This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Seven Factors of Awakening: Mindfulness

Greetings. Today is the first day of a series of talks on the Seven Factors of Awakening. There are seven, so the plan is that I'll be able to do seven days in a row, including Saturday and Sunday, for those of you who like to do the whole series.

To introduce them, Buddhism is less a teaching and more an instruction on how to wake up. These Seven Factors of Awakening are the inner capacities we have that mature and grow in this process of becoming awake. However, the word "awake"—often the translation of Bodhi—comes from this idea that Buddhism is "awake-ism," the ism of being awake. But the word Bodhi also means wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. Sometimes just the word "awakening" in Buddhism doesn't feel so solid. It doesn't seem rooted in something substantial in the way that the word Bodhi as knowledge, understanding, or wisdom does. It has a little more of a feeling that we are connected, involved, and seeing the world in a clearer way.

These Seven Factors of Awakening are not only part of the goal of Buddhism—to become free and liberated—but I also see them as a wonderful framework or exploration for how to enter into the world. They give us the capacities to live in the world in a healthy, balanced, supportive way. We bring these best qualities with us into our attention to the world, our witnessing of the world. Perhaps we can call them the "Seven Factors of Witnessing."

If we really want to see what's happening in our society, we might want to consider how we see it. It's very easy to get caught up in our opinions, our thoughts, our reactivity, our fears, our angers, and our distress, and lose touch with a deeper capacity to qualitatively see and experience it deeply in ourselves so that we become changed. We can touch into the depths of our capacity to care and our capacity to engage in ways that are free—not caught by hate, greed, or fear.

I'm hoping as I go through these seven factors this week that we can consider how they might come into play as we read or watch the news, as we encounter some of the challenges that exist in our neighborhoods, and as we reflect on our relationship to this world that we live in. We can reflect more deeply and more fully from the place that the Seven Factors of Awakening point us to.

I think of the Seven Factors of Awakening as being the sap in the tree of Buddhism. The Bodhi tree—the ficus tree that the Buddha sat under—represents Buddhism. If the tree represents Buddhism, then the nourishment for it, what keeps it alive, the sap of it, are these seven beautiful qualities inside that get awakened in practice. These are: mindfulness, investigation, effort, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. Around the edges of those are other important qualities of mind and heart as well, but these are the core that the Buddha emphasizes.

He sometimes gave a very simple path of practice from beginning to end: a person would first let go of the Five Hindrances, then cultivate the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and then develop the Seven Factors of Awakening. Often the juxtaposition is that as the Five Hindrances decrease, the space that's created in the mind is filled in by the Seven Factors of Awakening. When the forces of greed, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and regret, and doubt decrease, that space is available in the mind and the heart for mindfulness, investigation, effort, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity.

The first factor of awakening is mindfulness. It's not simply just being mindful, but really being settled into mindfulness, really having it begin to flower. Awareness begins to have a little bit of a life of its own, where it's no longer really up to us. When it's really strong, it's actually hard not to be mindful. It's kind of like this is what is coursing through us, this is what's most alive. This life force of awareness is what takes up space when everything else has been cleared away. It's a fantastic feeling to be really established in mindfulness.

The idea of sati (mindfulness) is talked about not just as mindfulness we're cultivating, but mindfulness and awareness centered on four subjective areas of our life. These subjective areas are not meant to be at the exclusion of the world around us. Rather, we tend to the subjective way that we are, so that how we are subjectively can be in harmony with the external world and connected to it in a good way. The inner and the outer become attuned to each other in an important way, but the idea is to start here in this subjective experience.

There are four areas:

1. Our physicality: being aware of our subjective experience of being in a body.
2. Feeling tones: the hedonic tones of pleasant and unpleasant.
3. States of mind: how our mind is.
4. Mental processes: inner processes that come into play that keep us either contracted and caught or which allow us to open up and be free.

These subjective experiences are what the Buddha called the ancestral homeland. They are the place of refuge. We have a refuge inside. Being with our subjective experience in a certain way is a place of safety, a place of deep home, being connected here.

What is it to really rest or be at home in oneself? It's an experience that not many people have. There are a lot of challenges that people face, tremendous challenges in this life that sometimes make it very hard to feel that you can rest or trust to really settle into your direct experience here and really feel it. Part of the process of practice, sometimes for years, is this noble and wonderful path of awakening the deepest capacities we have to be aware.

Exactly what awareness is, we probably don't want to specify exactly, because it's probably some combination of all the different attentional faculties we have. This miracle of attention, this miracle of how our psycho-physical bodies can have the capacity to register, to perceive, to take in a tremendous amount of information through the vehicle of attention or awareness. We have the ability to know in our minds. We can know what's happening. We can recognize something. We can recognize that we are breathing. We can recognize that this is an inhale and this is an exhale.

We have the ability to feel and sense the experience of our breathing. We can sense and feel the pressure and the release of pressure, the movements of the body as we breathe. As we breathe in, we can feel the expansion of the ribcage, and as we exhale, the collapse of it. This idea that we can sense physically, almost like we're getting a massage, is another attentional faculty we have.

We can be aware of the feeling tone of the experience. We have these nerve endings that allow us to feel pleasure and pain. To feel what's pleasant and unpleasant in an experience is a very important part of the human experience. We can tune into the pleasant and unpleasant within us, which allows us to make adjustments and to appreciate more what is pleasant, nourishing, and supportive. Even with the breathing, it's possible to sense what's pleasant in the breathing and what maybe is not so pleasant and uncomfortable. We can learn how to be attuned, aligned, and aware of these pleasant and unpleasant feelings in a supportive way so that our willingness to be here and present for it all is stronger.

It's also possible to just settle back and observe the experience. Vipassanā^[1] means to see clearly, and the idea of seeing is a metaphor which the Buddha used a lot. It is very prominent in Buddhism. The idea is that somehow, with the inner eye, we are settling back. The image that is used sometimes in the suttas^[2] is leaning against a tree with a pasture in front of us, just allowing the mind to gaze and be aware. For me, it's kind of like leaning against a tree and watching a river go by. There is a sense of ease and relaxation, settling into oneself, and just watching the phenomena flow. You just watch the river go by.

This capacity to observe is also part of mindfulness. In fact, traditionally, the capacity to observe is considered a very advanced form of mindfulness practice. So in saying all this, I'm saying that we have a lot of different attentional faculties. Another one that the Buddha didn't talk about is proprioception. We have an awareness of where our body is in space, and where different bodies are in relationship to each other in space.

When we say the word "here," what I'm pointing to is the capacity to settle back, open up, and allow all the doors of perception, all the ways we have to be aware, to be open. We do not go out to experience, nor try to make something happen, but see what breezes come into the house when all the windows are open. What smells from the garden come into the house?

When you sit and open here, for me, it's kind of a movement of both opening and settling. It's like when I open my hand: the sensitive part of the palm becomes available to feel and sense what's here, which it can't feel when it's closed up. For mindfulness to be this natural capacity for attention, give it a chance to operate. Give it a chance to be here.

The single word that I like to use to represent the practice of mindfulness is the word "here." You might, as we go through today, say the word regularly to yourself. Not the way you would say a command to a dog to "come here," but rather almost like a lover, almost like a gift: "Here. Here I am as a gift." Experience what's here.

If you're reading or watching the news, is there some way of watching deeply and fully? Even feeling all the difficult emotions that might come? Challenging, strong emotions might arise. Is there some advantage, some benefit to waking up to "here" in the middle of that? It gives more space for that, allowing it to be there somewhat independent of the reactivity, the rush to judgment, the rush to contract, or the urge to give up. Just "here."

Each day I'll give a different word for the Seven Factors of Awakening—a little practice word that hopefully can open this experience for you as you go through your day. The Seven Factors of Awakening are in you. They're part of you. May this practice awaken what's in you in these wonderful qualities so that you can be of benefit to this world. Thank you.