Books on mindfulness

Ajay0 · Dec 14, 2023

A free e-book on mindfulness , 'Mindfulness in Plain English' by Ven. Henepola Gunaratana (Buddhist author and monk from the Theravada tradition)

Mindfulness in Plain English by Ven. Henepola Gunaratana

Some excerpts from the book...

If your thought pattern is chaotic, your behavior will be chaotic, too. Mental culture reduces mental chaos.

We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for the reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all of our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted.

Meditation is not easy. It takes time and it takes energy. It also takes grit, determination and discipline. It requires a host of personal qualities which we normally regard as unpleasant and which we like to avoid whenever possible. We can sum it all up in the American word 'gumption'. Meditation takes 'gumption'. It is certainly a great deal easier just to kick back and watch television.

The Dhammapada is an ancient Buddhist text which anticipated Freud by thousands of years. It says: "What you are now is the result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now. The consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it. The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like your own shadow. No one can do more for you than your own purified mind-- no parent, no relative, no friend, no one. A well-disciplined mind brings happiness".

There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought. That difference is very subtle. It is primarily a matter of feeling or texture. A thought you are simply aware of with bare attention feels light in texture; there is a sense of distance between that thought and the awareness viewing it. It arises lightly like a bubble, and it passes away without necessarily giving rise to the next thought in that chain. Normal conscious thought is much heavier in texture. It is ponderous, commanding, and compulsive. It sucks you in and grabs control of consciousness. By its very nature it is obsessional, and it leads straight to the next thought in the chain, apparently with no gap between them.

Deep concentration has the effect of slowing down the thought process and speeding up the awareness viewing it. The result is the enhanced ability to examine the thought process. Concentration is our microscope for viewing subtle internal states. We use the focus of attention to achieve one-pointedness of mind with calm and constantly applied attention. Without a fixed reference point you get lost, overcome by the ceaseless waves of change flowing round and round within the mind.

We use breath as our focus. It serves as that vital reference point from which the mind wanders and is drawn back. Distraction cannot be seen as distraction unless there is some central focus to be distracted from. That is the frame of reference against which we can view the incessant changes and interruptions that go on all the time as a part of normal thinking.

The depth and speed of your breathing changes according to your emotional state, the thought that flows through your mind and the sounds you hear. Study these phenomena. You will find them fascinating.

At the end of a well-done meditation session you will feel a delightful freshness of mind. It is peaceful, buoyant, and joyous energy which you can then apply to the problems of daily living. This in itself is reward enough. The purpose of meditation is not to deal with problems, however, and problem- solving ability is a fringe benefit and should be regarded as such. If you place too much emphasis on the problem-solving aspect, you will find your attention turning to those problems during the session sidetracking concentration. Don't think about your problems during your practice. Push them aside very gently.

Every time you stumble, start over. Take it one breath at a time. This is the level of the game where you can actually win. Stick at it--fresh resolve with every breath cycle, tiny units of time. Observe each breath with care and precision, taking it one split second on top of another, with fresh resolve piled one on top of the other. In this way, continuous and unbroken awareness will eventually result.

Mindfulness of breathing is a present-time awareness. When you are doing it properly, you are aware only of what is occurring in the present. You don't look back and you don't look forward. You forget about the last breath, and you don't anticipate the next one. When the inhalation is just beginning, you don't look ahead to the end of that inhalation. You don't skip forward to the exhalation which is to follow. You stay right there with what is actually taking place. The inhalation is beginning, and that's what you pay attention to; that and nothing else.

Greed and hatred are the prime manifestations of the ego process. To the extent that grasping and rejecting are present in the mind, mindfulness will have a very rough time. The results of this are easy to see. If you sit down to meditate while you are in the grip of some strong obsessive attachment, you will find that you will get nowhere. If you are all hung up in your latest scheme to make more money, you probably will spend most of your meditation period doing nothing but thinking about it. If you are in a black fury over some recent insult, that will occupy your mind just as fully. There is only so much time in one day, and your meditation minutes are precious. It is best not to waste them.

The most damaging psychic irritant arising in the mind particularly at the time when the mind is quiet, is resentment. You may experience indignation remembering some incident that caused you psychological and physical pain. This experience can cause you uneasiness, tension, agitation and worry. You might not be able to go on sitting and experiencing this state of mind. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you should start your meditation with generating Universal Loving-Kindness.

For all practical purposes, if all of your enemies are well, happy and peaceful, they would not be your enemies. If they are free from problems, pain, suffering, affliction, neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., they would not be your enemies. Your practical solution to your enemies is to help them to overcome their problems, so you can live in peace and happiness. In fact, if you can, you should fill the minds of all your enemies with loving-kindness and make all of them realize the true meaning of peace, so you can live in peace and happiness. The more they are in neurosis, psychosis, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., the more trouble, pain and suffering they can bring to the world. If you could convert a vicious and wicked person into a holy and saintly individual, you would perform a miracle. Let us cultivate adequate wisdom and loving- kindness within ourselves to convert evil minds to saintly minds.

Problems come in all shapes and sizes, and the only thing you can be absolutely certain about is that you will have some. The main trick in dealing with obstacles is to adopt the right attitude.

When your mind is wild and agitated, you can often re-establish mindfulness with a few quick deep breaths. Pull the air in strongly and let it out the same way. This increases the sensation inside the nostrils and makes it easier to focus. Make a strong act of will and apply some force to your attention. Concentration can be forced into growth, remember, so you will probably find your full attention settling nicely back on the breath.

Mindfulness is a function that disarms distractions, in the same way that a munitions expert might defuse a bomb. Weak distractions are disarmed by a single glance. Shine the light of awareness on them and they evaporate instantly, never to return. Deep-seated, habitual thought patterns require constant mindfulness repeatedly applied over whatever time period it takes to break their hold. Distractions are really paper tigers. They have no power of their own. They need to be fed constantly, or else they die. If you refuse to feed them by your own fear, anger, and greed, they fade.

When we listen and talk mindfully, our minds are free from greed, selfishness, hatred and delusion.

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, surging 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.

Mindfulness is non-egoistic alertness. It takes place without reference to self. With Mindfulness one sees all phenomena without references to concepts like 'me', 'my' or 'mine'. For example, suppose there is pain in your left leg. Ordinary consciousness would say, "I have a pain." Using Mindfulness, one would simply note the sensation as a sensation. One would not tack on that extra concept 'I'. Mindfulness stops one from adding anything to perception, or subtracting anything from it. One does not enhance anything. One does not emphasize anything. One just observes exactly what is there - without distortion.

Mindfulness sees things as they really are. It adds nothing to perception and it subtracts nothing. it distorts nothing. It is bare attention and just looks at whatever comes up. Conscious thought pastes things over our experience, loads us down with concepts and ideas, immerses us in a churning vortex of plans and worries, fears and fantasies. When mindful, you don't play that game. You just notice exactly what arises in the mind, then you notice the next thing. "Ah, this...and this...and now this." It is really very simple.
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Etherea · Dec 14, 2023

As an introduction to the concept?
A delightful wee book by Thich Nhat Hanh - The Miracle of Mindfulness

kinulpture · Dec 17, 2023

Thanks

kinulpture · Dec 17, 2023

This may not seem possible for many. But along with other concepts. Could cure many of the worlds ills.

Ajay0 · Jan 28, 2024

'Action in the Instant Present ' by N.Sriram, who was the president of the Theosophical Society (1953-1973).

https://www.theosophy.world/sites/default/files/articles/Action in the Instant Present - N. Sri Ram.pdf

Some insightful sayings from the book...

The consciousnesness, which is inseparable from the very nature of life, can experience its timeless state.

But the mind by its nature has a freedom which enables it to depart from that present instant which reflects the true character of life, and gets involved in the complications of time, subjecting itself to various illusions.

Freedom includes freedom to go astray, to think anything, right or wrong, and it is this freedom of the mind which enables it to move away from the truth of things and invent ideas which are either pleasing to itself, or fit into a condition which it has created in itself.Thus the mind becomes a creature of illusions.

It has the memory of certain experiences to which it becomes attached, and under the stress of forces involved in that attachment it projects a future, and these forces appear as desires of various sorts. There is a pull towards the experience which was agreeable, and there is a movement away from an experience that was disagreeable.

The mind is moved by these forces. It is afraid that something that happened in the past and was painful might happen again, and it eagerly wishes something that was pleasant should take place again, and it tries hard to bring it about.

The mind which is subjected to different forces of attraction and repulsion becomes broken in various ways, and though the pieces are adjusted and put together, it can only function with a fraction of the energy which would be sprining up if it had not undergone that process.

What does being conscious imply ? First of all it implies perception as distinguished from thought. You perceive an object, say a tree or another person, at this moment, the present.

The more strictly you exclude the past and the future from this activity of the present, the better you perceive. Such perception is without time, for you perceive directly and immediately; it is not a movement occupying an area of time. When we perceive anything - a beautiful flower, a sunset, a tree, an animal, a human face - the perception of the whole of it is instantaneous if the consciousness is fully awake, alert and not asleep, if it has not already become changed in various ways so that it cannot act with the fullness of itself, but with only a part.

If you look at an object of beauty, you cannot perceive its beauty unless you see the whole of it at once.

Beauty depends upon the perception of a whole , and it is present when that whole embodies a certain order which is not mechanical - a mechanical order merely adjusts what is comprised in the whole - but an order which has the attribute of harmony. All this is possible in that moment which is the present.

Love is also in the present; it is not attachment which involves the past. One s attached to what one has known or experienced.

Liking is different from love, one likes something for the pleasure it gives him, and that pleasure, when it becomes a craving, corrupts the mind.

What is stale is what continues from the past. In life as it arises there is always freshness, a wonderful keenness and a quality that is timeless.

We can see, therefore, that whatever is the action that takes place in the living present must have a quality of freshness and immediacy. This action includes perception, the whole range of responses to beauty and love.
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