Shaping your mind
Thoughts and attitudes that help on the path to mindfulness are essential for achieving inner peace. We are developing these tools trough understanding our minds. This process is called bhāvan on Pali language, a word that we translate as meditation. A much more precise translation would be “living” or “existence.” So, when we meditate, “we are,” in the full sense of the word, because we are aware, present, and witness to our own lives. Shaping your mind with mindfulness meditation will bring clarity in your thoughts.
Seven elements of revival
To shape the mind, it is necessary to develop a whole range of skills that lead us to the calmness of mind, focus, and clear vision of what is happening in our lives. Those skills allow us to act so that we do not inflict pain on ourselves or others. The qualities that we need to understand are:
1. Consciousness (Sati);
2. investigation of phenomena (dhamma vićaya);
3. energy (Viriya);
4. joy (pīti);
5. calmness (Passaddhi);
6. concentration (samādhi);
7. serenity (upekkhā)
They all lead to awakening, and at the same time, they exist in mind at the moment of awakening, at the time of the complete eradication of suffering. Consciousness is the basic quality, which keeps all other elements of awakening in balance.
The next three are
investigation of phenomena, energy, and joy, and they are called elements that are energizing. In contrast to the last three: calm, concentration, and serenity, which are calming elements, give stability.
All these qualities enable the mind to see the ultimate reality.
Without these qualities, we will not be able to help either ourselves or others. Their order is sequential; that is, one quality leads to the other. But also, once they were created, they support one another. It is not necessary, however, to develop one element fully, so that we can start with the next one.
Consciousness
Meaning of the Buddhist term Sati originally means “remember”, but the meaning goes far beyond memory. Based on the analysis of the various texts in the Pali canon that talk about Sati, we can say that the term has four meanings.
Always in now
Do not lose sight of what is in mind at present. Consciousness remains firmly with its object, without hesitation or wandering. We are aware and know what we are experiencing at the present moment. We are intimate with the world, but not trapped in it, trapped by it.
Presence of the mind
Another aspect of consciousness is its quality that it is always aware of what appears in mind, instead of just looking at it. In this way, consciousness is a kind of guard at the door of the senses, who carefully monitors and understands what or who through that door enters and leaves.
Recalling
This aspect of the Sati is often forgotten, but it is related to its root meaning. So here, once we recognize a part of our experience, consciousness means calling in mind. Reminding us what is useful, what is harmful, what is rough, what is refined, what dirty, and what purifies. Awareness is the key to stabilizing our moral compass. Awareness combined with genuine concern for your own and the well-being of others is easily misinterpreted and ignored in our culture. In this way, unfortunately, we also reject something that provides the basis for great beauty and strength in our lives.
A close relationship with wisdom
Awareness is not only a superficial consciousness, or as it is otherwise called – naked attention. It is also entering deep below the surface of the phenomenon, in the very essence of some phenomenon and its internal dynamics, so we see it in its context. Shaping your mind with mindfulness meditation will help you achieve just that. Therefore, in Pali texts, the notion of Sati is often found together with one other term, which is the sampađañña – a clear understanding.
Understanding what?
1. Understanding the goal or motive of what we do;
2. Its suitability to reach that goal;
3. Understanding the real domain of our exercise of consciousness [body, feelings, mind, and different categories of experience (dhamma) ] and the importance of self-restraint, especially in regarding the senses – so we do not become its servants and thus win freedom;
4. Understanding of non-delusion and accepting three universal characteristics in each event: transience, unreliability or insufficiency, and non-belonging to your self or to anyone else.
We understand that, at the level of ultimate reality, inside any process, there is no permanent entity, self, which would be an “executor”, but only a stream of empty phenomena that take place one after the other in accordance with the law of cause and effect.
As expressed in Visuddhimaggi:
“There is suffering, but not one who suffers,
there is work, but not one who works,
there is a revival, but not one who is awakened is there,
there is a way, but there is no traveler on it.”
The next step is the investigation of phenomena or dhamma vichaya, which will be explained in the next post.
I hope that this post about shaping your mind with mindfulness meditation will help you gaining peace of mind. Please leave comments or suggestions on what you would like to read in the next posts. I will also appreciate it if you help me improve on describing this topic by sharing your thoughts and remarks.
If you want to learn more
You can learn much more about mindfulness meditation and how to achieve peace of mind in my books. You can check out my other post about Mindfulness and about Living in the present.
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