The fields for cultivating Wise Mindfulness are: Body Feeling Mind states How we frame our world (phenomena or dhammas) This last category is broad, and we’ll come back to the particulars at a later time. The important point is...

The fields for cultivating Wise Mindfulness are:

This last category is broad, and we’ll come back to the particulars at a later time. The important point is that we can learn to understand and adjust our assumptions, what we bring to experience as a framing device. A very common one is the presumption that if we like something, it’s as it should be, and if we don’t, then something is wrong with the world or the (other) people in it and it’s not to be tolerated! (Doesn’t everyone feel this way? – rhetorical question). Embedded in this attitude is the primary duality of what we like and what we don’t like as the driving force for how we see the world. In moments of clarity we can see that this is a limited and limiting view.

The Buddha invites us to consider alternative windows through which to approach our experience and to reconsider our assumptions about the world. Five possibilities:

Among these, the five hindrances (1) and the seven enlightenment factors (2) are composed of mental factors we can actively monitor and re-direct towards radical freedom.

The five hindrances and seven factors of enlightenment require special attention because they are the principal impediments and aids to liberation. … Whenever one of the hindrances (sensual desire, ill will, dullness and drowsiness, restlessness and worry, and doubt) crops up, its presence should be noted; then, when it fades away, a note should be made of its disappearance. …

A similar mode of contemplation is to be applied to the seven factors of enlightenment: mindfulness, investigation, energy, rapture, tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity. When any one of these factors arises, its presence should be noted. Then, after noting its presence, one has to investigate to discover how it arises and how it can be matured. … https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html#ch6

So, instead of thinking we already know everything we need to know, we could take the attitude of a dedicated student of behavior – our own and other peoples’. If we follow this course with dedication, the shift in our inner and outer life will gradually become discernible to ourselves and others. Questioning experience, investigating it, instead of leaping from one conclusion to the next, could soften our interactions with others and give us a steady sense of purpose, without diminishing our confidence.

We have the power to choose the lens through which we will view the world. If we put knowing what we’re experiencing first – lust/hatred/dullness/agitation or engagement/inquiry/lightness/settledness – we will be stepping onto the Buddha’s path towards awakening.

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