Meditation in Action: Check your State

1. Meditation in Action: Check your State Buddhism offers an incredibly large number of tools and ways to approach mindfulness and wisdom. At the recent Visuddhimagga retreat with Doug and Catherine Sensei this January, we practiced mindfulness of breathing (Anapanasati sutta), and explored a few of these 2000+ year old meditative tools and strategies in depth. We developed the four foundations of mindfulness and observed the five aggregates (Skhandas) that make up our sense of ‘selfhood’. We contemplated impermanence and struggle in detail. We looked closely at the relationship between ‘name and form’ or ‘mind and matter’ – which comes first? What triggers what? It was clear at the retreat that meditating for 7-10 hours per day, although a few did more, provided an immense opportunity for deepened awakening experience – day by day, step by step we developed greater levels of calm, concentration and insight. We turned book knowledge into experiential understanding.

2. I think I could safely say that all of us at the retreat tangibly felt the importance and power of meditation retreats for progress on the path of awakening. However, the question was always with us, what happens when we get back to our busy, complex and challenging daily lives? Doug and Catherine Sensei pointed to the importance of ongoing practice in the form of ‘awakening in action’ or karma yoga. We used a lot of stellar tools on the retreat. So, what tools can we bring to karma yoga in the city? Here are two excellent ways to strengthen your awareness in day to day life. They are checklists that can equally be applied while cooking dinner or at the office, as on the meditation cushion – they are five qualities of a good state and the five hindrances that interrupt a good state. Five Qualities of a Good State Calm A feeling of being in Union Internal Dialogue Quietens Bliss Equanimity Use these five qualities of a good state to gauge how you are doing with mindfulness in action. Karma yoga as well as meditation will bring about these positive qualities. With calm, the body settles into quietude. With the feeling of being in union there is the sense you’re with what is going on, you are there in it, with it, part of it, undistrubed by it and present. As internal dialogue quietens, the stories, worries, dramas and fears recede and slow down and dissipate into purer perception. As bliss arises you feel well being and elation. Finally, equanimity is a sense of composure, balance and equipoise regardless of the circumstances or phenomena within or around you. It should not be mistaken for indifference which does not care, but as a passionate non- attachment. These five qualities of a good state are an excellent ‘honesty check in’. Sometimes I kid myself, saying or thinking I’m in a good state when really I’m not, especially when I am in dialogue or conflict with other people. Running

3. through this list helps me compare my current state to the states of calm and unification I know are possible. If my current state is far off, then I can use the many meditation tools in the toolkit to improve my state. Now lets turn to the question of what gets in the way of a good state? The nature of ‘purification’ on the path of awakening is the process of seeing the obstacles, lack of clarity and attachments that cloud the wholesome which rests unhindered behind the ego’s machinations – like a clear sky behind the clouds. Thus this next list is vitally important to see what clouds the mind.