Anapanasanti: the power of mindfulness

• Four sources of power in bare attention
  1. the functions of "tidying" and "naming"
     • tidying up the mental household
     • naming
  2. the non-coercive procedure
     • obstacles to meditation
     • three countermeasures
  3. stopping and slowing down
     • keeping still
     • spontaneity
     • slowing down
     • subliminal influences
  4. directness of vision
     • the force of habit
     • associative thought
     • the sense of urgency
     • the road to insight

Anapanasanti

• "mindfulness of breathing"
• form of buddhist meditation
• to feel the sensations caused by the movements of the breath in the body, as is practiced in the context of mindfulness
• origins in buddhism
  • core meditation practice in theravada, tiantai, chan, zen
  • The Anapanasati Sutta specifically concerns mindfulness of inhalation and exhalation, as a part of paying attention to one's body in quietude, and recommends the practice of ānāpānasati meditation as a means of cultivating the seven factors of awakening: sati (mindfulness), dhamma vicaya (analysis), viriya (persistence), which leads to pīti (rapture), then to passaddhi (serenity), which in turn leads to samadhi (concentration) and then to upekkhā (equanimity).
  • anapanasati has been used as a basis for developing meditative concentration (samadhi) until reaching the state and practice of full absorption (jhana). It is the same state reached by the Buddha during his quest for Enlightenment.

The standard assertion of Buddhism is that by wiping away the cobwebs of ignorance typified by the three poisons of greed, anger, and delusion what remains is the Buddha nature which answers the question of appolonios above but my question is somewhat more philosophical.

The Dalai Lama has been carrying on an open discussion with the scientific community with the mind and life institute being a prime example. He has stated that the nature of reality is open to story telling and that the framework of material existence has some merit as a partial frame for a discussion of how pragmatic empiricism might tease out the connections between the physical world and the vital and mental worlds.

Thannissaro Bikkhu sounds like many people I hear in the Buddhist community who may be engaged in a skillful means exercise but do an injustice to those of us who see the mind as an instrument of perception that is disciplined by the rigors of philosophical debate like what is happening at the mind and life institute.

B. Alan Wallace has just published a book "Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic" which I heartily recommend to those with the scientific background to appreciate the subtleties involved in the East/West encounter that is part of the beginnings of a new science.

Another book by the 1998 Nobel laureate in physics, Robert B. Laughlin "A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down" has a new take on theorizing that sounds very much like dependent origination.

Within Hinduism the is a yoga called jnana yoga that is not for everyone. It is a yoga of the mind that delves deeply into epistemological issues that might be too difficult for most people. I think Buddhism's encounter with western science is fomenting a revolution in Buddhist epistemology and is shaking the foundations of Western science. It is something every educated Buddhist should have at a passing awareness of.