Tempel Smith spent a year ordained as a monk in Burma and teaches Buddhist psychology and social activism in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently part of the IMS/Spirit Rock Teacher Training Program.
Within our blessed lineages of Venerables Ajahn Cha and Mahasi Sayadaw, and the teachings within the Pali Canon, we have found three kinds of nibbana. Nibbana is closely related to the full liberation from dukkha (suffering). To even talk about one kind of nibbana can be difficult as it is beyond language, yet there is another confusion within western Insight meditation. By practicing in Mahasi's Burmese meditaitons, in Cha's Thai Forest meditations, and here in North America, there are roughly three kinds of nibbana: a) an unperturbed background field of awareness, b) a perfect zero of cessation, and c) a stream of transient mind-body moments without greed, hatred or craving.
Knowing of these three kinds of nibbana can clarify what our vipassana practices are aimed at.
We need to explore how to find and develop true compassion which is a beautiful quality of opening our hearts to the suffering inside and outside ourselves. While there is pain in suffering we can actually grow to have a sweet heart of compassion when we know how to breath open heartedly in contact with pain and suffering. When we find true compassion we don't need to shrink back from what is difficult but rather use the commonalities of difficulties to feel warm and expanded.
The Buddha wanted us to learn how to wakefully "stream", to realize we are forever and only a stream of mental and physical phenomena. We have no part internally or externally which is permanent, though in daily life we subjectively feel as if there is a lot of dependably permanent parts of life. With the deepening intimacy of mindfulness all there is is a flow and change. With patience we can learn to find liberation within the universal aspect of impermanence.
There is a style of mindfulness practice where we lightly attending a central, familiar anchor of attention, such as the breath or scanning the body, and then intentionally choose to watch our minds move through its habits and its nature. In this style of mindfulness practice we can watch our attention move through our six sense doors of stimulation. With this style of meditation we can directly see the dharma nature of our mind.
With this style of practice we have to be careful we not lose attentiveness, which can be a shadow side of choiceless attention. We want to keep learning and discovering the dharma, and not space out into half committed mindfulness.
An incredibly important aspect of mindfulness is to direct attention to "vedana" which is the tone of every moment which is either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This one tone of conscious experience is at the very root of all suffering and therefore all liberation from suffering.
5 mins for chanting refuges and precepts, then a careful guided meditation on mindfulness of thought. We create a base of being mindful with the breath and body to allow us some perspective on thought as a direct stream of phenomena.
In the Pali Canon the process of awakening typically passes through four stages of awakening: Stream Entry, Once Returner, Non Returner, and Arhat. For lay people in the west the two most important are experiential Stream Entry and the aspiration of the full awakening of an Arhat. These four stages are most clearly laid out as the breaking of the 10 fetters.
Spirit Rock has blessed lineages from both Ven. Ajahn Cha and Ven. Mahasi Sayadaw. From our deep connection to these traditional lineages, we can see at least three different kinds of Nibbana: 1. Nibbana for Everyone; 2. Dealthless Awareness; and 3. Complete Zero. As a maturing community of western Insight practitioners rooted in several lineages, we have the benefit of many styles of practice and Buddhist understandings. We also have the challenge of there being so many practices, and experience to where they lead. Here in this talk we explore three common understandings of Nibbana and how the various traditions guide us to them.
While the 3rd and fourth foundations of mindfulness can be taught as their own separate topics, it can be very useful to look at the language and instruction given in both of them together. In the 3rd foundation we rest mindfully in all cognitive and emotional states as they arise and pass with the courage not to change them. In the 4th foundation of mindfulness we use this deeper intimacy from the 3rd foundation to act most skillfully in how we let go of suffering states and welcome wholesome states.
The Buddha stated we are often lost in craving and aversion when we are not mindful of our bodies. In a discourse named the Six Animals (SN 35.247) the Buddha strongly encouraged developing the concentration of body mindfulness as a pillar to collect and calm oneself, and learn to have a conscious relationship to the six sense. From developing calm and collectedness mindfulness of the body continues to liberate us from our confusions towards having a body. As both a refuge of samadhi and a place for deepening wisdom, mindfulness of the body is considered the central foundation to the buddha's path to freedom here and now, and ultimate liberation.
