Mindfulness as Nonduality
The mind gets in the way of mindfulness. Minds can't be mindful, minds should drop. Mindfulness in Pali and Sanskrit, Sati and Smriti, are complex words and translations will never due justice...When we are mindful we are touching a completely different dimension. This explanation is lacking in today's meditation world. We make a fundamental mistake about who is meditating. – Venerable Sudhammacara
Today was the first day of my weekend retreat with Venerable Sudhammacara, a Japanese teacher that has trained in the Zen, Theravadan, and Tibetan traditions. I look forward to his yearly visits to India as his teachings are beautiful and he has a skillful way of blending the traditions he’s studied in. For me, the weekend teachings created an important bridge between my study of mindfulness practice in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh and Ramana Maharshi’s method of Self-Inquiry, “Who Am I?”
It’s tough for me to really articulate myself here because language is always dualistic but at the core “the subject” being mindful of “the object” isn’t mindfulness at all and mindful observation is based on the principle of nonduality (dissolving the gap between subject and object). In my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary on the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing he stresses that in the calmness of meditation, discrimination between body and mind no longer exists, you dwell in the state of “body and mind at one” and no longer feel that the subject of meditation exists outside of the object of meditation.
Venerable Sudhammacara stressed that mindfulness and the thinking mind are direct opposites—they cannot coexist. When we are truly mindful our thinking mind has dropped. During true mindfulness practice we touch another dimension outside of our thinking mind. (This doesn’t mean thinking is bad but we must learn to use our thinking mind in a productive way.) When we are mindful we have a glimpse of a new dimension hence the last line of my favorite Thich Nhat Hanh Gatha, “I have arrived. I am home. In the here. And in the now. I am solid. I am free. In the Ultimate I dwell.”
In Ramana Maharshi’s “Who Am I” the seeker is told to “persistently inquire into the nature of the mind, the mind will end leaving the Self/Atman as the residue.” When one engages in this practice one realizes that Awareness alone remains. Being completely unenlightened engaging in Self-Inquiry alone will never enable me to touch this nature of Awareness because I am using my “thinking mind” to engage in the inquiry—I’ve tried it several times and consistently fail miserably. For me this is where mindfulness practice is key, it gives me a glimpse of this Awareness or Ultimate dimension. When I practice mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful eating etc. I touch a place that brings me immense joy and this is probably because in the few moments when I am really, truly practicing I’ve stopped identifying with my thinking mind and in a way I become the breath, the tea I’m drinking, or the garden I’m walking in. When we are mindful our thinking mind has dropped. If we are not our thinking mind, then who are we? We are still alive and aware, we do not disappear and become unconscious but we are clearly not our thinking mind. The AHA for me was when I really got that we can be mindful only in the Ultimate reality.
I’ve always felt in my heart that mindfulness is quite deeper than people think. If you really understand mindfulness then your whole perspective of the whole world will shift, if you understand what it is you will understand who you are and while I have a LONG way to go in those brief moments where I am deep in practice there is no separation, only Interbeing. I feel peaceful because I am in a space of spaciousness. For me, mindfulness practice is a way to touch the Ultimate and live in a space of nonduality even if it is just for a moment.
Venerable Sudhammacara spoke about how many spiritual traditions jump from the “egoic mind” to “something else” and there is a gap in the jump from egoic mind to the “something else.” Compassion is extremely important when you attempt to make this jump because compassion is the opposite of our ego and what keeps us identified with our small self. Real meditation is when we move from the egoic dimension to the ultimate dimension. We need to make this jump because the egoic mind is what creates suffering. During our retreat we spent time engaging in a compassion meditation. While I’ve engaged in this practice several times before it was great to have the reasoning behind the structure explained because the structure of the compassion meditation is extremely important to the Ultimate dimension. We can have human relationships based on ego or based on compassion. We have 3 choices in relationships, either we like, don’t like or have no interest. During the practice we send compassion to these following categories but we begin by sending compassion to ourselves and end with sending compassion to all beings. The compassion meditation has a structure because of our egoic mind and by recognizing it we can attempt to move beyond it. The basic meaning of compassion is that we really pray for the happiness of others purely without expecting anything else and we really feel the suffering and pain of others clearly and we really want them to be free of pain and suffering.
Venerable Sudhammacara was clear that conceptualization is FAR from transformation. Many of us think too much and as a result our mind never stops, it is always jumping around. We almost always end up doing meditation with our thinking mind. Before many of us come to the Dharma center everything we do is with thinking and we are educated in a system where we adhere to: “If I do A then I will get the result B so I will do A.” When I asked Venerable about bringing mindfulness into education he cautioned that using mindfulness as technique to improve students ability doesn’t work because mindfulness isn’t a technique. We need to first overcome the notion that happiness is waiting and by studying and achieving we’ll get there. We should not use spirituality in this context because spirituality is to really reflect on ourselves from the most fundamental level. Unfortunately it is challenging to bring mindfulness into mainstream education as long as the current paradigm remains. Until education focuses on happiness in the “here and now” mindfulness will lack its greater depth of meaning in schools.
At the very least, really getting “beyond my mind” that mindfulness practice is my bridge to the Ultimate dimension will help me use technique more effectively as I attempt to touch the Ultimate as I teach and try and transmit that to my students. Mindfulness is deeper than a skill. Unless we understand the deepest meaning it doesn’t work.
Ramana Maharshi's "Who Am I"
