Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Ven Kaye Miner develops the theme of mindfulness as an emotional and psychological practice, not merely awareness itself. He begins with physical sensations—how mindfully observing pain or discomfort without judgment can dissolve its intensity, illustrated by a case study of a cancer patient who reduced morphine dependency through this method. Miner then pivots to a sustained critique of secular mindfulness in clinical and business settings, warning that awareness without the commitment to change or wisdom can deepen suffering (making someone more aware of depression, for instance, without relief). The heart of the session explores emotions and feelings: the Buddha’s teaching of the two arrows, where the first arrow is life’s inevitable pain and the second arrow is our reactive judgment and aversion. Through non-judgmental mindfulness, practitioners observe feelings arise and pass without identification, creating space to investigate habit patterns and apply antidotes. Miner distinguishes between ego-centred survival mindfulness—vigilance for threat and opportunity—and open, accepting mindfulness. The talk assumes some familiarity with Buddhist concepts and is pitched at practitioners ready to examine their emotional patterns deeply.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 2011 01 08 day1 session4.mp3
UUID: c75881c3-371e-4299-8024-41118671f93f
Teacher: Ven Kaye Miner
Collection: Mindfulness with a Heart (Ven Kaye Miner)
Date: 2011-01-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~5,228
See if you’re able to tell the difference between the awareness of the physical sensation and the way the mind mind reacts to it. Could you notice that, or were you all asleep? Well, I thought it was very interesting. Yeah. My feet were sort of aching.
I sort of have my foot on edge, and I was aware of the discomfort, but I focused on that, it was no longer a distraction. It was no longer a distraction. Actually, I was quite happily meditating on my feet. Then there was some other sensation that came up so that I would change to that. But it stopped it from being a distraction.
Okay. But did you find that when you looked at that discomfort, that physical sensation, that there was some kind of reaction in the mind towards it? Yes there was. It wasn’t painful anymore. Just focusing on the fact that it was a sensation.
Not whether it was painful or not. Okay. But you didn’t have this kind of, oh, pain. I wanna get rid of it. No.
Only when my focus was on the breath, but when I focused on the pain Mhmm. The pain wasn’t the pain. Right. Okay. Very good.
Very good. Anybody else? I was naughty. Sorry? I was naughty.
Mhmm. But I was aware of my naughty. This technique, when I lived in Melbourne, which is a few years ago now, we ran meditation courses for people with life threatening and serious illness. We had a number of cancer patients who were really having extreme pain. And so this was one of the techniques to help bring about a reduction in their pain.
And I remember that the way to do it was to begin with the breathing and then to identify where the pain was and then to actually use the kind of insight to really look look at the pain, you know, what shape is it, what color, is it hard, is it soft, you know, what temperature it is. And then what we would do is like just with the natural washing of the breathing and that breathing sort of light and energy into that space and imagine it sort of like dissolving the pain, dissolving the discomfort. There was one man who had cancer and he was on morphine and he had very bad pain in his back. So we did this the first time. Was there any difference?
No. Second time difference? No. Seven times, you know, after each other, we did this meditation with him and by the seventh time there was a change in the experience of pain. So he went home, kept doing this and he was actually able to reduce his morphine quite considerably.
So you can see how mindfulness can be so beneficial, can be so used in so many different ways. But it’s very good. I often get the pain in the leg. And so you’re trying to focus on the breath, but the pain in the leg is so demanding. And then when you actually concentrate on the pain of the leg, then just like with your feet, George, your feet disappeared.
No, the pain disappears but what happens the majority of the time when we’re aware of a physical sensation then immediately there’s a reaction. Immediately there’s a judgement like or dislike to a physical sensation and like when it’s your leg that goes to sleep it’s not like is it? It’s usually dislike and the mind starts to become tight and the mind starts to have aversion to it and the mind wants to push that away, wants to move the leg or whatever straight away but when you don’t get into that kind of like or dislike or that sort of mental conversation about it but just focus on it even with just a few descriptions what size is it and sort of you’re a bit objective not getting right involved and involved with it then it has the ability to disappear. And so that’s very very useful. For example, we have a headache and we’re not able to take some painkillers or something like that.
Can use it as a means to just reduce the seriousness of the pain. And I think this kind of technique, like when you hear about people who are able to survive like being crushed or like in earthquakes, you know, everything caves in or they’re having a hand trapped in something you know and it’s it’s really to do with the power of their mind not getting to this kind of I can’t handle this because the more you go I can’t handle this, the worse it is. So this kind of technique can be very helpful in these kind of situations. But, of course, you know, the thing is you’re developing the the power of your mind with this. It is not the end in itself to be able to be aware of your physical sensations.
It’s that’s a means to help develop, you know, the power and the quality of your mind. Did it then? Then I did find it was all over the place. But it wasn’t excruciating. No.
The idea is that you keep the sort of the breathing in the forefront. That’s the main thing to be doing. But then when you find that there’s a physical sensation that keeps distracting you away from the breath, then you go and look at that physical sensation. But if there’s no physical sensation, you stay on the breath. Oh, because it wasn’t distracting me, so in that case I should have just kept it in the breathing.
Yeah, but I mean it’s also good to develop an awareness because if you know, I said at one point, ‘Just imagine your body is like this big sensing kind of organ and when you do that then you can feel everything. You can feel the throbbing in the little finger, you can feel a tingling somewhere else, you know. So yeah, that’s sort of a heightened awareness, I guess. But the idea is, yeah, you focus on your breathing. If there’s a physical sensation that’s so demanding, you go and look at that physical sensation.
When you apply mindfulness to that then often it disappears. So then when it’s disappeared and there’s not another physical sensation that’s started shouting, you know, to be focused upon, then you go back to the breath. So you have to keep trying. There was a dullness. That was my problem. The alertness was not very tight.
Yeah. That’s probably because it was after lunch and so that often happens. So that’s just kind of the way it is. It’s not something to be upset about or frustrated about or anything like that. It’s just yeah.
That’s probably due to, you know, the temperature, due to, you know, having eaten. Also, it’s a long time to be sitting here all day, isn’t it? Do you notice that? Yeah. And you’re just sitting there?
Sorry. Said the Buddha here is to just be. Yes. If it is just be, daydreaming becomes a big part of just being. I think what the Buddha was saying, he gave us the permission to just be, that you don’t have to be daydreaming or thinking of the past.
He’s giving us the permission to I mean permission he’s just saying just try and be aware of the present moment. So it’s not like it was an instruction you have to be but that was just you know some advice. You’re allowed to just be. I think that is one of the biggest luxuries, you know, to just for a few minutes I don’t have to do anything else. I don’t have to be thinking about oh I’ve got to be somewhere in five minutes, you know, or we can only concentrate on that part of the meditation for two minutes.
Do you know what I mean? So it’s just a real luxury. It’s almost quarter past three. We’re going to finish at four. How about we have just a quick five minute break or so?
Would you like that? Yeah. And I think this is one of the biggest pitfalls about many secular mindfulness courses because they’re aimed at being mindful, of being aware, of recognising, but then people are left high and dry. Well what do you do when you’ve already recognised it? Has anybody heard of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
ACT. I don’t know terribly much about it. I think from what I’ve read that if it’s done correctly that it can be beneficial. But what I’ve been hearing from some people is that there is a movement to introduce mindfulness for people with mental illness for example or with an addiction so that they become mindful of their situation but then there’s not the following part all the time which is like the commitment to actually change the behaviour. So it’s like becoming aware but then the next step is not present.
And certainly in the Netherlands I’d heard from a friend who’s the policy adviser for the big mental health organisation there. And it had been the case that there was the introduction of mindfulness training for people with mental illness and addictive behaviour and this was actually causing more problems because people were becoming more aware of their situation. So somebody for example who is severely chronically depressed becoming aware of your depression even more aware of your depression is likely to make you even more depressed. So there’s got to be the follow-up. There’s got to be and this is what you’re getting to Helen which is that yes being aware is a good step.
It’s a beginning because always when we’ve got a problem, whatever problem it might be, problem with anger, a problem with addiction, problem with depression or whatever, the first step is the acknowledgement, the recognition of it, the recognition of the problem. And then what you need to do is then to be able to try and change where it is a problem, change that form of behaviour. There’s been a bit of a discussion lately because with ACT, with this Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, what I had been hearing from some people is that they use a form of mindfulness which as I said this morning is not the richness of the Buddhist mindfulness tradition and that in fact somebody was quoting a case where that it was like how can I put it? Mindful alcoholism That someone, you know, that they would be mindful of their alcoholism. And that and it seemed like there wasn’t the kind of follow-up about how to to deal with the alcoholism and so that concerned me.
And it’s concerned me that many of the very wonderful Buddhist psychological techniques, that they’re being used in a secular setting which is of course fine, it’s a benefit there’s no problem, but there’s not necessarily the experience and the training to go further than a superficial level and so I feel like there’s not the support. I think that ACT is the same as any of thing, you know, the way they do ACT. I mean I think it may vary because I run a secondary health service and several of our social workers have done the ACT training and integrated really, the really skilled people integrate it very well into their practice. So I think it’s like a lot of those things and I think the Buddhist techniques for unskilled practitioners are the same whether you’re an unskilled Buddhist or not. It’s about actually the backup and the support.
Yes. And so I don’t think it’s actually the ACT therapy. I think that that’s it you know, some of the body of that therapy and that, teaching is quite skilled, and, you know, there’s some some stuff that is about how you follow-up. And I think it’s about the quality of the practitioner. Right.
A level of support for the teachings wherever you are probably. Right. I’m not sure, but you know I’ve seen with my staff, the two more experienced practitioners use it really well. And the less experienced I’m not quite sure what to do with it. Right.
Yes. And I think that was probably the case in the Netherlands, that people had kind of got on the bandwagon without the sufficient training. And I think there’d been something from from some people in Australia, some Buddhist teachers that were concerned about this. They were concerned that it wasn’t being, I think, well enough understood and practiced and promoted and so they were concerned. And also that it was I think it was like are we using Buddhism and this is being presented as what Buddhism is and it wasn’t.
It was only a very tiny bit. But the point is being aware of something whether it’s a physical sensation or whether it’s a particular emotion or something like that that’s a good start yeah fine but it’s like well what do you do with it?’ you know and if it really is that you become more aware of a particular problem that you’ve got and that only makes the problem bigger and you don’t have the techniques, you don’t have the skills to deal with it then that’s my concern about the way mindfulness can be taught in a more secular setting. I think mindfulness can be taught in a secular setting, it can be taught in a way that’s of benefit. It doesn’t have to be by Buddhist monks or nuns. It doesn’t have to be in Buddhist centres.
That is not so important. But that it’s done thoroughly. That that’s I think my concern. And I’m not the expert. I’m not the expert.
Isn’t it a kind of look and find, like that problem solving technique that’s being used in tertiary centers at the minute where you’re not given any answers and it seems to me that you can use mindfulness meditation like that. Feel that sensation in the back. Right, so then you’ve got to do a little bit of work for yourself. What is it? What am I labelling that?
Is that pain or is that a sensation? What is my natural tendency? Whereas I think, I mean it can be good to always be finding your own answers but I’d rather be told. Think that’s easier. We like the easy option that’s for sure.
And also, face it, not everybody has the ability and the skill to be able to work these things out for themselves. They need to be guided. They need to be guided. Yeah. So I think we’ve probably come to some awareness today that when we’re talking about mindfulness that the mindfulness practice is not the end of it all.
That the mindfulness practice is a technique to help develop the power and the strength and the skills of the mind in order to be able to help you deal with whatever situations in life and to develop your your wisdom, your compassion, your insight. So I I think I’ve been trying to make that point very clearly, haven’t I? Mhmm. Okay. So we’ve got half an hour.
There are any other burning questions, or can I move on? Move on? Are you tired? No. You can still you can still take more?
Yeah. You’d go home, like, drunk tonight, won’t you? Okay. So just like I was saying with that, meditation, the mindfulness of the physical sensations of the body, you know, I said that the idea is that we’re mindful of the breath unless some other experience is so strong that it pulls us away from being mindful of the breath. And then we turn our attention to that experience instead.
So one of the, experiences that can pull us away from focusing on the breathing are the physical sensations. We’ve just looked at that. Another is emotion. Emotions can pull us away. They can be so demanding that we’re not able to stay meditating on the breath.
Now when we’re talking about mindfulness practice, then no emotion is inappropriate. In mindfulness practice, we’re not trying to avoid emotions. We’re not trying to have some emotions and not others. We’re trying to allow them to exist just as they arise without the additional complication the other reactions, just like we’ve been trying to do when we talked about mindfulness being a non judgmental awareness. We don’t judge the breathing.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s fast or slow, long or short. Okay? We said that. When it came to the physical experience, we didn’t start to judge that physical experience as being good or bad or I like or I don’t like. Remember we were saying that?
So again, when it comes to the emotions, we’re not saying good emotion I want more of you. Bad emotion, I’ve got to get rid of you. We’re trying to just be aware, to be mindful, non judging the emotions, not having preferences, not having aversion, not having clinging. And the Buddha’s instruction was very simple. He said, regard feelings as feelings.
They’re just feelings. What’s the the difference between feelings and emotions? So a feeling, for example, is a feeling of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Then out of these feelings come emotions. With a feeling of something pleasant we grasp onto that, we want more.
With a feeling of unpleasant we want to reject it, we want to have aversion towards it. With a feeling that’s a neutral feeling, then we don’t give a damn. You know, we’re indifferent towards it. So the feelings of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral give rise to emotions. Okay?
And the emotions are like the, attachment, the anger, the indifference or the jealousy or, you know, things like that. So, with mindfulness practice we’re not judging, we’re not saying my feeling. This is my feeling. We’re just saying feeling. So, you know, we can again, when we have feeling, could perhaps do this mental noting, this little whispering in our mind again saying, oh, agreeable feeling or agreeable sensation maybe we could say, disagreeable, you know, neutral, and that’s it.
No other comment. We don’t have to go into I like or I dislike, you know. And the way to think about it, you know the Buddha once said if a person and I ask you this question too. If a person is struck by an arrow, is that painful? Yes.
Yes. Then the Buddha asked, and I’ll I’ll follow the Buddha’s example, if the person is struck by a second second arrow, is that even more painful? Yeah. Yeah. And so what the Buddha said was that as long as we’re going to be alive, we we can expect the painful experiences.
We can expect the first arrow. But often we let ourselves have the second arrow because, you the suffering that can come from an emotion such as jealousy or anger or or greed, you know, attachment? The suffering that can come with some of these disturbing emotion is not the emotion itself but the way we relate to it. So if we condemn, if we judge, if we hate, or if we deny the first arrow, that’s like being struck by the second arrow. This second arrow is optional, and mindfulness helps you avoid it.
So there can be a do you understand what I’m saying? There can be a painful experience. That’s going to be part of our life. As long as we’re alive and under the influence of karma and delusion, that’s another story, we’re going to experience painful situations. We’re going to experience unsatisfactory situations.
How we deal with that determines whether we experience more pain. Okay, so that experience is the first arrow, but when we say I don’t like this and we have the aversion in the mind, you know, depending what it is of course, we get a second onslaught. We get the second arrow. So that’s our choice. That’s completely our choice and mindfulness helps us to avoid having that second arrow.
So when we’re mindful of feelings and emotions here, the idea is just to feel in a direct way without adding any commentary to it so that we get to see, you know, the reactions that come from immediately judging are agreeable, disagreeable, you know, and it’s because we start to judge them as agreeable, disagreeable, etc, that we end up having the other attitudes of attachment or aversion and stuff like that. So the idea is just to, Oh, pain or suffering, you know, without starting to judge it. So, you know, the idea is to become aware that we are constantly judging in our minds and being aware of this judging and trying to avoid it helps us to be able stop them. So basically being mindful of the emotions and feelings like this helps us to stop the chain, the chain of yeah, it’s like a chain of reaction which actually leads to more and more and more problems. That is so true, that road rage experience.
Like once I gave him the bird back and I got chased up the road and that was quite a while ago but I’ll never forget that, that chain reaction just so fast. Yeah. I never should have done that. No. So what you should do instead is say, oh, I’m so sorry.
Please, you’re obviously in more of a hurry than me. Please let you go. And then young. Just drive on by. Yeah.
May you may you be happy. May you be well and happy. And at first it’s just blah blah blah, but then eventually it becomes really something sincere, you know? So mindfulness of feelings has the effect that we actually get to know ourselves better. We see how these things arise and we don’t run away from our feelings anymore.
They become familiar you know. There’s a great variety of these kind of feelings and emotions and things and so we don’t give them any special importance anymore. We just recognise, oh yeah, okay, you know. And we recognise that they’re all the same in the sense that they come and they go. So basically this meditation, this foundation of mindfulness actually leads us to stop identifying with the feelings and the sensations as being so, so important.
And so that, you know, feelings will arise but there’s not this kind of secondary process that sort of kind of how can I put it because this secondary process of the judging and the emotions, especially the attachment and the aversion, they come from a very strong idea of me, of I, of self, and our self importance and our kind of concrete sense of self. So with this mindfulness practice, the feelings arise and we’re aware of them, they arise and they pass, but we don’t let them get so connected and tied up with this kind of ‘I’, this sense of ‘I’. So they’re simply what they are: feelings, a flow of experiences, ever changing. We don’t have to label them and give them all this kind of baggage, you know? If you just see feelings for feelings without this identification process going on, then where is the self in them?
Can you grab onto that feeling? It doesn’t actually exist like the way we make them so solid. So I understand that. I suppose what I’m thinking is that I think some of those feelings you’ve described you have because of your previous attachment or your aversion. You have them because they’re patterns of behaviours or they’re delusions or whatever.
And so, and I understand that not, you know, if you just say ‘ah, there they are’, what I’m not sure is how you stop the attachment of delusion so that if you don’t do that identification and that kind of analytical process to change that attachment, might you not just keep on having them again and again and repeating the situations that create them? And so not changing what you need to change? Very good question. Let me reiterate that mindfulness is one meditation technique. So this is in the meditation you just go there they are.
Absolutely. And it can help to go further than just in the meditation technique. It can help you not to identify with them so strongly which stops them having so much power and it gives you more space in the mind. So it’s a very effective technique. However, there are other techniques which as you say you know if the emotions come up that is also something to do with the habit that’s been cultivated in the past and from the Buddhist perspective we talk about karma and we talk about the tendencies that have developed due to karma over lifetimes okay so yes just saying oh you know they don’t not identifying with them so strongly won’t necessarily wipe out that tendency.
So there are other methods which help you to really investigate those disturbing attitudes and apply other antidotes which can help you know again we have different levels of antidotes. Of course the ultimate antidote to all of these disturbing attitudes is going to be the wisdom that correctly understands the way they exist and see that they don’t exist inherently from their own side. Okay. That’s a bit to get to. Okay.
So even just not identifying with the emotion so strongly is going to help to bring a little bit of space in the mind so that you are able to start investigating the more profound, antidotes. But it’s good to remember that mindfulness is not the only, you know? That’s really good to remember. It’s a technique. It’s a technique.
So with the mindfulness of the emotions aspect then what we do is investigate our relationship with emotions. Some emotions we really hate. What emotion do you hate? Guilt. Guilt.
Anger. Anger, shame, jealousy? I rejoice. Okay and then there’s some emotions that we really love. Love, happiness.
Okay That’s clinging onto our own. So the important part of mindfulness practice is investigating our relationships with our emotions like do we cling onto them? Do we hate them? Are we ashamed of them? Do we get tense with them?
Are we afraid of how we are feeling? Do we measure our self worth by the presence or the absence of an emotion? Can we simply leave an emotion alone? So what mindfulness does, it doesn’t condone, and it doesn’t condemn any particular emotional reaction. Rather, in mindfulness, it’s honestly being aware of what happens to us and how we react to it.
And the more familiar we are with our reactions, then it will be much easier to have uncomplicated, straightforward grief or joy, you know, not mixed up with the second arrows of guilt, of anger, of remorse, of embarrassment, or judgment. So emotional maturity nice idea. Emotional maturity doesn’t come from the absence of emotions, but from seeing emotions much more clearly. So mindfulness helps us to be who we are without baggage, without further complications. It helps us to be accepting of ourselves.
And then it’s much easier to know how to respond with choice rather than reacting out of habit. So you can look on your feelings like as a personal experience, you know, within as a personal experience. You can look at feelings from outside, you know, as if someone else was experiencing them, you know. So like you’re the observer watching somebody else. So when you’re doing this mindfulness of emotions like this, so you can look at your own emotions from inside or you can look at the emotions of somebody else, you know, somebody else experiencing.
Both is okay. Okay? Both is okay. But according to the Buddha what we should also look at is what gives rise to these emotions, to these feelings, and how they they dissolve. So we can also from the Buddhist perspective we investigate impermanence.
We investigate the conditioned nature nature of feelings. We look more intelligently, not judging, you know, because if we don’t judge that gives more space that allows us to understand. So we see how the feeling of pleasure is arising, for example. We see how the feeling of suffering is arising. We see how the feeling of pleasure disappears, how the feeling of suffering disappears.
Mindfulness of feelings teaches us to be aware and to notice actually that we’re already surviving. Every feeling, every sensation signals to us that we are alive and we notice that life just continues from moment to moment, you know, without any great effort from our side. Sometimes it feels like my life has a life of its own. It’s like, ‘hey hold on, let me catch up!’ But our life goes on really without much effort from our side and so in this way it’s a way to get out of our constant worry. Little anger is arising, we don’t have to react immediately.
We can observe this angry feeling coming and going. And then of course we can do something about it. You know? When there’s a loud sound somewhere outside, we don’t have to get all tense about it. We can just observe.
We don’t always have to kind of tense up when something is happening. Basically this also means that we have to give up, wanting to manipulate the world around us. The hardest thing in the world to give up, I reckon. You know, this idea of ‘I want this’ and I don’t want that you know we’re always trying to manipulate the situation you know so in basic mindfulness there are no such second thoughts there’s no personal ego centered interest in the way we contact our life. It’s a very simple presence.
So that’s what we’re going to continue on with tomorrow. Yeah. You know, we have a sort of a survival mindfulness. Survival mindfulness is like the guard on the watchtower, always looking out for the enemy or for the opportunity. The enemy to get rid of or the opportunity to grab.
And that’s what our lives are pretty much like, our ego centred mindfulness. And so there’s no balance in that. There’s no equanimity. There’s no letting go in that. So we shouldn’t be trying to cultivate our mindfulness with the idea of feeding this ego centred mindfulness.
And that’s again another thing that I’ve been concerned about, the teaching of secular mindfulness, especially in business. Because it’s about being mindful of the opportunities that you can kind of grab and mindful of the competition that you can cut down. Okay? That’s ego centered mindfulness. So, you know, we shouldn’t be trying to practice meditation in order to become better performers and be the best or to snatch away opportunities from others.
That’s not what the point of mindfulness really is. The point of mindfulness is being opening up, being aware, not getting into this second arrow. So we’re going to work tomorrow more on practicing mindfulness with feelings and with emotions, using intelligence, using our curiosity to be aware of what is happening. So I think that’s probably enough for today.