A B C of Mindfulness

[Happy Buddha]

Dear all, I have posted the article below and at the end have added a 4 minute illustrating the ABC of mindfulness. Be well and happy. Suryacitta

I get a lot of students coming through my courses and the thing I see most is that people are trying to change themselves by practising mindfulness. This is, of course, understandable but it is a rather unhelpful way of approaching it. I have tried many ways to explain what happens when we practise mindfulness regularly. I recently came up with the ABC of practice, which seems to give people a healthier perspective on how to approach it.

The students were gathered in the meditation hall listening to the meditation teacher, when the teacher asks for questions. A student stands up and asks, ‘Can you tell us the secret of life?’ The master nods in agreement and sits himself down and looks around the room. The room is silent in anticipation and some students are even holding their breath, waiting for the wise words.

The master then sits up and says, ‘The secret of life is knowing the difference between the contents and the container.’ The students sigh, all rather disappointed at his response.

But what does this mean? If the master says this is the secret of life, perhaps there is something there for us to explore.

Imagine we have a small glass almost full to the brim with water. Here we have the contents, water, and the container, the glass. If the glass is shaken, the water spills out because it is already nearly overflowing. So what is needed? A bigger container.

The water represents our thoughts, feelings/emotions and sensations – our internal experience. If the water represents our internal experience (the contents), then the glass represents our container – but what would this be? At this point, people often say the container is the body, which is partly true. The container, though, is really awareness, or we could say it is perspective.

Most people come to mindfulness practice thinking they are going to change the contents – unpleasant feelings and negative thoughts into pleasant feelings and positive thoughts. This does happen to some degree, but this is not what mindfulness is really about.

Imagine we put the same amount of water into a container two or three times the size and shake it in the same way. The water moves but it does not spill. This is, of course, because it is in a bigger container – there is more room. Mindfulness, then, is creating a bigger container. We still have all the same emotions and thoughts, though they do tend to become more benign, but what really happens is that we create a bigger container – we increase our awareness of our emotions and thoughts. We no longer get so easily upset, just like the water does not so easily spill out. We can contain them.

Another way of looking at it is that we gain a greater perspective on ourselves and our reactions. Instead of taking our emotions and thoughts very seriously, we begin to be able to be more at ease with them.

This process is an organic process. A bigger container is not something we can will into being. It happens naturally over time, with regular practice. What upsets us now will not have such a dramatic effect in six months’ time if we practise well. As we practise and are willing to be with ourselves rather than running away, we create this bigger container, which brings with it a peacefulness. It is peaceful because we are no longer pulled around by our thoughts and emotions.

As you may have guessed, the ABC of practice is A Bigger Container. The master pointed to this because through regular good practice we cease to identify so much with our thoughts and emotions. We don’t take it all so personally. We come to see that we don’t have to believe all our thoughts, we don’t have to act on or fight against our feelings, because whatever arises soon passes if we don’t interfere. It is a means of letting go into the natural way of things. Sounds arise and pass away, a bird in the sky appears then passes away, a plant or a tree arises then passes away – albeit generally more slowly than a sound. The point is that everything passes away and it is the same with our thoughts and emotions if we allow them to take their own course. They flavour our experience for a while then pass on.

A woman who attended a course I was running was suffering with ‘knots’ in her stomach. It became apparent that she was using mindfulness to try to get rid of these knots. To her, mindfulness was another tool to try to abolish these feelings once and for all. After all, she had researched the benefits of mindfulness and so assumed this practice would help her do that. After a few weeks she seemed rather desperate and she approached me at the end of the class. She said mindfulness was not working for her.

I could tell what she was trying to do – she was trying to change her experience from being unpleasant to pleasant, but it was not working. I spent some time with her and at some point I asked her to say ‘hello’ to the ‘bad’ feelings rather than trying to banish them in some way. She must have thought I was a bit mad. She looked rather confused for a few moments but I let her work it out for herself.

I suggested that her mindfulness practice for that week was one of saying hello to any uncomfortable feelings and then doing the best she could to move toward them and feel the feelings. I said, ‘What we feel, we heal’, which brought a little smile to her face.

These feelings did not suddenly vanish into thin air. What she had to do was to allow them into awareness – we could say, into the container of awareness – so they could pass on again. However, for things to pass on we need to change our relationship from one of conflict and resistance to one of friendliness. We do this by turning toward them and experiencing them as they are.

When she returned the following week, she still had the knots but she said that something about the whole thing was changing. She said she was no longer seeing them as a problem but was allowing them to be just as they are. She said that she had actually learned something about them by being with them. She learned that they were anxious. Again, I suggested that she allowed them to feel anxious and did not get into judging them or controlling them.

So developing a bigger container changes our relationship to our internal world and, I might add, changes our relationship to the external world, too – we might just be a little easier to live with.

You Tube Video on ABC of mindfulness 4 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x97dTzxB1zY

[Gareth]

Great stuff Suryacitta; I'll put some links out soon.

[JonW]

Wonderful, Suryacitta.
Thank you, Jon.

[Happyogababe]

It's a great video and the ABC (re a bigger container) really illustrates mindfulness and awareness. I'm really enjoying reading your posts and viewing the videos.