Daniel, My comments are embedded below:
> Three Western Myths About Mindfulness > > > Three myths about mindfulness are frequently found western Theravada > circles. Beginning to intermediate students will often hold these > assumptions, sometimes even advanced students, having carried them over > from new age culture or watered down versions of culturally popular > meditation practices. For many aspirants, these beliefs lie unseen > within the mind, lost in memory, and become unrecognized sources of > doubt and opinion regarding the practice of satipatthana vipassana. [Bill!] You writing from a perspective (satipatthana vipassana?) and assuming your understanding of it is 'correct' and that anyone having a different viewpoint has created a 'myth'. I don't know how you formed your perspective (teacher/student, reading, etc...), but that really doesn't matter right now. It's your perspective. This is not good and not bad, but I cannot comment from the same perspective you have. I will comment from my perspective which has been built up from my zen practice. > Choiceless Awareness is the "Purest" Practice of Mindfulness > Attention is a process entirely conditioned by sensory input and the > inner forces of desire, fear, restlessness and aversion, no matter now [how] > hidden they may seem to be. To accept a myth of choiceless awareness > indicates that one has not grasped the truths associated with the second > stage of vipassana insight, Knowledge of Conditionality. In reality > choiceless awareness is conditioned attention, whose conditioning is > goes unoticed. [Bill!] 'Choiceless Awareness' is zen. When you start applying discrimination (categorizing, judging, associating, censoring, rejecting, augmenting, translating, rationalizing, intellectualizing, etc...), in other words applying some kind of CHOICE on your sensory experiences you have entered into the realm of dualism and illusion. Your choices are the illusions and the myths. > Allowing one's attention to float free in this way will make three > things particularly difficult: the development of concentration, insight > into intention, and the development of effort and energy. When practice > is mature in Knowledge of Equanimity, a kind of choiceless awareness > becomes possible, in that the illusion of the one who attends is now > absent, but at that point the mind is very developed and will not be > hindered or deluded by its own act of letting go. [Bill!] Here you seem to backtrack. In the paragraph above you indicate 'choiceless awareness' is a myth, but in this paragraph you admit in the absence of illusion (duality) it 'becomes possible'. So, is 'choiceless awareness' a myth or not? Or, is it only a myth for some and not for others? Or, is it a myth for some and not a myth when no one (self) exists to make choices? > The path along which our mind must evolve to come upon the experience of > the Unconditioned is quite narrow and precise. The ability to discover > this precise point of balance in the development of the mind's > faculties is what made the Buddha so unique. [Bill!] There is nothing unique about Buddha (Guatama Siddhartha), or Buddha (the direct experience of reality we share with all senient beings). The very fact of this is essential to zen (and to Buddhism). Otherwise you are elevating Buddha (Guatama Siddhartha) to some special state like Christianity has mistakenly elevated Jesus. Both Guatama Siddhartha and Jesus are men, human beings just like you and me, and anything they have done or accomplished or realized can be done by us also. >There is no room in this > process for personal predilections or intellectual prejudice. To be > successful in this path we must train our attention so as to achieve the > necessary balance and development of the faculties. There may indeed be > more than one system of practice for achieving this, yet every such > successful system will be discovered to be balanced within itself. > However, even then, all practice methods must be regularly > "tweaked" to insure that progress remains on course. In the end, > it is not the method itself that achieves the goal, but the carefully > balanced evolution of the faculties that leads the mind to emergence. > This precision requires refined tuning, something that does not easily > evolve from free-floating awareness. [Bill!] I agree there is not one system of teaching. However, the practice is not to 'develop faculities'. You already have everything you need. The practice is to dissolve the sense of dualism you have created which occludes and interfers with your ability to be aware of direct sensory experience. So practice is a matter of discarding, not developing or building. > Non-conceptual Awareness is the Goal of Mindfulness The conclusion to > this logic is that the silent witnessing mind is superior to the use of > mental notation. For fuller explanation on the benefits of mental > notation, please refer to my dedicated chapter on this subject. [Bill!] Non-conceptual Awareness (aka Buddha Mind) is zen. I don't know if it is a 'Goal of Mindfulness' or not. Non-conceptual Awareness is non-dualistic so is not subject to judgement (choices) such as 'superior'. Mental notation (I think this is the same as I call discrimnation or using the discriminating mind) is not good and not bad. It is used to form dualistic concepts. The only caveat here is to be aware that these concepts, these 'mental notations' are not real but illusory. > Conception and preception are so intimately merged that we cannot > separate them, although we can come to distinguish them. Those who > pretend that awareness is non-conceptual are lost in their own concepts > about practice and are far from seeing the present reality of their > minds. [Bill!] Both 'conception' and 'preception' pre-suppose a discriminating self. Both are interpretations (post-processing) of sensory experience. They are illusions created by the discriminating mind which are tagged to experiences, and often obsure experience to the point of replacing them as percieved 'reality'. 'Conceptions' and 'preceptions' are part of the dualistic baggage of the discriminating mind that must be discarded (or at least suspended) to directly experience reality. In ordinary life, the closest we come to non-conceptual awareness > is in deep sleep, or when we see something in the distance that we do > not recognize, or when we encounter some new object completely unknown > and mysterious to us. However, even those last two examples, the mind is > busily applying the closest approximate concepts to try and "figure > it out." [Bill!] This is absolutely wrong. There is no awareness in dreamless sleep, and dreams are all illusions. Intellectual activity as you describe above is just juggling illusions to try to find one characterize the sensory experience. Non-conceptual awareness happens when your teacher slaps your face. It is the awareness of that slap you have BEFORE you think 'Pain!' or 'Bad'' or 'Embarassed!'. Additionally, yogis can experience non-conceptual awareness > during their practice in that tiny space between sensory impingement and > mental recognition. Concepts are not the enemy. The enemy is that > confusion of mind that cannot distinguish between the two dimensions of > conception and perception present in our moment-to-moment cognition. It > is this confusion that hides the true nature of both, and not the > presence of concepts in the mind, which are inevitable and almost > constantly present. [Bill] We agree on something! - almost. I'd remove 'yogis' from the first sentence above. It's not just yogis that can experience this, it's everyone - all sentient beings. Concepts are not exactly the enemy, it's the ATTACHMENT to concepts that is the 'enemy'. Concepts will arise and dissapear. They are illusions. As long as you can recognize this, concepts are not the 'enemy'; but anything that gives rise to dualities (the most insiduous being the duality of self/other) is an 'enemy' to direct awareness (Buddha Mind). > Mindfulness Only Reveals What Is > A common mistake made by many dedicated practitioners of satipathana or > other forms of mindfulness as found in various schools of Buddhism, is > to believe that mindfulness only reveals what is without altering how > things appear to consciousness. Mindfulness is not a passive process. It > radically changes the way the mind experiences its reality. We cannot > claim therefore that we are merely allowing reality to reveal itself. > Because the perceptions, insights and states of consciousness that arise > in practice are conditioned by the development of the five controlling > faculties, the jhana factors and the seven factors of enlightenment, we > cannot say that we are accessing the reality of the five aggregates as > they really are in their own objective sphere or even as they would > appear in some hypothetical state of subjective super clarity. > Satipathana practice is definitely a system of mental development > engaging and affecting the mind in many ways and on many levels. All we > can say is that mindfulness reveals reality as experienced by a mind > properly developed in such a way as to experience freedom from greed, > hatred and delusion. The absence of delusion means something very > precise: the successful oppositing of the four vipalasas, or distortions > of subjective perception. There are the vipalasa that sees the > impermanent as permanent, the vipalasa that sees the dissatisfactory as > satisfactory, the vipalasa that sees a self in what which is no-self, > and the vipalasa that sees the repulsive as delightful. [Bill!] I could not disagree more. I want to reiterate that I'm not saying your paragraph above is not correct in pointing out what 'Mindfulness' is and is not. My thoughts below are not from a 'satipathana perspective. They are from my own zen practice perspective. Zen is awareness of only what is. All else is illusory. All intellectualizations (post-processing) are illusions. And I say again it is not the illusions that occlude Buddha Mind, it is ATTACHMENT to illusions that occlude Buddha Mind and that must be dissoved or at least suspended. Clean your bowls! ...Bill!
