Mindfulness

 

Did BMS teach much mindfulness in the 1980’s? Yes, lashings of it; we had it coming out of our ears. The ‘Be Here Now’ self-reminder rang out in the corridors of our retreat centres and in the satsangs with Guruji – as well as in private audience with him. It was his constant instructional mantra. Often he would raise his voice, somewhat irate, saying, “Wake up, BE HERE NOW – and, I would add on to that, be brave!” But he didn’t want us to stop at the felicity accompanying what’s generally accepted to be mindfulness informal practices. His main thrust was showing us we unwittingly reject our absoluteness by playing in the small field instead of the vast arena of total unfoldment.

 

Yes. we were practising mindfulness long before it became a popular expression in the western world, although it has been in Buddhism for a long time. Mindfulness is a key first step to unfolding ourselves to the stage where we completely handle problems with ease and without stress. You can go some way towards that point using the generally accepted mindfulness informal and formal strategy. The basis of the informal structure is listed below.

 

Beyond this, however, you can get on with releasing - sometimes known as unconditioning. The reason we also learned releasing is that when you progress with informal mindfulness you come up against your own conditioning, based on personal impressions; etched into your individual self like furrows that refuse to change, even though you are retraining yourself to react in a less erratic manner. The furrows (impression known as samskaras) need more than the generally accepted mindfulness tactics to be able to let go of past impressions. They need a heavy plough to scour out the impacted mud followed by a harrow to refine the levelled soil.

 

What does letting go actually mean? To use an analogy, it means letting go of the river bank and flowing with the stream. The analogy speaks for itself and it’s an obviously attractive proposition. We’ll still be attached to the river bank if we don’t alter our perspective. Mindfulness identifies our reactive tendencies but, without adding the releasing practices, our ‘little self’ will continue to be controlled by the domineering mind, keeping us in the zone of suffering. We need to change the relationship between our mind and our whole self in order to ‘dance the dance of joy’ when nothing affects us – not even temporary hiccups that disappear with ease.

 

Here’s what Gururaj in his very first satsang in the UK (UK76-1):

“Now the Buddhist meditation of mindfulness is a very good meditation. We do not condemn anyone and we do not condone anyone.  If you take up Buddhist meditations you have leanings towards those teachings; Buddhist teachings - by all means do follow them.  But do have an open mind. Go further; by the way of trial and error one could find a solution.

(Imagine) If you want to go to Birmingham you could take a road that has a lot of traffic and lot of traffic robots in it. This will cause you delays. It makes you feel irritable having to stop and start, stop and start – and the roads are bumpy and not nice.  You can take that road or you can take the motorway which can take you directly to Birmingham.  So the choice is yours. (Ed: Why hang about in non-reality, which can never be resolved?) Man / woman has free will. They choose themselves.

If you are attracted to just mindfulness and finding it beneficial to you, by all means do pursue it, but at the same time always have an open mind. The open mind blossoms like an open flower - oh so beautiful - it can be worth more when it opens.

From the level of the absolute only joy abounds but from the level of the relative there is the suffering. If we stand at the ocean we find the waves very turbulent but if we go a mile up in to the sky, that same ocean will seem calm.

So it depends. Suffering or no suffering depends upon where we stand.  From the angle, from the value, of the absolute there is no misery and no suffering, but from the angle and value of the relative everything is a suffering (of some degree).

So… be in touch with the absolute. (By our open method) we learn to live in the absolute; thereby we do not get affected by any kind of suffering in the world, because we have now acquired that strength. We can see any kind of suffering objectively; we can see the true worth of it.  We can see the change amidst the change, and then we can truly say ‘all this too will pass away’. Living in the absolute we truly understand the meaning of this Buddhist injunction.”

 

Mindfulness ‘informal’ practices –

‘Be here now’ generalisation – to focus into the present experienced moment when (e.g.) eating, bathing, communicating, encountering distastefulness, doing chores, attending to family etc. etc.; can be in almost every activity.

Awareness – of the surrounding environment, in every detail in order to notice what is happening now, instead of daydreaming; reduce focus on the ‘little self’. Total awareness leads to self-realisation.

Guided body awareness (Gururaj’s version is in his talk US 84-51) – for physical health as well as progress to recognising the whole self.

 

Gururaj taught all these in great detail as one element of unfoldment, which also relies on unconditioning (releasing)

 

Additional practices for releasing / solving samskaras -

Contemplation – the pinnacle of meditation – leads to any thought becoming one thought

Discrimination – between reality and non-reality, developing non-judgement

Letting Go – moving on from the past and from pre-conceived ideas

Self-reliance – evolutionary status; truth facing & filtering; acknowledging absoluteness

Non-Resistance – subtle energy appreciation and usage; karma dissolution; removing fear & loneliness

Non-attachment – subjugates change, expectation & projection

Non-Separation – Multi-dimensions; the illusion; liberation

 

Several meditation masters, trained by us, teach independent programmes nowadays, which we fully endorse, covering all the above practices - and of course the 7 vital meditation practices (breath awareness, mantra, pranayama, chaktivate, tratak, walking &/or Moaun, and ‘Gap’).