Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute introductory talk from 1985, Kathleen McDonald defines meditation as familiarization and establishes mindfulness as the foundational Buddhist practice for anyone beginning to study. She works through the law of karma from the Dhammapada—how mind drives action and action creates experience—then explains mind as a non-physical energy encompassing thought, feeling, perception, and awareness. Moving to the practical: she demonstrates how mindfulness prevents regretful impulses (using anger and impatience as examples) by catching mental patterns early. She closes with detailed instruction on breath meditation—posture, object of focus, technique, and how to handle distraction—positioning it as a practice to develop both during formal sessions and throughout daily life. Suited to complete beginners.
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File: 01 Basic.mp3
UUID: e7401911-1107-4b5d-bf81-a6bfc52a653f
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Basic Buddhism (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Date: 1985 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~4,951
Now the word in Tibetan for meditation literally means become familiar. So we could say that meditation is an activity of becoming familiar with something, and That’s a way of summing it up or giving the basic meaning of meditation. It’s becoming familiar with some object, or perhaps we could say becoming familiar with oneself, getting to know oneself better, developing more understanding and awareness of oneself, one’s ideas, thoughts, feelings, and so on. In Buddhism there are many, many different types of meditation. There are not just one or two different ways of meditating, but there are many different ways of meditating.
They all have this common feature of being an activity by which one becomes familiar with something. There’s one type of meditation which is perhaps the most important one. It’s something one needs to learn right from the beginning, and it’s something that one continues to practice all the way through one’s study of Buddhism, and that is what’s called mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness itself is like an activity of mind or a function of the mind which involves we could call it introspection. It’s a question of looking at oneself and being aware of oneself, being aware of all the different thoughts that are going on, all the different feelings, the different ideas, all the mental activity, and also being aware of what one is doing externally, verbally, with your speech, what you’re saying, and what you’re doing with your body, how you’re acting, how you’re behaving, and so on.
Mindfulness, then, is just simply being aware of what one is doing. This is something that can be cultivated in meditation. There are meditation techniques to develop and increase one’s mindfulness, and we’ll be learning and practicing that over the weekend. It isn’t only confined to the time one is meditating. Mindfulness is something that should be practiced all the time.
Buddhism is really a way of life. It isn’t something that you turn on and off. At certain times you practice and certain times you don’t. So it’s something that you try to incorporate in your whole lifestyle. Now, what’s the point of mindfulness?
Why should one have mindfulness or develop mindfulness? The answer to that question comes as one learns more about Buddhism, as one comes to more understanding of the whole system of Buddhism, the way things are seen, the whole worldview, the explanation of what the world is all about, who we are, why we’re here, what we’re doing, what we should be doing, and so on. The whole kind of view that Buddhism has of the world and of things. Basically, simply speaking, Buddhism, to quote one little phrase of a Buddhist text, one of the most well known Buddhist scriptures is called the Dhammapada, and it’s actually a collection of little sayings of the Buddha on different topics. The first verse of this text, to paraphrase it, says, Mind is chief, just as cart follows the ox that is pulling it, so our experiences follow the actions that we do.
It goes on to say that when we do good actions, the result will be happiness when we do negative actions, the result will be unhappiness. That’s a very essential point in Buddhist philosophy, the law of karma, which you’ve probably all heard of, or cause and effect, which says that every action produces reactions, not just one but often many. A whole series of results will come from even just one simple action. In the case of, say, external phenomena, a seed when planted and nourished and given the right conditions, will produce a plant and a whole series of whatever comes on the plant: leaves, flowers, fruit, so and more seeds as well. So that’s an external way of seeing cause and effect.
Internally, and effect has to do with our experiences. So when we do something, or say something, or think something, that is like an action, that is like a seed. And that action will bring about reactions, results, consequences, in terms of our experience. In other people’s experiences as well, of course. Whatever we do does affect others, and that may in turn affect others.
So you can see how the results of our actions spread out and multiply and increase, and so on. But it also affects ourselves and what we experience. Basic idea there is that we create our own experiences. We create whatever happiness or unhappiness, whatever good experience or problem that we encounter in life. It’s result of our own actions, it’s the result of what we do, what we have set up for ourselves.
So we set things up, we set up our life, we set up our experiences. Mind is what’s behind it all. It’s how we think, it’s how we perceive and conceive and believe and feel and so on that is behind all of our actions. Our body doesn’t just act by itself. Body does and also when we speak, the words don’t just come out of nowhere haphazardly, but our actions of body and speech come from our mind, our thoughts and our feelings and so on.
So that’s why in the Dhammapada says mind is chief. Now, mind I feel I should explain a bit. Here, mind is like a general term, a general category that includes all of our conscious experiences. Basically, can say a person is made up of body and mind, body being the physical body, made of skin and bones and blood and so on all the different physical elements. That’s the body.
Mind is everything else. So mind is the whole world of experiences, thoughts, feelings. It isn’t just intellect. Sometimes people have the idea that mind only means intellect, so they make a difference between mind and emotion, or mind and intuition, or mind and feeling. But all of those things are included in mind.
I just want make it clear when I use the term mind, what I’m referring to. Mind includes thoughts, it includes the intellect, and it also includes feelings, emotions, and perceptions, and also dreams and memories. So it’s that whole realm or that whole sphere of consciousness. Mind is something which well, there’s a whole science in Buddhism, a whole study that’s done of the mind and what the mind is and the different types of mind, looking at it from different points of view. So it’s quite a complex thing.
Mind is said to be it’s not a physical thing. It’s a non physical, non substantial entity, so it isn’t something that we can see. It’s not a physical thing that we can see or touch or hear or smell. It doesn’t have any physical properties. It’s something other than that, other than the physical.
We could perhaps call it energy, but that’s a pretty vague term. But it’s definitely there, we’re experiencing it all the time. Even in one moment, even just now in the present, minds, each of us has a mind, and our minds are operating and functioning. Now the visual experiences are happening. You’re looking at me, you’re looking at other people in the room, you’re looking at objects in the room.
Visually, you’re picking up colors and shapes so on, visible objects. And and we’re also hearing hearing the sound of my voice and cars passing by and birds and so on. And you may be feeling sensations in your body, like warm, cold, uncomfortable or comfortable, you know, different physical sensations. Smell, that’s another perception we have. You might smell that or you might be smelling something else.
Taste is another one. You might have some taste in your mouth. Those are what we call perceptual ways of knowing, perceptual types of mind or consciousness. So those are experiences of the mind. And those are happening most of the time, except when we’re asleep.
Those five perceptions are taking place. Most of the time we have our eyes open and we’re hungrily taking in things that we see and sound or hearing. Those two are probably the two types of perceptions that we’re most occupied with hearing and seeing. All the time taking in information from the outside world by means of our sight and our hearing. So that’s part of mind.
So that’s happening even right now at this moment. And then more internally, on another level, we are thinking, we are having thoughts, reactions. We are probably thinking about what I am saying and having some kind of reaction, agreeing or disagreeing or making associations with other things you’ve heard or read or experienced in the past, or disagreeing with what I’m saying because of those other experiences that you’ve had. That’s on the level of thought or intellect, thinking, reacting in that way. That’s also part of mind.
Then perhaps on the emotional level, might be reacting with you might feel very comfortable in this room and feeling, Yes, it’s a very pleasant room. Or you might feel very uncomfortable here. There are certain things that jar your your you know, what you like and dislike. You know? So so on the emotional level, you know, we also are having experiences positive reactions or negative reactions or neutral reactions, to whatever we see, to whatever we hear, to whatever we come in contact with in the outside world, and to whatever comes up in our mind as well.
If any memories come up, then we have an emotional reaction to those. Again, that’s part of mind. Then, of course, there are all the other things that go on in your mind, thinking about other things you are going to do later on today, tomorrow, or next week, thinking about something that may have happened to you earlier today, you are still carrying that with you or past experiences. So not only are we dealing with present experiences, but we’re also dealing with past experiences and fantasizing about future experiences. Those activities are also part of the mind.
Mind is active all the time. There’s never a moment when the mind isn’t doing something. In fact, most of the time it’s doing several things at once, many things at once, so it can be operating on different levels. It’s quite complex, if you see it in that way. Even when we’re asleep, our mind is still operating.
When we dream, dreams are part of the mind as well. It’s a different kind of experience in the mind. Our perceptions cease. When we go to sleep, our perceptions go to sleep as well, so we’re not hearing, we’re not seeing, we’re not smelling and tasting. But we’re still experiencing things, so we experience dreams, and when we’re not experiencing dreams we might experience just a kind of darkness, unconsciousness.
But that doesn’t mean the mind isn’t active. The mind is active, it just doesn’t have any objects that it’s dealing with. Even the state of unconsciousness is still mind, and the mind is still active, it’s still functioning. There’s never a moment twenty four hours a day. There’s not one moment when the mind isn’t operating, it isn’t functioning.
All this stuff that happens in the mind, all these different levels, all these different areas in which the mind is working taking in material from the outside world through our perceptions, through our senses and then thinking about that, digesting it, dealing with it, associating it with other things that we’ve learned and experienced, reacting to it, and then regurgitating all that information in a way of choosing to act in a certain way, choosing to speak in a certain way, choosing to do certain things in our life, and so on. You see how all of our actions, the whole way we live our life, decide to do in terms of work, in terms of where we live, in terms of how we dress, in terms of who we happen to relate to, who we choose to live with, who we choose to ignore and reject, speech, in terms of our speech, what we say, what we talk about, and so on. All of our actions originate from our mind, our thoughts and so on. That is why it says mind is chief, because we don’t act blindly. We don’t act, as I say, mechanically.
Well, it looks like that sometimes, you know. When a kind of action becomes very habitual, it seems as though we’re acting without really thinking, without really deciding or choosing to act in that way. Habitual actions have become mechanical, but that’s not really true because there is thought behind it. There is always a reason behind what we do. We never do anything without a reason.
Often we don’t know the reason. Often we act just as some kind of impulse comes up and we just carry it out. It seems as though we don’t really know what we’re doing, but there is a reason. We do have some reason for why we’re doing that. It’s often beyond our control.
It’s often beyond the realm of our awareness and our consciousness and our conscientiousness. But still, the action has originated here in our mind. I’m pointing here because in the Eastern religions, not just Buddhism but the other religions of the East, tend to say that the center or mind is here in the heart. Not the physical heart, not that kind of blob there which pumps blood around the body, but the center of the chest, which is said to be the heart center, the heart chakra. And this is said to be the center of the mind, the mental activity, not the brain, not this organ up here.
But that doesn’t mean the mind is only located here. It’s just this kind of immaterial or insubstantial energy which flows through the whole body. That’s why can feel something in your toe. It’s because the mental energy, the energy of the mind, is flowing all through the body. But its center or its seat is here in the heart center.
What was I saying? So everything that we do starts here in the mind. It originates there, And then we carry it out in our physical actions, in our speech, just in the whole way we think, in the whole realm of ideas and concepts that we have, the way we react to things. Okay. So that then you know, with that idea, with that explanation of things, we can see how important it is to know what’s going on in the mind.
As I say, so much of the time we act without really knowing why or what we’re doing. We don’t really have much control or awareness. If we act in that way, we often do things which we regret afterwards because they’ve been very stupid or they’ve been things that have harmed others. We’ve hurt other people, we’ve hurt ourselves because of mindless, unconscious kinds of behaviour and activity. And it isn’t necessary.
If we can develop mindfulness awareness of what we’re doing, then we can have more control and more choice, more awareness of what we’re doing, and can cut out a lot actions which are unskillful or harmful to ourselves and to others. Our whole way of life can be much more wholesome, much more healthy, skillful, satisfying. As I talk more about the Buddhist worldview, more things will become clear about, you know, what’s life all about anyway? This is a big question. What are we here for?
What are we supposed to be doing with our lives? Buddhism has a whole explanation about that. But in terms of just how the mind influences our actions, I think we can see how useful it is to be more aware, to be more mindful. That doesn’t mean a kind of heavy handed big brother is watching sort of mentality. It doesn’t mean that we’re sort of watching ourselves all the time a living and deep, controlling everything that we do.
It isn’t like that. In fact, I really like the way one Zen teacher explained the idea of control. He said, The best kind of control is, say, if you have a flock of sheep, you don’t pin them into a really small sort of enclosure. That’s not the best way to control them. The best way to control them, to handle them, is to give them a big, spacious meadow, you know, where they have lots of space to wander around, lots of corners to explore, lots of freedom, but there’s still a fence.
There’s still a fence around it so they don’t escape, they don’t harm themselves, get into trouble, and so on. The same should be applied to our mind. The best way to control our mind is to give ourselves a lot of space, to give ourselves freedom, to let the mind go, in a sense of just let the mind think and feel and experience and do whatever it’s doing. But control comes with mindfulness, with awareness. So we develop this you could call it introspection, I suppose.
I tend to use the word mindfulness, but that isn’t really I don’t know if that’s not really an English word. It’s become an English word because of you know, it’s it’s the way of explaining this kind of this kind of meditation, this kind of mental activity that’s explained in Buddhism. But maybe awareness, just awareness That word could be more appropriate. Awareness just means being aware, being careful and knowing what’s happening in the mind as much as possible. So in the beginning, we can’t be aware of everything that we’re doing, everything that we’re thinking, everything that we’re feeling.
It’s something that can be developed. But as we develop it, as we practice it, we do naturally become more and more mindful. We become more and more aware of the different thoughts, the different feelings, the different ideas, the different impulses and emotions and so on that are coming up in the mind. We can start to penetrate deeper and deeper into the mind, so there’s many different levels on which the mind operates. In the beginning, maybe we are only aware of the most obvious, the most superficial surface kinds of experiences.
But as we develop our mindfulness, we can start to become aware of deeper and deeper levels of the mind, deeper and deeper levels of experience. The advantage of that is, as I say, very often we will do things just impulsively, like, for example, getting angry. Angry sometimes. We’ll say something unkind or yell at somebody or be very impatient with somebody that might be a very good friend, might be someone close to. And of course the other person is hurt, and we feel bad about it afterwards.
We feel really yucky about ourselves for having done that. I think we all feel this regret and the wish that we could have avoided that and controlled ourselves and not done that. I think that sort of thing happens to all of us. Anger or impatience doesn’t just come out of the air, doesn’t just come from nowhere. But it’s a whole thing that’s been building up inside of ourselves.
It could have started from something that happened a few days before or earlier that day. It could be maybe you didn’t sleep well and you had a bad night, you had a bad dream, and you woke up feeling irritable and grouchy. As the day went on, more and more things occurred that would irritate you, so you sort of build up to this state of being very irritable, very on edge. Finally, that person, your friend or your loved one, did something or said something, and it was just the last straw, you know? And you just blow it blow off, how do we say it?
Anyway, blow up and get angry and hurt that person. And then afterwards you say, Oh, I don’t know what came over me. I’m really sorry I did that. I just lost control, and so on. Okay, now that whole thing is really unnecessary.
We had mindfulness and we were able to detect feelings of grouchiness or irritation or unhappiness as soon as they start in the mind, as soon as we notice that we’re not feeling all that great, we’re starting to feel a bit on edge. If we took note of that and took care of it and dealt with it then, when it’s just starting to develop, then we can avoid the whole thing, we can avoid that build up of anger and irritation that leads to this final blowing up. At any point along the way, if we are mindful and if we notice, I’m not feeling too good. I’m feeling pretty lousy and I know it’ll happen. If I don’t do something about this, then you know, I’m going to get angry.
Because happens so many times. We can see that after a while there’s a pattern to it. So we can know then how the whole thing works. If we can put a stop to it and deal with that unhappy state of mind, that irritated or grouchy state of mind early on, then we can avoid getting angry, avoid hurting people, the people that we love, the people we don’t love. But still, we regret getting angry, however it happens.
That’s just an example of how mindfulness can help us, what kind of changes it can make in our lives. We can actually get to where we don’t lose control. We don’t blow up. We don’t do these things that we regret afterwards. Then we avoid all the other problems that go along with that, the pain that we cause the other person, the regret and the guilt that we feel about ourselves, about how we have behaved.
Sounds ideal. It sounds really wonderful and simple. I’m sure it’s very appealing, that whole idea, but of course not so easy to do. However, as I say, mindfulness is something that can be developed with more time, with more practice, with more experience, with familiarity. As I said, the idea of meditation is becoming familiar with something.
As mindfulness becomes more familiar, more a part of our experience, it does become easier. As I said, we can get to where we can deal with unhappy or unfortunate or unpleasant states of mind as they are starting to arise, before they get too strong, before they get to where we just lose control and they take over. They dominate us. So that’s the basic idea of mindfulness. It’s something that can be learned in meditation, developed in meditation, but ideally it’s something that we should try to be practicing all the time.
Even if somebody takes up a practice of meditation and does a regular meditation practice every day, It’s only a very small percentage of our time. Maybe meditate half an hour a day, but we’re awake for nineteen or twenty hours of day, maybe more. During all that time, we’re doing things, we’re saying things, we’re acting. The idea of mindfulness is to try to practice, to try to be mindful, to try to be aware all throughout the day. Be aware of what we’re doing, be aware of what we’re thinking, and try to live our life, try to put ourselves, our whole existence, the way we act, the way we speak, and the way we think, to try to keep it as much as possible in a kind of positive and skillful and healthy way of life, way of being.
With that as an introduction, I’ll just teach you now the most basic way of developing mindfulness, meditation. We can practice it together. So this meditation involves using the breath as an object of concentration. Very simply, you just watch your breath going in and out. Concentration and mindfulness can be developed using other things, other objects.
You can have something sitting in front of you that you look at, like a flower or a candle or something. Or you can use some kind of sound, repeated phrase or series of syllables that you repeat over and over and use that as an object of concentration. But I find that I think breath is a very efficient object to use. For one thing, it’s with us all the time. We’re always breathing, so the breath is always there.
So you don’t have to put something in front of you, you don’t have to set up a certain situation in which to meditate, because you can sit down and do this meditation anytime, anyplace, even when you’re outside on a bus or a train, or sitting in a park, or sitting in your office, you can find your object of meditation, find your object of concentration, and it’s there. Also, the breath being a natural part of our being, our existence, you know, it’s and it has this rhythmic flow to it by tuning into the breath, watching the breath, concentrating on the breath. It just naturally makes the mind more calm, more inward looking. It’s very easy to become introspective by watching the breath because the air the whole cycle involves the air coming into the body and then going out again. So just that whole rhythm naturally brings our attention, our awareness inside, internally, which is the idea of meditation.
Because most of the time our attention is going out to things that we see, things that we hear, things that are happening around us. The idea here is to try to become more aware of our internal world, our world of thoughts and feelings and so on. This is accomplished quite easily by concentrating on the breath. It’s a sort of common knowledge, you might say, or common wisdom that if you’re getting upset or you’re, you know, you’re starting to get all emotional or angry, they say if you just count count your breaths or, you know, take a few deep breaths, it’ll calm you down. So even people who don’t meditate will use the breath as a way of calming down, relaxing, quieting the mind.
So it does have that effect. That’s why I think the breath is a very good object to use as an object of meditation or concentration. Okay, so let’s just try that now. When you meditate, you don’t have to sit in any special way. You can sit in a chair, you can even lie down, although it’s difficult to stay awake when you lie down.
The idea in meditation is to try to stay awake and alert. As I say, you can sit any way you like, but it has been found that a certain way of sitting is more conducive to concentration, to a clear and concentrated state of mind. That involves sitting cross legged, if possible, if that’s comfortable, keeping the back straight as much as possible. The energy of the mind runs all through the body, but the main channel that it takes is parallel to the spine. When the back is straight, then that mental energy is more clear.
You find that in just normal situations, if you’re listening to lecture or if you’re studying, if you can sit with the back straight, it’s much easier to have the mind clear and concentrated. Keeping the back straight, the shoulders relaxed, and generally the whole body should be relaxed, all the muscles should be relaxed. Relaxed. You can have your hands on your knees, or the Buddhist way is to have the hands in the lap with the sometimes right over left, but this way is yeah, right over left, right hand over the left hand with the fingers aligned, palms facing up, and the two thumbs touching. That’s the classic Buddhist way of sitting, and it does have it does have significance.
It has to do with the flow of energy in the body. But you can just rest your hands comfortably in your lap if you prefer. Close your eyes, or you might find it helpful to have them open just a crack. If you leave them open just a little bit to let some light in, then you’re less likely to get sleepy or drowsy. It’s easier to stay awake and clear.
And just breathe normally and focus your awareness, your attention on the breath in one of two places, either at the tips of the nostrils where the air first enters and then leaves the body, Or the movement, the rise and fall of the abdomen as the air So choose one of those two places and just stay with it. And you can think to yourself with each breath, breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in, breathing out. And it’s an aid to concentration if you count. So count each full breath as one.
Count up to ten, and then start again with one. And with each breath, your attention should be fully on the flow of air in and out of the body. Now other things will happen in the mind. You’ll hear sounds. You will feel sensations in your body.
Thoughts will come up. But whatever happens in the mind, take note of it. Don’t get upset. Don’t reject it and try to pretend it’s not there. Observe it.
Take note of it. But don’t get involved in it. Don’t be distracted by it. Bring your attention back to the breath each time it moves away, each time it gets distracted. So stay fully with each moment, with each breath.