Exercises from the Four Foundations of Mindfulness
We practice full awareness in order to realize liberation, peace, and joy in our everyday lives. Liberation and happiness are linked to each other: if there is liberation, there is happiness, and greater liberation brings greater happiness. We know that if there is liberation, peace and joy exist in the present moment. We do not need to wait ten or fifteen years to realize them. They are available as soon as we begin the practice. However modest these elements may be, they form the basis for greater liberation, peace, and joy in the future.
To practice meditation is to look deeply in order to see into the essence of things. Due to our insight and understanding we can realize liberation, peace, and joy. Our anger, anxiety, and fear, for instance, are the ropes that bind us to suffering. If we want to be liberated from them, we need to observe their nature, which is ignorance, the lack of clear understanding. When we misunderstand a friend, we may become angry at him, and because of that, we may suffer. But when we look deeply into what has happened, we can end the misunderstanding. When we understand the other person and his situation, our suffering will disappear, and peace and joy will arise. The first step is awareness of the object, and the second step is looking deeply at the object to shed light on it. Therefore mindfulness means awareness and it also means looking deeply.
The Pali word sati (Sanskrit: smriti) means 'to stop," and "to maintain awareness of the object." The Pali word vipassana (Sanskrit: vipashyana) means "to go deeply into that object to observe it." While we are fully aware of and observing deeply an object, the boundary between the subject who observes and the object being observed gradually dissolves, and the subject and object become one. This is the essence of meditation. Only when we penetrate an object and become one with it can we understand. It is not enough to stand outside and observe an object. That is why the sutra reminds us to be aware of the body in the body, the feelings in the feelings, the mind in the mind, and the objects of mind in the objects of mind.
The Buddha delivered the Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness to an audience of bhikkhus and bhikkhunis. But that does not mean that the practice of being mindful in the ground of the Four Establishments is limited to monks and nuns. Anyone can practice mindfulness. If monks and nuns can practice mindfulness in walking, standing, lying down,and sitting, then laymen and laywomen also can. Is there anyone who does not walk, stand, lie down, and sit every day? What is most important is to understand the fundamental basis of the practice and then apply it during our everyday lives, even if our lives are different from the way the Buddha and his monks and nuns lived twenty-five centuries ago. When reading the Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, we have to read with the eyes of a person of today and discover appropriate ways to practice based on the teachings of the sutra.