Monday, July 11, 2022
THE FOUR FOUNDATIONS OF AWARENESS
We got off to a great start last night!
Thanks to all who attended and offered their listening and loving presence, as we grow in spiritual friendship.
This morning, my first thought about Monday Friends was that weekly continuity of practice is great, but daily continuity is better, and moment-to-moment is best of all.
That last one is something only each of us can do for ourselves.
But Monday Friends can definitely help us all maintain daily continuous awareness, I believe, in two ways:
First, I publish a free daily email practice message from Sayadaw U Tejaniya, a Burmese monk and a master teacher of the Four Foundations of Awareness, which we are practicing this year as Monday Friends.
Continuity of awareness is one Sayadaw’s great teaching themes, about which he says:
“Forget the idea that meditation happens only on a cushion or in the meditation hall. The right time to meditate is all day long, from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall asleep.”
The Daily Tejaniya is sent by email the first thing every morning, and several thousand people worldwide find it a tremendous aid to maintaining continuous awareness throughout every day.
For these reasons, I highly recommend The Daily Tejaniya as a powerful support to our growing interest and commitment to practicing the Four Foundations of Awareness.
You can subscribe to The Daily Tejaniya here.
Second, as you can see, I have created this Google Document page. From time to time I could perhaps offer a few hopefully useful reflections as a complementary aide to our weekly guided meditations, Q&As and discussion of the Four Foundations.
After all, the Four Foundations of Awareness can initially seem quite daunting.
For example, there is the matter of those 16 steps.
Sixteen!
The fact that every teacher teaches these steps differently, with a different vocabulary, different emphases, and different tips and techniques, can be confusing.
And how is breathing meditation connected to the Four Foundations of Awareness, anyway?
It takes an extra oomph of energy to cut through such questions as we begin, before the skies clear and smooth sailing becomes the norm.
So starting today, every now and then I’ll offer a missive like this one, taking a crack at any questions you might ask, and addressing such issues as they arise from day to day.
Please always feel free to email me at doug@dougmcgill.com. Later, I might also open a Google Docs page where as spiritual friends we can share our thoughts, questions and reflections in writing. We’re sure to evolve over time.
Let’s tackle this handful of basic points as we start Monday Friends.
Starting with basic definitions:
1. The Four Foundations of Awareness describes four places to aim our attention, going to successively deeper and subtler levels of consciousness, in order to see exactly where and how we unconsciously create mental suffering for ourselves. In so doing, we discover how we can consciously stop doing that.
2. Those four levels of consciousness are our awareness of the BODY, of FEELING TONES (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral), of MIND, and the TRUTH OF NATURE. The truth of nature is our own true nature, of course.
3. The Full Awareness of Breathing, or “anapanasati” in the Buddha’s language of Pali, was the Buddha’s favorite way of practicing and teaching the Four Foundations of Awareness. Indeed he was practicing in this way on the day he was enlightened. Anapanasati uses the breath as a steady anchor as we travel deeper and deeper into consciousness, down to the subtlest roots of suffering. We can end suffering so much easier when suffering is in its tiny root form, as opposed to the great thick trees and trunks of suffering once those seeds of suffering get a chance to grow. The Full Awareness of Breathing guides our attention to four different domains within each of the four foundations of awareness. These are four domains of awareness of our BODY, four FEELING domains, four MIND domains, and four domains of THE TRUTH OF NATURE. Altogether, then, the Full Awareness of Breathing encompasses 16 domains of consciousness (awareness), which we are encouraged to visit, to explore, and finally become so intimate and familiar with, we decide to permanently move in.
As I mentioned, every teacher labels and expounds on the sixteen domains differently, which can create confusion. On our journey, I propose that we keep things very simple to start, by labeling each domain with a single word.
The shorter the handle, the easier it is to remember, to grab, and to use.
Mentally, if you wish, as we get started, you can add the name of each foundation after the one-word label, in order to generate a fuller description of the specific activity of mind that the Buddha recommends in order to explore and to solidly build each foundation. For example, doing this for the first foundation yields these four domains: “Long Breath,” “Short Breath,” “Whole Body,” “Calm Body.”
In the first foundation, remember that the breath is not different from the body, rather it is one powerful way to experience the body.
Indeed, it’s the one the Buddha recommends we use to start:
BODY (BREATH)
1 LONG
2 SHORT
3 WHOLE
4 CALM
FEELING TONES
5 JOY
6 HAPPINESS
7 KNOW
8 CALM
MIND
9 KNOW
10 GLADDEN
11 UNIFY
12 LIBERATE
REALITY
12 IMPERMANENCE
13 DISAPPEARING
14 ENDING
16 LETTING GO
This is the simplest and most powerful map of consciousness I have ever encountered. There are of course many maps of consciousness around, both from before and after the time of the Buddha. But this map was created with one specific goal in mind: to help people find the end of suffering. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a map that leads you deeper and deeper, in a very specific way, to the very place in the mind where we’ve developed the bad habit of creating suffering for ourselves.
By practicing at each place on the map, over time we develop the clarity and wisdom we need to immediately see and correct the mental mistakes we are making at the root level of consciousness, and to replace them with skillful practices. These practices lead inevitably to happiness, just as our bad old mental habits led to suffering.
Next, let’s review two key points that came up in last night’s session:
Our conditioned mind tends automatically to interpret the 16 domains as “steps to practice in order, starting at 1 and ending at 16, with each step requiring mastery before we go to the next, as we climb higher and higher until we are enlightened.” But we don’t buy that interpretation.
There are many, many ways to understand and practice the 16 domains and in my experience, these have transformed many times over the years. But with absolute certainty, the understanding outlined above falls short of capturing the full practice of how the Buddha intended the 16 steps to be understood and used. For example, on the one hand, the 16 steps do describe an orderly and natural progression that one can experience as an effortless flow, with one domain leading inexorably to the next, like portage trails connecting a system of lakes. On the other hand, the steps are a map of consciousness, with all the domains of consciousness being ever-present and fully active in every moment, just as all systems of the body (or that system of lakes) are constantly present and at work in every moment we’re alive.
Therefore, all 16 of the domains that are named by the map, are also capable of arising and being vividly present in awareness, and observed and explored in any given moment. For example, the moment we become aware of the breath (Domain 1), we might then immediately notice the feeling of joy that this knowing causes to arise (Domain 5); some thoughts and judgements that appear around this knowing (Domain 9); and a recognition of the impermanence of the breath (Domain 13). Indeed, the Full Awareness of Breathing encourages us to open more and more, to all that can be known about the body, feelings, mind and reality in any moment of consciousness.
Over time, in Monday Friends, we will discover more and more ways to work with consciousness in just this way, by opening more and more to seeing all there is to see about the appearance of our bodies and minds in consciousness. Most especially, of course, to seeing how chains of cause and effect lead inevitably to suffering or to happiness, and thus to seeing more and more skillful ways to work with the nature of consciousness, to ensure we keep consciously creating happiness, instead of unconsciously creating suffering. For now, let’s just be happy to loosen around how we understand the 16 domains of the Full Awareness of Breathing, not as “steps we must arduously climb to awakening,” but rather as “domains to lovingly inhabit and explore.”
These reflections raise a point you might have pondered after last night’s guided meditation, which took us journeying through Domains 1 to 6. The intention here was to encourage the experience described above, of the presence of 16 naturally interconnected domains of consciousness, always available to observe and explore.
In this respect, looking ahead, over the year we’ll explore the 16 domains in many ways.
Two prominent of those ways will be:
Staying in one domain for an extended period. Exploring it from many angles, and by staying still and observing what arises there, moment by moment. For example, sometimes on a Monday evening, we might spend the entire 40-minute guided meditation exploring Domain 1, the “long breath.” We could choose that hour to explore four aspects of the long breath: the inhalation, the pause between the inhalation and the exhalation, the exhalation, and the pause between the exhalation and the inhalation. Indeed, we could choose to spend the entire 40 minutes exploring primarily just one of those portions of the breath. In this way, we would recognize that the breath is like the drop of water you put on a slide under a microscope, in high school. The drop didn’t look like much until, under magnification, a whole new world of fascinating and complex living forms suddenly appeared before your eyes. Just this experience awaits you in the Full Awareness of Breathing practice. You will find fathomless depths within yourself, filled with bursting forms of life of all kinds, the closer you look.
Flowing from one domain to another. This was the idea of last night’s meditation, to notice that simply being aware of a long full breath (“LONG” above), leads easily to knowing where the breath may be restricted in some way (“SHORT” above); to then knowing the whole body while breathing in and out (“WHOLE” above); to calming the whole body while breathing in and out (“CALM” above). So simple, natural and easy. In this way, we can easily and quickly grow out of any intimidation we might have felt about the sixteen steps, relating to them instead as a wholly natural process that by nature flows from one to another, inexorably, towards ultimate happiness and ease.
Let me add here, a note especially for those who attended the recent online weekend retreat, “The First Act of Love is to Breathe,” on June 14-16. On that retreat, we practiced through the Foundation of Feeling Tones which are Domains 5, 6, 7 and 8: Joy, Happiness, Know (Feeling Tones), and Calm (Feeling Tones). You’ll recall that Thich Nhat Hanh, another great teacher of the Four Foundations, called Domains of Joy and Happiness “The Art of Happiness,” and the the Domains of 7 and 8, “The Art of Suffering,” that is the art of transforming suffering into understanding, which is love.
When he teaches the Full Awareness of Breathing, Thich Nhat Hanh specifies that in his opinion, one should always start every meditation—no matter which domains you intend to explore most deeply during that sitting—by practicing Domains 1 through 6. In other words, you should cultivate the ability to start every meditation by calming the body (Domains 1 through 4), and by bringing joy and happiness to body and mind (Domains 5 and 6). Domains 1-6 can be a routine one can actually do in five or 10 minutes, as opposed to the 40 minutes we spent last night. It might have felt at first as if we were zipping through too many domains (so the mind might have said). Yet I guarantee, if it felt uncomfortable, maybe it was like the first time you rode a bike. All kinds of awkward feelings at first. But then one day, one time, doing Domains 1 through 6 will be like riding a bike, you’ll hop on, feel perfectly natural, and you’re on your way.
I’m sure you noticed too, that we took time to notice how joy arose, even from the first breath. “Breathing in, I notice joy.” That was practicing what we spent several sessions on, during the June 14-16 retreat, and that made such an impression on so many of us.
That is, cultivating the ability to notice joy in every moment. What an utterly transformational skill that is to adopt, develop and perfect. Especially, by noticing how sensations we might have mentally labeled as “neutral” in their feeling tone, turn very noticeably into intensely pleasurable sensations, as soon as we turn our awareness to them, and pay loving attention to them. We noticed during our retreat, that 99% of the sensations we experience in life are actually neutral in feeling tone. So in this way, we discovered how to feel 99% of the sensations of our life as joyful. Last night, as you recall, we did that regularly, noticing how joy arose during LONG, SHORT, WHOLE, and CALM—and then of course in JOY, then cooling down to HAPPINESS
Lastly, let me dwell a bit on a point Brian raised during last night’s Q&A.
All 16 domains, and all of the mind states and mental qualities ever described by the Buddha, including the deathless—nibbana—are experiences we have already had countless times in our lives. The Thai Buddhist monk and teacher, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, had a wonderful phrase for this: “Nibbana at the tip of our nose.” What the Full Awareness of Breathing does, is simply enable us to see within ourselves all the beautiful qualities that have been there all along. And they are still there, very much alive and bursting with positive life energy. They want to express, to manifest, to radiate out of our joyful heart which is the essence of us—our true nature.
Good to keep in mind!
Looking forward to next Monday.
Much love 🙏☀️
Doug