Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 85-minute session, Venerable Kaye Miner introduces Buddhist mindfulness in its full richness, contrasting secular mindfulness courses with the traditional Buddhist approach. She begins by guiding participants through breath and body awareness, then expands the scope dramatically: mindfulness is not just calm concentration but a spiritual practice rooted in wisdom and compassion. Miner clarifies how the four foundations of mindfulness taught by the Buddha address the four noble truths, and explains that in the Mahāyāna tradition especially, mindfulness is always paired with bodhicitta—the motivation to develop oneself for the benefit of all beings. She walks through practical applications: mindful walking or eating with awareness of impermanence and dependent arising, recognizing limiting self-assumptions, and observing how emotional reactions fuel suffering. By the end, mindfulness emerges as a tool for dissolving obstacles to wisdom and compassion rather than merely achieving temporary peace. Aimed at newcomers and those curious about Buddhism’s approach to meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 2011 01 08 day 1 session1.mp3
UUID: 3d444ce8-2203-4a62-a7aa-3f3aff69d043
Teacher: Ven Kaye Miner
Collection: Mindfulness with a Heart (Ven Kaye Miner)
Date: 2011-01-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 85.7 minutes
Words: ~8,252
Great, we’re all here together? Someday, but another Oh, well, you know, we’re all here, and that’s the main thing. So I think let’s just try to begin with developing a motivation for being here this weekend. So we just can sit quietly for a few minutes, just letting go busyness of coming here and sort of our curiosity about what’s going to be happening and whether that’s going to work for us or whether it’s going to be interesting, whether it’s going to meet the kind of expectations that we already have, we try to let all of that go and instead just take the moment to allow our bodies and our minds to come to a certain level of rest. We do that by sitting comfortably, being aware of the way we’re sitting.
And if possible, we can feel the weight of the lower part of our body sinking down into our chair, our cushion into the floor. For me, this feels like a sort of a heaviness of the lower part of my body. The muscles relaxing. Just let the weight fall down. And as a result, the upper part of the body feels lighter, and that enables us to to lengthen and straighten the back, the neck, even the back of the head.
And to help this process, we can allow our chin to come in slightly towards our throat. Not so much that we feel any pressure on the throat. It’s a very slight movement. Movement. We’re also careful to allow our chin to fall too far towards the chest because that leads to sleepiness.
We also avoid allowing the head to fall too far back because that can lead to distraction. So we’re just trying to find a comfortable middle way of sitting. Allowing the body to relax. And as our body sits here quietly, we notice that there’s still some movement going on. The rising and falling of our chest or abdomen as we breathe.
Or even far more subtle, the movement of the tiny hairs inside our nostrils as the air enters and leaves our nose. So we allow our mind to notice this, to notice this movement at whatever point is most obvious for you. And it’s like we allow our attention to focus, to float on this movement of the breath. Just as if we were floating on the surface of the ocean, rising and falling with the swell of the waves. And if the mind becomes distracted by a thought or a feeling, a sound, a physical sensation.
We don’t get involved with those. No need to have a mental conversation about them. Just let them go. Allowing our attention to return, to that natural rhythm of the breathing in order to help calm and focus the mind. And now, from the relative calm and clarity of her mind, we take the opportunity to consider our reason for being here this weekend.
So it can be worthwhile to just check up what our motivation is. Why are we interested in learning more about mindfulness, about Buddhism? And we all can have our different reasons, but at the heart of them all is a wish, a wish that we share in common for a deeper sense of peace and satisfaction, happiness, relief from the dissatisfactions, the the problems, the difficulties, the sufferings that we experience in life. So that’s good. That’s a very good reason for being here.
But we’re capable of so much more than just our own happiness and well-being. We have the potential to make a positive impact on the lives of others. We have the potential to bring about happiness and freedom from suffering for all beings, including ourself. And that all begins on the tip of a wish. So see if it’s possible to broaden your motivation for being here today.
Your motivation for understanding and developing your mind. See if it’s possible to develop the wish, the motivation. May I make my life truly meaningful for the benefit of all, including myself. And then, when you feel ready, begin to breathe more deeply. Slowly begin to move the body.
And then finally open your eyes. Do you need some water? Sorry about that coffee. No. That’s alright.
But do you bit of hay fever this morning. Oh, okay. But you’ve got some water or something to help? I need to cough again. Okay.
George, just George? Yeah. I was just wondering. Could you turn the sound up a little bit? I can’t really hear very well.
Does the air come? Yeah. But we had it on the other night, and it still wasn’t a problem. It was just a little bit. I think that’s testing, testing, testing.
That sounds oh, that’s a bit too much. We want middle way. That sounds good. Thank you very much. Otherwise I feel like I have to try and project my voice a bit too much.
That’s very good. Thank you. Thank you. Well Welcome. Mindfulness with a Heart.
I think everybody’s heard about mindfulness, haven’t they? It’s kind of a buzz topic these days, isn’t it? But is there anyone here for the first time today who weren’t here last you’re here the first time. Okay. Welcome.
So you don’t know who I am? I read about you on the website. That’s about you. Okay.
Sorry. It’s quite funny talking about yourself.
So my name is Kay Miner. I’m a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and I’ve been a nun for more than twenty years and I’ve been following Buddhism for about thirty years. Sounds a long time but doesn’t mean I know everything. It means that I’ve found Buddhism beneficial and interesting and as I said at the talk last Thursday night I’ve never been bored since I met Buddhism. There’s always something to do.
I live in Amsterdam in the Netherlands but originally I come from Sydney. I come from the western suburbs of Sydney. So that I don’t know. The western suburbs the same in Adelaide as the western suburbs in Sydney. Very kind of working class.
They’re quite yuppie now. Oh they’re quite yuppie. Yeah, well I think where my family come from is also now considered to be the inner west of Sydney. Anyway, but basically it means I come from a very down to earth practical background. And so I try to look at Buddhism from that kind of viewpoint about it being practical and nothing.
You know, a lot of people with Buddhism love and light. Love and light. I’ve got a friend who always signs these emails, love and light. And I go, yeah, right. Anyway, from my perspective I try to look at Buddhism as a very practical methods to actually help us in our lives, us to become happy.
We don’t have to become Buddhists, we don’t have to change religions, we don’t have to become like me dressing like this, you know? It’s about what we can use that can help our lives and as I said the other nights as well is that the first time I walked into a room like this and there was somebody dressed like me sitting up the front talking and I thought oh dear, what have I come into? Know better be careful here, was a lot of cults and sects, not sects, cults in those days. I thought, better be careful that I don’t get brainwashed’. But the teacher said right at the beginning that you should investigate, your intelligence is valued, it’s encouraged, you should investigate, you should question, you should analyse, you should check up with your own experience.
You shouldn’t just blindly believe whatever I say. And I found that very refreshing coming from a Protestant Presbyterian background where we were actually told that we should just believe. And at the end of the first teaching, that teacher also said, If there’s anything that I’ve said that’s of value to you, then please take it, use it. But if there’s things that you can’t quite comprehend that don’t make much sense for you, then leave them aside. Leave them on the back burner.
Don’t completely reject them but leave them on the back burner because you’ve got enough to think about and to occupy your mind so you don’t need to worry about these things. So I found that approach very refreshing and so I think that’s probably why I ended up like I did. Okay, so I’ve been in the Netherlands for twelve years where I’m the resident teacher of the center in Amsterdam and I teach in other places in the Netherlands as well. And I’m here on holidays. Uh-huh.
Actually visiting my mother in Sydney, and then I was invited to to come here and do a few things. And, as one of my teachers said, ‘Ah, so your holiday meaningful?’ You know? It wasn’t just about lying on the beach, but I did do that yesterday. So I’m very, very happy. Very happy.
Okay, that’s enough about me. Is that good enough? Yeah, it’s right. Okay, good. I’ll ask you about you later.
Okay. So, so this course, mindfulness with a heart, mindfulness is a buzz There are so many courses on mindfulness around, I guess here in Adelaide as well. There are so many people that are calling themselves mindfulness trainers. And I think there’s developed a very secular idea about what mindfulness is. And I don’t think that it occurs so often that the full richness of the mindfulness tradition that we find within Buddhism, I don’t think that’s really brought through into these mindfulness courses.
I don’t think there’s this full richness, this full understanding. So that’s what I would like to try and do this weekend, to try and introduce because it’s such a vast area, but to try and introduce this richness, this vastness of the mindfulness tradition that we find within Buddhism. There are many different methods of meditation that we find in the world within the different spiritual traditions, within Buddhism as well, within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. We’re a Tibetan Buddhist center here. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition we practise many different types.
We practice concentration meditations. We practice analytical meditations where we actually analyze a subject and using our powers of reasoning and questioning and concentration to help come to some understanding, to develop our wisdom and understanding. We also practice visualisation meditations. Now all of these different types of meditations you can kind of categorise them differently and they are certain methodologies, but they all include the element of mindfulness. Mindfulness is such an important quality and the real point of Buddhist meditation is to help us to come to a very clear and a very direct and unmistaken knowledge of an object or or or a mistaken awareness.
And so from the Buddhist perspective the whole reason for practicing meditation is to develop our wisdom, to develop our what we call special insight. The very clear understanding about the way things exist, about the way our self exists, about the way others, the world phenomena exist. Meditation from the Buddhist perspective is not just about feeling good. That’s a by-product. That’s like if you feel good after you’ve done meditation, fantastic.
But that’s not the main reason why you meditate according to the Buddhist tradition. The Buddhist tradition is to because okay, okay, once I get going because you know if your meditation is only about feeling good then that’s also a bit like a junkie. You know a junkie shoots up to try and feel good and then it wears off and then they try to do it again and what they they never get that same high again do they? I’ve not been a junkie but I think that’s what I’ve heard, that they’re always trying to get that same kind of high and they never get that really again. It never is exactly the same as that first initial high.
And it’s sort of like a form of grasping trying to get more and more and more. So if we approach meditation like that, that it’s to feel good each time, then we’re going to find that at a certain point we don’t feel good. That meditation doesn’t give us what we’re looking for, this nice feeling and so we’ll stop. We’ll stop. And also if we approach meditation as yes, our mind being calm and having some kind of respite from the busyness of our lives etc, then we’ll find that when we’re meditating, when we’re sitting on a cushion it used to be but everyone sits on chairs these days, you know that when we’re sitting in meditation the mind feels okay, it feels quite calm, but then we get up, back to the old habits again, back to the same old craziness.
You know there’s a story about a meditator who is meditating in a cave up in the mountains somewhere. I don’t know what country. We can pick a country with mountains. Nepal. Okay.
So he’s meditating in a cave for twelve years and he finishes his retreat and he starts to walk down the mountain and there’s somebody coming up towards him and the mountain tracks are very narrow, only one person, you know. And he got angry because the person walking up didn’t get out of his way and it’s like what was he doing for those twelve years in his cave? Probably trying to feel good. So the real aim of Buddhist meditation is to transform the mind to such a point that whether you’re sitting on your meditation seat or whether you’re out working in the world, the mind is always calm. The mind is always peaceful.
The mind is clear. The mind has plenty of space. No irritation. And so the mind is stable. There’s the wisdom understanding that sort of permeates, that integrates your whole life.
So the whole aim of Buddhist meditation is far more profound than just kind of having a bit of space and a bit of calm while you’re doing your meditation feeling good. And so I think that very often often with a lot of the mindfulness courses that we find around that are more kind of secular oriented, that the motivation is having that calm and that peace and that rest for the time that you’re doing the meditation. But there’s not necessarily the follow-up instructions that help you to develop the skill and the wisdom to be able to have this calm and this peace and this clarity of mind and understanding that permeates every aspect of your life. So that’s why this weekend what I want to try and do is to give this introduction of the richness and of the real sort of the richness and the comprehensiveness is that a word? Of the mindfulness tradition.
And also to explain that it’s within the Theravadan Buddhist tradition that there’s the greatest emphasis on mindfulness practice. But mindfulness is actually something that it’s what the Buddha taught really the basis of all mindfulness is the Buddha as the basis for all meditation practices within all of the Buddhist traditions. Although it’s the Theravadan school that has the main emphasis on it, mindfulness practice is also an element of the Mahāyāna. So basically after if we think about the life story of the historical Buddha Śākyamūni who lived two and a half, three thousand years ago in India. He was a prince, an ordinary person like us, but he was born into a royal family.
So I mean, I don’t know how many of you have been born into royal families. So in that sense he wasn’t exactly the same as us, but in the sense that having a human body, a human mind, the same as us. So he was looking for the very causes of the various types of sufferings and a way to get out of suffering. The sufferings that we’ve just yes, suffering is a big word, dukkha is the Sanskrit word, the unsatisfactoriness. I know that’s not a word, but I like it.
Unsatisfactoriness. So he was looking for an explanation as to why there was this unsatisfactoriness and how we could become free from that. And so he left his royal family and he went on this kind of spiritual search and got caught up with some very ascetic practicing guys but found that that was too extreme. Royal family life was too extreme and he found a middle way and he worked on developing his mind to the point where he experienced what we call enlightenment or full awakening. And that state is where the mind is completely free from all unsatisfactoriness and the causes and where the qualities, the wisdom, the compassion, the skill are fully developed.
So that’s what he did as his personal quest. And after he became enlightened, he didn’t start teaching straight away but other people kind of noticed that there was something very special about him. And so they asked him what had happened and could he please tell them what had happened. And so then he gave his first explanation of his observations and the process that he’d been through. This was known as the first turning of the wheel of dharma.
Basically he gave an explanation about the four facts of our existence, the four things that he noticed that we have this unsatisfactoriness, this dukkha or suffering, but that this suffering, this unsatisfactoriness has a cause and so he was able to explain what the cause was. But he said that, yeah, our existence has suffering but it doesn’t have to be that way, that there is an escape hatch. It is possible to be free of this unsatisfactoriness and there are methods that will lead to it. So he talked about these four facts about our existence and actually for the rest of his life he continued to address these four facts about our existence. Anyway, after that gave many teachings according to the different capacities and interests of the people that were following him.
And after he passed away there were basically two main sort of streams of Buddhism that developed. I mean Buddhism is a label that’s being given to you know these kind of this way of thinking and understanding and practicing. So we call it Buddhism now but the Buddha never said, oh I’m giving you Buddhism. He never said that. Anyway, basically so there were these two main streams and I’m going like this because I’m trying to explain that actually it developed Buddhism from India going in the southern direction across to Sri Lanka and to Burma and to Thailand and to Indochina and so that stream of Buddhism we call the southern tradition and it was actually the Sanskrit word was Hīnayāna and that’s not a nice word Hīnayāna, it’s never translated nicely.
So we tend to call it the individual vehicle of Buddhism or the individual path. And there were many different sort of schools within this individual path of Buddhism and the one that remains these days is the Theravadan and that’s the Buddhism that we see in Thailand still, in Sri Lanka, etc. So Buddhism also spread in a northern direction up sort of to China and to Tibet, to to Korea and to Japan. So even Zen Buddhism is part of this northern school of Buddhism that we call the universal vehicle of Buddhism. And so the Buddhism of Tibet and what we practice fits within this universal vehicle.
Oh gosh, so what’s the difference between going down south and going up north between individual vehicle and universal and it basically boils down to the methods that are focused upon and the goals. So in the individual vehicle of Buddhism then the goal is to experience a state of what we call personal liberation from problems, from suffering, this dukkha. And to achieve this personal liberation then the focus is upon ethics and mindfulness is one of the big practices, this kind of being very aware and being very ethical and not causing harm, very much sort of this emphasis on behaviour. In the universal vehicle all of that is there too, but the motivation is different. The motivation is actually one of great compassion.
The motivation is to fulfill your potential for enlightenment. Self liberation is what we call nirvana, okay, not the rock band. No it wasn’t a rock band, was called it was a grunge band wasn’t it? Yeah. Grunge band.
Okay so this self liberation is what we call nirvana but in the universal vehicle the idea is that self liberation which is an an unbelievable achievement, unbelievable the qualities that one has to develop, it’s fantastic achievement, but there’s the view that one can actually do more than only individual liberation. There’s the view and the motivation is to also fully perfect all of the positive qualities of wisdom and compassion and skill and to do all of this, to achieve or experience enlightenment for the benefit not just of yourself alone, although that’s important still, but for the benefit of all beings. So the motivation is very much of fulfilling your potential, potential, of great compassion, of altruism. So this is just, you know and different people fit in different places. That’s what the Buddha taught many different methods.
So mindfulness mindfulness practice is one of the core practices that we find within the individual vehicle of Buddhism. One of the core practices, one of the focuses of Theravadan practice. That is why you will find mindfulness courses mostly within Theravadan Buddhist organizations. But, but that doesn’t mean that mindfulness is not a part also of the Mahāyāna or the universal tradition of Buddhism. It just means that there’s a slightly different emphasis.
So the Buddha taught what we call the four foundations of mindfulness. As I said before, as the basis for all meditation practice that we find within Buddhism. And these are the four foundations, the factors that one really needs to develop right from the beginning of your meditation practice, spiritual practice of Buddhism. But they really are like a basis for developing all of those qualities or you know progressing along if you like the steps that lead to enlightenment. So actually what do most mindfulness courses teach about?
Well recently I attended one by Theravada tradition in October. That was the most worrying thing I’ve ever done, but it’s so tediously repetitive. But my mind was so quiet at the end. Mhmm. And so it was based on a Burmese tradition.
It was called a Mahasi course, the big drum. Just named after the monk who did the big drums, so they decided to call it big drum course. And what we did was to notice the sensations of the body, to notice the feelings that feelings that arose, to notice the labeling that we placed on body parts and, know, more sensations that were happening in there, to notice how we were were it is the consciousness itself, the movement of the mind itself. So endlessly, you know, we had one day that focused on the body, we had the next day that focused on sensations, the next day that focused on emotions, last, you know, the next thing, was, what we were feeling. That whole range of just noticing, noticing without engaging.
Okay. That’s why it felt very repetitive, but I’m a little better at it. Well, I think to be good at anything, you do need to train and you do need to repeat these things over and over again just like a great athlete. Have to really train and keep repeating. About has anyone done other mindfulness courses, more secular mindfulness?
Okay. Okay. Well, from the Buddhist perspective, actually mindfulness is a really big subject. There are these four foundations of mindfulness, which has to do with the mindfulness of the body or the physical sensations, the mindfulness of the emotions or feelings, the mindfulness of the mind itself or consciousness, and the mindfulness of phenomena or the mindfulness of dharma.
And so dharma is a Sanskrit word which means that which protects from suffering. So it sounds like what you were introduced to were these four foundations of mindfulness. But it’s really an incredible vast subject mindfulness because we can employ mindfulness with virtually all the practices that you find within Buddhism. And so we can use mindfulness about subjects such as cause and result or karma. We can use mindfulness about refuge, about following a safe direction.
We can use mindfulness about the relationship with a spiritual teacher. We can use mindfulness if we’re practising the Mahāyāna vajrayana tradition that we find within Tibetan Buddhism. We can practice mindfulness with the nature of reality, the emptiness of inherent existence. But the emphasis and of course that’s what we do within the Mahāyāna or the universal vehicle traditions view of mindfulness what we specifically emphasize within the universal vehicle, the Mahāyāna practice of mindfulness, is the motivation and especially the bodhicitta motivation. That’s why mindfulness isn’t just about developing your own feeling good, it’s about developing that really positive, open, compassionate heart which kind of again is the motivation that we try to cultivate within the universal vehicle of Buddhism, the great motivation for whatever we do.
So the practice of mindfulness is about developing some level of mental calm, calm abiding. So that’s what you said, maybe not calm abiding necessarily, but that’s what you felt at the end, that there was some kind of calm, there was some kind of peace. Great, that’s good, you know? But you need that, you need that sort of deep level of concentration and stability of mind to also be able to develop the other aspect, the other quality we call special insight and that is what Vipassana is. Okay?
Vipassana? How do you say Vipassana? Vipassana. Yeah, I think everybody says these things differently. But anyway, Vipassana.
So the calm abiding is what they call Samatha and the special insight is what we call Vipassana. So all of the meditation that you’ll find in the Theravadan tradition have this aim to help develop your concentration and your understanding. So a lot of people think, well, why in the universal vehicle tradition and especially within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, why don’t they have mindfulness courses? That doesn’t happen very often actually. It doesn’t happen very often.
And there are other organisations. Have you heard of Goenka? Goenka, who’s Sri Lankan I think wasn’t he? Burmese was Goenka, I can’t remember. I’ve met him.
Anyway, that was a long time ago. So there are many Goenka courses which are about developing mindfulness, about this calm abiding, this vipassana. Within the Theravadin tradition they have these insight meditation centres. Those courses are mostly about these four foundations or these four what they call close placements of mindfulness. And so a lot of people say, well, you know, do all that.
Why don’t we in our tradition? Is it something that was lost from the Mahāyāna tradition? Well, no. It’s there. It’s definitely there.
But they’re not taken as the main practice, the main object like it is within the other tradition. But it’s really important still and it’s still used but the emphasis is not so strong on it and where the emphasis does come with mindfulness is to integrate this bodhicitta motivation with everything that you do. That’s the idea to develop mindfulness. So bodhicitta is another Sanskrit word. We don’t need all these Sanskrit words but bodhicitta means Lama Yeshe used to describe as healthy mind.
The mind that has plenty of space and no irritation. It’s a mind that is open and compassionate. Compassionate for all beings. Not what we said the other night, idiot compassion, but a compassion that also starts from having compassion for yourself, recognising how you also have suffering or unsatisfactoriness, unsatisfactoriness, that your life is sometimes a bit crazy, that you’re not always able to cope perfectly, that things are not always one hundred percent perfect. You recognise that about yourself, that you have your confusions and disturbing attitudes and stuff like that you recognise that about yourself and you have compassion for yourself which is a wish that you would be free from this.
Free from this kind of problem and suffering and disturbance. And then you also recognise that others are in the same boat. Well, maybe to a greater degree, but maybe to a lesser degree. And so you also start to develop compassion for them. It doesn’t mean that you have to go and do everything for everybody else, but you start to have a more open, more comprehensive, view about the situation of life with everybody.
You know we react because somebody behaves in a certain way and we don’t like you know and we might get angry but we don’t necessarily understand what’s the process that’s caused that person to do something that we don’t like. That person just like us probably has some confusion. That person just like us wants to happy and free from what they view or experience as suffering. They’re doing their best. They might be very unskillful, they might be causing lots of harm to others, but never the less, you know, they are just like us in wanting to be happy and wanting to be free from suffering, but they’ve got these problems, you know, so you recognize and you think, ‘Gosh, if they were free from these problems, then they probably wouldn’t behave like they do, which I wouldn’t get upset about anymore, and they probably wouldn’t be causing any harm.’ So it’s an attitude that you have, an attitude of openness, of it doesn’t mean open, let everything happen to me, come on, that’s not very wise but it’s an openness that looks more comprehensively, more fully at the situation and develops the wish that they be free from suffering and the wish that you could actually make that happen.
A wish that I can free myself from suffering and that I can free them from suffering. I think all of us have had the experience where someone close to us has got a big problem. You know, maybe they’re sick or maybe they’re going through a relationship breakdown or something like that and they’re really suffering and you just think I wish I could do something about that. Have you had that thought? You know?
And it’s like it’s so frustrating sometimes that you can’t do anything about it. So then comes the wish. May I be able to develop the wisdom to know exactly what is the right thing to do that’s going to help. May I have the compassion to really want to help free everyone from this confusion and these problems and this suffering you know. May I have the skill to be able to do that?
So in order to develop this skill and this compassion and this wisdom then we need to develop ourselves. We need to develop those qualities within us. Those qualities when they’re perfected is what a Buddha is. A Buddha is not some kind of mystical being or you know that a Buddha exists in heaven or something like that that determines everything that happens. A Buddha is basically the transformation of your own mind.
Buddha is a label, you know. So we also can become a Buddha. We also can develop those qualities within our mind, become free from all the confusion and the obstructions to our knowledge and you know, can become free of the delusion. This is absolutely possible. So we can’t we shouldn’t think that Buddhahood is some great holy goal that is just far beyond us.
We can start developing the Buddha within us already because we’ve already got the seeds of all of these transform yourself, to develop these qualities, to be able to really be of benefit for yourself and for others. It’s not about, hey, look at me, I’m a Buddha’. It’s about really practically transforming so that you’re of benefit for yourself and for others. And so the whole reason for practicing mindfulness within this universal vehicle tradition is about helping you to transform, to develop these qualities. And so that’s what your motivation is.
And that is the motivation that actually the idea is that it permeates throughout our life. Everything that we do, we think may be a cause for us to develop this wisdom this compassion, and this skill so that we can help ourselves and we can help others. So mindfulness is a very key ingredient. It’s a cultivation of a clear, stable, non judgmental awareness. It can help bring some calm and clarity, certainly amid the pressures of our modern, you know, daily life, but it it is also a spiritual path.
Mindfulness practice is a spiritual path and that’s what I think misses out in a lot of these secular mindfulness courses. It’s a spiritual path that helps to gradually dissolve the barriers to our developing our wisdom and our compassion, fully fully developing our wisdom and our compassion. And so mindfulness is important because mindfulness helps to free us from the kind of you know we get caught up with things in life Entangled. You know we get entangled with things in life, you know. Our mind is always struggling.
There’s so much going on. There’s so many sensing inputs, and let’s face it, the media and technology. I guess everyone’s got a mobile phone? No. You haven’t?
But George has. That’s him. Okay. Even my mother’s got a mobile phone. She never turns it on but that’s another story.
You know we’ve got mobile phones and smartphones. I tell you, I love my iPhone. Somebody gave it to me and I have to say, but of course I don’t have data roaming here because I’ve got a Dutch account. But anyway, so anyone Facebook? How many people are on Facebook?
Who Twitters? Does anyone Twitter? No one Twitters? Oh gosh, you guys are backward. Yes, I mean you know I’m sorry but I don’t really have the great interest in doing these things but it is the modern world and especially like you know from a Buddhist center perspective and I’m what they call the cyber nun in Holland you know because there’s a big website of Buddhist we have Buddhist media in Holland that’s sponsored by the government and with so much TV time and so much radio time and a big website and I’m the cyber nun which means that there are questions that people ask the cyber nun and so every two months and they vote on these questions.
People go on the website and vote on these questions and then every two months the question with the most votes I have to answer. So I’m the cyber nun. You’re close to being a Bodhisattva. No I don’t think so. But anyway, the thing is there’s profile and it’s not something that I really want myself.
I have no interest in it personally but in terms of being of benefit to others and younger people because there’s a lot of younger people who are suffering and they want to become happy and I don’t want to make a whole new Buddhist, that’s not what it’s about but also these cyber nun questions are things like how do I get out of the prison of my low self image? Can Buddhism help me with an addiction? All of these practical, practical questions. So the profile of being on the Internet and Twittering is a way of contacting and being of benefit to others. So again the motivation’s important, right?
If the motivation was about becoming rich and famous well, I don’t know about becoming rich anyway but the motivation is to be of help. But the fact is there are so many of these things these days. There’s so many social media and the computers and smartphones and Twittering and all of this stuff. So much input. You know music, there’s very few people that are actually just quiet without some kind of sensory input going on.
So mindfulness actually is very important to help our mind that is always struggling to keep up with this endless flow of things going on changes you know in the external world because you know actually to make the job of our mind easier the mind tends to create a series of generalizations about ourselves and the world around us. Series of generalizations, a series of assumptions. And the mind does this so we don’t need to think so much. And we need these kind of generalizations in order to help us make sense of the world. But these assumptions and these generalizations, they also are like a block.
They prevent us from seeing the truth about ourselves and about the world. So for example, have you ever sort of made statements or thought, you like I am X or I am Y. What is X and what is Y? Like I’m an angry person or I’m a control freak. I’m a control freak.
I realize this. I’m a control freak. Or, you you make all these kind of assumptions about yourself. Any other assumptions that we make about ourselves that you want to share? I’m generous.
You’re generous. That’s an assumption I work towards. I’m holding my hand out. You’re generous? Okay.
Anyone else? I’m too loud and noisy. You’re too loud. Honey, you’ve been sitting there very quietly. I’ve been making all the noise.
Yeah, so we make these assumptions about ourselves. We kind of identify with certain characteristics you know like being generous or being too loud or noisy or a control freak or outrageous or frightened or, you know, whatever. Down to earth, you know. But the truth is we’re much more than just a singular emotion. Even though we might think we’re that kind of person.
It’s true isn’t it that we’re capable of doing exactly the opposite, you know, doing something completely different. So we might say that mindfulness meditation is the process of becoming aware of the assumptions that we make about ourself and the world around us. So being mindful is realising that we’re much more than any sort of obvious or even passing limitation that we place place on ourselves. So mindfulness actually applies to all aspects of life. Whatever’s going on, whether we’re working, whether there’s a group that went walking this morning, the Buddha House walking group.
So I said to them before they went, I said, I told them, no, no, suggested that they try walking with mindfulness and then one of the people said, oh, we won’t get very far because because he’s thinking that mindfulness meant that you walk very slowly and, you know, like a walking meditation. I said, ah, ah. Because mindful walking is being aware, being aware. That’s a tree, that’s a hill. Okay, that’s an assumption.
That’s a generalisation that we make. That’s good. We need that to able function in the world, but mindfulness means that when you look at that tree you realise that that tree is actually what we call a dependent arising. The tree is the label that is placed upon the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Okay?
You look at it more fully. Okay? And you realize that the tree is also a result. That tree was does not exist independently, inherently, unchanging permanently the same way. It started from something small and it grew and it’s still growing.
And what you don’t notice here so much, but we do in Holland, is that the leaves change color and then they fall off the trees and in spring you get these little buds and then the little shoots, you know, and you start to see the impermanence of it. So this is where we bring mindfulness really fully into everything that we’re doing. So whether we’re working, whether we’re walking, whether we’re running, whether we’re enjoying a meal, whether we’re enjoying the sunset, because you’ve got nice sunsets here haven’t you? You know you can go down the beach and you can see this ah, it’s beautiful. You know?
The idea is to be fully aware of what’s going on. Not worried about your worries from the past or your dreams of the future, you know. Just being fully aware, experiencing the present moment in all its richness, in all its fullness. And so that’s why, you know, the Buddha taught the four foundations of mindfulness. And so that’s what we’re going to go through.
We’re going to what the Buddha taught was that we begin with, you know, breathing meditation where we watch the inhalation and exhalation of the breath and that’s you know we’re watching something physical going on. And so when you get tired of that then you can also watch your posture, the way that you’re sitting, you know. And then when you get tired of that, you can then do what they call ‘walking meditation’. We can do it more formally, not like going off in the bush like I was just talking about, but we can do a walking meditation where we actually walk very slowly. Now sometimes people think that walking meditation has got to do with something with walking very elegantly.
But then they don’t really understand what the point of it is. You know the idea is when you’re walking aware, to absolutely be aware, to be aware of the motion of the body. And so this in the Theravadin tradition is very much the focus being aware of the movement body and the lifting of the feet or not both at the same time but one after the other and the way you put them down you know. But we try in the Mahāyāna tradition, universal vehicle tradition, to do just like I explained explained with going for a walk. Be aware of the physical movement, sure, but being aware of karma, being aware of impermanence, being aware of dependent arising, etc.
So the awareness becomes much more deep doesn’t it? Much more subtle. And also with eating, you know, being mindful of eating so it could be being aware of the body while eating, the motion, the awareness of the motion of picking up the food and putting it in the mouth and the the feel in the mouth, the tasting it, the the chewing it, very slowly chewing, chewing. What do you do a hundred times or something to chew? I don’t know, something like that, you know.
And so this mindfulness of the body is actually also an introduction to the do you remember I told you about the four facts about our existence that the Buddha taught about? So mindfulness of the body is actually an introduction to one of the four noble truths. So in the Mahāyāna teachings, the universal vehicle teachings, when it talks about mindfulness, it says that the Buddha taught these four foundations of mindfulness as ways to understand these four facts about our existence. Now that’s not taught in every mindfulness course that’s going on around the place. He says, basically, when you’re mindful of your feelings.
Remember that we talked about mindfulness of the body or physical sensations, mindfulness of the feelings or the emotions, mindfulness of mind or consciousness, and mindfulness of phenomena. So when we’re talking about a mindfulness of feelings, that helps to give us insight into the way suffering is caused. That was the second fact about our existence, that there are causes that rise to our unsatisfactoriness. So the mindfulness of feelings helps to give insight into what causes our problems and our suffering. And because the way we respond or we react, should I say, to our feelings, to our emotions, not just emotion feeling but to our feelings, you know, that gives rise to the disturbing attitudes, you know, the feelings of or the emotions if you like of attachment and anger etc.
Which are the real causes of suffering. So from the Mahāyāna perspective the mindfulness of feelings becomes very important in order to help identify what the cause of problems and suffering is. So really from the Buddhist perspective, mindfulness practice is much more subtle, much more meaningful than what we might think at first or what is presented in secular mindfulness courses. So also when we do mindfulness on the consciousness or mindfulness of mind, that level of mindfulness practice, that helps to give us some kind of taste if you like of the third noble truth or the third fact about our existence which is the cessation of suffering. The cessation of unsatisfactoriness, you know, where there is no suffering and no cause of suffering.
So mindfulness of the mind, mindfulness of consciousness can help give us the taste of that. And when we are mindful of the fourth foundation which is the mindfulness of phenomena or sometimes I’ve said mindfulness of Dharma, then that gives us insight into the path, the fourth fact about our existence, that there is a path that leads to this cessation. So the mindfulness of phenomena or the mindfulness of Dharma is just what I was advising the walkers to do, be mindful of the impermanence of the tree, the dependent arising nature of the tree. So the four foundations of mindfulness, mindfulness practice is actually related also to the four facts about our existence. This is what the Buddha explained.
So also from the universal practice of Buddhism the aim is to overcome two major obstacles to our happiness and to our transforming into an enlightened being. And those two main obstacles are what we call self grasping and self-cherishing. What’s the difference? Self grasping is a view of ourselves as being very permanently existing, very solidly existing, inherently existing. And then, you know, this eye, this eye is so strong and then we cherish this eye.
We think this eye is so important. This eye has to be protected all the time. See this ‘I’? I’ve got it right there in my heart. And do you see how tight it is?
So I think that I am the most important. This kind of self-cherishing is the big obstacle to the compassion, to the openness, to the understanding about others. This self grasping thinking ‘I’ is so permanent and then cherishing it, finding it so important, these are major obstacles to our development. So mindfulness helps us to fight these two. So mindfulness is still a very important practice that we find within the Tibetan universal vehicle of Buddhist practice.
So I think it’s probably time we had a break. Can I just make a comment? One interesting thing, as you’re talking about the differences between the the southern part and the northern part, individual and the universal, I remember in that Mahasi retreat, he said the Ghanaian master said, he said when the Buddha was teaching even before he taught mindfulness meditation he taught morality and the first morality he taught was generosity And he made the comment that although they were quite an advanced society learning from Gotama, he said that the monks had this habit of hiding all their veggies under the rice and that he would notice and he would say, Relax guys, you don’t have to be so greedy and grasping. Feel that everything that you have been given is this wonderful, you know, being given through generosity. So, for some reason that visual really stuck in my mind that he taught the morality first because acts of morality then lead to better meditation.
Such a sweet energy. Actually, very interesting you mentioning the vegetables in the rice. For monks and nuns it is a vow that you’re not supposed to have your rice covering up your vegetables or the other way around. So if you ever watch the way I serve myself, it’s always the rice is one side and the vegetables the other because and of course in those societies in Asia, Southeast Asia mostly, the monks and the nuns to a lesser extent because nuns are not so prevalent there, they actually go begging for their food and so the generosity of others is important and people give to the monks because of their morality. It’s not because they don’t give to everybody, goes along and says, ‘Hey, give me my lunch.’ It wasn’t like that. Again,, it was the generosity of others due to the ethics, to the morality and for the monks to realise they’ve got a responsibility not to be greedy and that’s why it became one of the vows.
Interesting. Yes, actually I could go and on about the whole Buddhist path and all the things like that but that’s not what we’re here for. We’re mostly here for mindfulness and so let’s have a tea break mindfully.