Seven (Wisdom Quarterly) and Ven. Nyanasatta, Uprisingradio.org, PublicMeditation.org
Power to the 99 percent. On Saturday October 1st, thousands of Los Angelenos took to the streets in an action inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests becoming part of the larger movement.Today is Day 35 in suddenly cold, rainy, then sunny Los Angeles. Wisdom Quarterly has been out and about organizing, encouraging, and providing meditation, yoga, veggie food, and educational programs.
"What do meditation and yoga have to do with this movement?" the reporter asked. The answer is clear:
Meditation, yoga, compassionate eating, and education all have one aim -- waking up. That is the goal, and that is also the goal of this movement. Rise above. See that we really are all connected. The separation is an illusion. The "system" promotes that illusion.And the answer is in the body, this body, right here and right now.
Celestial beings are delightfully distracted have difficulty perceiving suffering (of aging, sickness, death, distress). Beings cycling through unfortunate planes of rebirth (animals, hungry ghosts, odd monsters, the miserable) are overwhelmed by distressed, in too much pain to pay attention in any way that would benefit them. Humans have a balance of leisure of woe.
Meditating Mindfully
The way to enlightenment is by setting up four "foundations" of clear attention. This means mindfulness (non-judgmental bare attention or consideration of reality just as it is) regarding the:
- BODY (breath, postures, clear comprehension, repulsiveness, material elements, states of decay)
- FEELINGS (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant)
- CONSCIOUSNESS (lust, aversion, ignorance/delusion, shrunken, distracted, developed, undeveloped, inferior, superior, unconcentrated, concentrated, unfreed, freed)
- OBJECTS OF MIND (defined in detail by the Buddha and called the Five Hindrances, Five Aggregates of Clinging, internal and external sense bases, Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the liberating Four Noble Truths).
In early Buddhist texts ten forms of recollections are described. According to the Ekottara Āgama, the ten are MINDFULNESS of:
- the Buddha
- the Dharma
- the (accomplished) Sangha
- Mindfulness of giving
- Mindfulness of the heavens (devas)
- Mindfulness of stopping and resting
- Mindfulness of discipline
- Mindfulness of breathing (to be here now in the body)
- Mindfulness of the body
- Mindfulness of death
