Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 502: The Mental States That Steal Your Calm | Bhikkhu Bodhi

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Ever have that experience where you catch yourself in a moment of anger, judgmentalism or fear? And, with a wince, immediately tell yourself a whole story about what kind of person you are? How do you stop this from happening or cut it short once it’s already begun?The answer? Mindfulness or having the basic self-awareness to see what kind of mental states are arising so that you are not owned them. To use a technical Buddhist term this is called, “mindfulness of mind.” It’s the ability to see your mind states without taking them personally and it comes from one of the Buddha’s most famous lists called the four foundations of mindfulness. Today we are going to learn about the whys and wherefores of mindfulness of mind from one of the most esteemed living Buddhist scholars, Bhikkhu Bodhi. Bodhi is a monk, originally from NYC. He is a prolific translator, scholar, and author of books on the Buddha’s teachings. He is also President of the Buddhist Association of the United States and co-founder and Chairperson of the Board of Buddhist Global Relief. This episode is the third installment of a series we've launched on the four foundations of mindfulness.In this episode we talk about:The historical backdrop of the four foundations of mindfulnessWhat exactly the Buddha meant by “mindfulness of mind”How we can know whether or not we are being mindful How not to let our mindfulness become a sort of compulsive internal nanny statePractical instructions for the third foundation (given that the Buddha never actually gave them)And Bhikkhu Bodhi’s view that we should not be mindfulness zealotsPhoto Credit: Hsiao Ying Chang (史曉瑛）Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/bhikkhu-bodhi-502See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, everybody. Have you ever had that experience where you catch yourself in a moment of, I don't know, anger or judgmentalism or fear and with a wince, you immediately tell yourself a whole story about what kind of person you are. I am irretrievably rageful, irreparably bigoted, irredeemably anxious, and so forth. So what do you do about this?

How do you stop this from happening or cut it short once it's already begun? The answer, and this will be completely unsurprising to anybody who has ever listened to this show before is mindfulness, having the basic self-awareness to see what kind of mental states are arising for you in any given moment. So that you're not owned by said mental states to use a technical Buddhist term. This is called mindfulness of mind. It's the ability to see your mind states without taking them personally. Today we're gonna learn about the wise and wherefores

of mindfulness of mind from one of the most esteemed living Buddhist scholars. Bikuboti is a monk originally from New York City. He is a prolific translator, scholar, and author of books on the Buddha's teachings. He's also the president of the Buddhist Association of the United States and co-founder and chairperson of the board of Buddhist Global Relief. I love this guy because he's not only Eridite, but also incredibly practical in his advice.

I should say this is the latest installment of our series on the four foundations of mindfulness. As you may know, the Buddha was a big listmaker, and one of his most famous lists was the four foundations of mindfulness, which is basically a list of four ways to be mindful, to wake up, to stop sleep walking through your life. If you missed the previous episodes, go back and check them out. We've put links in the show notes here that said you do not have to have heard them in order to listen to this one. In this conversation, we talk about the historical backdrop of the four foundations of mindfulness. What exactly the Buddha meant by mindfulness of mind? How we can know whether or not we're actually

being mindful, which is a question a lot of people have, how not to let our mindfulness become a sort of compulsive inner nanny state, bicobeauties, practical instructions for mindfulness of mind, given that the Buddha never actually provided any. And his view that we should not be mindfulness zealots. There are, he argues, many other arrows in the quiver of the Buddha's teachings. For example, he's going to talk about some specific antidotes for difficult mind states such as anger, lust, and delusion. All right, we'll get started with today's guest right after this. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives,

but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly Kelly McGonical, and the great meditation teacher,

Alexis Santos, to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10percent.com. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts. On my new podcast, Baby This is Skiki Palmer.

I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby This is Skiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Bigou Boti, welcome back to the show.

Yeah, I'm glad to join you again. Let's start at the highest level here. Can you give us some historical and textual context for the four foundations of mindfulness? How important a text is this within the Buddhist canon. Yeah, certainly within the teravada tradition, the tradition of Buddhism, to which I belong, the tradition that prevails in the countries of southern Asia. The Sattipatana Sutta is regarded as the, maybe the paramount Sutta for the practice of meditation, and particularly for the development of a particular type of meditation, which involves both the development of calm or concentration and insight either alternatively or simultaneously.

Can you talk about the difference between calm, slash concentration and insight for a lay person. Yeah, these are two basic modalities which are involved in the development of meditation. So ideally meditation should involve what we call calm or the polyword is Summata which involves the calming down of the mind and the concentration of the mind, in the sense of collecting the mind and developing the ability to keep the mind focused upon the object without destruction, without disturbance. That is the aim in the development of calming meditation. is the aim in the development of calming meditation. And then the counterpart is insight meditation, or the Pasinah, which is the development of the ability to see clearly and directly

into the actual nature of things, to see the constituent phenomena that make up experience, and particularly to see those phenomena in a particular way, to see them in terms of their conditioned origination, their conditional arising, their dependence on conditions, and then moving from there to see them in terms of what are called the three universal characteristics of phenomena that is impermanence, then duke, which in this context means not suffering,

but having an unsatisfactory nature as being in some way defective or flawed or unsatisfactory. And then the third characteristic is a natta, which means not a self, not a true substantial basis for our personal identity. I'm going to try to restate some of this inevitably. I will screw it up. So, yeah, just use your own intuition. Yeah. Okay.

But I think what you're saying is that this Satyupatana Suta, this classic set of statements by the Buddha, is guiding listeners, meditators into two forms of meditation that work well together. First is to get the mind calm, concentrated, collected, turned down the volume on discursive random thinking. And the second is insight, which is to see that whatever's coming up in our mind right now, in particular, might be a powerful emotion, like anger. Well, the temptation is to see this as my anger, this big monolithic force stampeding through

my mind. And I've got to obey all of its horrible orders. With insight, I might say, oh, yeah, this is a collection of bodily sensations. This is not anything I can call mine, per se. And it's often accompanied by a bunch of self-righteous, rageful thoughts, none of which I can lay claim to and don't have to obey blindly. So is that as a rough summary somewhat near the mark? That I would say will summarize somewhat of a more elementary stage. But like once the capacity

for insight is fully unfolding, then when is able to maintain the mind sort of clearly and consistently on what I call the ongoing flow of experience. And so it's not so much that one is dealing with the states of rage or states of strong desire, though they might come up, of course. But when just remains focused on the flow of experience and when just sees whatever is occurring in a process of arising and passing away. Why would I want to sit and watch the relentless flow of change? I think what initially begins not with the motivation of wanting to watch the relentless flow It only begins not with the motivation of wanting to watch the relentless flow of phenomena, but usually we start, we come into the practice because we want to do something about our own

suffering. And so we might start off with a more elementary type of meditation, more basic type of meditation. And it's just simply watching the breaths or observing sensations or maybe doing mindful walking, but as the mind sort of settles down, then one sees that one of the underlying roots, maybe the primary underlying root of one's experience suffering is a clinging to things as being I and mine. In other words, taking what happens to one, taking it personally. That one is always observing and experiencing from a sort of standpoint of a platform of the idea of I am at the center of this experience and this experience is relating to me as a subject standing behind the observation behind

the experience. And so then when I'm the sense that since there is this deep rooted clinging to the idea of self here and to the twin ideas of I and mine, to really get free from suffering at the deepest level when has to eliminate the clinging to I and mine. And when can understand, sort of, if one becomes familiar with the Buddha's teaching, that the ideas of I and mine rest on the pillar of the idea of permanence, of lastingness, of there being some kind of persistent identity. And so, when I was to develop the capacity for sustained attention, and then when turns that beam of sustained attention to the flow of experience in such seeing everything that's occurring undergoing arising and passing away, then gradually the clinging to the idea of

ion mine gets eroded, such to wear away. So, we all know, everybody knows that things change, but on some deep subconscious level, we don't really believe it. And the point of this practice is to explode, or that's probably too aggressive, maybe undermine that subconscious assumption. Yeah, I think undermine is a more adequate word than explode because it's generally it's a gradual process rather than the sudden, well sometimes there will be sudden breakthroughs, but generally it's a gradual long-term process.

So, we've been running a series on the show where we go through the four foundations of mindfulness. And today we're going to talk about the third. I recommend to listeners to go back and listen to the previous episodes. We'll put links in the show notes. But the third foundation of mindfulness or the third of the four ways that the Buddha described that one can establish this capacity to be mindful

is called mindfulness of mind. What does that mean? Yeah, the poly expression is cheek on a passanaina and the word cheetah, you say we translate that as mind, but the word mind is very general, the English word mind, whereas the poly word cheetah would suggest the state of mind. So this is the direct contemplation of the state of one's mind. And the text itself, the Satyibatana Sutta, enumerates, so as a kind of guide to the practitioner, it enumerates 16 states of mind, which are presented in pairs, eight pairs. So the eight pairs would be the mind accompanied by lust

and the mind without lust, the mind accompanied by aversion, without aversion, the mind accompanied by delusion, the mind without delusion. So those are three pairs, which take the three root defilements, lust, hatred and delusion, and contrast them with the opposites, with the mind free from those three root defilements. Then we have some further pairs, which I translate, the cramped mind, or constricted mind and the scattered mind, then we have the developed mind and the undeveloped mind,

the surpassable mind and the unsuppassable mind, the concentrated mind and the unconsentrated mind, and the freed mind and the bound mind or the unfreed mind. Okay, I have a million questions. Can you define root defilement? Yeah, the way the Buddha treats his analysis of the mind, so he speaks about the main problem that we face in our spiritual development, about the main problem that we face in our spiritual development is the persistent grip of certain unwholesome or harmful or detrimental mental states upon the mind. And those detrimental mental states, are what he calls, or what we call in English. In the English translation, we call this defilements.

or what we call in English. In the English translation, we call this defilements. And the Pali word is key laser. But the texts, the discourses of the Buddha mention many, many different defilements. Sometimes we have sets of 16, 80 defilements and so on and so forth. But the Buddhist texts, see all of those defilements as stemming from three most basic defilements, which are what we call the root defilements. And those root defilements

are loba or raga, which is greed and also rendered as lust, hatred, and delusion. And from each of those root defilements, one could trace out other defilements, which become sort of secondary or derivative defilements. And so sometimes it's said that the task of the Buddha's path is the removal of lust, hatred, and delusion. So the goal of the third foundation of mindfulness, the goal of mindfulness of mind is to be aware

of what your mind state is right now. And this list, these pairs are pretty good road map to the available mind states to members of Homo sapiens. Yeah, I was teaching a course, a retreat a few months ago, where we moved from contemplation of the body to contemplation of the mind, and then to help, you know, the practitioners understand what they should be looking for. I took each of those three so-called root defilements and then elaborated each one so that one could see what would be comprised under each of those headings. So I had okay, the mind with lust, and here the problem is with the English word lust

corresponding to the Pali Raga is that it suggests too much of sexual lust in the narrow sense. So I elaborated upon this by saying, under this heading of Raga, we could include desire for the five enjoyable sense objects, beautiful sights, sounds, odors, taste, Sites, sounds, odors, tastes, tactile sensations, then we could have things like the desire for fame, honor, praise, desire for wealth, desire for position and power over others, desire for friends in a kind of maybe obsessive sense. Like with Facebook, you want to see how many friends you can accumulate even though you don't know the people. So desire for friends, attachment to loved ones, craving for delicious food, then the addictions craving for alcoholic drinks

and drugs and so forth. So all of those could come under the mind with lust, then under the mind with hatred. Okay, so we have Satov with raw hatred, visceral hatred, but then it can move on to a kind of persisting resentment, ill will, annoyance, irritation, malice, hostility, envy, angelicy, bitterness, anger, violent tendencies, belligerence, and so forth. Yeah, the mind with delusion is maybe a bit more difficult than the other two. So the way I sort of expanded upon it was to take okay, delusion might include things like cynical doubt or skeptical doubt,

wrong views, idle speculation, ego pride, conceit, vanity, hoardiness, nationalism, racism, religious dogmatism, religious nationalism, and so forth. So all of those can be taken as manifestations or consequences of delusion. I imagine the point is once you develop the capacity to see these root defilements and the other defilements in your mind, then you're not so owned by them. And so that kind of leads to the question of, so how do you learn to get a more resolution

on your mind states, which tend to change throughout the day? Yeah, well, within the actual practice of Si Bhattana, the practice of mindful observation, the task is not so much to make an effort to control the state of mind, but simply to note and to observe what state of mind has arisen. So, of course, mindfulness has to work together with right efforts so that one is not indulging those states that arise. But part of the right effort here is the effort just to note whatever mind state has a risen and to note it clearly and then to drop it to let it go. And then it will be followed by other mind states will arise.

But this is where the observation of individual states of mind starts as it builds up momentum, then it starts to turn into a continuous and consistent observation of what is taking place within the mind. So the mind states are occurring, you know, not as solid blocks, which control and dominate the mind. So that the mind states are occurring, you know, not as solid blocks, which control and dominate the mind, but just like little flickers of mental states, which just popped their head up for a moment. And then when they are recognized and identified, then they fall away. Yeah, I came up with a certain, similarly, to illustrate how this process takes place. If I could relate that.

Please. I compare this to like we have a shop in which you're a goods for sale and there are no mirrors, you know, in the corners to observe the rows and there's no inspector on the floor. Okay. So we have a kleptomaniac into their shop, and he looks around that he sees that there are no mirrors, no observation mirrors. And so he's able to take some goods, put it into his pocket, and then maybe dispel any suspicion. He might buy a cheap item in and he walks out and he's taken the valuable items with him.

So that is like the way the mind ordinarily works without observation. But when we have corner mirrors, which are reflecting the image of the hidden rose back to the cashier or to somebody, an inspector on the floor, then when the thief comes into the shop, then he'll look around, and he'll see that he's under observation that there are these mirrors reflecting him in every row, and then he'll just leave the shop empty-handed and maybe go to another shop. And so, in this way, when the mind is not under observation, the way the mind ordinarily works, when these unwholesome or defiled mental states arise, we don't recognize them. And in that way, those states are able to gain power over the mind, to gain control over the mind and to dominate

the mind. But it's when we use the power of mindfulness to simply recognize the state of mind that's a risen, identify it, and then drop it that the state of mind is able to pass without doing any damage to the texture of the mind. Coming up, Bikubodi talks about how we can know whether we're actually being mindful, how not to let our mindfulness become a sort of compulsive, inner nanny state, and he provides some instructions for practicing mindfulness of mind on the meditation cushion. We'll be right back. Celebrity feuds are high stakes.

You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or do moa or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices

taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wonder App. How do we know when we're actually being mindful? That's a good question because so many times, I mean, I've sat thinking I'm being mindful and then I realize that I've been way back in the past or planning things for the future.

But let us say that the defining characteristic of mindfulness, there are many ways to conceptualize mindfulness, but the way I would put it succinctly, at least with the kind of practice that one undertake in the foundations of mindfulness, that mindfulness is keeping oneself under observation, keeping either observing things going on in the physical body, or keeping the mind under observation,

the feelings with a mind under observation. So when one can recognize that one is sustaining that process of self-observation, then one knows that one is being mindful. But at other times, one can be sitting with the intention of being mindful, but the mind will drift away from mindfulness. And that's quite natural and normal, too. But then when one realizes that the mind is drifted, and well, that recognition that the mind has drifted is itself a function of mindfulness. This observation language you're using, I can see in my own mind, and I can imagine this happening in other people's minds, a militantsance or setting up of a sort of internal nanny state

that can get compulsive rather than helpful. Yeah, that can happen. It depends on how one undertakes that process of observation, the kind of attitude and mindset that one brings to the process of what I call observation. So it can be, as you said, something of a nanny state, if one maybe brings the wrong approach, but I would say that the healthy and fruitful approach is that one comes to the process of observation, keeping the mind soft, gentle, non-judgmental, but also curious to see and understand what is taking place? I say it's primarily that sort of, but I call it, soft, gentle, relaxed, but diligent framework in which the contemplation or observation takes place

that keeps it on the right track and prevents it from becoming a process by which one engages in self-blame, self-condemnation, and so forth. and so forth. Just to go back to the practical here, as I understand it, nowhere in the Suta does the Buddha actually give detailed instructions on how to establish mindfulness of one's mind states. But you've come up with some instructions. Would you mind walking us through them? Yeah, and that's what's interesting also because in my own sort of experience of trying to practice, according to the method of the Satyibatana Sutta, when it came to the mindfulness of the mind, couldn't find what I would call clear direct systematic explanations of how one undertakes the contemplation of the mind. So as I sort of reflected on this, I developed a method, I don't want to say that it's under copyright, patent registration,

or anything like that, but it just seemed to be an effective way to see what's going on in the the mind. So what I did was to take as a focus point of observation the word mind. And so to undertake this, I would have to build up a certain momentum of maybe mindfulness and capacity for concentration through the practice of a method like mindfulness of breathing, so that the initial tendency of the mind to wander, to get overrun by thoughts and emotions and so on, settles down somewhat, and the mind becomes more quiet and sort of stabilized. Then I would run through the mind, the word mind, and make the task I would run through the mind, the word mind, and make the task just to observe within the mind the word mind as is being mentally verbalized. And so when I'm doing this, it's not an automatic process upon itself to watch the word mind as it is passing through the mind with each mental recitation of the word mind.

And so mentally reciting the word mind keeps the mind focused upon itself. And so when it's watching the word mind, mind passing through the mind, but what inevitably happens is before long you've lost the word mind or you're just, or I'm just reciting it without mindfulness and the mind is has wandered, it's strayed into any of the bypass of mental activity. And so when that happens, what one does is to identify what is that mental state that has arisen. And that's where I found that I'm applying the template, that the contemplation of the mind section, of the Satyibhataanasuta gives us. So if it's a mind, say, desiring things, say thinking about the meal is coming up, maybe it's the morning. If I'm in my room and then I get the smells coming from the kitchen, then I'm thinking, ah, craving for delicious

food, mind with desire, mind with lust. If I'm thinking of somebody did something wrong to me, and I'm angry about it, then it's mind with hatred, mind with anger. If I'm just maybe engaging in some speculations or some doubts, then it becomes mind with delusion. And then also while I was doing this, I also noticed that in, I would have to say that the section on contemplation of mind

in the Satyibhata-suta, even though it has these 16 pairs of contrasting mental states, but it's not all inclusive for contemplating what is taking place within the mind. So then I found it's useful to use another template, which I partly started to sketch, which is to see where is the mind dwelling? What is it dwelling on? And then I found that when the mind is not present,

when it's not focused on the present, then it's gone in either of two directions, it's either gone back to the past or it's jumped ahead to the future. And so we have mind dwelling on the past, which will be remembering the past either accurately or inaccurately. And then when the mind dwells on the past, it could be dwelling on the past, either with, you might say, the sorrowful emotions, that is, with sadness, maybe with grief, with distress, regret, remorse, guilt, or it could be dwelling on the past with happy states, happy memories, joyful memories, nostalgia,

fondness for the past. So that would be mind dwelling on the past, and then we could have mind projecting on the other side of the tracks, mind projecting into the future, and then the mind can be projecting into the future with imagination, with desire, craving, hope, and expectations, or with other negative side, with fear, worry, anxiety, or so those would be rooted in a version, or it could be projecting into the future in ways that would be based on delusion with idle imaginings, with idle expectations, and so forth. Probably you could expand these lists still further, but these were some of the types of mental activity that I sketched on the basis of my own

lived experience and trying to practice contemplation of the mind. So let me just see if I can state these meditation instructions back to you. The first is to repeat the word mind silently in your own mind at a decent clip mind, mind, violently in your own mind at a decent clip mind mind mind and that has the well actually I missed a step the first is you may want to get calm concentrated collected by sitting and focusing on the breath for a while which can create some level of focus in the mind then you bring in this kind of mantra of the word mind within your own mind. Yeah, but I don't want to use the word mantra.

Right, because you're not, it's not quite a mantra. Yeah, it's not like a mechanical recitation. What's the difference between your suggested use of this repetition of the word mind? What's the difference between that and what you are calling a mechanical repetition? I guess a mechanical repetition, you're just reciting it without, let's say, the point the way I use the word mind, the point is to turn the mind back upon itself in order to observe the mind by running the word mind through the mind.

So as I'm saying this word mind, it's reminding me to look at the machinery of this thing or not a thing called the mind. Yeah. Yeah. Inevitably then I will get distracted. And at that point when I wake up from distraction, I can see, oh, what is the state of mind in which I've been dwelling during this distraction and I can make a note of it? And then I'm starting to get into this habit of seeing the mind states that grit me.

Exactly. And I should also add to this that, at a certain point, when one develops the, let us say, the skill in observing the mind by using the word mind as a reminder to turn back and observe the mind, once one develops a certain skill and momentum with that, then what I found in my practice, that then I can then drop the word mind, and then I just remain focused on that constant equal at the flux of mental activity.

And so at that point, one is seeing what's going on within the mind, occurring at very, very rapid pace, just kind of rapid arising and vanishing of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so on, just coming almost instantaneously. Is that achievable off of retreat? Because I've had a few moments on meditation retreat day seven or whatever, where I click into this state of dramatically reduced mental chatter and I'm much more on top of whatever's happening in my mind the

things coming in through the ear and the eye and the physical sensations and the random thoughts, urges and emotions. I'm right on top of it in a way that I'm not in my daily life. So this kind of sustained mindfulness that you're describing, is that something we can expect in our daily, you know, 10-minute meditation? I say very difficult in a 10-minute meditation, even in the 45-minute meditation. I could sort of get into that state pretty much only in a retreat setting, could get into that state pretty much only in a retreat setting, or after doing several hours of meditation a day, and it's in a stretch. In the day-to-day, regular practice, I would do the contemplation of mind, but I'm almost reliant on using the word mind as a focal point for turning back on the mind.

But to get into that, just the unverbalized observation of the constant rapid flux of mental events, that takes place to pick up the momentum for that. It pretty much requires, for me, a retreat setting. Maybe somebody who has sharper faculties can do it just with a regular daily practice. But I have a rather, I'm a slow, a bit of a slow boat, yeah. Well, you're in good company or bad company, this may be. So, hence, as you said, the value of this technique that you developed of just repeating the word mind to remind us to be awake. So we've just finished talking about an on-locution practice that we can use to practice mindfulness of mind. How would you recommend we remain attentive to awake, to aware of our mind states when we're off the cushion as we're moving through

the world? Yeah, it's very critical for us to maintain, let's say, our calm, our balance, our effectiveness, in dealing with situations, to have some degree of mindfulness of the mind in the midst of our everyday activities. What I would say is that it's the capacity for self-observation that we develop through a formal meditation practice, whether one is doing a practice like mindfulness of breathing or body contemplation or contemplation of mind. That doesn't matter, but that gives us the ability to monitor, to recognize the states of mind that arise within our everyday life, and then to be able to deal with them effectively, not to be overwhelmed by them and carried away by them.

But when we recognize them as they arise, then we're able to, especially the unwholesome or impulsive mental states, we're able to just by recognizing them. And if necessary, keeping them under momentary observation, we're able to help them to settle down and to become still and not to control us. I'm having two thoughts. I'm going to say them both, but we might want to attack them individually. The first is that it seems to me that you are articulating right there to use a business term, value proposition of this third foundation of mindfulness, which is that when you're aware of whatever emotion is, as I said before, stampeding through the mind, you are less likely to be carried away by it.

The second thought I had is that at least the first foundation of mindfulness, which we have discussed a couple weeks ago, which is just being aware of the body, and that can be just as something as simple as just watching your breath. That seems to me to be a way to achieve the third foundation of mindfulness, which is as soon as you've learned to just watch, pay attention to something as simple as the breath, well, that just boosts our self-awareness, our mindfulness in a way that would allow us to see when anger is present. Yeah, that's exactly true. What I would say is that the previous two foundations of mindfulness also prepare one for the direct observation of the mind. And so that we could say that all of the four foundations of mindfulness

are really in some way practices of observation of the mind or contemplation of the mind. And it is quite, I mean, natural that that should be the case, because the focus of the Buddha's teaching is upon understanding and training and developing and liberating the mind. And so even when one takes an object like mindfulness of breathing with a task is to keep the focus of intention of observing the breath is illuminating the way one's mind normally works, but which we don't recognize because we don't have a clear light to shine on it, but we don't have a kind of backdrop against which to see it. of backdrop against which to see it. Yeah, I have a simile for this. It's like, you know, in a room which hasn't been cleaned up in a long time, like in a basement

or an attic, there'll be particles of dust floating in the air. And if one opens the door and one is still in a fair amount of darkness, you don't see those particles of dust. But if you turn on the light or open the curtain so that a beam of sunlight comes through, then you can see that there are these particles of dust floating in the air. And so that's somewhat like the task of turning the attention to the breath is a bit like pushing away the curtain to let the beam of sunlight come through so that one could then see the particles of dust floating through our own mind. So even a practice like mindfulness of breathing is in a way sort of foreshadowing and even to a degree participating in the observation of the mind, the contemplation of the mind.

After the break Bikubodi talks about ways that we can see our mind states without telling ourselves a big story about whatever emotions we're experiencing and what they say about us. And he lays out specific meditation strategies for dealing with struggles that are common for many of us, ranging from anger to lust. Keep it here. I wanna mention something to you that a few weeks back, we talked to Joseph Goldstein, he kicked off this series on the four foundations of mindfulness, and when we were talking in my interview

with Joseph, we sort of zipped through all four foundations, and subsequently we've had a series of episodes that have gone deep on each of the foundations individually. But when Joseph and I were talking about this third foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of mind, he said one little pitfall is that when we are mindful of unwholesome mind states, you know, when we notice greed or hatred or confusion, distraction, it's quite human to tell ourselves a whole story about what kind of person we are based on whatever neurotic obsession is flitting through our mind. We can be, you know, moving along in our life or in our practice, trying to be aware of

our mind states. And then we notice anger. And then very quickly, we move into a whole story about how we are angry people. And we're never not going to be angry people, or we're so anxious. And this is just, you know, this has been the way I am. And I'm always going to be like this because my dad was like this, etc. It's there. We see something really quickly in our mind, in my state, and we tell a big story.

Okay. So those would be examples of what we call like identifying oneself with those states of mind and then constructing one sense of identity on the basis, on the foundation of those particular states of mind. And so one of these sort of benefits of the contemplation of the mind, but let's say two of the benefits, at least two of the benefits. One, you see how quickly the mind works, I mentioned two benefits benefits and now I forgot the first one. Yeah, okay. Now I got them back into the mind. Okay. The first benefit is that when one sees that the mental states are constantly changing, that helps to break the identification with that state of mind. So that one, let us say, a state of anger arises when remembers some aggressive behavior that somebody displayed towards yourself or somebody took your share of something or got the credit where you should have gotten the credit.

And so, then the mind is dwelling in anger. And it might build up if you don't approach it in a skillful way. It builds up the sense that I'm an angry person, but if you have a proper application of the contemplation of the mind, the observation of the mind, when it recognizes this is just a state of anger that has arisen, it is not permanent, it's not my true identity, but it is just a conditioned state of mind. And then, as one observes it, it loses its force. And so it starts to become weaker, and then it will drop away, at least temporarily. And sometimes, one of the things that strikes me in this practice

is that when the mind changes and shifts into another state of mind, you look back and you were thinking, in the case of anger, was I really angry just a few moments ago, now that anger is dropped away completely. And I'm in an utterly different state of mind, fantasizing about maybe what the next meal will be like, thinking about something else. Okay, so in this way, you're seeing how a state of mind would seem to be so strong, so persistent, so dominant, as now just by identifying it, by observing it, has faded away and replaced by something else. Yes, so that was the first point that I wanted to make, is that when starts by putting the

state of mind under the beam of observation, one seizes to take it as the basis for one's personal identity, and when sees it's just a transient condition, mental state. The second point is that, sort of this is the promise of the Buddha's teaching, is that by training the mind according to the different, many different methods that the Buddha has given, we can utterly transform the texture of our mind. And this is the gradual process, the gradual transformation that takes place over the long term, not just in one sitting, one meditation retreat, or just a few months of practice, but over the long term, using the appropriate antidotes for the different defilements are on wholesome tendencies of the mind. We can weaken, debilitate, and at least, on many occasions, remove, eliminate those tendencies. For example, somebody might have a aggressive or inflammatory character. They get angry easily. they bear strong resentments.

But if they take up, say, at least on a part-time basis, the practice of we call meta-loving kindness meditation, and then develop that even a little bit each day, like 15, 20 minutes of loving kindness meditation, after a year, they might look back upon themselves and see, wow, my anger, my hatred has diminished, like, 10%, it's 20%. And then over 10 years, it doesn't quite work arithmetically. It's not that it will disappear 100% after 10 years, but it will diminish quite significantly.

disappeared 100% after 10 years, but it will diminish quite significantly. I'm really glad you're hitting this point that it's not just about seeing your anger or whatever it is so that it doesn't own you. It's that over time, the very act of seeing the anger clearly and not being carried away by it can reduce the incidence of anger. Yeah, yeah, certainly. Yeah, yeah. Especially when paired with what you call the appropriate antidotes, like in the case of anger, loving kindness meditation. Yeah, I think that's also like an important aspect of practice,

which in some of the systems, contemporary systems of the pussinum meditation or insight meditation, just use sometimes single techniques, rather simplified, finely-honed techniques without maybe taking sufficient advantage of the full, like, arsenal of methods of techniques that the Buddha provides in the discourses. And so, are like sooters where the Buddha will mention different defilements and then mention the particular practice that's the appropriate antidote for that state of mind or for that disposition. It's so interesting.

So let's not be, if I'm hearing you correctly, let's not be mindfulness zealots. There are other practices, there are other arrows in the quiver that we can use for our own personal development. So you mentioned loving kindness meditation, which is an antidote to aversion or hatred, ill will. What would be an antidote for lust or greed or desire? Okay, that depends on the particular type of lust or desire. So in the monastic life, of course, one of the big problems that monastic's face, particularly in the younger years, is sexual desire. particularly in the younger years is sexual desire. And so for that sort of direct antidote that the Buddha provides for that is the meditation on the what we call the 32 parts of the body. So what one does is to take what starts with one's own

physical body, not with the body of an attractive person, and when examines this body from the top of the head to the souls of the feet bounded by skin, and then when thoughts to analyze it in terms of its constituents, so in this body we have on the outer surface the hair of the head, bodily hairs, nails, teeth skin, then we sort of cut through the skin and then we have muscles, the sinews, bones, bone marrow, and the various organs, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, and so on, the bodily tissues. And so when it goes through that over and over, and then that helps to sort of dispel the

appearance of beauty that is the trigger for the arising of sexual desire. But then there'll be other types of craving or desire, like craving for worldly success, position, power, accumulation of wealth. In the world, we have people who are just accumulating like billions and billions of dollars that they're never going to use for anything. It just has no transactional value, but just symbolic value to give them a sense of self-importance. So the antidote to this craving for possessions and position and status and power, I would say the most effective is the meditation on death, reflecting on the fact that death is inevitable and

escapable, that we never know when death is going to strike us, and when we die, we have to leave all worldly goods, achievements, accomplishments behind. Is there an antidote to delusion? Yeah, the antidote to delusion is not so simple. From the Buddhist philosophical point of view, the core expression of delusion is the grasping of the notion of the truly existing self, the ego-self. And so the antidote to that grasping of the idea of the ego self would be, this doesn't have

to be a high level of direct insight, but one can do this as a reflective meditation, taking in Buddhism we analyze the person into the five, what are called the five aggregates, the five groups of factors. So we start off by taking the physical body. And when contemplates this body is not truly I, not truly mine, not myself, then we go to the feelings. The feelings are not mine, not I, not myself, and we come to third aggregate, perceptions or ideas, with thought formations. Those are not mine, not I, not myself, then the volitional activities, the different projects, plans, ambitions, undertakings, all of those mental constructs, also when it takes not mine, not I, not myself, and then even this consciousness itself, this awareness, is not mine, not I, not myself.

So if one does this, it's a regular practice of just running through the five aggregates, just momentarily reflecting on each is being not mine, not I, not myself. This will be like an axe chopping away at the root of the tree of delusion. Last question from me, it's been a minute since I looked at the actual text of the Satyapudhana Suta. It's not the easiest reading, as you know, it's quite repetitive. But the last time I looked at it, there was a lot of verbiage about being mindful of stuff internally and externally and both internally and externally. So does that language show up around the third foundation of mindfulness?

Should we, in other words, try to be mindful of the mind states of other people and both hours and their simultaneously? Yeah, it's interesting question, because in the sota itself, when doesn't find an explanation of how those phrases are to be implemented, what is the practices involved, or even like what is the meaning of those phrases? And so different interpreters have come up with different interpretations. It would seem to me, I would see two different ways

to understand this with regard to the mind. Okay, one way is that what can't be directly observing the mind states of others, unless one has the power to read the mind of others. But through people's words, gestures, the mind states of others, unless one has the power to read the mind of others. But through people's words, gestures, body language, ways of behavior and so forth, one can infer their state of mind. Yeah, so that would be one way to get some idea to be so-called contemplating the mind externally.

So that would apply to like specific states of mind in relation to particular individuals. That would seem to be something that you could practice in the context of everyday life when one is interacting with people. But if one is sitting on one's cushion in the shrine room or a little meditation hall, particularly if one is on one's own, it doesn't seem that one could practice that under those conditions. So, the alternative way I've come to understand that is that particular states arise within oneself, states of lust, states of anger, states of aversion, states of delusion, and so on, distractions,

sluggishness of mind, one reflects that I'm not the only one that has these states, other people, just about all of the human beings have those states of mind. And so in that way, one can universalize the mental states that one is experiencing within oneself. So in that way, when can universalize the mental states that one is experiencing within oneself? That strikes me as extremely valuable because it goes right to one of the stated goals of practice, which is not to take your own stuff so personally. Yeah, exactly.

Can I just nudge you a little bit to lists any relevant resources that you've put out into the world, or ways to support you, or groups that you would like to see supported. Basically, I'm just trying to get you to plug anything you'd like to plug. Okay, I would like to plug. I have an organization which I established back in with some of my friends and students, we established back in 2008. It's called Buddhist Global Relief. And the purpose of the organization is to provide assistance to communities around the world who are afflicted with chronic hunger and malnutrition. So we started out in 2008 with three pilot projects and with a bank account of, I think, $20,000

through a few helpful donations. And over the years, we've developed to the point where we now have 54 projects going on in countries ranging from Mongolia, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi, Kote Devwa, Cameroon, Haiti, and the United States. And so we started out with the admission of addressing chronic hunger and malnutrition. And so we thought that the way to do this is by providing direct food aid to those in need. But then we saw the need to tackle some of the underlying roots of hunger and malnutrition. And two of the main underlying roots of hunger

and malnutrition we found to be the subordinate status of girls and many traditional cultures and the subordinate status of women. And so we expanded the range of our projects to include projects that enabled girls to continue with their education until a complete at least high school and in many cases now supporting girls to go to university. And on the other side, supporting women to start right livelihood projects to earn more to support their families. And so we have many projects in both of those, actually all three of those areas, direct food aid, the education of girls, right livelihood projects for women,

and also a kind of way of addressing the problem of climate change to support ecologically sustainable models of agriculture in many traditional cultures, so that they don't give way to the industrial type of agriculture, which is often quite detrimental to the natural environment. Sounds like great work. Yes, it's been quite a source of delight to see the way that the organization has grown and developed and brought in some very, very capable people. Bravo. So thank you for doing that work. Thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. It was my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks again to Bikuboti.

Thank you as well to everybody who worked so hard on this show. 10% happier is produced by DJ Cashmere, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justine Davie and Lauren Smith. Our senior producer is Marissa Schneidermann. Kimmy Ruggler is our managing producer and our executive producer is Jen Poient, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

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