Outskirts Press, INC.

The Path of Mindfulness Meditation

The Path of Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation are indispensable skills for modern day life. Mindfulness allows us to connect to the essence of our being, and through mindfulness, we gain freedom from the patterns of habitual reactivity that create suffering and conflict in our lives. In the spacious dimension of mindfulness, we create the ideal conditions in which our intuitive innate intelligence can arise and flourish, bringing about transformation and healing in our mind and in our relationships. This message was taught by the Buddha over 2500 years ago and has been taught ever since by many great teachers, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. The Path of Mindfulness Meditation is a comprehensive and in-depth exploration of mindfulness, mindfulness meditation and mindfulness-based psychotherapy.

Suffering, or dukkha, refers specifically to the mental anguish created by our subjective emotional reactions to the stresses of life. Pain is an inevitable part of life, whereas suffering is created through our subjective reactions to pain. These, we learn from our parents, our culture and even from our religious teachers. Through cultural and parental conditioning, we unconsciously acquire patterns of reactivity that produce mental anguish and suffering, and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to free ourselves from these habits.

The challenge of The Path of Mindfulness is to undo the conditioned patterns of habitual emotional reactivity that create and proliferate suffering, both within and without. This begins when we awaken to reactive habits and learn a totally different way of relating to dukkha: a relationship based on mindfulness, rather than further reactivity.

The Path of Mindfulness develops the ability to recognize and respond to reactivity, in all its many forms, with complete presence of mind. The ability to recognize reactivity is a skill that has to be learned. Also, after mastering this skill, we also have to learn the right way to respond to reactivity, after we have detected it in ourselves.

Most of the time, we are not aware of our habitual reactions, and we blindly obey them as if under a hypnotic spell. We become angry or sad, frustrated or afraid when events happen, but never stop to question whether we need to react in these ways. In reality, we react out of habit, not choice, and we blindly accept this way of being out of habitual ignorance, not conscious awareness. Reactivity depends on this blind attachment, the combination of upadana and avijja and this is what we seek to counteract through the practice of mindfulness. Instead of blindly reacting to situations, we choose to treat each and every moment of experience, whether reactive or non-reactive, as a means of developing and strengthening the response of mindfulness. The beginning of The Path of Mindfulness is learning to say “No!” to reactivity and to respond instead, with the open heart of mindfulness.

Recognition is the first and most important step in the response to reactivity and stops the proliferation of further reactivity. It allows us to break the habit of reacting to situations and experiences and re-introduces freedom and choice. But mindfulness is more than simply recognizing reactions when they arise. Mindfulness is also a response to reactions, and that response is to form a relationship with each reaction, based on openness, receptivity, sensitivity and complete presence. It is only when we can establish this mindfulness-based relationship with our own afflictions and kilesas that they can transform and resolve themselves. The mindfulness response to reactivity must involve both aspects: Recognition and Relationship.

Mental reactions come with varying intensities, ranging from minor disappointments and irritations to core traumas and unresolved emotional issues. When we practice mindfulness, we choose to pay close attention to all these manifestations of dukkha, no matter how big or small. Nothing is left out, because our mission is to resolve dukkha and discover freedom from suffering, wherever it occurs. All dukkha arises from the same roots of ignorance and attachment, and all manifestations of dukkha are connected. When we heal one form of suffering, we strengthen our innate ability to respond to all suffering in a skillful way that facilitates resolution.

By choosing not to react to dukkha, but rather to respond with complete presence, openness and receptivity, we create a safe space in which dukkha can heal. It is when dukkha is allowed to unfold in full consciousness that it will begin the process of healing, under the direction of the innate intuitive intelligence of the psyche that we call satipanna. When we practice mindfulness, we choose to cultivate a relationship based on compassion and openness, in which we neither indulge in, nor react against pain or the secondary reactions to pain, but choose instead to respond to either with complete objectivity and presence of mind.