So we spent the last couple of weeks exploring Nibbana or Nirvana and it's one of the stated goals of practice to attain Nibbana,
To attain this deep release like when a fever breaks and your health returns.
It's associated with health,
It's associated with happiness and well-being and with peace.
And the experience of Nibbana,
The word kind of means to go out like the going out of a fire.
So the going out of the fires of greed,
Of aversion and of confusion.
So how does this happen?
That's what we'll explore now.
The Buddha recommended that there were certain frameworks that are helpful and useful if you're interested in Nibbana and waking up.
And one of these frameworks are part of a particular discourse that the Buddha gave that is the clearest instruction on meditation practice which is called the Satipatthana Sutta and which I just read from.
And in it are a whole series of instructions on how to do meditation practice starting with the four foundations of mindfulness as a frame of reference to help us orientate ourselves and understand what's important in the present moment,
Where we need to look.
So the frame of reference of our breath,
Looking at the experience of the breath from the point of view of what is the breath like in the beginning,
What is it like in the middle,
What is it like to breathe into our life.
And then working from the breath to the body,
To the sensations in the body,
The feelings of pleasant and unpleasant and neutral and the whole container in which it sits in,
The awareness.
And another frame of reference is the seven factors of awakening and that's what we'll be exploring in these next several weeks.
These are wholesome qualities of mind that help us to wake up.
They can be developed in our meditation practice so they are intentionally cultivated and encouraged and they enhance our practice and enhance our life.
And in a sense these mental qualities,
These seven factors are needed to have the foundation of waking up and freedom.
And these seven factors are available,
These qualities are available to all of us,
They're within us and some of us have them to a greater or lesser degree and as we practice,
As we practice meditation fully daily,
The idea is that they become stronger,
So they become strengths within us.
So in order for them to get stronger,
To become more available,
We have to be able to recognize them as they arise,
As we cultivate them and we have to value these factors,
Value them enough that they become a frame of reference and they become a reference point for our understanding and for our experience.
So when you go into your life or to a situation,
You could ask yourself if these factors are present.
How are they present?
How can I cultivate them?
Can I tap into them?
So rather than looking at the experience from the frame of reference of,
Well how will this enhance my self-image or how will this help my reputation or how will I be perceived in this situation?
Will people like me?
Will they not like me?
You sort of put these things aside,
Those habit patterns and look at how this relates to the cultivation of these beautiful qualities within ourselves,
These seven factors of awakening.
So these seven qualities,
The first is mindfulness.
The first is mindfulness.
So is that quality available in whatever situation you are in during your life?
The second is investigation.
The third is energy or effort.
The fourth is joy.
The fifth is tranquility or relaxation.
The sixth is concentration and the seventh is equanimity.
And what's interesting is it's said that these seven qualities,
The last six of them arise kind of naturally out of the cultivation and the development of mindfulness practice.
So all of the other six arise,
Investigation,
Effort,
Joy,
Tranquility,
Concentration and equanimity arise from the mindfulness practice.
So you don't have to be concerned about cultivating the others so much.
They kind of come up.
They wake up when you do mindfulness practice.
So one way to think about this in daily life is think about some discipline that you've developed,
You know,
Something really simple.
So for me,
It was developing a running practice after my son was born.
And at first I didn't like it.
But I needed to get exercise and I had limited time.
So it was kind of like the big bang for the buck to get out there and run for 30 minutes.
But interesting,
You know,
At first there was a pretty tremendous inner protest.
Like it was hard to get going.
You know,
And so for those first 10 minutes of running,
There was a lot of resistance.
But once I got past,
You know,
The first 10 to 15 minutes,
It got a little bit easier.
And I would do it every day or every other day.
And then that resistance,
It faded away.
And I was able to enter the flow of running more easily.
And you know,
My breath improved and my muscles got stronger.
And I really got into it.
And I applied myself to be really present to be interested in what was going on.
I was kind of in the flow of it sometimes.
So it was what Suzuki Roshi called effortless effort just kind of got into the flow.
There was joy in moving my body.
It felt like everything was kind of going along harmoniously.
Whereas in the first weeks,
You know,
Of doing it,
There wasn't so much harmony,
I was scattered and fragmented in my mind and in my body.
And then I noticed as I kept doing it,
You know,
Calmed me down quite a bit,
There was a lot of agitation with being a new parent and it tended to fall away.
And I got into this routine.
And I got concentrated and really,
Really present with a simple act of just running.
You know,
The feet touching the ground,
What was required to go up a hill,
The concentration that was involved.
And I can't remember this so well,
But I'm guessing that there was some equanimity.
There was a certain balance of mind.
You know,
I can sense it after I ran.
The various physical and psychological factors of my body started to harmonize or kind of line up.
And all of these wonderful qualities began to arise.
So that was my simple discipline.
And it's the same thing that happens with mindfulness.
If you hold to the practice of mindfulness and when you keep doing it on a regular basis,
You know,
Perhaps the first thing that happens is there's this inner protest.
Like you have better things to do,
Like defrost the refrigerator or clean the house.
So perhaps there's a lot of restlessness or agitation when you first start practicing.
Maybe there's a lot of inner conflict that you don't really want to look at.
So initially,
There's a lot of stumbling blocks that might actually encourage a person to give up on meditation practice because it's difficult.
Just like starting to run is difficult.
Or maybe almost any other discipline,
You know.
So somehow you have to work through it.
There has to be enough understanding to expect that as part of this path,
There's going to be an initial period that we have to go through.
And our job is to hold to the mindfulness practice,
Knowing that at the beginning,
And maybe other times as well,
That there's going to be difficulty.
And our practice is to keep doing it.
You know,
If you keep doing it,
Things will line up.
Some of you may remember the movie called Field of Dreams,
Where this guy was Kevin Costner has this dream to build a baseball field in the middle of like Iowa in the middle of nowhere.
And he believes that if he builds it,
Like they will come.
These baseball players from the past who are long dead will somehow materialize.
So he builds it.
And this great baseball game happens in this field that he built.
So he built it and they came.
So like your meditation practice,
You're building it.
You're building your posture,
You're building your presence of mind,
You're building a certain kind of engagement with the present moment.
And then somehow,
Something can come.
And something eventually does,
Something beautiful.
And this is what the seven factors are awakening,
These beautiful qualities.
So I'll stop here today and we'll continue with the first of these qualities.
We kind of touched on it today.
But we'll continue on Thursday and then for the next couple of weeks.
So thank you.
Thank you for your your kind attention as we enter into the seven factors of awakening.
