We have now arrived at final reflections on mindfulness meditation and

its transformations over time.

We will discuss this in three parts.

Its inner conflicts that drives its transformations over time,

brief thoughts towards the history of the practice, including its modularization for

use in other contemplative systems, and its position in the context of

how Tibetans create stages of the path linking together diverse practices.

Mindfulness meditation's primary inner conflicts are manifold, and

I would argue drive the historical evolution of Buddhist meditation with

its shifting forms and valuations.

In general, the Sanskrit, in Tibetan terms, for mindfulness

are the standard words for memory in the sense of recollection and retention.

And the relationship between these two registers, recollective memory and

alert contemplative presence of mind,

has been controversial in Buddhist as well as contemporary scholarship.

In my own opinion, these are clearly poles of a unified spectrum, such that

the different uses of these terms are deeply interdependent, and the spectrum

constantly shapes, even with faint echoes, any particular use of the term.

Hence, the same term can refer to negative cognitive processes that bind one to

Samsara, ordinary discursive memory and the rampant reification shaped by it,

or to soteriological processes that release one into Nirvana.

It can signify contemplative tools that facilitate such release, but

it can also signify the actual enlightened modality of awareness in its own right.

Throughout, retention, recovery, and

recollection are themes that partially bind these different uses together.

And, of course, the soteriological method itself,

that falls under this rubric, varies considerably.

From its beginning, Buddhist meditation has struggled with three different poles

fraught with complex interrelationships in the form of dependencies and

tensions, concentration, observation, and analysis.

We have discussed analytical mediation in relationship to the ordinary preliminary

meditations in the birth of Buddhist thought.

Well, we will next turn to practices focused on concentration and

calm, before returning to an interweaving of analytical meditation

with observational practices in the form of insight meditation.

For the moment, however, our subject is mindfulness, which I think has four

primary dimensions already present within its earliest dimensions.

First, mindfulness is almost tantamount to meditation,

itself, as a deliberate, bounded practice aimed at training the mind.

Second, mindfulness is bare attention.

Third, mindfulness is a mode of attentiveness or

awareness which is observing the world with active interests.

And, fourth, mindfulness is keeping doctrine in mind as overall

considerations, as well as behavioral guidelines, even as one observes and

monitors one's self in the world.

They are all bound together by the dimension of alert observation and

self-awareness.

But this modality of awareness can be turned to many different topics and

objects, as well as be framed by many different considerations and goals.

Self-awareness, an alert watching of one's own processes and

experiences, thus ranges from a mere presence of mind,

to attentive observation framed by philosophical considerations,

to very active self-inquiry guided by analytical agendas and scripts.

These meditative practices of mindfulness concern one's body, speech and mind,

though the most persistent focus is on the mind, since even when the focus is on

the body of speech, the mind is still central, as that which observes.

Thus, mind training is an appropriate way of thinking about mindfulness,

as cultivation of awareness is always involved at one level or another.

Buddhist meditation comes back again and again to cultivating concentration,

analysis, reflexivity, mindfulness, and different modalities and

qualities of awareness, all towards a new literacy in one's own self.

These practices of self-cultivation thus begin by developing the capacity for

focus and self observation,

which then get applied to content through the exploration of Buddhist teachings.

However, even within this short, early sermon on mindfulness,

we find a tremendous diversity, a diversity which only deepens and

expands over the subsequent centuries.

The first point of divergence in Buddhist meditation is the operational goal

of these practices.

Why?

Certainly, all Buddhist traditions will agree that wisdom is the ultimate goal,

but what are the short-term goals that will deliver one to wisdom?

And and those goals influence the entire system.

Are we trying, for example, to tame the mind, subdue, control, purify,

develop, cultivate, transform, unleash, understand, release?

The same can be asked with the body's emotions, attention and speech.

The second issue is the methods.

How?

We have various possibilities.

Breath, awareness, attention, posture, movement, analysis,

reflection, visualization, performance, stillness, relaxation, concentration,

emotions, sound, chanting, intonation, music, observation, and more.

There is also semantic encoding using various media.

Our body's surface, our body's interior, external visual images, sounds,

our identity.

In the focus on these four foundations of mindfulness,

we can see a strong tendency in early Buddhist meditation

to focus on the objects of meditation, as a way to organize

different types of meditative projects independence upon what the object is.

This is hardly surprising given the deep connection of objects we experience in

the world with our mental and emotional states.

There is a deep and compelling relationship between the objects of our

world and our own subjective self and

modes of awareness, which both cuts negatively and positively.

These diverse objects point to a key inner conflict of mindfulness.

At what point is the meditation more about the internal dynamics of the object being

contemplated, rather than the awareness being brought to bear on the object?

And in today's world we have new devices.

Fashionable EEG/ECGs devices, such as news, heart rate monitors, and so forth,

that offer new possibilities and method for self-observation and self-monitoring.

Mindfulness, then, ranges from strict valorization of nondual and

nonconceptual forms of awareness, to deeply analytical considerations of

one's experience with explicit agendas of adoption and rejection,

with exercises involving perception as standing in-between.

Mindfulness also entertains a great number of meditative objects

which have a tendency to take on a rich meditative life of their own.

These two tensions explain much of the driving force

of Buddhist meditation's diversity.

Concluding with a brief historical glance at the major phases and transformations

of mindfulness meditations, I can only point to a few key junctures.

Whether the term for mindfulness appears by itself or in a compound,

both principles of a careful attentiveness to one's experience, and internal and

external processes, and keeping doctrinal principles in mind while meditating,

either as the core process or an ancillary awareness,

are found throughout many meditative systems in Tibet.

In addition, mindfulness's bare attention could be correlated to the persistent

meditative attention to dissolution, which we find in emptiness meditation,

and in the culminating dissolution of visualizations

in the wake of which one sits quietly.

More particularly,

various forms of mindfulness of breath are a free-floating component that are present

in many contemplative practices, especially as a preliminary moment.

For example, the ninefold, purificatory breathing technique is often done before

a practice's main phase, which involves breathing through the right nostril and

exhaling through the left nostril three times, switching the left and

right three times, and then doing through both nostrils three times,

all the while imagining that one is inhaling divine blessings and

exhaling negativity from one's being.

While this practice enhances the breathing with visualization, and

even internal considerations of a subtle body of channels and winds, it draws upon

the basic principle of close attention, or mindfulness on the felt breath.

In the later great vehicle, Shantideva's seminal eighth century masterpiece,

Engaging in the Conduct of the Bodhisattva, gives a central position to

mindfulness and dynamic introspection, with mindfulness defined as,

quote, not forgetting the topics of what is to be adopted and

what is to be rejected, unquote.

And dynamic introspection is defined as, quote, examining and

engaging one's mental, verbal and physical conduct, unquote.

This clear formulation interprets mindfulness as keeping

in mind philosophical and ethical guidelines about what to do and not do.

The basic karmic principle of the causes and effects of one's action, or

dynamic introspection, is understood as monitoring and

analyzing one's own mental, verbal, and cognitive processes and behavior,

with a view toward implementing these guidelines in one's own life and conduct.

In Tibet the term, mindful introspection, drenshe,

combine these two terms into a single meditative process.

In the Adamantine Vehicle, or Tantra,

we find the principal of mindfulness of purity, doctrine, in deity yoga.

This involves complex self-visualizations and performances of oneself as a Buddha,

with the principle involving a type of semantic mindfulness

in which one needs to retain an awareness of the inner meaning of each visual detail

of the visualization, which correlates them to elements of Buddhist doctrine.

Thus, the four heads correlate to a fourfold doctrinal set,

the trampling of a corpse may signify overcoming egotism, and so forth.

In the later tantric practices of subtle body yogas, we see a clear extension of

the early mindfulness of body exercises that scan the body's interior

with their focus on inter-receptive awareness of the body's interior and

physiological processes.

However, instead of the body's coarser structures, the focus is on elaborate

visualizations of channels, wheels, and nuclei, as well as mandalas of Buddhas.

And the agenda is manipulating those processes to achieve

altered states of consciousness and personal transformation.

In the Natural Vehicle, or Post-Tantra, the term mindfulness appears in a range of

compounds and contexts, but most importantly it senses nonconceptual,

naked forms of mere awareness become dominant practices.

In the Great Perfection and Great Seal forms of meditation, these are conjoined

with explicit critiques of analytical scholasticism, and related forms of

meditation, as well as critiques of the fussy elaborateness of ritualized forms of

meditation, that had come to dominate tantric forms of Buddhism.

Such forms of mediation would differentiate themselves from earlier

forms of Buddhist mindfulness practice through the depth of their

nonconceptuality, and their principle of Natural Freedom,

which allows whatever services and experience to appear, but

then is let go to its intrinsic freedom, like a snowflake in water.

The Great Perfection, at least, also has very interesting further transformations

of the idea of mindfulness that relate to recollection of the primordial ground of

awareness, both in its deep nonconceptual being and in its

spontaneous manifestations, a topic which we will discuss further in that context.

Well, as we have seen, mindfulness is an intrinsic part of early Buddhism.

It is one of the two meditative components of the Eightfold Noble Path.

It has recently emerged as a global phenomena,

often profoundly disconnected from its Buddhist roots.

The most famous contemporary definition is that of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who created MBSR,

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, originally in a healthcare setting.

Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way, on purpose,

in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.

Psychology today offers the following definition,

mindfulness is a state of active, open attention on the present.

When you're mindful, you observe your thoughts and

feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad.

Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and

awakening to experience.

In these senses of John Cabot Zinn and Psychology today,

mindfulness is thus contrasted to being in a state of distraction, or experiencing

the world in a biased way, constantly judging things in various manners.

In addition, however, mindfulness has become a global brand

that is functioning in a remarkable variety of ways.

On the one hand, it is becoming the newest version in a long history of terms

presented as alternatives to mainstream religion or the very idea of religion,

mysticism, spirituality, the enchanted secular, even contemplation now.

Mindfulness.

I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual, or I'm not spiritual, but I'm mindful.

On the other hand, mindfulness has become a term signifying organic, natural,

wholesome, or

simply strongly recommended, leading to products like Mindful Mayonnnaise.

The complex history of modern mindfulness is still being written, but it is

clear that its Western proponents draw from a complex, and often unacknowledged,

mix of Buddhist traditions, especially Theravadan practices of mindfulness,

Chan or Zen practice of nonconceptual sitting from China, Japan or Korea,

and Tibetan practices of letting be from the Great Perfection, or Great Seal.

As for the question of mindfulness meditation in relationship to the broader

stages of The Path, this is a relatively complex issue since mindfulness,

as a distinct practice,

does not figure prominently in such arrangements within Tibet.

It is in, in its various senses, both everywhere and

nowhere in Tibetan stages of The Path.

In its sense of an experiential retention of doctrinal considerations, we see

it throughout, and especially in the ordinary preliminaries, insight practices,

emptiness meditation, extraordinary preliminaries, and deity yoga practices.

It its sense of focus on the breath, we find it in that pure and

primary form within standard calm mediations.

In its related sense of keeping focus on an object,

it can be located in all of the object-based forms of calm mediation.

In its sense of an active, analytical, introspective observation of our body,

mind, and perceptions, we find it most purely within insight techniques,

though this is also a component of emptiness meditation,

the somatic inquiries of tantric perfection, phase subtle body meditations,

and the preliminary meditations of the Great Seal and Great Perfection.

In its sense of nonconceptual and alert reflexive awareness,

this can be found in object-free calm meditation, emptiness meditation,

the extended meditative phases of image-free sitting and

tantric practices following the dissolution of visualizations, and

the famed nonconceptual meditations of the Great Seal and the Great Perfection.

And finally there's the Great Perfection's profound visionary meditations

against the divine cosmonic background, which involve a recollection of

the true spontaneous emptiness underlying our body and mind.

"Buddhist Mindfulness Meditation - Inner Conflicts" David Germano

藏传佛教禅修与现代世界：小乘佛教

与讲师见面