Be Here Now, Peacefully - Easy New Practices

Practicing with Just Being Here

Consider these three practices to kept you here now:

1.     The Don’t-Ask-Anything/Just-Do-It practice

2.     The No-Expectations practice

3.     The Or-Not practice

The classic reminders to be here and now are to recapture your breath or to develop a background awareness of your body. These both work, and they have worked for two thousand years in Asian Buddhist monasteries. For non-monastic Westerners with young practices, setting an intention to maintain a behavioral mantra can be much more effective.

Don’t-Ask-Anything/Just-Do-It Practice

Consider what would happen if you entered each endeavor and activity, not with the stridency or the arrogance of your Self dictating your behavior, but with a profound commitment to the humility that tells you not to ask anything of anyone. This isn’t about being independent, it’s about learning to be comfortable. It isn’t about another form of assertion, it’s about . This isn’t about finding a new value for ourselves, it is about discovering the real lack of value in everything, which is the uncovering of emptiness.

This isn’t just a practice aimed at physical acts, like telling a kid to get you your coat, or telling someone in the office to bring you back a sandwich when they return from lunch. That change (and it is not a little change) can be an important part of the humility that retrains us to avoid the Three Conceits: I am better than you, I am worse to you, I am equal to you (SN 1.20). It is much more encompassing than just asking others to bring or things rather than just getting them ourselves. It is about neither comparing nor contrasting–not judging.

Beyond that, there is the arrogant of expecting others to entertain us. Isn’t this what most small talk is aimed at? And isn’t that why gossip and small-talk are specifically listed as wrong speech?

Right Speech

Only speak when it will improve the silence.

Here are the five elements of right speech:

1.     Only speak when conditions suggest you should speak

2.     Only speak when you have something to say that will be of benefit

3.     Always speak in ways that can be understood

4.     Only say it once

5.     Never go on the battlefield; being of benefit (right intention) isn’t about winning

While wrong speech could be accurately and broadly described as anything we say that isn’t right speech, there are traditional key elements to wrong speech:

            Harsh, mean-spirited or angry words

            Falsehoods and slander

            Gossip and small talk, and

            Belittling others to raise your own status

It is important to look at our intention in speaking: does it come from one of the three right intentions or does it arise from selfish and self-cherishing notions and desire that we have, from an intent to make ourselves appear superior, from a wish to do create enmity, from a need to do harm or a belief that we should acquires retribution?

There is also our mistaken belief that others share our misguided goal-orientations–“Friends don’t do that kind of thing,” ”Kids your age don’t do that anymore,” “If I loved her I wouldn’t feel this way or if she loved me she wouldn’t do that…” Pinning our happiness on future happenings, goals, is the antithesis of Buddha’s path, a path that is solely directed toward teaching us to live here, now.

And amazingly, there is a belief that others inhabit our world to satisfy our trumped up needs. Realizing that we only think of others when we focus on them, and that we only focus on them when we want something from them (bhava), should for those on our path, indicate was must find another way of relating, one that is not asking anything of others. The first paramita (dana http://northshoremeditation.blogspot.com/2009/08/generosity-its-our-original-nature.html) is the new course for those who have begun to deeply understand their true self-centeredness. [Bhava is the tenth link in the chain of dependent origination.]

1. The Practice

Pick a weekend to try this: in all your interactions with others, and in any anticipation of those or other soon-to-be interactions, set your intention with this mantra, repeating it to yourself over and over throughout the weekend until it seems natural: I won’t or I am not asking anything from this interaction; I will just do it, just be there. It’s that simple, or not.

Once you get a handle on what this practice is like, consider extending it to other days of the week. For those in an office, this can seem daunting at first.

No Expectations Practice

We, and the world, can get along quite comfortably without all our unnecessary posturing. We could just be a simple, direct and straightforward person. We could form a simple relationship with our world, our coffee, our spouse. To do this we must abandon our expectation that the world should always be other than what it is. In other words, we must come to recognize and realize here, now. We must come to know that our path is simply to be here, now, without expectations.

2. The Practice

The meta cognitive question that arises as a practice is: Whenever you are uncomfortable, nervous, anxious, stressed, frustrated, angered, or the like, just look at the situation that is seemingly the source of the problem and say to yourself, strongly, “I have no expectations; no expectations.”

Say it often enough and you will begin to see the world without expectations as a comfortable, confident person.

“Or Not” Practice

Opinions support our emotions which defend and protect our affinities and aversions, our preferences. That’s how Sengcan, the third patriarch of Chan, describes our dilemma in life.

Faith in Mind

First stanza, by Sengcan

至道無難 The Great Way is not difficult

唯嫌揀擇 for those who have no preferences.

但莫憎愛 When love and hate are both absent

洞然明白 everything becomes clear and undisguised.

毫釐有差 Make the smallest distinction, however

天地懸隔 and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

欲得現前 If you wish to see the truth

莫存順逆 then hold no opinions for or against anything.

違順相爭 To set up what you like against what you dislike

是爲心病 is the disease of the mind.

不識玄旨 When the deep meaning of things is not understood

徒勞念靜 the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

In fact, we use this triad (preference, supporting emotion, and justifying view), to process and express information. All of our stories, all of our views, all of our opinions are, as we know from studying the five aggregates and the twelve links, false and foolish.

2. The Practice

The best way to imbed this notion that all our notions are nonsense is to simply say “Or not” to ourselves, or when appropriate out loud, as a tag at the end of any declarative statement we hear ourselves making.

Another way to use “Or not”: when someone says something that you disagree with, that upsets you in any way, minor or major, or when anyone expresses an opinion, just say to yourself “Or not.”

Do this all day for a week or two until it becomes a habit.

“Or not” is a way of practicing with the two truths, one of the most important understandings on the Bodhisattva’s path. http://northshoremeditation.blogspot.com/2011/08/without-this-perspective-youll-never-be.html

New Year's Celebration of Emptiness

The Great Way Requires Great Commitment

Commit Now to a New Year of Practice with Emptiness

As Venerable Master Yin Shun points out in his book Investigations into Sunyata, for a meaningful practice, a practice in which we cultivate purity, we must develop an intimate understanding of emptiness. Getting to know emptiness is so important that Master Ji Ru says, “I only teach emptiness.”

This New Year, consider committing to a yearlong practice of investigating emptiness. If that sounds daunting, it really isn’t. And nothing will do more to bring you peace of mind and to end your suffering than to get a handle on emptiness. Here are three steps to get you on course for an empty new year.

1. A simple starting point would be to commit to making this bumper sticker slogan omnipresent in your life: Don’t believe anything your mind tells you. Since everything is empty, anything your mind tells you is, of course, false. Use it as a mantra; make it omnipresent in your thoughts. This will limit and weaken your attaching. It will ease you through your life rather than making you anxious and uneasy.

2. Next, consider committing to practicing with the two truths. This means we commit to acting from the premise that everything is a lie and so there’s no reason to believe it or attach to it. This is the enhanced version of the practice above.

The Two Truths, Plain and Simple

There are two truths and they teach us the real truth–that nothing is true. (“Dude, everything is a big lie!” as one of my students put it.)

The first truth is the everyday or relative truth. An example would be: This is a table, or this is a desk.

The second truth is the absolute truth. It tells us that the object we are discussing is, really, empty, that it has no inherent or permanent definition or value or meaning or weight.

The first truth says that what we call something is what it is. This is a common understanding: “This is a table.” Most people stop there. The problem is that, in truth, you and I can call it different things because it isn’t anything until we label it. And once we label it, we give it definition and meaning…and we are in trouble if we are not careful for we have created a false story and asserted it as true and substantive. In other words, we believe our lies and act on them.

If I can call it a table and you can call it a desk, then is one of us right and the other wrong? Obviously, we tend to believe we are right. We are, after all, attached to what we think. And that makes anyone who disagrees wrong, so we have to protect and defend our position. We do this without realizing that what we are protecting and defending is, at best, a false notion, at worst, a flagrant lie. In the political area, where the stakes are higher than arguing over whether something is a table or a desk, we see the depth of suffering caused by not practicing with the two truths, and how conflict and war results from believing our relative understanding of the world is true.

The two truths is telling us that we must realize both truths simultaneously, realize that they are just notions (stories) about things that are both there and not there simultaneously; true and not true simultaneously. So I can call it a table without attaching or really believing it is a table, so if you call it something else, I neither protect nor defend my position.

This is the core teaching of the Diamond Sutra, it is the heart of the teachings of great nuns and monks of medieval Christendom, it is fundamental to the long tradition of mystical Judaism, and it is a central tenet of Islam’s Sufism.

3. Study hard and take to heart the Four Marks of Existence (The Four Dharma Seals), the Five Aggregates (Five Skandhas), and the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination. By study hard, I mean learning the list in a functional, not academic, way. Start with a definition of how each element works in relation to the others in the list, and how it works in your life to create and to end your dukkha. Become comfortable enough with your understanding to be able to explain it to a 9-year-old. (You will be amazed at how easily a 9-year-old can grasp emptiness.) Study these three lists in the sequence listed here: the 4, the 5, and then the 12.

Next, contemplate them on the cushion. This can be done in two ways: one, sit for 5-10 minutes with your breath to calm body and mind, then do a thorough cognitive investigation of the teaching; and two, sit with the aim of observing them as they arise during meditation.

(1) Start by looking at the teaching in its broadest meaning: what is this list saying? What does it mean as a whole? How present is it in my life? Etc. Then narrow the meaning; examine each element: what does each mean in terms of my suffering, in terms of my liberation? Define each from your experience. Consider how each relates to the others in the list? Are the lists really linear or is that just a skillful means? Continue to take each element apart piece by piece. Limit your contemplative time on the cushion to 20 minutes at a time so you can stay very tightly focused on subject; the mind wanders too much after that. Repeat this frequently throughout the year, building on your previous understandings and conclusions.

(2) Watch the Marks or the Aggregates or the Links as they arise in your mind. See how one leads to the next: how each works in dependence to the others. If you understand them, you will be able to see them experientially on the cushion. If you are having difficulty finding them on the cushion, do some more reading and talking about them and then try again. Finally, when you know them experientially from the cushion, start watching for them in your everyday activities: see how a traffic light turning red can cause an aversion and its attendant story and note how telling yourself this “event” is empty can short-circuit the discomfort.

Email me if you have questions as you celebrate this new year with a focus on making emptiness, the ultimate teachings of the Buddha, central to you life.

4. Finally, consider some serious book study. These four books, I believe, will last you for a year of study, perhaps a lifetime. I suggest studying them in the sequence below.

1. Introduction to Emptiness by Guy Newland. This is a short, very clear and accessible examination of emptiness. 

2. How Thing Exist by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This is another short book, also very clear, that is a profound examination of emptiness. 

3. Meditation on Emptiness by Jeffrey Hopkins. This is a serious examination of emptiness and the practices by which it can be realized. It is stimulating and extensive. 

4. For Chinese speakers, Venerable Master Yin Shun’s heady Investigations into Sunyata is available in Chinese, both in print and online, I believe. I have a very rough translation of it into English; email me if you’d like me to send you the 300-page pdf.

Thanksgiving...hmmm.

Let’s Not Be Thankful, Not Today or Any Day

Let’s Be Contemplative

In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared a three-day late autumn feast to celebrate the success of the harvest. They had prayed for a good harvest and when they got what they wanted, they celebrated. In 1863 Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, institutionalizing the idea that getting what we want is cause for celebration. 

This was a very Puritan religious idea: seeking happiness from externals It is not a very Buddhist idea. In fact, Buddhism posits exactly the opposite idea. It sees greed, the unrelenting desire for more, as one of the three poisons (anger and delusion are the other two), not as a cause for celebration. Being thankful for getting what we want misses the whole point of our practice, which is to be selfless, present, caring and generous, which is to do our best in each moment and to allow our happiness, our Buddhanature, to arise from within.

So today, rather than giving thanks, consider spending some time reflecting on the Five Contemplations which have, for thousands of years, been recited by followers of the Buddha before meals. 

The Five Contemplations

1. I contemplate how much positive potential I have accumulated in order to receive this food.
2. I contemplate my own practice (of generosity, moral rectitude, compassion, patience), constantly trying to improve it.
3. I contemplate my mind, cautiously guarding it from wrongdoing, greed, and other defilements.
4. I contemplate this food, treating it as wondrous medicine to nourish my body.
5. I contemplate the aim of our practice, accepting and consuming this food in order to accomplish it.

Getting Started with a Contemplative of The Five Contemplations

Sit in the traditional meditation posture and follow your breathe for 5 to 10 minutes, then start thinking about each of the key phrases in the Five Contemplations. After about half an hour of contemplate, go back to your breathe for another 5 to 10 minutes. Here are some notes to get you started.

Positive potential: Consider how mindful and morally disciplined you have been; consider what “mindful” and “morally disciplined” each mean and their relationship to each other.

My own practice: Consider what generosity, discipline, compassion and patience mean to you in the context of your practice, how much of each you exhibit in your daily life, and if you apply these with a sense of equanimity.

My mind: Contemplate mindfulness of mind, one of the four foundations of mindfulness, in relation to guarding against wrongdoings, and also how right effort applies here.

This food: Consider the interconnectedness of all phenomena that can be seen in food and its sustenance, and the moral implications of interconnectedness for you and your family and ultimately the planet and universe.

Aim of our practice: Consider the point of a Buddhist practice, what your aim is in following the path, and its implications for the future.

After half an hour or so of contemplation, return to your breath and follow it for another 5 to 10 minutes.

Happy Holiday.

Patience in a Paragraph

Chew On This, Unpack It, Let It Settle In

Patience in a Paragraph

The alternatives to patience in the spiritual life form a spectrum of wasted energy from irritation and frustration to anger and all the way to fury and wrath. Such a waste. All the result of trying to force ourselves and others to change rather than allowing us and them to be. If we try to force change we prevent change from happening. Patience is needed if there is to be spiritual growth. Patience is neither passive nor submissive; it is finally being fully engaged, without our stories clouding our vision. Patient effort, enduring effort, persistent, consistent effort is needed for patience and peacefulness to replace the raucousness and violence of our greed, anger and delusion. In the end, patient, enduring effort is the pathway to a successful. This sort of effort, the effort that persists day after day, the effort that persists during good times and bad times, is an effort that understands and uses the law of karma. Actions have consequences. Skillful actions have beneficial consequences. Patient, enduring effort in skillfulness of body, speech and mind brings about spiritual growth and wisdom. Patient, persistent effort in ethics, meditation and study brings about spiritual growth and wisdom. Patience is a “perfection” (paramita) because it is natural aspect of reality, an aspect of wisdom. The nature of wisdom is expressed in the concept of the dependent origination. This law of conditionality states that everything arises in dependence on conditions. Spiritual progress too arises in dependence on conditions, and in the absence of those conditions it does not arise. We need to patiently and persistently create and put in place the conditions for spiritual growth to arise. This is in accordance with the world as it really is.

Being Patience, That's Our Practice

Patience, Antidote for Anger (and all our other evils)

Patience, the practice of patience, of wholeheartedly being present, is the antidote for faulty frustrated desires (the I-wants and shoulda-hads) and unwanted occurrences (the I-shouldn’ta gottens, shouldn’t bes). That being the case, we need to make the perfection of patience an omnipresent practice; not just a fallback position to use in difficult situations.

Patience is a mind that is able to be fully present with whatever occurs. It is much more than just gritting our teeth and putting up with things, that’s the tolerance/intolerance thing. Being patient means to welcome wholeheartedly whatever arises, having given up the idea that things should be other than what they are. It is founded in a trust of ourselves to do what is right, without preparation or discursive analysis, in any situation.

When patience is present in our mind it is impossible for anger to gain a foothold. As we know from the cushion, since we can only have one thought at a time, if there is patience there cannot be anger.

It is always possible to be patient; there is no situation so bad that it cannot be accepted patiently, with an open, accommodating, and peaceful heart.

We start training ourselves to be patient on the cushion when we teach ourselves how to be patient with our thoughts and feelings as they arise, especially when we sit without moving and learn to be able to let go of discomfort. Letting go of our imagined discomforts, after all, is patience. Next we take it off the cushion and practice patience by learning to accept the small everyday difficulties and hardships that arise. Gradually our patient mindstate increases and we remain peaceful in the face of our perceived adversities. There are many examples of people who have managed to practice patience even in the most extreme circumstances––Empty Cloud, for example, when he was being tortured. or those in the final stages of cancer, who, although their bodies are ravaged, maintain peaceful minds.

• If we practice the patience of voluntarily accepting suffering (which is all imagined and unreal), we can maintain a peaceful mind even when experiencing “suffering and pain.”

• If we maintain this peaceful and positive state of mind through the force of mindfulness, angry minds will have no opportunity to arise. (You’re always breathing, so you can always return to your breath, even when someone is screaming at you). On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to dwell in aversive or harmful thoughts there will be no way for us to prevent anger from arising.

• By training our mind to look at frustrating situations in a more realistic manner, we can free ourselves from anger and a lot of other unnecessary mental suffering: If there is a way to remedy an unpleasant situation, what point is there in being angry or worried? On the other hand, if it is completely impossible to remedy the situation there is also no reason to get upset either. This line of reasoning is very useful, for it leads is to realize through mindfulness that a peaceful life is a call to action, not thought. 

Being patient doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do something to improve the situation. If it is possible to remedy the situation, then of course we should; but to do this we do not need to become worried or angry. Simple awareness is all we need.  

As long as we are alive, we cannot avoid seemingly unpleasant, difficult situations and a certain amount of physical discomfort, but by training our mind to look at frustrating, anger-producing situations in a more realistic manner, we can free ourselves from a lot of much if not most of our unnecessary suffering.

Instead of reacting blindly through the force of emotional habit (anger, worry, depression, etc.), we should examine the situation. We should not become angry just because things do not go our way. We must break that old habit of ours if we are to progress past anger and move meaningfully forward on the Path.

In reality all our problems are nothing more than a failure to accept things as they are – in which case it is patience, rather than attempting to change externals, that is the solution. Lessening and managing the anger, in its full spectrum from irritation to wrath, is not the point on which we practice. The point is to patiently be with things as they are and to let go of all our fabrications about how they oughta be/shoulda been. Problems do not exist outside our mind, so when we stop seeing other people and things as problems they stop being problems. 

The Three Patiences

There are three kinds of situation in which we need to learn to be patient:

• When we are experiencing suffering, hardship, or disappointment
• When we are practicing Dharma
• When we are harmed or criticized by others

Correspondingly, there are three types of patience:

• The patience to deal with our perceived suffering in each moment – we do this when we realize that we are the source (it’s our stories based on our past actions) of all our suffering and that if we are patient with the suffering it will cease.
• The patience required to practice the Dharma – this is using our understanding of emptiness and dependent arising to lessen attachment and increase patience though mindfulness, which guides us in eradicating our delusions and suffering.
• The patience not to retaliate – we learn not to retaliate when we combine patience with compassion; and further when we realize we are the real source of the suffering is internal not external, so there is no reason for retaliation.

Reminder: Right Speech Produces Patience

Right speech leads to mindfulness, wisdom, and speaking calmly and with lovingkindness and compassion in our hearts. Those conditions tend to hold us stable in a patient mindstate. They also allay anger.

Only speak when it will improve the silence

1. Only speak when conditions suggest you should speak

2. Only speak when you have something to say that will be of benefit

3. Always speak in ways that can be heard

4 Only say it once

5. Never go on the battlefield; being of benefit isn’t about winning

Avoid wrong speech:

1. Avoid harsh, mean-spirited or angry words

2. Avoid falsehoods

3. Avoid gossip and small talk

4. Avoid belittling others to raise your own status

We use wrong speech when we feel an aversion. Wrong speech is uttered in anger and intended to cause the hearer pain. Such speech can assume different forms: 

1. Abusive speech: scolding, screaming, reviling, or demonizing with harsh, bitter words.

2. Insulting speech: hurling insults at someone for some perceived offensive quality or action that we don’t like or approve of. 

3. Sarcasm, snarkiness and the like: speaking to someone in a sharp or ironic way intended to annoy or outright hurt them.

New Beginner's Class

Beginner’s Mindfulness Meditation Class

Every Tuesday from 6:30 – 8:00 pm

Deerpath Primary Care

1800 Hollister Drive, Suite 102

Libertville, IL 60048

Email for more information

Meditation can wipe away the day's stress, bring you a new sense calm in your daily activities, improve the quality of your family life and reduce your stress at work. If stress has you anxious, tense and worried, try mindfulness meditation.

According to the American Journal of Psychiatry, published by the American Psychiatric Association: A group mindfulness meditation program can effectively reduce symptoms of anxiety and panic and can help maintain these reductions. According to the National Institutes of Health: Mindfulness meditation is effective in decreasing stress symptoms in a wide variety of patients of all ages, genders, and educational backgrounds.The medical profession has been conducting studies on the efficacy of mindfulness and the impact of meditation on practitioners for over 30 years. Results show that people who meditate regularly experience significant wellness benefits decreased heart rates, respiration, blood pressure and oxygen consumption, all signs of improved wellness and physical health.

Mindfulness meditation is a simple and effective technique anyone can do anywhere to get themselves back in focus.  It doesn’t require any special equipment, or clothing, can be done at home, at work, inside or out and even – under certain conditions – while driving.  It’s a near perfect way to manage anxiety, control worry, lower tension and increase happiness.”

Although the roots of meditation go back thousands of years to the religious practices of ancient India, especially Buddhism, mindfulness meditation is a non-denominational, pan-sectarian practice.  All three major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have a meditation practice.  It’s not something complicated or cultish - it’s simply sitting still, breathing mindfully and letting the mind quiet naturally.”

Join meditation teacher Carl Jerome of the North Shore Meditation and Dharma Center at DPC every Tuesday at 6:30 to learn how to meditate, to learn the insights that meditation offers, and to grow healthier and happier. 

Here’s the Simple How-To of Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness is when mind and body are wholly engaged with what is happening. No evaluating, no judging, no stories or notions about it. Just full engagement.

Mindfulness meditation is simply wholeheartedly observing our breath.

Mindfulness is the driving force of a clear, peaceful, calm, quiet and confident mind. Meditation is what charges our mindfulness battery.

What do we do? We just sit, still, without moving, and focus on our breath. No numbers, no words, no visualizations, no wondering about the breathing. Just noticing it go in and out: in the diaphragm, chest, or at the tip of the nostrils. When a thought, a sensation, a feeling, a sound, whatever, arises as a distraction and we notice that we are thinking or feeling of hearing, we let go of that distraction and mindfully return to observing our breath.

We don’t judge or evaluate our meditation. We just sit.

Meditation is about letting go, not attaining. How do we let go? We let go by focusing our attention on something else. For example, when we notice we are listening to a bird, we let go by simply (re)focusing on our breath.

We allow the breath to be natural. We don’t try to change it or control it. We simply breathe. Simply observe. We become calmer, healther, and more peaceful.

Buddhist Best Practices, Part 2

In our last blog, we looked at the first three of the six paramitas. Here we look at the last three.

4. Right Effort

We generally describe right effort as abandon and refrain the unwholesome, develop and maintain the wholesome. But a definition is not a plan.

Right Effort requires us to simplify our life and to restructure it in ways that conduce to the performance of our practice. We can, once we see how, create an environment in which our practice can thrive. After all, what we are doing now is creating an environment in which our practice is difficult. So it is more a shift in style than something new.

Right Effort keeps us on the Path. We shift our lives in order to lower our stress levels. By minimizing our interactions with others we minimize “selfing,” ego-energizing involvements and conflicts. By taking the conditions of our body and mind seriously, we eliminate deleterious habits, eliminations that can be ended easily, providing we grasp the power that meditation and practice. We do instead of thinking and talking. We meditate and we gain insight. We create an environment in which practice can flourish and in which the sense of well-being we derive from this induces us to further practice.

Five Right Efforts

Techniques for Ridding Ourselves of Defilements:

1. For every defilement there is an antidote (patience for anger; generosity for jealousy, etc). The first of these right efforts is to replace the defilement with the wholesome mindstate that is its opposite.

This is often described as abandon and refrain, develop and maintain.:

	Unarisen	Arisen
Defilements	(2) Refrain	(1) Abandon
Wholesome Mindstates	(3) Develop	(4) Maintain

2. The second of the five right efforts is to activate these positive mindstates: regret and distaste. Ordinarily in the West these are considered negative mindstates, but in Buddhism these are positive mental qualities that we can used to abandon an unwanted thought or action.

Here’s how: Reflect briefly, quietly and gently on an unwholesome action, seeing it harmful. Next consider its undesirable consequences until a very gentle distaste for it sets in. Then, as regret arises in us we use that regret to calmly push the thought away, shelving it until and similar situation arises again. Next time, though, when we look at what happened last time we were in this type of situation, the regret leads us to change strategies. No guilt, no wallowing, no ruminating.

3. In this third method, we confront the defilement directly, scrutinize and investigate its structure and the structure of each of its components. When this is done, the defilement quiets down and disappears on its own. This contemplative destructuring, which requires patience to learn, is a very powerful tools for evaporating everything from physical pain to depression. Note that this is not a therapeutic model; we are not looking for sources and origins, we are only looking at the mental paradigms and models with which the defilement is created.

These first three are very effective ways to reset our behavior, to help establish new and lasting habitual patterns, leading to ever-increasing wholesomeness in our thoughts and actions.

4. The fourth technique is to strongly divert our attention away from the defilement. When a powerful, unwholesome thought arises and demands to be noticed, instead of indulging it we forcefully redirect our attention to a mindful presence somewhere elsewhere. This has a limited value, though, as it is weak at resetting our habitual behavior and only works if the defilement is met with a diversion of equal or greater strength.

5. The fifth right effort, to be used only as a last resort, is suppression–to vigorously wrestle the defilement to the ground and keep it pinned there until it can safely get up and redirect our attention to something better for us. Like four, this too has limited value and limited effectiveness, because it has little resetting strength.

5. Meditation

Meditation is what charges our mindfulness battery, and mindfulness is the driving force of a clear, peaceful, calm, quiet and confident mind.

What do we just do? We just sit, still, without moving, and focus on our breath. No numbers, no words, no visualizations, no wondering about the breathing. Just noticing it go in and out: in the diaphragm, chest, or at the tip of the nostrils. When a thought, a sensation, a feeling, a sound, whatever, arises as a distraction and we notice that we are thinking or feeling of hearing, we let go of that distraction and mindfully return to observing our breath.

We don’t judge or evaluate our meditation. We just sit.

Meditation is about letting go, not attaining. How do we let go? We let go by focusing our attention on something else. For example, when we notice we are listening to a bird, we let go by simply (re)focusing on our breath.

Allow the breath to be natural. Don’t try to change it or control it. Simply breathe. Simply observe.

6. Wisdom

Wisdom, in the paramita context, can be considered as the understanding and intention that leads us to maintaining the practices of right effort, mindfulness and meditation. The right understanding, or view, is no view–just being mindfully present. The right intention is the intention to wholeheartedly and with utter diligence make it our life’s work to be generous, disciplined, patient, and mindful; plus be meditators.

Conceptually, Buddhist wisdom is often described as the four noble truths: there is suffering, its causes, that it is possible to end suffering, and the path to ending it. A level deeper of that concept are the five aggregates. And on the deepest level, wisdom is understanding and someday realizing the twelve links of dependent origination.

We will look at the aggregates and the links in upcoming blogs.