Tag: mindfulness

Guiding Mental Factors

We have been talking about our mind for the last few sessions. We looked at three types of minds and then we dived into mental factors that identify the object. Today, let’s continue down this rabbit hole if you will and discuss mental factors that guide us to an object.

There are five mental factors in this category, aspiration, firm apprehension, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. Let’s look at each one.

Aspiration is a mental factor that takes an interest in an object. We are all here for meditation tonight. If you did not have an aspiration to calm your mind or make progress on your spiritual journey, you would not be here. The main function of aspiration is to induce effort. Think about it. If we don’t have a wish to meditate, we would not put an effort to be here. You could have a million excuses, its Diwali time, or it’s dinner time, or whatever. But you have a wish to meditate and that is why you made an effort to be here.

There are four types of aspirations. Wishing to meet an object, wishing not to be separated from an object, wishing to obtain an object and wishing to be released from an object. Let’s take an example. Your kids are coming home for holidays. You wish to meet them. That is wishing to meet an object. You don’t want them to leave. That is wishing not to be separated from an object. You want to get a promotion, or make a lot of money, that is wishing to obtain an object. You want to remove your self-cherishing mind that is wishing to be released from an object. Depending upon our motivation each one of them could be virtuous, non-virtuous, or neutral. Wishing to steal would be an example of non-virtuous aspiration as opposed to wishing to meditate would be a virtuous aspiration.

Next let’s look at firm apprehension. It is a mental factor that allows our primary mind to apprehend the object firmly. It is also a foundation for mindfulness and concentration. You see, unless we understand an object clearly, we will not be able to keep our mind on it for long. Take this topic for example. These teachings come from a book called “How To Understand The Mind.”  When I first read this book, I would put it down after a couple of pages. It was too complex. Then, I started to break it down in relatable examples and that helped me continue to read the book in a way that I could explain it to someone else. Without firm apprehension, our mind is like a leaf floating in the air. It has no direction and it cannot stay at one place for long.

Next mental factor is mindfulness. It is a mental factor that allows us not to forget an object that is realized by our primary mind. Mindfulness can only focus on an object once it is realized. If an object is not present, you cannot have mindfulness about that object. Mindfulness maintains continuum of the object by not forgetting. What does that mean? When we do our empty sky meditation for example. Once we realize that our mind has this empty sky like nature and we keep our focus on the clarity of our mind, mindfulness helps us keep it there. We will continue to observe the clarity of our mind without distractions. If our primary mind lacks mindfulness, it will forget the object. The function of mindfulness is to prevent distractions. The more stable our mindfulness, fewer distracting thoughts we will have. We need to make continuous efforts to improve our mindfulness.

The next mental factor is concentration. Concentration helps us keep our primary mind on the object single-pointedly. It can develop only when an object is held firmly by mindfulness. There are three types of concentration. When we are meditating, we have virtuous concentration. When we are driving, we have neutral concentration. And when we are thinking about our enemies, we have non-virtuous concentration. Concentration is very important for our spiritual progress. Listening to teachings, reciting mantras, contemplating teachings, meditating, all are only effective when we have a mind that is concentrating. Buddha said that prayers, mantras, spiritual readings are of no use if the mind is distracted elsewhere. The main function of virtuous concentration is to make our mind peaceful. When our mind is free from distractions, it becomes calm and peaceful. When our mind is peaceful and happy, craving for external pleasure declines and we become content. Pure concentration also helps our body and mind become comfortable.

The next mental factor is wisdom. It is a virtuous, intelligent mind that makes primary mind realize meaningful object. What are these meaningful objects you may ask? They are also known as universal truths. Some of the meaningful objects are cycle of life and birth, existence of past and future lives, laws of karma, and emptiness. There is a monumental difference between intelligence and wisdom that I want to bring out here. An intelligent person is not necessarily a wise person. Let’s take an example. Scientists who develop weapons of war are intelligent but I am sure we can question their wisdom in doing so. Or wolves on wall street who pray on investors are certainly intelligent but you would not call them wise. Function of wisdom is to eliminate doubts and misunderstandings and to dispel ignorance. If we understand the benefits of wisdom, we will strive to achieve it. Opponent of wisdom is ignorance. Nothing harms us more than ignorance. Ignorance makes us create negative karma. Wisdom can arise from listening or reading spiritual teachings; it can arise from contemplating on those teachings; and it can arise from meditating on those teachings.

As you can see our mind is a fascinating subject and hopefully, we are peeling the layers to understand how it functions.

Five Mental Factors

We talked about three types of mind last session. In today’s session, I want to continue discussion our mind in a bit detail. When it comes to function, mind can be divided into primary mind and mental factors. The primary mind is the same as what we call soul or consciousness. Mental factors are the ones that identify the attributes of an object. It is important to note that primary mind and mental factors are not two separate entities. You can think of primary mind as a flame and the mental factors are the rays of the flame—they are not separate from each other.

There are five mental factors and if one of them is missing our primary mind cannot cognize the object. These factors are: feeling, discrimination, intention, contact, and attention.

Feeling experiences an object as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Discrimination allows us to identify the object by distinguishing one object from another. Intention enables the mind towards the object and get involved with it. Contact perceives an object as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral and becomes the basis for our feelings. Attention focuses our mind on the object.

Let’s look at each one in a little depth starting with feeling. Feeling can be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. One side note: enlightened beings only experience pleasant feelings. Beings in God realm and formless realm experience pleasant and neutral feelings. We in the human realm, experience all three types of feelings. Also of the note, when we are sleeping, we only experience neutral feelings. Except when we are dreaming then we can experience pleasant and unpleasant feelings as well.

General function of feeling is to experience the effects of previous actions or karma. Buddha said that fully ripened effects of karma can only be experienced on consciousness. Virtuous actions result in pleasant feelings, non-virtuous actions result in unpleasant feelings, and neutral actions result in neutral feelings. We tend to think that pleasant feelings come from pleasant objects and so on. But that is not the case, it completely depends on our karma. Take medicine for example. Same medicine that cures one person can have deadly reaction for another person.

Function of contaminated feeling is to induce three poisons in the form of attachment, hatred, and ignorance. For example, when we develop contaminated pleasant feeling, we develop craving or attachment. This is because of delusions that we carry with us from our past karma. If we have mastered our delusions, even when we get pleasant feelings, we would not create cravings or attachment. So it is important for us to become free from self-grasping. Once our self-grasping is gone, the feelings are pure and we can be free from attachment, anger, or ignorance.  Uncontaminated feelings on the other side are directly based on wisdom or true nature of phenomenon.

Next, let’s talk about discrimination. Every object has features that distinguishes itself from other objects. Function of discrimination is to apprehend one object from another. When our eye consciousness sees a tree, it recognizes the tree based on its characteristics. A newborn on the other hand, is unable to recognize a tree. I know discrimination has become a dirty word in our society but all discrimination means is “this” and not “that” nothing more, nothing less. Discrimination can be associated with six types: eye, ear, tongue, nose, body, and mental. If one of them is missing discrimination, it cannot identify an object. For example, if we have faulty eyesight, our eyes may not be able to discriminate objects clearly. This goes for all other types of discrimination.

Discrimination can be mistaken or unmistaken. We act destructively because of our delusions. All delusions are mistaken discrimination. For example, anger has mistaken discrimination that identifies an object as an inherently unpleasant and attachment has mistaken discrimination that identifies an object as an inherently pleasant. In reality, both of these are mistaken discrimination because an object is never pleasant or unpleasant from its own side, it is the mind that perceives it as such.

There are many causes of wrong discrimination such as previous karmic imprints, familiarity, listening to wrong advice, contemplating wrong reasons, etc. We all have seeds of mistaken discrimination but whether or not they ripen depends upon lifestyle choices we make. If we lead a non-virtuous life, we will tend to develop wrong thoughts as a way to justify our choices. Clear and correct discrimination helps us make positive choices when it comes to creating our karma.

Next is intention. Primary function of intention is to put a focus on the object. You will notice that sometimes you are seating in a room and your mind wanders off to a totally different place. This is because our intention associated with inner winds is carrying our mind to the object. Principal function of intention is to create karma. We talk about this when we study karma. Definition of karma is a body, speech, or mental actions initiated by mental intention. If there is no intention, there is no karma. We discussed this at length in our karma sessions.

Next is contact. Function of contact is to perceive the object as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Once it perceives the object as such, it then creates the appropriate feeling for that object. For example, if our tongue tastes sugar and finds it pleasant, it then develops a pleasant feeling. Contact is associated with six types: eye, ear, tongue, nose, body, and mental.

The final mental factor is attention. Attention has four functions: 1)to focus the mind on a particular object; 2) to fix the mind on that object; 3) to prevent the mind from moving from that object; and 4) to serve as a basis for mindfulness and concentration.

To develop mindfulness and concentration, we must develop strong and stable attention.

Enemy of My Enemy

I attended a meditation retreat over the weekend. During the retreat, the teacher mentioned something that got me thinking. He said we often think that people are our enemy. However, our real enemy is our delusions. So if our real enemy is our delusions and other people’s real enemy is delusions as well then other people are our friends since we have the same enemy. Let’s dig in.

Often we consider other people as our real enemies. Someone who cut us off in traffic for example. This is how road rage starts. Someone cuts us off intentionally or otherwise. All of a sudden, we are all riled up. Some people even chase the other car putting themselves and everyone around them in danger. All because they perceive the other driver as their enemy. Funny thing is that the other driver may not even realize that they cut us off and may be just driving without giving it a thought. Now, we have given rent-free space to that driver in our head. We get angry and in that state of anger, we make decisions that are not prudent to say the least. This angry state of mind also affects our health. It increases our blood pressure, affects our heart health, affects our memory and so forth.

And this is true for all of our delusions. Whether it is anger, attachment, hatred, jealousy, and so forth, each one of our delusions affects us negatively. It affects our mental health, makes us anxious and even depressed, and all of that drama usually plays out in our heads. Shantideva an Indian scholar said and I am paraphrasing here, that we must fight our real enemy—our delusions with everything we have. We must destroy our delusions. We must not give delusions time of day if you will.

Instead, we think other people are our enemies. That driver who cut us off. Or even people who we think we love. They did not take the trash out or did not greet us properly or were upset with our behavior and so forth. But if we think about it, they all suffer from similar plight. They all have the same delusions that we are going through. It reminds me of a story about this airline passenger. There was a father and son traveling. The kid was upset and was not behaving properly. The passenger next to him got irritated and told the father that he should try and control his son. The father goes you are right and I am trying but his mom passed away recently so he is having a tough time. All of a sudden passenger felt empathy for the kid instead of anger toward him.

And this is true for anyone we think of as our enemy. They all have their own delusions they are battling with. That coworker who you think is always bothering you may have some personal issues they are going through. Because we put our comfort and our needs first, often we don’t even try to think about what may be going on in someone else’s life. This putting ourselves first is what we refer to as Self-Cherishing. Since beginningless time, we have been conditioned to think about our needs and our comfort ahead of everyone else’s. As a result, anytime someone gives us the slightest discomfort real or perceived—often it is perceived—but that is a topic for another day, we tend to regard them as our enemy. Look at our social fabric. If someone disagrees with our point of view, they are our enemy. We can’t even have a civilized conversation about our political views anymore. If we take time to put our self-cherishing aside, we will realize that everyone else is in the same boat. They all have the same delusions that we are fighting.

And if all of us have the same delusions, the same enemy if you will, then does it not make sense to think wait, they are my friends? We are all battling the same enemy here. Why don’t we team up? So empathy towards them. Realize they are not our enemies. The real enemy is within us—our delusions. If we put all our efforts into fighting this enemy, we can make a difference. Because we all have this Buddha nature. This is pure potential. This ability to be happy and peaceful all the time without getting disturbed by external events. No person or thing can make us unhappy because as they say, agony and ecstasy are within us. What happens out there should not be able to disturb what happens within us. What happens in here is entirely up to us. If we realize that, we will no longer take on the world as our enemy and resulting peace will help us become more happy, peaceful, joyful, and otherwise nicer human beings.

Power of Wisdom

Before the break, we talked about how compassion and wisdom are the two pillars of Buddha’s sutra teachings. So today, let’s discuss wisdom. If you think about a relationship, that’s it, isn’t it? If you can remove disharmony using wisdom, your relationships are perfect.  

One of the verses goes when I associate with others, I will consider myself lower and hold everyone supreme. So the best way to do this is to familiarize ourselves with Cherishing all living beings by putting our determination to cherish them into practice.

So, through thinking about the kindness of others, the benefits of cherishing others what happens is we make a determination I want to cherish others, I want to love others. We have talked about this before, that what we end up doing every day depends upon what we wish for. It all starts with intention. If we develop that wish to love everyone then we will slowly start practicing that and grow our love for other living beings. It just will happen naturally.

It is perfectly possible to do this because we have the seed of universal love. We have Buddha Nature, which means we’ve always had the potential to grow our love, expand our love, and deepen our love, to every single person.

The main reason why we do not cherish all living beings as explained in the book Mirror of Dharma, is we’re so preoccupied with ourselves. This leaves very little room in our minds to appreciate others.  So therefore if we wish to cherish others sincerely, we have to reduce our obsessive self concern.

Sad to break it to you but our self-cherishing, obsessive self concern is the source of all disharmony.

Everywhere we look, our mind is polluted by this surface of self-concern. It just alters everything we see. You know, we can’t actually see what’s going on because we’re so obsessed with ourselves. And that’s just reflected in our minds. So why is it? Why is it that we regard ourselves as so precious, but not others? I am just one person others are countless. Why are we so obsessed about it? Me? Me, me?

One major reason is we’re so familiar with thinking about ourselves, it’s a familiarity of habit.

And the Geshe-la says, Why because we’re so familiar with self-cherishing we’re very familiar with an attitude that puts ourselves first. We have been doing it since beginningless time in our lives, which is why we’re still circling in suffering. Since the beginningless time we have grasped at a truly existent I this is the root of it. So a truly existent I is an I that exists from its own side. But basically, we have two ego minds that are the very kind of root of all our problems. And one is called self-grasping, meaning we’re grasping at a self that exists from its own side.

We think there’s a real me or real I and we think everyone else is not me or either other or self or there are also other or them or you know, him or her or something like that. We have done this experiment before. Show of hand where is the me in this room? Everyone of us think we are that me and everyone else is something other than me right? Now if the I was inherently existent, it would be same for all of us. But it’s not.

So it’s only our ignorance that thinks I’m really me, and everyone else is really other. Because I have this sense of real me, I then think that this me is more important than all the other me’s. So I’m more important than you just as simple as that.

We spend so much time contemplating our real or imagined good qualities that we become oblivious to our faults. So, in reality, our mind is full of gross delusions, but we ignore them and may even fool ourselves into thinking that we do not have such repulsive minds, like pretending there’s no dirt in our house after sweeping it, under the rug. So when we think about our own faults and delusions, the reason we do this is with the view of getting rid of them right not to feel bad about ourselves. Because these faults and delusions, as most of you know, are not intrinsic to our mind, these delusions are like salt, for example, salt, in salty water, they’re not the actual nature of the water, we can get rid of them. We don’t want to identify with our faults and limitations. We do have to realize our faults and limitation but not identify with them if that makes sense.

But Geshe Geshe-la says it is often so painful to admit that we have faults that we make all types of excuses rather than alter our results view of ourself, and one of the most common ways of not facing up to our own faults is to blame others. For instance, we have a difficult relationship with someone. We naturally include that it’s entirely their fault. That’s true, isn’t it? They should really change, you know. And then we’ll be so happy. Anyway, good luck with that. Because you know, it’s hard to change even one person, it’s impossible to change anyone other than ourselves, to be honest, and it’s definitely hard to change everybody.

So we naturally conclude it’s their fault, we’re unable to accept that it is at least partly our fault when we have difficult relationships. So instead of taking responsibility for our actions, or making effort to change our views or our behavior, get rid of our faults. We argue with them insists as they who must change an exaggerated sense of our own importance thus leads to a critical attitude towards other people makes it almost impossible to avoid conflict. And I think we’re seeing that in the world today, too. So the fact that we’re oblivious to our faults does not prevent other people from noticing them and pointing them out. But when they do we feel that they’re being unfair. So unfair.

This is self cherishing. That arises from self grasping ignorance. Our inherently existing self. This is the source of all our disharmony. If we learn to remove that, our relationships become easier. Life becomes frictionless. It just flows all of a sudden.

The 16 Breath Meditation

Today I want to talk about what is known as 16 breath meditation. Buddha taught this meditation in his early days and they say if you follow it, that has all the ingredients to be liberated. It is also known as Full Awareness of Breathing meditation. It allows one to generate mindfulness and develop awakening.

Here is how we practice this:

The First Breath: Breathing in a long breath, I know I am breathing in a long breath, breathing out, I know I am breathing out a long breath.

The Second Breath: Breathing in a short breath, I know I am breathing in a short breath, breathing out, I know I am breathing out a short breath.

Explanation: These two breaths remove forgetfulness and unnecessary thinking. This generates mindfulness and allows us to be in the present moment.

The Third Breath: Breathing in, I am aware of my whole body. Breathing out, I am aware of my whole body.

Explanation: This breath puts us in touch with our body making us aware of every part of our body.

The Fourth Breath: I am breathing in and making my whole body calm and at peace. I am breathing out and making my whole body calm and at peace.

Explanation: This breath allows us to realize the calmness and peace in the body and puts body and mind in harmony.

The Fifth Breath: I am breathing in and feeling joyful. I am breathing out and feeling joyful.

The Sixth Breath: I am breathing in and feeling happy. I am breathing out and feeling happy.

Explanation: These two breaths create joy and peace that nourishes body and mind. Happiness and joy arise naturally within you. By being mindful, you are able to transform neutral feelings into joyful feelings.

The Seventh Breath: I am breathing in and am aware of the activities of my mind. I am breathing out and am aware of the activities of my mind.

The Eighth Breath: I am breathing in and making the activities of my mind calm and peaceful. I am breathing out and making the activities of my mind calm and peaceful.

Explanation: These two breaths allow you to look at all the feelings that arise within you whether pleasant, neutral or unpleasant. They enable you to look at these feelings deeply into their roots and nature and make your feelings calm and at peace.

The Ninth Breath: I am breathing in and am aware of my mind. I am breathing out and am aware of my mind.

The Tenth Breath: I am breathing in and making my mind happy and at peace. I am breathing out and making my mind happy and at peace.

The Eleventh Breath: I am breathing in and concentrating my mind. I am breathing out and concentrating my mind.

The Twelfth Breath: I am breathing in and liberating my mind. I am breathing out and liberating my mind.

Explanation: With these four breaths, you recognize all states of the mind—perceptions, thinking, discrimination, happiness, sadness, and doubt. It allows you to observe the activities of the mind and release obstacles of the mind.

The Thirteenth Breath: I am breathing in and observing the impermanent nature of all phenomena. I am breathing out and observing the impermanent nature of all phenomena.

The Fourteenth Breath: I am breathing in and observing the fading nature of all phenomena. I am breathing out and observing the fading nature of all phenomena.

The Fifteenth Breath: I am breathing in and concentrating on liberation. I am breathing out and concentrating on liberation.

The Sixteenth Breath: I am breathing in and focusing on letting go. I am breathing out and focusing on letting go.

Explanation: With these four breaths, we observe true nature of Dharma. First with observation of impermanent nature of phenomena, then with observation of fading nature of phenomena, then contemplating liberation and finally contemplating letting go. Hope this all makes sense and as we develop your practice, you are able to perfect this over time.