7

RIGHT MINDFULNESS

It used to be part of my practice to walk mindfully to work each day, and one morning I had a remarkable demonstration of just how mindless I—who had the intention of mindfulness—could be. That particular morning I was preoccupied by thoughts of a talk I had to give in an hour—worrying about whether the room had been set up properly, whether I would remember to say everything I meant to, how my listeners would respond. I let red lights determine when I crossed streets and which way I walked, and when I reached my office, I realized I could not recall which route I had taken, so little in the present had I been. In my preoccupation over what was to come in the future, I had been entirely on automatic pilot. Another time, which could have had serious repercussions for other drivers around me, I arrived at my doctor’s office for some tests I was anxious about and could remember nothing about driving there—an all-too-frequent experience for many people driving familiar routes, as Thich Nhat Hanh, in Present Moment, Wonderful Moment, observes:

When we are driving, we tend to think of arriving, and we sacrifice the journey for the sake of the arrival. But life is to be found in the present moment, not in the future. In fact, we may suffer more after we arrive at our destination. If we have to talk of a destination, what about our final destination, the graveyard? We do not want to go in the direction of death; we want to go in the direction of life. But where is life? Life can be found only in the present moment. Therefore, each mile we drive, each step we take, has to bring us into the present moment. This is the practice of mindfulness.

The Buddha was well aware of how often we are not present for our lives, and he made cultivation of right mindfulness, or awareness, the keystone of his teaching. In a popular story, he was talking with one of the philosophers who frequently sought him out to hear and sometimes to challenge his teachings. When the philosopher asked him to explain his practices of enlightenment, the Buddha said, “We walk, we sit, we bathe, we eat.” “Well,” said the philosopher, “so does everyone else. What’s so special?” The Buddha replied, “We know that we are walking, sitting, bathing, or eating. Others don’t.”

TEACHINGS

The starting point for all of the Buddha’s teachings is mindfulness. The importance of mindfulness cannot be overemphasized, because there can be no spiritual practice without mindfulness. Not only must we “be present to win,” we must also be present to practice any of the steps on the Eightfold Path. Since the Buddha’s time, many of his followers and scholars have considered his discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness the most significant teaching in the Pali canon. It is found in both The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Sattipatthana Sutta, MN 10) and in The Long Discourses of the Buddha (Mahasatipattana Sutta, DN 22), which also includes an exposition of the Four Noble Truths. The discourse begins this way:

There is, monks, this one way to the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and distress, for the disappearance of pain and sadness, for the gaining of the right path, for the realization of Nibbana:—that is to say the four foundations of mindfulness.

What are the four? Here, monks, a monk abides contemplating body as body, ardent, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside hankering and fretting for the world; he abides contemplating feelings as feelings . . . ; he abides contemplating mind as mind . . . ; he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects, ardent, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside hankering and fretting for the world. (DN 22.1)

The rest of the discourse analyzes each of these categories of mindfulness contemplation: the body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects. Bhikkhu Bodhi, in his introduction to The Middle Length Discourses, describes this teaching as a comprehensive system “designed to train the mind to see with microscopic precision the true nature of the body, feelings, states of mind, and mental objects.” Through this systematic process we can achieve insight and thus overcome sorrow and pain and can walk on the Eightfold Path for the realization of nirvana. In Buddhism the word insight means seeing things as they really are and thus freeing ourselves from the greed, hatred, and delusion that are obstacles to our liberation.

Mindful awareness is essential for our freedom and happiness. The insight we achieve through it is the key to changing our karma, for only when we are fully present and seeing clearly can we make the decisions and have the intentions that cause others and ourselves no harm. The Buddha clearly intended that we cultivate mindfulness in all aspects of our life. As he said in another discourse:

And how, Sire, is a monk accomplished in mindfulness and clear awareness? Here a monk acts with clear awareness in going forth and back, in looking ahead or behind him, in bending and stretching, in wearing his outer and inner robe and carrying his bowl, in eating, drinking, chewing and swallowing, in evacuating and urinating, in walking, standing, sitting, lying down, in waking, in speaking and in keeping silent he acts with clear awareness. In this way, a monk is accomplished in mindfulness and clear awareness. (DN 2.65)

This brief description essentially covers every facet of a monk’s life—and, by inference, ours because, as we have noted, the word monk was used specifically for a bhikkhu but also generally for any follower, lay or ordained, of the Buddha’s teachings.

At the end of the foundations of mindfulness discourse, the Buddha said that these teachings are so powerful that anyone who successfully practices them “for seven years . . . for seven months . . . even for seven days” can become enlightened. Those of us who have tried to practice the four foundations of mindfulness for many years—and still are not yet enlightened—have found out just how challenging but also how rewarding it is to cultivate mindfulness.

Contemplation of the Body

The first foundation of mindfulness is contemplating the body. The body is an ideal place to start, because it is always with us. The Buddha specified, for all of the body contemplations:

So [a monk] abides contemplating body as body internally, contemplating body as body externally, contemplating body as body both internally and externally. He abides contemplating arising phenomena in the body, he abides contemplating vanishing phenomena in the body, he abides contemplating both arising and vanishing phenomena in the body. Or else, mindfulness that “there is body” is present to him just to the extent necessary for knowledge and awareness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. And that, monks, is how a monk abides contemplating body as body. (DN 22.2)

The Buddha began by teaching mindfulness of breathing, because breathing is present at every moment of our lives. Then he moved on to other kinds of mindfulness practices involving the body: posture, “clear awareness,” “foul” parts of the body, the four elements, and what happens after death. In all of these contemplations, the Buddha urged us to be aware of the arising and vanishing phenomena—impermanence—in the body. With each breath we can observe this transience of our very source of life.

To develop mindfulness of breathing, the Buddha advised a monk to go out into the forest, to sit at the foot of a tree or in another quiet place, and to breathe in and out mindfully, knowing—but not controlling—when he is breathing out, when he is breathing in, and whether a breath is long or short and calming his body as he does so.

As simple as this sounds, it is not at all easy. Stephen Batchelor, in The Awakening of the West, points out both the difficulty and the profound implications of this practice:

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.

Because mindfulness of breathing is an integral part of many meditation practices, Chapter 8 will give specific instructions from different traditions for using awareness of the breath as right concentration.

As we move through life breathing, we usually occupy one of four positions. The Buddha encouraged us to know that we are walking when we walk, that we are standing when we stand, that we are sitting when we sit, and that we are lying down when we lie down. In whatever way our body is disposed, we “know that that is how it is.” We abide “contemplating body as body internally, externally, and both internally and externally.”

In this training the Buddha invited us to be clearly aware of what we are doing, no matter how mundane the task may seem. All of us tend to be thinking almost all the time—whether we are aware of it or not—and his injunction is that we instead live in awareness, because that is the essence of walking the Eightfold Path and all spiritual practice.

In a section of the discourse sometimes labeled “Reflection on the Repulsive Parts of the Body,” the Buddha encouraged us to scan the body from bottom to top and from top to bottom, becoming aware of all its parts, including “manifold impurities” such as bone marrow, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, tears, snot, and urine. He used the analogy of a man with good eyesight opening a bag and identifying beans, sesame, rice, and other grains, and said that we should in the same way, with awareness of reality, contemplate all the body parts.

In a reference to another kind of “body parts,” the Buddha urged us, just as a butcher has slaughtered a cow and divided its various parts for sale, to separate and contemplate the four elements in our bodies: the earth, water, fire, and air elements (DN 22.6). The four elements appear in many ancient texts and belief systems. They are particularly important in Buddhism because they are components both of the aggregate, or skandha, of matter, which is the object of clinging; and of the “derivatives of the four elements,” which include our material sense bases and their objects—for example, eyes and visible forms. The Buddha discussed the four elements in detail in one discourse (MN 28.5 ff ), saying that they may be either internal or external and listing the manifestation of the internal elements. For example, the internal earth element includes hair, teeth, skin, bones, lungs, heart, content of the intestines; the internal water element includes blood, sweat, fat, urine, tears, and spittle; the internal fire element includes anything we have consumed and digested; air includes breath, belches, and farts. In all cases, for both internal and external elements, the Buddha stressed that the element is simply that element, without consideration of I, my, or mine.

As a dramatic contemplation on the body, the Buddha also sent his disciples to the charnel grounds and had them observe bodies in various states of decomposition. The heart of each contemplation is: “This body is of the same nature, it will become like that, it is not exempt from that fate” (DN 22.7 ff ).

Contemplation of Feelings

As we have noted in Chapter 2, feeling is our affective component and refers specifically to whether a sensation is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. The Buddha expanded the description somewhat to include knowing when a sensual (externally based) feeling is pleasant, unpleasant, or neither and when a nonsensual (internally based) feeling is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

The Buddha urged us to contemplate the arising and vanishing of feelings “just to the extent necessary for knowledge and awareness” (DN 22.11).

Contemplation of Mind

In the original Pali, the word citta, which refers to both “heart” and “mind,” is used for a general level of consciousness. As we saw in our discussion of the aggregates in Chapter 1, consciousness has a component of memory, so that it encompasses the states usually referred to as emotions. The Buddha asked:

And how, monks, does a monk abide contemplating mind as mind? Here, a monk knows a lustful mind as lustful, a mind free from lust as free from lust; a hating mind as hating, a mind free from hate as free from hate; a deluded mind as deluded, an undeluded mind as undeluded; a contracted mind as contracted, a distracted mind as distracted; a developed mind as developed, an undeveloped mind as undeveloped; a surpassed mind as surpassed, an unsurpassed mind as unsurpassed; a concentrated mind as concentrated, an unconcentrated mind as unconcentrated; a liberated mind as liberated, an unliberated mind as unliberated. (DN 22.12)

The key to this foundation—no matter how skillful or unskillful the mind states may be—is to observe these states, to acknowledge them, and to remember that they are impermanent. When we can see these states without judging them or identifying them as my, mine, or Self, we can let go of them.

Contemplation of Mind-Objects

The Pali word dhamma (in Sanskrit dharma) is a very broad term that encompasses any manifestation of reality—any thing—any object of thought; when capitalized, it refers to the teachings of the Buddha. The term in this foundation is translated as “mind-objects.” The Buddha here defined mind-objects relative to his key teachings: contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in terms of the five hindrances, the five aggregates, the six sense bases, the seven factors of enlightenment, and the Four Noble Truths. Thus when we noted in Chapter 6 that we can use right effort to restrain and abandon unwholesome states through contemplation of the Dharma, it was referring to this all-inclusive use of the word and the practice of mindfulness. In all these contemplations, mindfulness—being aware in the moment of reality without imposing concepts or our own biases—enables us to “abide detached, not grasping at anything in the world. And that, monks, is how a monk abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects.”

In all of these contemplations, right understanding plays an important role in our ability to generate and maintain mindfulness, but right effort to maintain awareness is even more critical. Consider this description of contemplation of mind-objects in terms of the five hindrances:

Here, monks, if sensual desire [ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness, doubt] is present in himself, a monk knows that it is present. If sensual desire is absent in himself, a monk knows that it is absent. And he knows how unarisen sensual desire comes to arise, and he knows how the abandonment of arisen sensual desire comes about, and he knows how the non-arising of the abandoned sensual desire in the future will come about. (DN 22.14)

Similarly, we can contemplate the dynamics of the six sense bases and their objects and what happens when greed, hatred, or delusion (a “fetter”) comes between them. Whether the sense base is the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, or mind, with mindfulness we can observe the “fetter” and abide “detached, not grasping at anything in the world.”

For the seven factors of enlightenment, the three arousing factors of energy or effort, investigation, and rapture and the three stabilizing factors of concentration, tranquillity, and equanimity can be objects of awareness just as can be mindfulness itself:

Here, monks, if the enlightenment-factor of mindfulness is present in himself, a monk knows that it is present. If the enlightenment-factor of mindfulness is absent in himself, he knows that it is absent. And he knows how the unarisen enlightenment-factor of mindfulness comes to arise, and he knows how the complete development of the enlightenment-factor of mindfulness comes about. (DN 22.16)

Contemplation of the Four Noble Truths is done with the same open awareness as contemplation of other mind-objects:

Again, monks, a monk abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in respect of the Four Noble Truths. How does he do so? Here, a monk knows as it really is: “This is suffering”; he knows as it really is: “This is the origin of suffering”; he knows as it really is: “This is the cessation of suffering”; he knows as it really is: “This is the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering.” (DN 22.17)

As we can see, the discourse on the foundations of mindfulness touches on every aspect of our lives: our bodies, feelings, thoughts, even faith. The foundations of mindfulness can be so comprehensive because, as Joseph Goldstein says in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, “Mindfulness is ... a choiceless awareness that, like the sun, shines on all things equally.”

IN PRACTICE

When we consider how to apply the Buddha’s teachings on mindfulness to our daily life, it is helpful to look at the major characteristics of mindfulness that Venerable Henepola Gunaratana (Bhante) distinguishes in Mindfulness in Plain English: Mindfulness is “mirror thought” and reflects only what is happening and how it is happening; it is bias-free. Mindfulness is nonjudgmental observation and impartial watchfulness. It is “bare” attention that registers but does not conceptualize, elaborate, or compare. It is in the present time. Mindfulness is awareness of change. It is participant-observation but is nonegoistic awareness, with no reference to Self. And as we shall see in Chapter 8, mindfulness is central to meditation. The meditation techniques described there also enhance mindfulness, but mindfulness can be present in every moment of our lives. Sharon Salzberg, in A Heart as Wide as the World, describes mindful awareness as being like pouring water into a cup: “It doesn’t stay in one place—it fills whatever space there is.” We must cultivate mindfulness on purpose. With it, we can move through the world without being sucked into suffering. We can be free.

In everyday life the four foundations of mindfulness sometimes turn into, if not a circle, at least a spiral. I have had this happen several times, particularly when I have been involved in strenuous physical activity. My most starkly inescapable experience occurred one time when I was trekking the Annapurna circuit in the Himalayas with a Sierra Club group; the experience was so challenging that it seemed like a double helix—one spiral of pleasure intertwined with another of pain—just like life. As I had tried to do on other treks, I intended to make each day a pilgrimage of the spirit and an opportunity to practice mindfulness. Troubles started on day 1. An earthquake forced us to take a long detour through a hot, humid jungle. My feet began to swell inside socks wet from crossing streams: blisters, and nothing to do but go on, mindfully aware that my socks were now wet from blood. Contemplation of my body was unavoidable—and every feeling about the experience was unpleasant. Then both my mind/emotions (despair) and my mental formations (thoughts that “I’ll never make it”) kicked in.

I was most aware of my body as I struggled to breathe when we climbed over a 17,000-plus–foot pass. By the time I reached the snowline, all I wanted to do was get to the top (desire) and stop hurting (aversion). At the top of the pass, I became giddy with exhilaration (pleasant feelings) because I knew I was looking at Tibet, and my thoughts were filled with the Dalai Lama, prayer flags, and Chinese soldiers (mind-objects). The other trekkers wanted to start down, but I was transfixed by the beauty of the scene and wanted to stay longer (clinging), even though dangerous snow clouds were starting to build up. I was leaning against a rock cairn built in memory of others who had not gotten down.

On that trek I was distracted by beautiful sights, wild animals, physical pain, and absurd thoughts, but mostly I was present, a dispassionate observer of “my” foundations of mindfulness. But we do not have to go to the Himalayas to do that; we can start with mindfulness of one or two experiences, perhaps involving the body, then expand that awareness to more and more of our daily life.

Contemplation of the Body

When we first start to cultivate mindfulness, it is hard enough to maintain it on a silent retreat, and it is even more difficult to do so in our everyday life. One teacher who has found superb ways to develop and support mindfulness, especially of the body, is Thich Nhat Hanh, whose book Present Moment, Wonderful Moment is a collection of “mindfulness verses for daily living.” For example, when we are washing our hands we can say:

Water flows over these hands.
May I use them skillfully
to preserve our precious planet.

 

For brushing our teeth, his verse is:

Brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth
I vow to speak purely and lovingly.
When my mouth is fragrant with right speech,
A flower blooms in the garden of my heart.

 

At some retreat centers, especially those where Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, periodically during the day “mindfulness bells” are sounded, to remind everyone to stop what they are doing and come into the present moment. It is unlikely that someone is wandering around our office or home ringing chimes, but we can designate certain events in our daily life as “mindfulness bells,” and when they “sound,” we can pause long enough to take three or four breaths and do a quick mental scan of what is happening within each area of mindfulness. Very often mindfulness cues involve something physical, and our first—and perhaps only— awareness is of our body. Here are a few mindfulness bells that can work well, though you may want to find your own. If you are beginning mindfulness practice, you may want to start with one, then expand it or add others as your awareness increases:

Sounding clock. My personal favorite bell to signal a “mindfulness moment” is a clock with different birdsongs marking each hour. Once an hour I stop for a few moments of mindfulness and observe my breathing. This particular clock has a special test of mindfulness for me: As a birder, I recognize the songs, so the test is for me to experience the sound without imposing a concept—the bird’s identification—on the sound. Sometimes I even reset the songs so that they occur on the “wrong” hour, to see how much my conceptual mind is involved.

Ringing telephone. Especially when I am working, I find I can similarly use the sound of the telephone not as an interruption but as an opportunity for mindfulness.

Folding. When I began using folding as a bell, I was surprised by how often it sounded. I had only thought about laundry, clothing, making the bed, my meditation shawl, and bath and dish towels. But when I went into the office, it seemed as if I was folding paper all day. With folding, I have most often encountered the hindrance of restlessness, wanting to do the folding as quickly as possible.

Touching water. I began with washing my hands or the dishes as a bell, but I expanded my practice to try to maintain mindfulness anytime I touched water—while I was brushing my teeth, taking a shower, bathing my dog.

Climbing stairs. This bell was used by a meditation teacher during retreats, when she repeatedly had to climb stairs to go between the meditation hall and the room where she met students for interviews. Climbing stairs is a terrific bell for mindfulness of breathing and posture. Once, when I was on a retreat right before a trek, I spent each walking-meditation period mindfully climbing stairs, observing my body, my feelings, and my mind.

Stoplights. Thich Nhat Hanh has also suggested that when we are driving, instead of being frustrated every time we have to stop at a red light, we thank it for bringing us into the present moment. This bell can be especially helpful for commuters who extend the definition of red light to include not just stoplights but also the brake lights of the cars in front of them. We can also use stoplights as a bell when we are walking in a city; for many years they were an important part of my daily walk to work.

Breathing in Now

The history of Buddhism is filled with stories of practitioners who at some point exclaimed to a teacher: “But just observing the breath is so boring!” Some have been fortunate enough to get off with the rebuke: “Any time you’re bored, you are not paying close enough attention.” But stories abound of strict meditation masters of the distant past who grabbed unfortunate complainers by the scruff of the neck and held their faces under water until they were spluttering and choking, then asked them if they still thought the breath was boring.

The breath is the ideal object to focus on when we are cultivating mindfulness. It is always with us. It has no connotations of good or bad—you cannot breathe “wrongly”—and it is a process we share with all living things. In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki describes mindful breathing as a swinging door for our interconnection with all beings:

When we practice zazen [Zen meditation] our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say “inner world” or “outer world,” but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra. There is no you to say “I.” What we call “I” is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no “I,” no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.

Sometimes when I am walking in a forest, I am especially aware of this swinging door. I find myself very moved because I am literally breathing with trees. The respiration of trees takes in carbon dioxide and produces oxygen; I breathe in the trees’ oxygen and exhale the carbon dioxide that nourishes them. On a larger scale we are breathing in the same way with our whole planet. There is no I. There is just breathing.

Mindful breathing is the foundation for most forms of meditation; complete instructions for these formal practices are given in Chapter 8. But we do not have to be seated in a lotus position to be mindful of our breath. We can use awareness of breathing at any time in our daily lives, even for a few minutes, in three important ways: It can calm our bodies, still our minds, and bring us right into the present moment.

Let’s look here at the elements of our breath that we become aware of. To begin to develop awareness of your breath, sit in a comfortable position on a chair, or cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, or even, as the Buddha suggested, under a tree in the forest. Then do this simple exercise:

Take three long breaths, and be aware that you are taking long breaths.

Take three short breaths, and be aware that you are taking short breaths.

Let your breathing return to normal.

Be conscious of your whole body and aware that your breathing is calming your body.

See where you feel your breathing most strongly: at your nostrils, chest, or abdomen.

Just observe the movement of your breath: silently noting in and out or rising and falling. Make no attempt to control your breath—just watch it.

For about ten minutes, continue to observe your breath closely—learn everything you can about it. As you do so, ask yourself these questions:

Can I perceive exactly the moment this breath began? When it ended?

Is there a gap between the inhalation and the exhalation? Between the exhalation and the inhalation? Which one is longer?

Is the breath shallow or deep?

Is the breath smooth or ragged?

Is the air temperature cooler when I inhale than when I exhale?

When—not if—your attention wanders, gently come back to observing the breath.

Notice whether the quality of your breath—shallowness, coarseness, etc.—has changed since you began observing it.

Pick a common event in your life to be a mindfulness bell—perhaps opening a door—and each time you do it for the next few days, pause to take three breaths, mindful of the qualities listed here.

It is said that some monastics who have been practicing mindfulness of breathing for a long time know whether they are inhaling or exhaling when they fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. We may never achieve that level of refined awareness, but we can know when we are breathing out and when we are breathing in during our everyday activities.

Postures

One of the best ways to observe the body’s positions is to take a beginner-level hatha yoga class. As you assume each posture, be aware of how you are moving your body into a posture that is standing, sitting, kneeling, or lying down. As you hold the posture, become aware first of your breathing, then of your body itself. Do you feel tension anywhere? Any tingling? What are the touch points—feet, buttocks, hands? What does the pressure at each touch point feel like—pleasant, unpleasant, or neither? Periodically scan your whole body, then rest in awareness of your breath until you move into the next posture. In fact, any kind of physical exercise—jogging, swimming, playing tennis—is an excellent opportunity for mindfulness practice.

Less strenuous but also effective, another way you can observe posture is to do the breathing exercise given above while lying on your back (if you don’t fall asleep). First observe that you are lying down. Then bring awareness to your breath and see if it is any different when you’re lying down than it was when you were sitting up. Then do a scan of your whole body, aware of touch points and tension. If there is tension, mentally breathe into the area of tightness and observe it relaxing.

Clear Awareness

Clear awareness is being aware of what we are doing at every moment, whether we are walking, standing, sitting, eating, bending, or falling asleep. Developing this foundation is greatly enhanced by using mindfulness bells in combination with awareness of breath and posture. One chore that most of us have to do can be an excellent practice for clear awareness: cleaning house. As you clean, consider the following questions:

What am I doing (vacuuming, sweeping, scrubbing, dusting)?

What is the position of my body (standing, bending, stooping, reaching)?

Where do I feel pressure points?

Has my breath changed?

How do I feel about this task?

Am I distracted by thoughts or restlessness or boredom?

When we clean house mindfully, we tend to clean more slowly than usual but with more interest and pleasure—anything worth doing is worth doing slowly. We often make discoveries that we have missed for years, such as noticing the sculptural qualities of furniture or even bathroom fixtures.

Many other everyday experiences can be excellent building blocks for mindfulness, including brushing teeth and eating. When you brush your teeth, for example, first notice your posture, your breathing, and pressure points. Then be aware of how your hands work as you put toothpaste on your brush. Then see what it feels like to bend and raise your arm slowly to begin brushing. As you brush, notice how you move the brush up and down, side to side, or in circles. Is it harder to brush some areas than others? Do you feel gum pain anywhere? Is brushing your teeth pleasant or unpleasant? Did you leave the water running while you brushed?

Eating mindfully can be an amazing experience when it is done slowly and with keen interest. Even the smallest snack of a few raisins or peanuts—or, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, a tangerine—can be a feast. To develop clear awareness of eating, do this exercise for a week or longer:

Serve yourself moderate portions of the food you plan to eat.

Before you begin eating, take a few moments to look at the food. (At this point many meditators like to consider with gratitude all the people who made this meal possible —those who planted, harvested, transported, sold, and prepared the food.) Notice the color and texture of each food. While you are looking at the food, is there any buildup of saliva in your mouth?

Take the first bite, but do not chew or swallow it. Then put your fork, spoon, or chopsticks down. Observe what is happening in your mouth. What is the temperature of the food? What can you taste (the food itself, or just sweetness or sourness)? Is there any increase in saliva?

Slowly begin to chew, and observe any changes. Can you taste more than you could before you started chewing? What about saliva now? What is your tongue doing?

Swallow that bite, and see if you can feel it as it goes down your throat and to your stomach. Are you aware of any temperature change in your body? Repeat this sequence for ten more bites—or the rest of your meal if you choose.

Silent retreats are excellent places to develop mindfulness of eating. If you are developing this practice at home and there are other people present, you may want to ask that you all eat in silence at least for the first few minutes. As you’ll discover, you can develop clear awareness of what you are doing—eating or talking—but you’ll find that it is difficult to maintain mindfulness of both.

One way we can practice the Buddha’s suggestion to contemplate the “repulsive parts” of the body is, as part of the eating exercise outlined here, to be aware of what is happening to the saliva in our mouth.

The Elements

For all these contemplations, the Buddha invited us to be mindful of both what is external and what is internal. If you stand in front of an altar in a Zen meditation hall (a zendo), you probably will see representations of the four elements: There is a small vessel of water; the flame of a lighted candle is fire; a simple flower arrangement (often a single flower) is earth; and smoke from incense is air.

We can also see the four elements when we make a cup of tea. We begin with water, which we heat with fire; when the water boils and releases steam, we pour it over the tea leaves from earth into a cup made from earth. The Japanese tea ceremony, from beginning to end, is a practice in mindfulness.

Insight Meditation teacher Wes Nisker vividly describes “our” internal elements. He teaches that we, like all of our planet, consist of elements made by stars. The skeleton that holds us up is calcium, which comes from earth, so we are of earth. We are filled with water. In our respiration we exchange air with plants. Our body is heat, is fire. This lovely description thus links us to all other beings on earth, to the earth itself, and to the heavens.

Death and Dissolution

The Buddha sent his disciples to charnel grounds to do nine different contemplations on what happens to corpses after death. If there were charnel grounds with decaying corpses in our culture, health laws would probably prevent us from going to them for contemplation. Just as he told his followers in each of the contemplations to know that their own bodies were subject to the same fate, so can we observe and identify with what happens after death in the natural world around us.

If you have a garden and a compost pile, you know that the “garbage” from one year’s harvest discolors, is broken up by microorganisms, and becomes the earth for the next year’s plantings. The same thing happens to us during our life cycle. (If you would like to get a powerful lesson in the need for recycling, put a plastic bag into your compost pile so that part of it sticks out so you can observe it. Not in your lifetime, or your children’s, or your children’s children’s lifetime will this plastic become earth.)

My favorite exercise for observing the impermanence of life is to go around the neighborhood about a week after Halloween. Invariably, a number of the residents have not removed the jacko’-lanterns they so confidently and happily carved and set out a few weeks earlier. The biggest smiles have sagged and turned into toothless scowls; yellow-rimmed eyes droop; the whole visage has sunk into something soft and rotting and fly-ridden. “Yes,” I remember, “this body is of the same nature.”

Contemplation of Feelings

Contemplating feelings of pleasure, displeasure, or neutrality is an acquired taste. Usually these feelings arise and disappear so quickly that we react with grasping or aversion to fulfill or end them before we realize they have even arisen. If we become aware of anything, it is usually an unpleasant feeling.

One way we can begin to learn to contemplate feelings is to do a quick check every time one of our mindfulness bells gets our attention. Another way that we can get a sense of feelings arising and vanishing is to set up situations that elicit them and see what happens. For example, you might watch a movie or a soap opera on television and note your feelings as they change, including during commercials, especially in seasons of political campaigning.

I had a grand time surveying feelings one time when I went with a friend for dinner to an Ethiopian restaurant, a cuisine I was unfamiliar with. We ordered an assorted platter of just about everything on the menu. When the meal was served, I was baffled. There was no cutlery. There were some large flat pieces of steamed bread. There were about a dozen small dishes of sauce-covered something—I could not recognize the ingredients in any of them. I asked the waiter, “What do I do now?” and she patiently explained that the way to eat was to tear off a small piece of the bread, dip it into one of the small dishes, and use it to pick up some of the dish’s contents. Right away I discovered that eating with my hands was pleasant. My friend had just the opposite response and asked for a fork and spoon. Some of the tastes and textures were pleasant to me, some unpleasant, some neutral. But by doing/eating something totally unfamiliar, I could be very mindful of my responses. I find that I can use the same approach every time I eat, watch a movie, read a book, or do almost anything in my daily life, if I am willing to take the time and space to be mindful.

Contemplation of Mind

Contemplation of mind is similar to contemplation of feelings of pleasant and unpleasant in that we rarely stop ourselves long enough to observe what our mind states, or emotions, are unless we are in the grip of an extreme emotion such as anger or grief. Again, we often react so quickly with grasping or aversion that we do not have time to know what is there.

Mindfulness is not about avoiding emotions. Rather, mindfulness is about seeing what is really there; it makes it possible for us to encounter the full range of human emotions, from grief to joy, from rage to love, with equanimity. And that is the clue to why mindfulness of mind is so important: It enables us to break the cycle of dependent origination before we get completely caught in grasping or aversion; it enables us to respond rather than react.

We can observe mind states with the help of mindfulness bells and during meditation. At other times we need to monitor our own comfort level. If we are feeling uncomfortable or out of balance, we need to check out our mind state. While I was climbing the high pass on the Annapurna circuit, I experienced both despair and exhilaration. I felt at one time that I would never make it to the top; when I got there, I felt as though I never wanted to come down. Again, it is not that emotions are good or bad. Rather, when we are mindful of mind states, we will act skillfully rather than unskillfully. And it is those intentions and actions that make our karma.

Contemplation of Mind-Objects

A friend once related that she had been so lost in thought, she thought she had been abducted by aliens. In a sense, whenever we are in the clutches of our thinking, judging, comparing mind, we are with aliens—and these mind-objects are the origins of the stories we tell ourselves that cause us and others so much dukkha. As an old cliché says, it’s dangerous to visit your mind alone. When we begin to contemplate mind-objects, it is helpful to draw the distinction between mindfulness and thinking, as Bhante Gunaratana does in Mindfulness in Plain English:

Mindfulness is present-time awareness. It takes place in the here and now. It is the observance of what is happening right now, in the present moment. It stays forever in the present, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time. If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize the process and say to yourself, “Oh, I am remembering,” that is thinking.

The trick in this foundation is to contemplate mindfully a number of the Buddha’s key teachings without adding the “I” of “I am thinking about . . .”—to have “mirror thought” and impartial observation without bias. In his Sangha, his disciples had memorized all of his major discourses and could rely on memory for these contemplations. For most of us today, especially in the beginning, we may need to rely on written materials.

With these contemplations, we again encounter the “Eightfold Circle.” Right understanding of each is critical. Contemplating them can provide the arousing factor we need for right effort or the stabilizing factor we need for right concentration.

The Buddha specifically invited us to contemplate mind-objects, or manifestations of reality (dhammas) in terms of the following:

Five hindrances. In Chapter 6 we looked at desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness, and doubt as they related to right effort. In Chapter 8 we shall look again at these hindrances, in relationship to meditation. The best training for mindfulness of them occurs when we are meditating, for it is then that we can most clearly observe their arising and falling away. When we are experienced in nonjudgmentally observing the hindrances in meditation, we can practice mindfulness of them in our everyday life much more easily and break the desire/aversion link in the dependent origination cycle much more readily.

Five aggregates. In our discussion of impermanence and nonself in Chapter 1, we considered material form (all objects in the world and our bodies and senses), feeling (of the pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral), perception, mental formations, and consciousness. In so many ways throughout the day, we do things in our minds and with our bodies to create a sense of self. As a mindfulness practice, whenever I catch myself doing this, I repeat several times the mantra “Making Me” and contemplate the aggregates.

Six sense bases. When we contemplate the six sense bases— eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, mind—it is helpful to consider them as gates or doors for mind-objects. There are constant opportunities during the day to contemplate how these sense bases operate with their objects and play a role in the links of dependent origination. For example, at this moment five of them are in play for me: As I sit here on this windy day, I see that clouds are blowing in, I hear the wind chimes, my arms are cold, and I think it’s going to rain—but know that at this time of year we need it. When mindfulness bells chime, surveying the sense bases can be part of our mindfulness scan. With practice, mindfulness of our senses and our feelings will be increasingly present. Whenever we are suddenly aware of something entering a sense door—a sound, an odor, a taste, for example—we have the opportunity to turn our awareness to it, note its arising, and observe its fading away. Physiologists call this phenomenon sensory adaptation; we call it impermanence. The only time my mind-objects persist even under scrutiny is when I get a particular tune—especially an advertising jingle—in my mind and it will not go away; then I mindfully observe the unpleasant feeling and aversion that go with it.

Seven factors of enlightenment. In this chapter we have considered mindfulness as an enlightenment factor; we looked at the arousing factors of energy, investigation, and rapture as part of right effort; and we shall consider the three stabilizing factors of concentration, tranquillity, and equanimity as part of right concentration. The contemplation here is how the seven factors—especially mindfulness—enable us to cut through greed, hatred, and delusion and become free. All are desirable in some degree for us to walk the Middle Way on the Eightfold Path, but the first, mindfulness, is absolutely essential.

Four Noble Truths. The best time to contemplate the Four Noble Truths is when we are caught up in dukkha. If we are willing and able to make the effort to do so as nonjudgmental, nonegoistic participant-observers, we can see the reality of our pain, the cause of it, and the way to end the suffering. We can truly take refuge in the Dharma.

When we can live in the present, our mindfulness is our gift to the world. Meditation is the main way that we develop mindfulness of our bodies, feelings, emotions, and mind-objects. In the next chapter, as we focus on right concentration, remember that meditation is the training ground for our practice of mindfulness. With this training we can live a life that is incredibly rich because we are present for it in all its diversity—of things and feelings and emotions and thoughts—and are aware that we are an integral part of Indra’s net. This is being present to win.