2020-11-24 Eightfold Path-Right Mindfulness (4 of 6)

Insight Meditation Center15min

Gil Fronsdal

00:02

Continuing these talks on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. It could also, the word Foundation, it can also mean the four applications of mindfulness, the four areas of applying or developing mindfulness. Developing awareness. And second foundation is Vedanā in Pāli. It's a word which more generally just means feeling. It could also mean experiencing. It could also mean knowing. It has to do with how the present moment experience that we have, how it's felt, how it's known, how it's experienced in its directness, in its immediacy, before interpretations and stories we make about it. And of course, we have many feelings like this. And vedanā refers to all of them. And there's many different kinds of feelings for sure.

Gil Fronsdal

01:23

But in the practice of mindfulness, the Buddha points out that there are three fundamental feelings. That all feelings have these qualities, these characteristics. And to notice how feelings can be pleasant. How feelings can be unpleasant. And how feelings can be neither pleasant or unpleasant. And so sometimes people in in the Vipassana world will say vedanā means pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. But it's not really quite right. Vedanā is feelings more generally. And then we focus on how feelings are pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. And the reason for that is that feelings, these pleasant and unpleasant, is very much the trigger for being for against, for wanting or pushing away, or aversion. And so it kind of works like this, maybe, that if someone really likes candy. And so they just can't stop eating candy, eating lots of candy. And then they get sick, physically sick and bloated and often feel kind of tired. And after a while they realized this eating candy doesn't work. So okay, they stopped, it's great. So they start eating cookies instead. Eating lots of cookies, the same thing happens. I'll stop eating cookies, then they eat cake. And then they stop eating cake when they realize how terrible they feel. And then they just start drinking a lot of sugary sodas. Because the other things didn't work. Eventually, they discover that what the common denominator is for all these things that they're eating in an addictive way is sugar. "Oh, its sugar that's making me feel so addictive. And it's sugar, which is making me feel so bad. So why don't I just stop eating sugar." And so then that applies to all ways, all things that have sugar in them. And so it's seeing the common denominator and that applies to all situations. Of all the cravings for these things that had their root in sugar.

Gil Fronsdal

03:49

So in the same thing, there's can be pleasant. All kinds of things can be pleasant. And we can have all kinds of relationships with that pleasantness. We can have desires and wanting and addictions. And so sometimes we pursue a lot of pleasures. But it's not necessarily that the activities we're doing, that we're pursuing. Pursuing the feeling of pleasure, the feeling of comfort, the feeling of joy, or exuberance, or whatever it might be. But it's not really the thing we're doing. It's the pleasantness it provides us, the hit of pleasant sensations and hormones and whatever it goes on. And the same thing with unpleasant. We can react to unpleasant ways that are not appropriate if we don't understand what it's about.

Gil Fronsdal

04:46

When I was in my 20s, for seven years I had a wheat allergy and I had never heard of wheat allergies before and wasn't well known back then. And so before I'd realized it was a wheat allergy, eating wheat, I worked at a bakery, so there was at lots of bread to eat, and I was breathing in probably flour. And so I'd feel really bad. And my way, when I felt bad I wanted to comfort myself. And one of the comfort foods for me was baguettes and I had lots of access to baguettes. So I'd eat baguettes and I would feel worse. And since I felt bad, I would eat more baguettes, I didn't make the correlation. And at some point, it dawned on me that maybe it's all the wheat I'm eating. And I read about it. And then I discovered there were allergies and wheat allergies, and then I stopped eating it. And I felt better. And I didn't believe it, so then I would eat a little bit. And sure enough, I'd feel bad and back and forth for a while. And so it was the craving for pleasure again, in reaction to feeling unpleasant. I had to get better, I had to fix it. And I was doing the very thing that would make it worse for myself. But once I discovered the common denominator, the wheat, then I could find health.

Gil Fronsdal

06:21

So this idea of looking at the pleasant and unpleasant of experience, is to look at that common denominator of many different things. And if we can learn to identify how we generally react, respond to what's pleasant, and how we react to what's unpleasant, we get a lot of overview, a lot of wisdom. It kind of like becomes a key for a lot of different areas of our life, we don't have to then do sophisticated analysis of situations. We just have to realize that I'm reacting because of pleasant and unpleasant. So if you go to, you know before COVID, if you go to a crowded party or something. And you find no one knows you, you don't know anyone there, no one knows you. And everyone's having a good time with each other and you're left out and it's kind of unpleasant music. And maybe some of these conversations are unpleasant. And maybe there's a lot of smoke in this place, cigarette smoke. And you realize you really feel off and feel bad. And you start analyzing or interpreting it. And one popular way to do that is to blame oneself. I'm so unlikable, no one likes me, and everyone's avoiding me. And that's why I feel so bad. Or these people, I need to understand what these people are all about and kind of analyze them and try to understand how I can blame them for something about how I'm feeling. And then it dawns on you this pleasant and unpleasant things. And you say, "Oh, wait a minute, the whole situation is just unpleasant. And I don't have to understand exactly why it's unpleasant or what's triggering the unpleasantness. In order to not react to the unpleasant. It's just unpleasant. And I know how to be with unpleasant." With unpleasant you just let it be. Unpleasant, you don't pick it up. You don't push it away, you don't look for blame in yourself or others. It's possible just to be aware of it and hold it in a spacious mind. Hold it in a relaxed mind.

Gil Fronsdal

08:33

And the same thing with pleasant. You come to a situation that's really, really pleasant. And maybe it's a table full of pastries. I once taught a retreat at a monastery, Vipassana. We rented a space, someone went to space in a monastery in Missouri. And there was a meditation hall had a little room on the side. And the meditators kept going into that room back and forth over and over again. And I had no idea what were they doing there. And finally, I went to check that room. And it was full of pastries. I couldn't believe how much pastry through there was. And it seemed like there was a different pastry culture in Missouri back then than it was in California. And the meditators were reading a lot of sweets. So a very pleasant, but I wonder how good it was for their meditation. But to see, "Oh, pleasant, I want that." But then, "I don't need to do that. I can be free." And discovering freedom in relationship to pleasant and unpleasant is a wonderful thing. It's freedom. To be able to go into unpleasant place, uncomfortable place and be comfortable. To be able to go and approach something pleasant or experience something pleasant and certainly be comfortable, but comfortable enough that there's no addiction. There's no leaning, no grabbing, no wanting more. Just allowing it to be.

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