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Sati (2 of 5) Recognition

So this morning, I'll continue with my discussions of the faculty of mindfulness, the third of the five faculties. I feel in some ways I could probably talk about mindfulness for a very long time, and at the same time, I don't quite know what mindfulness is. I've been doing it for 40 years, so I have a sense of the practice of it, but to narrow what mindfulness is down to a particular thing, I haven't really found that particularly useful. Though we'll get to, as we go through these days, my understanding of the essence, or the full potential of mindfulness^[1].

The Faculty vs. The Practice of Mindfulness

As I said yesterday, I want to make a distinction between the faculty of mindfulness and the practice of mindfulness. The distinction could be, for example, that someone could tell you that they run. That doesn't tell you much; some human beings can run, and it's just a capacity to run. They're running, and that's nice. But if they tell you that they're training to run, if they're doing a training program for running, then you have an idea that it's not just running. Now it comes with strengthening and speed exercises, and running in a particular way—a whole program involved with what it means to train.

In the same way, mindfulness training or mindfulness practice involves more than just mindfulness. The function of the practice of mindfulness is to strengthen mindfulness, to strengthen that capacity—the faculty of mindfulness—so it becomes strongly established.

It used to be that the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[2] were translated simply as the "Four Foundations of Mindfulness." Now the tendency is to call them the "four establishments of mindfulness." My preference is to translate it as the "four ways of establishing sati^[3]." We have these practices that begin to establish and strengthen our capacity to be aware, to be attentive in a clear way in the present moment.

Establishing Mindfulness Through Recognition

One of the key elements that helps with this establishment, which is sometimes equated with mindfulness itself, is recognition. There's the mind's capacity to comprehend what's happening, to know what's happening. If I'm breathing, I can know I'm breathing. I can go through much of the day and not really pay attention to my breath. I'm breathing, but I don't really clearly know that there is breathing going on. I could hear a sound and just know it in passing, hardly paying any attention to it. Or I could know that's a sound, and I could really know it as a sound. I could recognize it; I can clearly comprehend that it's the sound of traffic or something.

This ability to clearly recognize what something is relates to two Pali words used by the Buddha. One is sampajañña^[4], which is usually translated—and I like to translate—as "clear comprehension." And then there's pajānāti^[5], which is "to know." Those two are key elements of the practice of mindfulness.

As we cultivate this clear recognition of what's here, our capacity for awareness begins to grow. Our capacity to stay in the present moment and be aware of what's happening creates momentum. It grounds us or connects us in a stronger way.

Specificity Over Generalization

The capacity to understand what's happening is not a complicated analytical thing, like understanding all the causes and conditions of what's going on. It's really the simple act of recognition—recognizing the specificity of what's happening in the moment. There's a clarity where things begin to stand out clearly, and we make distinctions.

I don't want to make this too analytical, but I will offer an example. If someone says to you they're having a bad day, that is a very broad judgment of the day. It is such a broad judgment that, in a certain way, if that's how they're seeing the day, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's bad because that's what they hold; that's through the eyes through which they're seeing it^[6]. But that's a broad abstract concept.

You might be talking with them, walking down the street on a sunny day with a blue sky in a peaceful setting, and you look around and say, "Well, is this the bad part of the day?" And they say, "No, no, this isn't the bad part of the day." "What's the bad part of the day?" "Oh, the bad part of the day is that I'm having a lot of trouble with my boss at work." "Does that boss come with you when you go home in the evening?" "No, no, but the thoughts of it do."

By asking simple questions, we begin separating out what's actually happening until we are clear, moment by moment. We see that we tend to generalize with big statements like "it's a bad day." As this practice gets strong, the direct experience in the moment might be: My mind now is having the thought, 'this is a bad day.' To clearly recognize, "Oh, that's a thought—a thought about a bad day," puts it in a different context. It frames it as one of many different features of the present moment. There are body sensations, there's what I see physically around me, there are emotions, there are other thoughts that are going on. All kinds of things are happening.

To see each thing in its specificity, rather than the generalization the mind can make, certainly begins to make us wiser to what's going on. We learn not to generalize, not to have these judgments that we get caught up in. It also starts to slowly highlight, more and more, the value of staying clearly present and really seeing the details of the moment as they arise and appear.

As we do that, awareness and mindfulness get established. We become clearer and clearer. Sometimes the concept of clarity—to see clearly, to know clearly—is almost synonymous with the idea of being mindful. In the training of mindfulness, one of the things we're doing is training ourselves to recognize the specificity of the moment. We are not digging underneath to do archaeological digs to see what's going on, but just beginning to see what's happening in the moment.

It could be as simple as looking around where you are in the room or outside, and just identifying individual things: I'm seeing a chair over there, I'm seeing a shelf over there, a door, a light switch. Even though it's kind of mundane and might not seem very spiritual to look around and identify things, for some states of mind, that's phenomenally useful. In fact, some therapists will do that exercise with people who are really caught up in their fear, their anxiety, and their [unintelligible]^[7]. They'll actually ask them to look around and just name what they see in the room. It's grounding. It's settling. It begins creating the mind's capacity to start being clear about what's going on.

It might seem silly to do that in a room, but when we close our eyes in meditation, we're doing the same thing. We're not sitting here thinking, "I'm having a bad meditation," or "I'm having a good meditation." When we say, "I'm a bad meditator," or "I'm a good meditator," these generalizations actually keep us removed from direct experience and interfere with our ability to establish awareness of the present moment. But if we can start recognizing the details of the moment in a relaxed, open way—not searching or striving so much, but just noting the simplicity of the in-breath and the out-breath—it shifts.

Instead of saying, "Oh, I'm having a bad breath and breathing in a bad way," which is abstract, we notice, "Oh, the inhalation is like this. The exhalation is like this. The weight of my bottom against my cushion is like this. The sound of the traffic is like this."

The Art of Mental Noting

One of the ways this is done—which is optional, but there is a long tradition of doing this—is using mental notes or little labels. This is a beautiful art to learn. It takes a while, and it's awkward at first. Some people protest too quickly and say it just makes their mind busy. But it's kind of like riding a bicycle. At first, it's wobbly, you fall off, it's awkward, and it takes a lot of energy. But once you learn to ride the bike, it goes really smoothly. Eventually, you can lift your hands off the handlebars and look—you can bike without even holding on! The same thing happens if we give ourselves time to learn the art of mental noting and figure out how it works best for us.

Then, it becomes a very simple thing of just recognizing: in-breath, out-breath, hearing, pressure, thinking, warmth, contentment. We make these notes so light and really quiet. One way that I like to do my mental noting—I don't always do it, but sometimes I find it phenomenally helpful and I love doing it—is to use a really light touch. I will imagine I'm doing a mental note, rather than doing it as a mind's whisper. Then it involves almost no energy. It floats through like an imagined vision, but it keeps me connected.

We don't have to use mental noting, but it's a way of getting the hang of clarity and specificity—to really connect to the direct experience as opposed to the abstract concepts of the experience. As practice settles down, it's a natural thing for the mind to become clearer and clearer, and to begin seeing more and more details of phenomena. It's kind of like when you've had a really good nap and you wake up in the afternoon: you're very clear, and everything seems precise and pristine because of the state of the mind.

As we cultivate this ability to clearly recognize the moment—this, this, this—then awareness grows. Mindfulness grows. The ability to stay clear moment by moment becomes stronger and stronger.

Recognition is seen by some as the same as mindfulness. I treat it as a little bit different than mindfulness, but it is a partner to mindfulness. It's an integral part of mindfulness training, and an important part of the whole faculty of mindfulness that we're growing and developing.

Closing Remarks

So that's the second day, and we have three more days on the faculty of mindfulness. I'm very much looking forward to the chance of sharing these ideas with you. I want to thank you, and I hope that you're well.

I see someone says transmission was intermittent throughout. I've been told that YouTube and the internet are just packed these days, with everyone home doing video conferencing and watching movies. The system is quite burdened, so maybe that's why it's intermittent in your neighborhood. What you can try to do is reduce the resolution at which your YouTube videos are coming in.

Until tomorrow, thank you all very much.