Session 001: Mindfulness and Dissolving Defilements

Today’s session started out with a meditation followed by a talk. In this blog post, you will first see the video recording of the meditation, then the video recording of the talk and then the handout text.

Meditation

Talk

Handout

The 4 page handout that we gave out in today’s class is posted below as blog content for you:

Mindfulness and Dissolving Defilements
Jan 8th. 2020, by Sophia Ojha Ensslin and Cristof Ensslin.

Mindfulness — a buzz word of the last few years, not only in the spiritual and religious studies, but also in self-help, psychology, and even business. What’s up with that? And why is it lauded as an important part of the spiritual path.

What is Mindfulness?

When we talk about mindfulness, we must discern it into two levels of depth: regular and spiritual mindfulness.

First is “regular” mindfulness — which we all have and without which we could not survive. We need it to find a parking spot, to know when to eat and to recognize when to go to bed or to wash ourselves. We won’t talk about this one here.

Rather, we’ll talk about the second type — spiritual mindfulness. It is a level deeper, it is about recognizing what is actually going on below the surface. It is essential in order to develop concentration. To be mindful means to be aware of what we are doing in every present moment and at the same time to assess whether it is the right thing that leads to the purpose of what we’re doing.

We can see it as applied in meditation on the one hand and as applied during mundane, every-day activities such as work or household or leisure activities. Let’s start with meditation, our practice-ground so-to-speak.

Mindfulness in Meditation

Mindfulness in meditation means to know what is going on right in this moment. Am I breathing in or out? Are there thoughts in my mind and what kind of thoughts are they? Are the muscles of my body tense or relaxed? In meditation, we try not to judge any of what is going on. If we’re simply aware of what’s going on, our mind can settle on one of these objects of meditation (breath, contents of the mind, parts of our body etc.) after a while and get to know it more intimately. This leads us to more stillness and concentration, into deeper states of meditation, which allow for greater joy, greater peace, greater insights into how life actually works.

Mindfulness in Everyday Life

While we can practice mindfulness in meditation, we must apply it in every-day life as well. When we do, we are fully present with whatever we doing. While cutting onions, we are not thinking of how many more onions we need to cut or that we still need to peel the potatoes. We only attend to this very onion in front of us and know it leads to a nourishing, delicious meal. We only feel the knife in our hand and how its blade slices through the fiber of the onion. This full presence alleviates all worries or regrets of life — even if just for that moment. What remains is a happy, blissful, maybe even rapturous feeling. 

Mindfulness in meditation and mindfulness in everyday activities support each other in symbiosis, not unlike that of flowers and bees, of trees and birds. We practice in an ideal environment (on the meditation seat in a quiet corner) for cultivating mindfulness during meditation. That allows us to learn it. Applying mindfulness in every moment while cooking or driving or sitting on the toilet shows us the benefits of it. Knowing those will motivate us to sit in meditation more regularly and get us deeper and more peaceful. A virtuous cycle has begun, like a wheel in motion.

The effect of mindfulness, hence, is calmness and tranquility in whatever we’re doing. That leads to one-pointed focus on the present moment, which in turn means peace of mind. With a peaceful mind, we can feel happy in any circumstance. That’s why mindfulness is important. 

“Mindfulness is moment to moment non-judgmental awareness”
⏤ Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Process of Dissolving Defilements 

I, too, have heard about mindfulness in all the new age books as mentioned above. Eckhart Tolle and Wayne Dyer to name just two. But only recently did it click for me. Why is mindfulness extolled as such an important part of the spiritual path - both by these new-age authors as well as in ancient wisdom literature such as the Buddhist Pāli canon? I understand, at least intellectually, if not in my experience, what essential role it has to play in moving away from suffering and towards happiness, true happiness that is not dependent on the physical/material world of things, people or events.

Five Hindrances in Meditation

To backtrack a bit to the work we have done in 2019. What have we focused on mainly during our meditation sessions last year? The five hindrances! As our regular meditators know this inside out because we have been hounding you with this for five months, they are:

1. Sensual/Worldly Desires

2. Ill Will (anger, hatred, resentment, etc)

3. Sloth and Torpor (sluggishness, lethargy, dullness)

4. Restlessness and Remorse

5. Doubt (skeptical doubt about the teacher, the teachings, our practice, our own abilities, etc.)
   

So these five are the obstacles to a peaceful mind state in meditation. They also happen to be the obstacles to a peaceful life in every day living — one can make that connection easily. We learnt about them in detail last year so that when they arise in our meditation, we can recognize them. It’s part of understanding and recognizing the mental landscape. So when we see thoughts of desire or jealousy arise in our mind, we can observe them non-judgmentally. We apply the skills of mindfulness to that arisen thought.

Three-Step Process of Dissolving Defilements Leads to Jhanas

And by doing so, first, we become familiar with the contents of the mind. Second, we practice noticing, observing and watching as opposed to judging, reacting and adding to that line of thinking. Third, we consider what wholesome action or response we can bring to that arisen thought. We can bring compassion to ourselves recognizing that we are experiencing jealousy. We can bring kindness to ourselves for we are experiencing anger. This kindness arises from the knowing that we are suffering and are prone to such a pattern of thoughts. Our mind is not stable enough and not yet strengthened by our practice. This knowing allows us to feel kindness and compassion towards ourselves when these thoughts arise. And in this way, we practice dealing with the defilements that come up in our mind. We are applying the skills of mindfulness here —  not just watching but also knowing what to do with what we are watching. It’s not passive. It’s alert, active and attentive like a mother who has her eyes on her toddler as it crawls towards a pool of water. She is not only attentive and aware but as she recognizes the nature of what’s happening, she takes proactive, non-judgmental action  — moving the child away from the pool and somewhere safe.

I have heard this simile somewhere: “Awareness is knowing that the horse we are riding is off the path, mindfulness is gently steering it back.” Now, this is what we are practicing in meditation. Why? Because the hindrances and defilements are what stand between us and peace and tranquility and true joy and happiness. The literature says that when these defilements are removed, we will achieve the dissolution of suffering and attain enlightenment. As we reduce our defilements during meditation, the mind gets more and more tranquil. The more peaceful the mind gets, the deeper we move into mind states that are called meditative absorptions or jhanas in Pāli. 

Jhanas are these deep states where we begin to experience the dissolution of the body and even the mind. There are 8 stages of Jhanas, four of them are mundane and four are supramundane. In other words, the first four stages are reminiscent of the physical world but the next four are immaterial. I hope we can go deeper into the study of Jhanas as we progress in our meditation sessions — both intellectually and experientially.

That’s why mindfulness is an important essential piece of this process and of meditation itself. How meditation fits into the entire path that the Buddha outlines (the Noble Eightfold Path, of which Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration are only two factors), and how the other six factors help in reaching deep meditative states, we’ll talk about next time.

Thank you! See you in class next week!

~ Sophia + Cristof