Categories: Maintaining Mindfulness
May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you all!
Welcome. In our ongoing series of teachings designed to nurture your spiritual journey, we will explore the practice of mindfulness. Specifically, we will delve into how to cultivate mindfulness to recognize the thoughts and defilements that arise in your own mind. We have previously discaussed various facets of this practice, how to study your mind and how to maintain what is known as Sati–sampajañña, or mindful clear comprehension, in line with the Buddha’s discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta).
Through this practice, you gain the profound ability to understand who you truly are. Mindfulness is a mirror that reflects your inner world. It allows you to identify your weaknesses, recognize the areas that need development, and also appreciate your strengths and positive personality traits.
This entire process of self-discovery unfolds because of mindfulness. Conversely, a person who lacks mindfulness often lives in a state of unknowing, unaware of their own nature and shortcomings. But with the tool of mindfulness, or Sati, to use the Pāli term taught by the Buddha, we are given a one hundred percent capacity to understand ourselves on a much deeper level.
The Universal Path: From Mindfulness to Wisdom
It is the person who develops this mindfulness who gains the ability to realize Nibbāna, or ultimate liberation. However, mindfulness alone is not the entire path. The understanding we gain by using mindfulness is what we call wisdom, or Paññā in Pāli. This wisdom must also be cultivated. Only when both mindfulness and wisdom are developed together can we truly comprehend the nature of our experience.
As we cultivate this practice, we may be living a lay life or a monastic one. Whichever path you are on, we observe that those in lay life, in particular, face a multitude of challenges. This is the nature of worldly existence. You can have all the money in the world and still experience moments of sorrow and sadness. Problems arise regardless of wealth. For those without money, there are financial struggles and family issues.
The poor have their own significant share of problems. In truth, problems come to everyone. Feelings of sadness, grief, and moments where you feel like crying are universal. Likewise, moments of joy also come to everyone, rich or poor alike. There are countless reasons for happiness to arise.
Today, we will focus specifically on those times when problems arise, when you feel pressured, troubled, or mentally broken down. In these very moments, how can we use the practice of mindfulness for stress to help ourselves? How can we develop our mindfulness when it matters most? We will share this based on our own practical experience.
The First Thing We Lose in a Crisis: Our Mindfulness
According to the Buddha’s teachings, which we diligently practice, mindfulness is a skill to be highly developed. We have spoken of this to you as laypeople, and there are ordained monks listening who are also cultivating this. For you, living a worldly life, challenges are inevitable. Even in monastic life, which has far fewer problems, they are not entirely absent. Problems are a normal part of life.
Whether it’s a financial issue, a social problem, a family conflict, or a workplace challenge, difficulties can come from any direction. The crucial question is: how should we maintain mindfulness in these moments? How do we work to eliminate the immense pressure we feel? This is what we must contemplate.
When a problem hits, the very first thing we lose is our mindfulness. Our Sati disappears. In that moment, we don’t even remember to be mindful as we face the problem. Even those of you who have diligently followed these teachings and tried to practice may find that when a serious problem arises, you forget. This happens because our minds are not yet consistently mindful. We can try to practice all the time, but at certain moments, it slips away, it gets forgotten.
In the beginning stages of training, it is difficult to maintain perfect, unbroken mindfulness like that of an Arahant (a fully enlightened being) or the Buddha himself. We must understand this. They, too, reached that state by practicing just as we are, little by little. They experienced moments of forgetting and letting go. When a problem comes into our lives, we panic. We get scared. Our patience vanishes. Sometimes, we become angry. In these instances, our mindfulness can be completely lost.
The Inner Alert: How Practice Brings You Back to the Present
However, if you are someone who is actively cultivating mindfulness, something remarkable happens. Mindfulness begins to arise on its own. It comes to you automatically. In the moment a problem strikes, you might panic at first. But after a short while, a thought will suddenly surface: “Wait, I should be mindful here. I don’t need to panic. I need to look at this problem with clear awareness.” This moment of remembering is a powerful sign of progress.
Think about it. Before you started practicing, when a problem occurred, such a thought would never have even crossed your mind. But now, as a practitioner, you are quickly reminded: “I need to be mindful.” It’s like an alert, a notification that pops up in your mind. Perhaps in the past, it would take you five minutes, ten minutes, or even an hour to gain some perspective on a problem. Now, as someone who practices mindfulness for stress, you might realize after just a few minutes, “I have been unmindful for the last five minutes. Now, it is time to be mindful.”
This is the special quality of this training. Your practice should begin from that very point of remembering. I am speaking to everyone who is struggling: students feeling pressure from exams, whether at university or for O-levels and A-levels; people suffering from the pain of broken attachments and relationships; those grieving the loss of a loved one, a parent, or a relative. If you are in any of these difficult, painful situations, you are facing a problem.
A Practical Exercise: How to Observe Your Mind Under Pressure
In such a situation, the most essential thing you need is mindfulness. When we establish mindfulness, we can understand our mind clearly. So, the next time a problem arises, I want you to do this practical exercise: watch your mind. Observe carefully how your mind behaves when it is confronted with a problem. You can do this right where you are. Sit in a chair, close your eyes, and just look at your mind. Or, you can do it with your eyes open.
If you can sit in a formal meditation posture, that is also good. You can even do this while practicing walking meditation. We previously gave a teaching on how to eliminate pressure through walking meditation, and I encourage you to explore that teaching if you have not.
As you walk back and forth, if you look at your mind, you can begin to understand it. When you study your mind in the midst of a problem, you will notice something: how many times does the very same problem, the same thought, repeat itself in your mind? It comes rapidly, an unending, continuous stream.
This relentless stream is what creates such intense pressure. The non-stop repetition is what causes headaches, a feeling of tightness in the brain, a sensation of your nerves tensing up. The pressure becomes immense. Your task is to simply watch this. You must observe these phenomena and understand their nature. Be aware, this pressure will not decrease immediately just because you start watching it.
The Real Problem Isn’t the Problem, It’s the Pressure It Creates
You need to understand something crucial. For us, a problem becomes a ‘problem’ mostly because of this internal pressure, the headache, the physical pain, and the mental anguish. This is what makes a problem feel so overwhelming. But imagine if that physical pain in your body disappeared, and the pressure coming from inside your mind also vanished. If that were to happen, no problem that comes your way would ever truly feel like a problem again. Remember that. They would no longer be a source of intense pressure.
Therefore, what we are doing here is not about magically receiving money or instantly solving the external, worldly issue. That external problem may or may not be resolved. What we are doing is reducing the headache, the tension, the stress, and the pressure. We are gradually reducing the pressure within our own minds.
And when that inner pressure is reduced, you might not even feel the external problem anymore. This is the profound result you can achieve. We are speaking from our own direct, practical experience. This is a benefit that can only be obtained by someone who truly practices.
Watching the Thought: How Observation Becomes Lasting Relief
So, as you mindfully watch your own mind, you will see that stressful thought appearing again and again, very quickly. It’s the same thought, repeating endlessly. If you have a financial problem, that exact thought will keep coming. Whether you are sitting or walking, your job is to keep watching it. However, do not try to stop the thought.
You cannot do it. It will inevitably keep coming in a continuous stream. The key point we need to grasp is this: by watching this thought, we must understand how much pressure it creates, how much it hurts us, how much trouble it causes, and how much it breaks us down mentally. This is the understanding we need to cultivate.
As you continue to watch, you will gain a clear insight into what is happening. How can a mere thought create so much pressure? How can it cause so much physical pain in our bodies? You will also notice how this problem affects other areas of your life. For instance, you can’t manage your diet properly. When you try to eat, you can’t consume the same amount of food as you normally would. You will gain a clear realization of these interconnected effects.
This is what it means to understand yourself. As you begin to understand these stressful patterns, you will find immense relief. I see today, especially with the current situation in the country, that many young people are dealing with various kinds of pressure. In fact, everyone is. There is no human being without a problem. Everyone has something. For some people, not having a problem has even become a problem! Your task is simply this: to watch your mind.
If you are in the middle of a problem right now, close your eyes, find a calm state, and just watch that thought. After some time, you will understand these points for yourself and feel a sense of relief. However, the stress and pressure will not disappear all at once. It will start to decrease little by little. If you practice walking meditation for 40, 45, or 60 minutes while observing your mind with this pressure, you will gradually feel it diminish. Is that not a relief in itself?
Building Unshakeable Mental Resilience and Strength
Because of these problems, some people even turn to psychiatrists and take various medications for their mental state. You do not need to fall into such a condition. If you practice this method taught by the Buddha, which we teach from our own practical experience, you will not face such issues. Try practicing and see for yourself what happens. As you continue to study your mind in this way, I repeat, the pressure will not vanish instantly. It reduces gradually.
The act of maintaining mindfulness and using your wisdom to understand the nature of your problem, to see how much pressure a single thought can create, this understanding is Paññā (wisdom). The more you understand this, the stronger your mind becomes. Your mind, your heart, will become incredibly strong.
Because of this newfound strength, the next time a different problem arises after this one is over, and this one may or may not be resolved externally, it will no longer be a source of pressure or a crisis inside your mind. That is the goal. Then, when another problem comes up later in life, you will be able to face it with the same strength and wisdom you cultivated before. That is what needs to happen. When you face pressure in this way, you discover a great mental fortitude within yourself.
Your Path to Self-Reliance and Skillful Action
To build this mental strength, some people talk about their problems and pressures with others to get relief. They release the pressure by sharing it and seek encouraging words to feel stronger. We have seen such situations. People confide in someone they like, someone honest and trustworthy who will protect their privacy, and they gain a sense of strength from that exchange. There is a genuine mental release that happens when one confides in another.
However, if you follow this method taught by the Buddha, you will not need to tell anyone else. You will have the ability to resolve this within yourself. By practicing in this way, our own mind becomes strong. We become a strong man or a strong woman. There is no barrier of age, race, caste, or religion for this practice. Anyone can do it. If it were not possible, the Buddha would not have taught it.
When you practice like this, you will face your problems with more strength than ever before. You do not need to anxiously await results. The results will come, certainly and definitively. Please, practice this. Do not limit this teaching to just a lecture. From now on, remember to practice mindfulness when problems arise. Because you are cultivating mindfulness, you will remember this teaching when a challenge appears in your worldly life. At that moment, look at the problem with clear mindfulness. When you look with mindfulness, you will undoubtedly gain the ability to understand these matters. Remember this.
When you act accordingly, you can transform your current mental state into one of mindful clear comprehension (Sati-sampajañña). Right now, when a problem strikes, some people have no mindfulness; they act heedlessly. They are agitated, afraid, and under pressure, not even knowing what they are doing. This is the state that arises. But when you practice this, you will have at least some awareness of what you are doing.
You will have a clear comprehension of your actions in that moment, which allows you to act correctly. Otherwise, it is hard to imagine how a person might behave when a problem hits. Often, it takes a good friend or someone else to manage them properly. But with this practice, even if you are alone, you will gain the ability to handle the situation well. You will be able to face the problem effectively if you maintain this mindfulness. These are things that must be practiced, little by little.
Your Path Forward: A Commitment to Practical Application
You can gain this experience for yourself. So please, proceed in this way. You have the definite ability to eliminate your stress, the pressure in your mind, and the physical manifestations like headaches, all of it. In this teaching, I have provided you with the necessary guidance and understanding on how to handle these matters. There is no need to extend this particular talk further, as we will continue to offer more spiritual teachings related to mindfulness. Your task is to take these instructions, practice them, and move forward.
With that, I conclude today’s teaching on developing mindfulness no matter what problem arises. By the power of the Triple Gem, the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, may all of you who have listened well to these points be able to practice them, apply them, and achieve victory over your challenges.
We invite you to walk this path with us. Read our teachings, and most importantly, apply them practically in your own life. as you practice, questions will naturally arise. Please feel free to share your experiences and questions in the comments below, via email or contact form. I will do my best to offer guidance in future talks based on your progress. For now, begin this practice with an open heart and a mind free from expectation. Cultivate it correctly, and may you find the clarity and peace you seek.
Thank you for joining us. We hope this blog will be of great benefit to your spiritual journey.
May you all be well and happy.
May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you all!.
