What I learned from the book “ Mindfulness in Plain English”
This is one of the best books written and easily explained about mindfulness. This is written by Bhante Gunaratana. Sharing my points below :
- There are 3 integral factors in Buddist Meditation — morality, concentration and wisdom. These three factors grow together as your practice deepens. Each of them influences the other, so you cultivate the three of them once, not separately. When you have the wisdom to truly understand a situation, compassion toward all the parties involved is automatic, and compassion means that you automatically restrain yourself from any thought, word, or deed that might harm yourself or others, thus your behaviour is automatically moral.
2. Meditation teaches you how to disentangle yourself from the thought process. It is a mental art of stepping out of your own way, and that’s a pretty useful skill in everyday life.
3. The whole meaning of the word Vipassana is looking into something with clarity and precision, seeing each component as distinct, and piercing all the way through to perceive the most fundamental reality of that thing. In vipassana meditation, we train ourselves to ignore the constant impulses to be more comfortable, and we dive into reality instead.
4. From a Buddhist perspective, we humans have a backward view of life. We look at what is actually the cause of suffering and see it as happiness. The cause of suffering a desire-aversion syndrome — up Pops a perception.
5. The compulsiveness is gone: now we have a choice
6. Breathing is a universal process. All vertebrates breathe in essentially the same manner. All living things exchange gases with their environment in some way or other. This is one reason that breathing has been chosen as a focus of meditation.
7. Seeing with Wisdom means seeing things within the framework of our body-mind complex without prejudices or biases that from spring from greed, hatred and delusion. Ordinarily, when we match the working of our mind-body complex, we tend to ignore things are not pleasant to us and hold onto the things that are. This is because our minds are generally influenced by desire, resentment and delusion. Our ego, self or opinions get in out way and colour our judgement.
8. The body alone can do nothing for itself; it is like a log unable to move to do anything by itself except to become subject to impermanence, decay and death. The mind can do nothing without the support of the body. When we mindfully watch both body and mind, we can see how many wonderful things they do together.
9. Mindfulness practise is the practice of being 100% honest with ourselves. Mindfulness is mirror-thought. It reflects only what is presently happening and in exactly the way it is happening. There are no biases.
10. When greed, hatred and ignorance reveal themselves in our daily lives, we use our mindfulness to track them down and comprehend their roots. The root of each of these mental states is within ourselves. If we do not, for instance, have the root of hatred, nobody can make us angry, for it the root of the anger that reacts to somebody’s actions or words or behaviour.
11. Meditation goals has 5 elements to it :
a. purification of mind
b. overcoming sorrow and lamentation
c. overcoming pain and grief
d. treading the right path leading to the attainment of eternal peace
e. attaining happiness by following that path
12. As your mindfulness develops, your resentment for the change, your dislike for the unpleasant experiences, your gree for the pleasant experiences, and the notion of selfhood will be replaced by the deeper awareness of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and selflessness.
13. Mediation recharges your mindfulness. Mindfulness grows by the exercise of mindfulness.
14. The best way to clarify the mental fluid is to just let it settle all by itself. Don’t add any energy to the situation. Just mindfully watch the mud swirl, without any involvement in the process. Then, when it settles, at last, it will stay settled. We exert energy in meditation, but not force. Our only effort is gentle, patient mindfulness.
15. Make mediation the first major thing you do in the morning
16. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.
17. We should start the meditation with generating universal loving friendliness
18. We have to learn to be kind to our ourselves
19. The way out of the trap is to study the trap itself, learn how it is built. You do this by taking the thing apart piece by piece. The trap can’t trap you if it has been taken into pieces. The result is freedom.
20. The purpose of mediation is to achieve uninterrupted mindfulness. Mindfulness, and only mindfulness, produces enlightenment.
21. Lethargy is nearly the reverse of meditation.
This is a must-read book for anyone that is interested in mediation and mindfulness.
