Foundations of
Mindfulness
Stephen Batchelor
tricycle
Applying mindfulness to the body, feelings,
mind and objects of mind
The origins of [mindful awareness] practice
are found in Gautama’s own discourse on the “Foundations of
Mindfulness” (Satipatthana Sutta) in the Pali Canon. It has been
described as “the most important discourse ever given by the Buddha
on mental development,” and as such is highly revered in all
Theravada Buddhist countries of Asia. The Buddha opened the
discourse by declaring:
There is, monks, this way that leads only to
the purification of beings, to the overcoming of sorrow and
distress, to the disappearance of pain and sadness, to the gaining
of the right path, to the realization of Nirvana—that is to say the
four foundations of mindfulness.
These four foundations are the four areas of
life to which mindful awareness needs to be applied: body,
feelings, mind and objects of mind. In other words, the totality of
experience.
The Buddha recommends that a person retire to
a forest, the root of a tree or a solitary place, sit cross-legged
with body erect and then turn his or her attention to their breath.
Then, “mindfully he breathes in, mindfully he breathes out.
Breathing in a long breath, he knows that he breathes in a long
breath, and breathing out a long breath, he knows that he breathes
out a long breath.” There is no attempt to control the breath or in
any way interfere with the immediacy of experience as it unfolds.
If the breath is long, one recognizes it to be long; if short, one
recognizes it to be short.
Yet for many this seemingly straightforward
exercise turns out to be remarkably tricky. One finds that no
matter how sincere one’s intention to be attentive and aware, the
mind rebels against such instructions and races off to indulge in
all manner of distractions, memories and fantasies. One is forced
to confront the sobering truth that one is only notionally “in
charge” of one’s psychological life. The comforting illusion of
personal coherence and continuity is ripped away to expose only
fragmentary islands of consciousness separated by yawning gulfs of
unawareness. Similarly, the convenient fiction of a well-adjusted,
consistent personality turns out to be merely a skillfully edited
and censored version of a turbulent psyche. The first step in this
practice of mindful awareness is radical
self-acceptance.
Such self-acceptance, however, does not
operate in an ethical vacuum, where no moral assessment is made of
one’s emotional states. The training in mindful awareness is part
of a Buddhist path with values and goals. Emotional states are
evaluated according to whether they increase or decrease the
potential for suffering. If an emotion, such as hatred or envy, is
judged to be destructive, then it is simply recognized as such. It
is neither expressed through violent thoughts, words or deeds, nor
is it suppressed or denied as incompatible with a “spiritual” life.
In seeing it for what it is—a transient emotional state—one
mindfully observes it follow its own nature: to arise, abide for a
while, and then pass away.
The Buddha described his teaching as “going
against the stream.” The unflinching light of mindful awareness
reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of
past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look
at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to
swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by
powerful currents we had never even suspected—precisely because
until that moment we were largely living at their
command.
The practice of mindful awareness is a first
step in the direction of inner freedom. Disciplining oneself to
focus attention single-mindedly on the breath (for example) enables
one to become progressively more quiet and concentrated. Such
stillness, though, is not an end in itself. It serves as a platform
from which to observe more dearly what is taking place within us.
It allows the steady depth of awareness needed to understand the
very origins of conditioning: namely, how delusion and craving are
at the top of human suffering. Such meditative understanding is
experiential rather than intellectual, therapeutic rather than
dogmatic, liberating rather than merely convincing.
The aim of mindful awareness is the
understanding that frees one from delusion and craving. In Pali,
such understanding is called vipassana (“penetrative seeing”), and
it is under this name that the traditional practice of mindful
awareness is frequently presented in the West today. Vipassana is
often translated as “insight” and courses are offered on “insight
meditation.”
This usage has given rise to some confusion.
It has led to the impression that some Buddhists practice
vipassana, while others (such as practitioners of Zen or Tibetan
Buddhism) do not. In fact, vipassana is central to all forms of
Buddhist meditation practice. The distinctive goal of any Buddhist
contemplative tradition is a state in which inner calm (samatha) is
unified with insight (vipassana). Over the centuries, each
tradition has developed its own methods for actualizing this state.
And it is in these methods that the traditions differ, not in their
end objective of unified calm and insight.