I’d like to continue with the topic of exercising and developing Right Effort, and in particular some of Bhante Henepola Gunaratana’s more specific guidance for making the First Great Effort. In the present post I’ll focus on Wise Attention. First, as some reminders and re-caps of previous posts:
1. The first great effort is directing your effort toward preventing unskillful states from arising in the first place.
2. This is not an all-or-nothing matter, and in general it will not be possible to absolutely prevent unskillful states.
3. However, relative prevention is often possible, and it is also possible to increase this ability over time.
4. The prime means by which to accomplish this is skillful mindfulness, which itself needs to be trained over time.
5. Part of that training, and even part of mindfulness itself, is developing and reinforcing the intention to become and remain mindful, even if it is not possible always be actively mindful.
Any comments, questions, or sharings of personal experience are most welcome.
Wise Attention
Gunaratana, after what was discussed in the previous post on this subject, goes on to advise practicing wise attention (and also, of course, to practice avoiding its opposite, unwise attention). Part of wise attention is to “stick to what you know to be true right now through the five senses” (Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness). This is one way of being immediately present, and protects the mind from getting carried off into thinking.
That does not, by the way, imply that all thinking should be always avoided, or that one should never attend to the future or the past.
However, if the mind does not enter into thinking, and does not follow or get carried along by successions or flows of thought, then thoughts cannot cause or contribute to the arising of unskillful states. If the mind does not enter into chains of thought, or even into initial thoughts, then a great deal of potential fuel for unskillful states is eliminated. Moreover if the mind is able to notice when thoughts begin to arise, and quickly redirect itself toward sense perception alone, this too can go a long way toward restraining and preventing unskillful states from arising.
The Mental “Sense”
It’s interesting that Gunaratana (in this particular sequence of passages, at least) presents us only with attention to the five senses rather than to the six senses. In case you are not familiar with it, there is a common rubric in Buddhist theory of six senses. Five of these are the familiar five: scent, sight, sound, taste, touch. The sixth is nothing mysterious, but simply thought (or perhaps a subset of thought, depending on the specificity of the philosophical discourse in which the rubric is employed).
This can be confusing for native Anglophones, as while we don’t otherwise refer to thought as a “sense,” we do have the phrase ‘sixth sense’, which always refers to something somehow mysterious or psychic. So we need to keep in mind that the “six senses” are the five senses plus thought, and not the five senses plus a psychic sense.
I can think of numerous good reasons why Gunaratana, in these particular passages, brings up only the five senses. One is the potential confusion discussed just above. Another is that it is more difficult to practice mindfulness on the mental sense, i.e. on thought. Practicing mindfulness on the five senses is less difficult.
Mindfulness of the Six Sense Spheres
Even so, I want to present you with the full rubric of six senses. This is because when Gunaratana advises practicing wise attention by keeping mindful awareness within the realm of the five senses, he is recommending a practice known as mindfulness of the six sense spheres, which comprises part of the fourth foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of dhammas.
The term ‘sphere’ is used abstractly, not literally. A sense “sphere” just means the sense itself and its “object.” For example, sight and visible things comprise the visible or sight “sense sphere,” the term ‘things’ including qualities such as colors and shapes, not only physical objects. The six sense spheres are the five senses, along with the objects or qualities these perceive, plus the capacity of thought and its objects: thoughts.
The practice of mindfulness of the six sense spheres includes skillful, mindful awareness of sense perception and of thinking. This is useful because typically, the mind cannot be stopped from thinking, and the full human “sensorium” will include not only the five senses but thinking and thoughts. However, when practicing mindful awareness which seeks to remain in the present and seeks also to remain only with the six sense spheres, the mind will still be restrained (skillfully) from thinking. In other words, one’s volition will not actively be generating thoughts, but only actuating mindfulness of thoughts and thinking which arise unbidden. Further, awareness of thought differs from following thoughts, thinking about thoughts, or generating further thoughts (including evaluations of thoughts, etc.). Awareness of thought actually restrains thoughts and deprives thinking of fuel, just as awareness of sense perception tends to do.
At the same time, practicing mindfulness of thought can be far more challenging than practicing mindfulness of any or all of the usual five sense spheres (scent, sight, sound, taste, touch). As Sayadaw U Tejanija describes, it can be very difficult not to get caught up in the “story” of thought and thinking, even when one is intentionally attempting to practice awareness of thinking. In other words, it is very difficult for the mind to be mindfully aware of thought, without getting caught up in and carried off by thoughts.
Tejaniya in fact recommends that when learning to successfully be mindful of thinking, one alternate between awareness of thought and awareness of a more concrete sense or sensory object (the usual five senses). This is because in the best case, something like the following will happen: Mind will notice a thought, begin to be carried off by it, recognize what is happening, return simply to mindful awareness of the thought. Then mind will need some grounding, and can get this by returning to awareness of something withing the five sense spheres.
The preceding explains, I think, why Gunaratana simply recommends attending to the realm of the five senses in beginning to exercise and develop wise attention. In context, it is clearly the most efficacious way of teaching. However I also wanted to provide a larger picture of the practice here.
In any case, we have here a specific practical recommendation: In seeking to prevent unskillful states from arising, seek to exercise wise attention by turning one’s attention simply to the five senses, or perhaps to the six senses, and do not follow chains of thought but simply return to mindful awareness of the sensory realm.
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