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Mindfulness of Breathing (38) Experiencing the Mind

We're beginning now with the ninth step of Anapanasati^[1], mindfulness of breathing in and mindfulness of breathing out. The ninth step really builds on what came earlier.

Some teachers who teach Anapanasati, this practice of sixteen steps, will insist that you should always begin with step one and systematically work your way through all the steps as far as you've gone so far. There are some advantages to that. Some people's minds really like having order and having real clear, definitive steps. The mind gets organized, it gets focused, and it gets concentrated knowing what it's doing step by step. Other people find that it ties them in knots to do that. They kind of trip over themselves; it's too much trying, too much expectation.

Some people find that it's good to be familiar with all the steps, and then as we sit and meditate, discover where we are, where the salient step is. Sometimes we can start on step five, or start on step eight, or even step nine—any of these steps—because we sit down and that is what's available. Then sometimes we move up and down in the course of meditation. So these steps can be done linearly for those who find this beneficial, and they can be more of a resource for those people who want to track themselves and understand the domain, the territory of what's happening in their meditation at any one time, what the emphasis is.

But we get to the ninth step, and one way of appreciating this is that, one way or the other, it's helpful that the earlier steps have been familiar, been developed to some degree. That's because the more we are grounded in our body, and the body is relaxed, the more we begin opening up in a holistic way to our experience. We begin working through some of the knots, some of the entanglements, tightnesses, and tensions that we have.

Then, to go to the second tetrad^[2], steps five to eight, is to begin to sense feeling, the emotional tone of the body. If you're quite relaxed and focused, it's a contentment and well-being. With that, it's easier to begin trusting that it's okay to relax the mental activity. We don't have to be so actively involved in fixing, solving, remembering, planning, criticizing, or whatever the mind is doing, and the activity of the mind can be brought to rest.

This resting, this releasing, making the mental activity calmer, continues this process of becoming more holistic, more inclusive, and more open to our experience. Based on that, the experience of the mind becomes easier to experience. So step nine is: breathing in, one experiences the mind; breathing out, one experiences the mind.

I love this word "experience." The Pali word could be translated as "to feel"—to feel the mind. It's not thinking about the mind, it's not having ideas about the mind, but it's something that is more holistic, more broad, using the range of sensory apparatus we have to take in our inner life. The mind is not the details of the inner life, not the particular activities. As I've said, the mind is the sum total of its mental activities, but it's the way that we can somehow take in the totality of that, whatever way our mind—and I want to emphasize, our mind—experiences the mood, the mental state, the overall configuration, or the balance of it all. That's what we call mind.

I say that because there are a lot of people who would like to have the mind be something in particular, to define it, to know what the mind is. I don't think that's really the emphasis in this Buddhist practice—to know in some abstract way what the mind is. That's a topic for some other occasion, some other purpose than meditation. In meditation, we are only interested in how each of us experiences our mind.

For some people, the word "heart" is a better translation for citta^[3] (c-i-t-t-a). Some people even translate it as "heart-mind." It's the state of the heart, the state of the mind, the quality of our inner life. It's the mood, the atmosphere, kind of the sum total of how all this works.

Sometimes there's a predominant mood of the mind. The predominant mood can be one of desire, lust, or strong wanting, and everything is kind of seen through the filter of strong wanting. There's almost like the mind has an overall force, like, "Give me that!" It's quite something. We have a cat at home, and I kind of delight and am amazed to see the cat definitely has desires. It seems like the whole cat-ness is focused on getting what it wants, and it's clear that the desire is there. So the mood of desire, this disposition, is kind of like the overall disposition that we have.

Sometimes it's not desire; you can feel the difference between a general mood characterized by this desire and one which is not. Sometimes it's aversion, hostility, ill will. You can kind of see it sometimes in people, that there's almost a cloud of anger or hostility around them, and you know that atmosphere, I'm sure, is being experienced on the inside as well. Or there can be the absence of ill will; there could be love. Then there can be confusion that characterizes it all, and the mind is jumping around, not knowing what it wants to do, and doesn't understand. A lost feeling—that's a kind of general tone of the mind. Or the absence of confusion, maybe there's clarity, wisdom. The overall mood of the mind state can be one of distractibility or scatteredness, or it could be one of being present and undistracted.

One of the great ones that the tradition talks about is that one can know the mind is being expansive or large, or one can know the mind is not being expansive, not being large. This points to how, as we develop this mindfulness and a reflexive awareness of awareness itself—of the mind itself—that seems to change the mind. It's harder then to focus only on the things that we are thinking about or things we are aware of. Something begins happening when we are aware of awareness, aware of the mind that knows, or the mind state. It's kind of like if someone points out to you how dirty the windshield is in a car. Now you drive and you are aware of the windshield. You're not focusing on it, but you can't not see it anymore.

To become aware of the mind changes the mind because the mind is not a physical thing. One way of understanding it is that it's the sum total of the mental activities that are operating, and one of the key mental activities is the knowing of itself. If the mind is known, if we bring attention to the mind, and the attention is not for or against, not with expectations, demands, or criticism, just a relaxed, equanimous, allowing awareness of the mind, that is a mental activity in itself that then feeds back into the formation of the mind as a whole.

So we are shaping our mind all the time. Maybe the brain doesn't change that much, but the mind is very flexible. The Buddha emphasized the mind is very, very changeable. It changes with all our moods and activities and what's going on. Mindfulness itself, meditation itself, does have an effect on how we experience the mind. The instructions here are: know the mind, or experience the mind, breathing in and breathing out. As we do that, because everything we do feeds back into shaping the mind, shaping the experience of the mind we have.

Now we are in this kind of loop, this cycle, where as the meditation deepens, we are bringing more and more equanimity, openness, and receptivity to whatever our experience is, including that of the mind. That brings those qualities to the mind itself. One of the reasons why in meditation practice we try to develop an equanimous mindfulness that's not for or against experience is that it's good in and of itself, but as that gets stronger, it feeds back to reshape or reform the disposition of the mind, the quality of the mind, the state of the mind. The mind itself begins feeling more receptive, soft, and expansive, and all kinds of wonderful things we will talk more about.

It might be difficult for some of you to follow what I'm saying, but maybe you can think about it as the mood you're in, or the feeling tone, the emotional tone of your inner life, of your mind, your heart. You can certainly be aware of it anytime at all. But to be aware of it after having meditated for some time—for example, the more or less first eight steps kind of prepare the ground for mindfulness of the mind to have this wonderful feedback loop, to continue to condition or open the mind in a deeper and deeper way that will allow for concentration to develop.

Practice for Daily Life

I'll talk more about this mind thing over the next couple of days. In the meantime, what you might do is, as you go about some of your daily tasks, maybe some of the common things you do regularly throughout the day—maybe washing up, or cooking, or driving, or whatever you do—start noticing the mood with which you do it.

Then really know the mood. Don't just check it off: "Oh, you know, I'm annoyed." Don't just check it off; really experience the mood. Take time. One way to make sure you give enough time to experience the mood is to breathe with the mood. Take time, just breathe with it for a while and get to know it. Start recognizing your mood, and start recognizing also how your mood shifts as it is known, as you experience it, as you breathe with it in daily life. As you go through the day, don't overlook the windshield by looking through it onto what's on the other side.

Announcements

Thank you all very much. I'll say it a few times: this week we're meeting at 7:00, and then next week we'll meet next Monday. I'll start again at 6:45 for that week because I'll be on retreat again. It works really well connecting the two, for the retreat practice and what we're doing here on YouTube. So thank you very, very much, and I look forward to tomorrow.