This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Modes of Being: Profound Contemplation vs Shallow Thinking - Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Well, good morning everyone and welcome. I think what most of you I’m sure know is that the primary practice that we do at IMC is mindfulness. And what maybe you don’t know is that in practicing mindfulness, we can understand there are two different sources within us from which that practice can come.
In fact, the Buddha distinguished between two different modalities of engaging in the world, being in the world, understanding the world, reflecting on the world, contemplation, all kinds of things. And it really helps to understand this distinction. If we don’t know it, then we might be practicing mindfulness from a mode of mental life which is not so conducive to the depth of what’s possible with mindfulness practice.
So these two different modes that the Buddha talks about could be maybe understood in the modern world like we have two different operating systems. An operating system in a computer is what governs the whole computer, perhaps. And so we have different operating systems within us. And it depends which operating system we tap into what the results are, what comes out of it.
Of course, he didn’t have the word operating system back in the Bronze Age when Buddha lived. But what he did talk about, the word that he uses to distinguish between these two is not operating system, but is an ancient word. You don’t have to remember it, but the word is manasikāra.1 The kāra part means to make or to do, and the manasi refers to the mind, or maybe more properly to mental processes, the mentality. So there’s what the mind does, what the mind makes. And the mind, in Buddhism at least, is considered to be a constructive process. It constructs our reality, constructs our understanding, interprets our perceptions, and so we understand how to navigate through the world.
But there are these two different modes of this mental activity, mental doing.
One of these operating modes is called yoniso manasikāra.2 Yoni in Sanskrit and Pali refers to the source from which animate life is born, comes out. So the yoni for a chicken or bird is an egg. The yoni for a human or for mammals is a womb. In the ancient world, they believed that for some creatures, the so-called yoni for certain aquatic animals is water. So it doesn’t only mean the womb, but for humans, it refers to a womb.
I like to think of it as being a metaphor, representing a deep source of life within us. So it’s a kind of a powerful way of saying there’s the mental activities from the source of life within. It’s kind of a dramatic way of saying it, but “from the womb” is kind of evocative and for some people is very meaningful. We have this deep generative place within from which mindfulness practice, Buddhist practice, from which our mental activity can operate from.
The contrast to that is ayoniso manasikāra3—not from this profound source of life. So there’s the mental activity that’s not from this profound source of life. The Buddha presents this as a very stark difference. It isn’t like two comparable things, two sides of the same thing, but rather it’s like two very different operating systems existing almost in different parts of our being.
The Buddha said that one, from the source of life, can bring you tremendous benefit. The one that’s not from the source of life can bring a lot of harm. The one from the source of life is wholesome; it makes things whole in a certain way, makes us whole. Whereas the one that’s not from the source of life is unwholesome, not part of the whole.
The Buddha said that what arises from this source of life, the mental activity that comes there, it grows within us. The not-source-of-life doesn’t grow, but it’s manufactured, it’s constructed, it’s built together. And so one mode has a kind of thinking that’s engineering, figuring out, putting things together, constructing things—often things which are not real.
We live in a world where our mind constructs a lot about our experience. Especially for us in the modern world living in urban settings, most of the things we touch and interact with all day long are not only like the hardware of a computer or something, but they come along with a whole set of built-in assumptions, interpretations, and representations of what it means for our life, what it’s going to do for us, that have nothing to do with the natural world.
Some of you probably have a smartphone. I just came back from being in the High Sierra, and I looked all over where I was at 11,000 ft and 12,000 ft, and I can tell you there was nothing there that resembled a smartphone. The natural world doesn’t produce smartphones by itself, nor does it produce all the associations, the meaning, the fantasies, the stories, the opinions, all the stuff that seems to arise and generate and flow out of these smartphones. These smartphones belong to this world of the mind being built and created. And people get paid a lot of money so that you will build up and create mental universes of abstract thoughts, fantasies, ideas, worlds to live in that are built, not grown.
This deep place within is where things can grow. And what can grow there is our wisdom, is what’s wholesome. What can grow there is our character. Our deep personal maturation cannot be constructed. You cannot go on YouTube to get instructions on “How do I mature?” and go through the steps one, two, three, four as if it’s an engineering job. [Laughter] This will end up on YouTube, so… but the idea we’re pointing to is what can grow.
This takes a deeper sensitivity than “think-ativity.” If we’re spending all the time thinking about things and fantasizing about things and ruminating about things, we are far away from this deep place where something can grow. For the Buddha, the primary fuel for the “not of the deep source” is clinging, is tension. When thinking is powered by tension and clinging, it belongs to this “not of the source.” When there’s no tension, no clinging, then we have a chance to take time to be sensitive and to feel this deeper place. There’s a whole different operating system that has a chance to operate when there’s no tension.
And that’s what mindfulness is for. Not to simply know what’s happening in a cognitive way, not to go through and just kind of name what’s happening as if it’s a mental exercise, but rather mindfulness is more like “body-fullness,” a slowing down and allowing and sensing a deep place from within. So there’s room for this profound intelligence we have for how we can operate in this world.
If the world that we live in is from the neck up, it’s a truncated world. I certainly have felt if I spent too much time on a screen, I’m in my neck up. It’s rare that the screen supports me to be from the neck down. And so it seems like that’s where the whole world is—in this cognitive, thinking, ruminating, figuring out, fantasizing mind. But this connects us to this deeper operating system which is whole, meaning it includes all of who we are, not from the neck up.
There are different translations into English for these two modes. One of the wonderful ones is what Bhikkhu Bodhi,4 the great translator of these ancient texts, has. One he calls “careful attention” (for the one from the source) and the other he translated as “careless attention.” My preferred translation is “profound contemplation” versus “shallow thinking.”
The reason I like to translate it as contemplation is that the Buddha used his profound contemplation, his careful attention, for his own process of becoming awake, becoming enlightened. He describes that from this profound source within, he contemplated, he considered, he reflected on where his own suffering came from and what was behind it. He describes in the ancient texts a process of asking himself a series of questions about what this suffering is, where it’s coming from, and where that is coming from, and he followed it to the source: to clinging. With his clear attention, this profound, creative, imaginative, intimate way of reflecting, he was able to go deeper and deeper than he could when he was only involved in this surface, shallow thinking.
Two important things the Buddha mentions that grow from this profound form of attention. One is seven different mental states that he calls the Seven Factors of Awakening. So mindfulness itself for the Buddha grows out of this place. It’s not an engineering task to be mindful. A deep discernment, a deep looking and feeling and sensing what’s going on here. The effort we make—and the Buddha makes this distinction in his teachings that there are two modes of effort. There’s the effort that comes from this deep source within and that which doesn’t. Joy can come from this deep source. Calm and tranquility. Concentration or unification of the mind. Many people think that concentration is important in meditation and they try to concentrate with a shallow mind, not from the deep mind. So trying to engineer concentration rather than allow it to grow and evolve on its own produces very different results. For me, when I tried to force myself to get concentrated, the primary result was a headache. And then equanimity, the profound sense of peace and non-reactivity.
In contrast to that, the shallow mind, the Buddha said, gives birth to the Five Hindrances: sensual craving, ill will, sloth, agitation, and doubt or indecisiveness.
Those are very different lists. If you hold those lists next to each other, you get a very different feeling. I would suggest if you sit quietly, maybe even right now, just close your eyes and I’ll recite these two lists and see what responds inside of you as you hear them.
Mindfulness… discernment… vitality… joy… tranquility… stability… equanimity… peace.
And I’ll try it with the same tone of voice so we have a fair comparison.
Sensual craving… ill will… sloth… agitation… indecisiveness.
So, was there a difference that your body, your inner life, your place of the source inside of you… that these live in a different way in you?
(Audience member): I felt so uncomfortable after the second list that I had to recite the first list in my head again to be okay.
(Audience member): The first list felt right and I could see beautiful images, images of people that I love and that bring me joy. And then the second list felt so forced. My body would tense up, and I wanted to go back to the first list.
(Audience member): In the second list, I noticed thoughts of “I, me, and mine.” Whereas in the first list, that did not come up at all.
Ah, fantastic. That was great. In fact, “I, me, and mine” are the primary constructs of the shallow mind, of this “not of the source” mind. Especially in the modern world, with the help of screens, the idea of self and identity and possession is such a huge construct. Me, myself, and mine comes into play. This whole complicated world of me, myself, and mine, especially if there’s tension, is one of the primary representations of this constructed mind.
This does not mean that all sense of self is part of that shallow mind. But there’s a very different feeling of who we are as a human being if it comes from this source of life within, this deeper wellspring of growth and flow and inclusion of all who we are that has no tension and stress associated with it.
So I started this talk by saying there are two modes of mindfulness. If we’re practicing mindfulness with tension and stress, like, “I have to do this, I’m supposed to be a good mindfulness practitioner,” you can to some degree be mindful that way, but it’s reinforcing the shallow mind. What we want to do is to support and nourish the deep mind, the deep mentality that we’re capable of.
So when we practice mindfulness, how do you practice mindfulness from this deep source? How do you discover it? How do you feel your way into it? How do you make room for it? How do you even know that it’s there? What does it take? That’s the question for you now.
(Audience member): The first thing that came to my mind was being versus doing.
Yeah, I think that’s very important. A lot of people, that distinction is so important. In the West, we’re so caught up in doing, but the doing is from this constructed, surface mind. Being makes room for something else to operate. For the Buddha, this deeper mind though is also a doing. Manasikāra is still a doing, but it’s a doing from a very different source. So it’s the doing from being, but in order to have that, you first have to be.
(Audience member): I came to Buddhism through Tai Chi. And so when I think of mindfulness, it’s a body motion for me. It’s an opening, loosening, relaxing of the body.
Fantastic. I think people who do a movement practice like Tai Chi or Qigong sometimes have a real head start for doing mindfulness because they’re already tuned in to the energies, the flow, the sensations of the body in a deep way and appreciate it.
One way to connect to this deeper source is the careful attention we give to when we’re not there. When we’re living in the stressful mind, the tense mind, the ruminating mind, the preoccupied mind, there’s the art of just bringing a careful, loving, caring attention to that and not condemning it, not being at war with it, but rather, “here, like this, this is here too.” And that begins creating space to feel everything in a different way. So we don’t have to set these two modes at war with each other. We can bring them together where the surface mind is held by the deep mind.
What that does is it allows the surface mind to unfold the way it’s meant to unfold. And if it’s characterized by tension, the natural way for it is for the tension to relax. We’re not forcing our way into anything in this dharma. We’re allowing these natural processes to unfold. Those that need to relax and soften, we allow that to happen. Those that don’t need to soften and relax, but rather their nature is to grow, to expand and to fill us, those we allow to grow and fill us.
For those of you who are practicing mindfulness, you might want to consider if there is some way that you can distinguish these two modes, these operating systems, for how to be attentive to this world that we live in. And can you find a way to be attentive from some place that’s deep within? That requires a certain degree of quiet, a certain degree of calm, a certain degree of time, a kind of a spacious present moment. If your present moment is very tight and you’re mostly living into the future, there’s very little room for this deeper source.
Chances are if you can operate from this deeper source, if we take time to be connected to it, the vitality by which you live your life will feel much more satisfying for you than if the source of your actions, your thoughts, your speech is the surface mind.
So may the deep mind be your source. Thank you.
I believe next week we have the picnic. Everyone’s welcome. We have once a year we have a picnic instead of the potluck here. It’s at Red Morton Park and it’s on the calendar for IMC, but you’re all welcome to come whether you have some food or not. Just come. It’s just an excuse for us to be together as a community and it’s usually a wonderful time together. Thank you.
Manasikāra: A Pali term that literally means “making in the mind” or “mental activity.” It refers to the mind’s act of paying attention or bringing something to mind. ↩
Yoniso manasikāra: A Pali term translated as “wise attention,” “careful attention,” or “profound contemplation.” It refers to a way of thinking that arises from a deep, wholesome source, leading to wisdom and liberation. The word yoniso literally means “from the womb” or “from the source.” ↩
Ayoniso manasikāra: The opposite of yoniso manasikāra. It is translated as “unwise attention,” “careless attention,” or “shallow thinking.” This mode of thought is rooted in tension, clinging, and reactivity, and leads to the arising of the Five Hindrances. ↩
Bhikkhu Bodhi: A prominent American Buddhist monk and scholar, known for his numerous and highly regarded translations of the Pali Canon. ↩