so many definitions of the term mindfulness. I have heard it described as  moment to moment awareness of whatever is arising. The dictionary describes it as a state of being mindful or a practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened awareness but to me the best definition comes from the Abhidhamma – an act of remembering. It is the ability to remember which fights forgetfulness, carelessness and distraction. When we are forgetful, careless and distracted we in affect allow mind to run about undisciplined. There is no telling what will come up or what conditional connection will be made. If we remember to include the "right" aspect of this path factor, then we don't have to remember to be mindful. We attune to mindfulness and our natural human capacity "to remember" kicks into gear.

Sometimes mindfulness is treated like this is for beginners and then you move on from it. But that is not true. Buddha called the Satipatthana (The Four Foundations of Mindfulness) the direct path to liberation. This means that your mindfulness practice is a fundamental aspect of your practice all the way until mind is completely liberated. Something that significant cannot just be for beginners. A better way to look at it is that right mindfulness is both the start of our practice, it carries us into the depths of dhamma and is the culmination of our practice. This is because mindfulness is different every single moment. That's the way I look at it. Every second of our existence is different. It's constantly changing. When we apply mindfulness to this constantly changing existence, right mindfulness is renewed over and over and over again. In fact, much of our sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair is habitual. And in order to get disentangled from it, we need something that is renewing and refreshing itself moment by moment by moment. That's what the picture below is pointing to. It's like putting a sticky note on the mind to remember.

I think because this word mindfulness has been co-opted by the secular world, we think mindfulness is however the secular world defines it - a state of being mindful or a practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened awareness. If you go with this definition, you can get stuck in the idea that mindfulness requires controlling the mind. This notion that one would be in a state of being mindful or that one could maintain a non-judgmental state of heightened awareness, already creates a conflict. This is not the middle way that the Buddha was pointing to. Any retreat practitioner will tell you that even if all the conditions are set perfectly for us to be mindful, it takes a lot of energy, continuity and persistence for mindfulness to arise. The Satipattha contains 13 practices (21 if you count the 9 death practices), all of which point to noticing the natural state one is in. Basically just knowing what you're doing or what your sense doors are knowing is enough to cause mindfulness to arise naturally. Retreat teachers just reinforce the notion to be patient and persistent in practice.

I believe Buddha put mindfulness in the eightfold path for a specific reason. It's not so you learn it and then are done with it, but that you apply it and reapply it, and reapply it, and reapply it your entire life. It has to be this way because mindfulness is a present moment understanding. It's not a past understanding or a future understanding. It is a present understanding. This means the only time mindfulness becomes relevant is in the present moment. It's only relevant for supporting you in knowing (or remembering) the truth of your present experience. Moreover, the samadhi training aspect of the eightfold path (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration), has a deeper implication. It sensitizes us towards knowing harm.

The stronger our samadhi practice, the more sensitized we get. What we get sensitized to is dukkha. This is kind of unexpected. We don't expect to see dukkha when we practice mindfulness. We expect that we are going to practice dukkha away. The more we practice the better everything is going to get until there will be no more dukkha. You might even think that Buddha doesn't see dukkha, but that is not what an ennobling truth actually is. If it is an ennobling truth, then it's always true. It's not true sometimes, or it's not true for a duration of time. It is a truth that you can stand upon, that exists in the universe. And that truth is there is dukkha, that so long as there is greed, hatred and delusion in the world, dukkha will remain. Buddha said dukkha is to be known.

As practitioners, we have to learn how to recognize the presence of dukkha in this very moment. We have to recognize the cause of that dukkha in this very moment and learn to uproot and abandon it in this very moment. This means we have to be sensitive to our behaviors, our conducts, our way of moving in the world without getting entangled. And to get to that level of sensitivity we need to have right mindfulness, right effort, right concentration. Attunement at this level of sensitivity is what allows us to realize liberation. We can sense for ourselves the allure, the drawback, and the harm from all these habit patterns that push us about. We can't necessarily just stop a habit pattern no matter how much we wish we could. Right mindfulness helps us learn to recognize the unskillful, painful nature of our habit patterns without judgment. The lack of judgment isn't coming from us; it's coming from right mindfulness. It's coming from being sensitized to the suffering habit patterns bring and being attuned to the ennobling nature of the four noble truths. Right mindfulness (not just mindfulness) is what keeps us on this journey no matter what shows up.

With a deep bow,
Tuere