Lesson for mindfulness – part 1:
Living in the
Present Moment
Battaramulla
Siri Sudassanarama
sadaham senasuna
Ven. Dr. Mirisse Dhammika thero
For the first stage of learning what mindfulness is, one must realize the extent
to which people are normally not mindful.
Usually one notices the tendency of the mind of wander only when one is
attempting to accomplish some mental task and the wandering interferes. Or
perhaps one realizes that one has just finished an anticipated pleasurable
activity without noticing it. In fact, body and mind are seldom closely
coordinated. In the Buddhist sense, we are not present
Mindfulness is the process of ‘living in the present moment’; it is complete
awareness of whatever one occupies or in other words, to experience what one’s
mind is doing as it does it, to be present with one’s mind.
When the mind attains the full state of mindfulness (total alertness, vigilance
and observation), it may lead to the tranquility of the mind; it is free from
subjective judgments. For example, when an ordinary person looks at another
person (subjectivity), he will judge the person through pre-conceived beliefs
such as race, colour, attractiveness, and social status. But when the mindful
practitioner concentrates on the person objectively, he just observes what is.
How can one employ the mind as an instrument for knowing itself? How can one
work with the absence of mind? Traditionally, mindfulness is taught by means of
formal periods of sitting, or Bhavana. The reason for specific periods is to
simplify the situation for complete awareness. The body is maintained in an
upright posture and held still. For the development of bare attention, breathing
is the simplest and traditionally recommended technique at this very first
stage.
Each time the practitioner notices that his/her mind is wandering heedlessly,
he/she is to acknowledge non-judgmentally that wandering thought and return
his/her attention back to its objective. Venela, Thompson and Rosch
express how, at the early stages, the practitioner can tackle his/her own mind
to maintain mindfulness in the present moment:
Breathing one of the most simple, basic, ever-present bodily activities. Yet
beginning mediators are generally astonished at how difficult it is to be
mindful of even so uncomplex an object. Meditators discover that mind and body
are not coordinated.
The body is sitting, but the mind is seized constantly by thoughts, feelings,
inner conversations, daydreams, fantasies, sleepiness, opinions, theories,
judgments about thoughts and feelings, judgments about judgments – a
never-ending torrent of disconnected mental events that the meditators do not
even realize are occurring except at those brief instants when they remember
what thy are doing. Even when they attempt to return to their object of
mindfulness, the breath, they may discover that they are thinking about the
breath rather than being mindful of the breath. |