I. Check in, Review
- Everything we experience is an opportunity for freedom from suffering. Either suffering is happening, and we are identifying causes and conditions for that, and then we are able to come out of that suffering through the practice of mindfulness. If we are not suffering, we are lingering in those qualities that encourage awakeing, like kindness.
- This is called wise effort. If we lose awareness, this is conducive to suffering. Prescience with bell.
- Uncovering the Buddha within : https://www.lionsroar.com/the-golden-buddha-inside-you/
- What is suffering, dissatisfaction with experience. Not getting what we want, getting what we do not want. Dharma teacher Rodnay Smith calls this “resistance to reality.”
- You are developing the intention to be mindful during your practice and daily activities. This can be as simple as being present and aware.
- We mentioned the path out of suffering, virtue, concentration and wisdom. This path is moving to more refined concentration, in order to develop understanding at more subtle levels in the body and in the mind.
- Review on the body
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- Budhha’s comments on benefits to Mindfulness of the body: “Would that light ball of string find an entry into that door-panel made entirely of hardwood?”
“No, sir.”
“In the same way, when a mendicant has developed and cultivated mindfulness of the body, Māra cannot find a vulnerability and doesn’t get hold of them.”
- Budhha’s comments on benefits to Mindfulness of the body: “Would that light ball of string find an entry into that door-panel made entirely of hardwood?”
- Bahiya Sutta: “Herein, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: ‘In the seen will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized will be merely what is cognized.’ In this way you should train yourself, Bahiya.
II. About feeling tone
- In Class I and II, we have been exercising awareness of the physicality of experience. What physicality? With mindfulness of breathing and you are aware of the body is the body hard or soft, that of cold, moving or still. When we give attention and awareness of an aspect of the body
- In every moment, we sense, and the mind assesses whatever it senses.
- The result of this assessment is perception and feeling. Perception is the mind recognizing what it is sensing.
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- Feeling tone is the first conscious indication of how the mind assesses experience.
- Feeling tone is the flavor of the experience, From the severely unpleasant to the severely pleasant. This is not emotion. Emotions, like anger, have a feeling tone. For most of us traffic can be unpleasant. Depends on perception. My favorite cigar, movie, landscape, could be pleasant. Depends on perception. Or milkshakes. Depends on perception.
- Exercise on feeling tone.
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- All mental impressions have an effect on the body. This can turn out to be a great skill. When we are suffering find refuge in mindfulness of the body.
- This can lead us into the land of suffering. When we have an unpleasant experience, we want to get rid of the experience. We are under the illusion that something outside ourselves has caused this. Not true! Our mental assessment of the experience has caused this. So we have an unpleasant experience and we hate this. Ex: Pain.
- So the conditioning in the undeveloped mind is that the unpleasant expenses can lead to a poison called hatred.Ex: Perhaps spicy food is unpleasant. Not a problem until I hate spicy food. Or your friends say “Why don’t you come over for some spicy Indian food?” And you say “I hate Indian food.”
- The pleasant experience leads to greed. I love the surf. Not a problem, until we crave the surf, it seems like we can not live without the surf. This is greed. And neither pleasant nor unpleasant can lead to delusion.This greed, hatred and delusion are called the three poisons.
- So we want to be able to intervene. I love the surf. Not a problem, until we crave the surf, it seems like we can not live without the surf. This is greed. Reflection: Say the word hate to yourself about some experience and then strongly dislike. Then do the same with love.
- About investigation. Curiosity, looking a little closer
- Dogen “and what is enlightenment?’” the mind that is intimate with all things”In this moment and awareness.
- Whatever you are experiencing, train the mind to give closer attention. Example: Breath long or short, shallow or deep; sensations, hot cold, hard soft moving still etc. then just watch.
- Besides suffering, we also are developing in impermanence.
- “Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.” The Buddha
- Another tool that can help you: Aiming and sustaining. Remember that we are moving towards concentration.
- Assignments: Practice Meditation
- Guided Body Scan Meditation Transcript
- Practice mindfulness at the activity level.
- Reading, from “Breath by Breath” by Larry Rosenberg: p60-90