This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video The Path of Mindfulness to Wisdom ~ Maria Straatman. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good evening. Oh, that sounds strange. I’m sorry. I just got new hearing aids and I can hear myself in an unusual way. It makes me very self-conscious of my voice. So, I’m going to try to ignore that. My name is Maria Stratman and I’m here for Diana tonight.
And what I’d like to talk to you about is practice as the path of wisdom. We use the word “practice” a lot, and it’s come to my attention that everybody means something slightly different by that word. What is our practice? It begins with meditation. Most of the people who come here begin with meditation, and our particular style of meditation is mindfulness meditation. And the mindfulness part is really the path to wisdom. But it’s not entirely clear how that works. How does sitting lead to wisdom?
You can think of a lot of ways, but I want to talk about some particular sorts of ways. I began thinking about this topic—actually, I think about this topic a lot—but today I was thinking about consciousness. As a consequence, I was looking at a book called Unlimiting Mind: The Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism by Andrew Olendzki. I want to read you something from that because he says it well, and I would probably not say it as well. So here it is:
“Fearless and honest introspection will soon reveal the basic flaws of the human condition. This is the noble truth of suffering. The mind and body are riddled with stumbling blocks, choke points, nodes of tension, knots of pain, and a veritable fountainhead of selfish, hurtful, and deluded psychological stuff. The mind’s capacity for awareness, the knowing that arises and passes away drop by drop in the stream of consciousness, is constantly hindered, fettered, intoxicated, and obscured by such internal defilements. The enterprise of organic spirituality is to untangle this jumble, to untie these knots, to unbind the mind moment by moment, breath by breath from the imprisoning net of unwholesome and unhealthy manifestations.”
This is a lot of stuff. In other words, the unconscious determines a lot of the things that we do, and we’re not really aware of that. The process of mindfulness, coming back to what he said, “the mind’s capacity for awareness, the knowing that arises and passes away drop by drop in the stream of consciousness, is constantly hindered, fettered, intoxicated, and obscured by these internal defilements”—those things that we’re just not really conscious of that keep happening. The job of our spiritual path is to untangle the jumble. That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s the path. Untie these knots, unbind the mind moment by moment, breath by breath, from the imprisoning net of unwholesome and unhealthy manifestations.
Now, the spiritual path does not include getting rid of healthy manifestations like kindness or generosity or sympathetic joy or equanimity1. But the process of seeing them is extremely important.
Mostly, what Buddhists talk of as suffering is wanting things to be other than they are. I like that, I want that. I don’t like that, I don’t want that. More of this, less of that. Suffering, in the Buddhist lexicon, has to do with dissatisfaction. I’m dissatisfied. I want this, I don’t want that. I want more of this, I want a lot less of that. A lot of meditation is the process of developing the tools for transforming the unconscious into the conscious, for noticing what’s happening.
So a lot of our experience has to do with what we think about the experience as opposed to what’s actually happening. We go driving along in the car. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has experienced this. I’m driving along, and I’m saying, “Wait a minute. What am I doing here? Where am I going?” Because I fully know how to drive the car. I’ve been driving for over 50 years. It just goes. And there are certain places I go to a lot. So, that’s a very common thing, and the car will just kind of go there. And then all of a sudden, I say, “Wait a minute. Where am I? I’m supposed to be going to the grocery store and I’m on my way to IMC.” Whoops.
Because we’ve lost track and we’re just doing things on automatic. And a lot of what happens in life is automatic. The practice of mindfulness is bringing us into the present moment and getting us used to the idea that we can know what’s actually going on. We don’t have to be lost. We don’t have to suddenly wake up and say, “Wait a minute, where am I going?” And that’s a broad “where am I going,” not just a narrow “where am I going.”
A further part of the quote from him is: “By training conscious awareness on an innocuous subject such as the breath, we strengthen its ability to open to more and more of the information available by the senses in present time.” The process of sitting and following the breath is a process of training ourselves to be here now with what’s actually happening.
So when you’re watching your breath, you’re sitting with the breath. The breath is coming, it’s going, coming and going. “Oh, that’s kind of boring.” And the mind goes off and finds something to do. And then you realize, “I forgot where I was,” which is the very moment when you’re really here. It’s the moment when you’ve forgotten where you were and you come back to the breath. And then it happens again almost automatically and you say, “Wait a minute, how do I feel about that? Why am I going back to that meeting I was in today?” Because I’m feeling something about it. So it brings you back into the body and we say, “Here I am in the body, thinking about… yeah, I felt really disgusted. I was just disgusted with what that person was saying.” And you feel that disgust in your body. Now, you’re back in the body and you’re dealing with something that’s real and not what you think about what happened. You’re not trying to rewrite what has already happened. You’re not trying to change what has already happened. And you actually don’t have an opinion, a judgment about what happened because you’re busy dealing with, “Ooh, there’s disgust here. I don’t like disgust. I tend to put disgust away.” So you actually are dealing with what’s happening now.
It’s not analyzing what happened in the meeting. It’s seeing what’s happening here in response to those thoughts that keep arising. Does this make any sense? It’s taking what is here and saying, “Oh, I see you. I see I keep going back to something because I’m feeling dissatisfied with it. There’s a feeling of dissatisfaction and there’s disgust. Huh?” So now, some days later, when you’re in a meeting and you feel that disgust, you recognize it as, “Oh, disgust. Now, there’s something I don’t like here. There’s something that I want to push away. This is my response to what’s being said. It’s not what’s being said.” This is a very important point.
So, I’m going to give you an example of myself today. I was with someone this afternoon who has very strong opinions on a lot of subjects. And after a couple of hours, I found myself—actually, because I know this person really well, I was sort of expecting this to happen, and so I just mostly let it go. But at a certain point, it’s as if it had just built up to a point where every time I said something, she had another opinion about it, and I was responding poorly to that. I realized that I had an aversion and I began judging her for what was happening when really it was me. It was my response that was causing me suffering, not what she was saying. A lot of what she was saying I actually agreed with. But when I realized, “I don’t get to say anything. I don’t get acknowledged here,” oh, this is me wanting to be acknowledged. This is me trying to think something about me. This is me wanting to be seen a certain way. Whatever it is that I notice.
The habit of sitting and following our breath allows us to be able to pull ourselves into the moment and say, “Oh, this is what’s actually happening.” This unconscious response can be made conscious by being present and saying, “Wait a minute. What am I actually feeling here? What is the reaction that I’m having?” Not, “Oh well, I have to analyze what happened in that meeting so it never happens again.” This is all misplaced. It’s not about wisdom then. It’s about fixing and making something I’m dissatisfied with better.
Excuse me while I fix this microphone, having knocked it away with my waving arms and the fact that it doesn’t really fit over my new hearing aid. This is how things are. So I could be irritated by any number of these things, including my own waving of my arms, or I can just say, “Ah, there she is, waving her arms.”
If you think of sitting in meditation as a form of sensitization, what you’re trying to do is enhance, sharpen your ability to be here, to be present, to be just here. No judgment. Oh, judgment is here. Okay, so judgment is here. It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s just judgment. When we begin to recognize that things are not real, but they are conjured up by what we think about them, we can return to, “This is what’s happening. This is what’s happening.”
So, let me give you a different example. Let’s take the color blue. Now, why did I choose blue? I don’t know. It’s a color. It’s not a noun. It’s not a verb. It’s not a subject. It’s not an active word. It’s a descriptor. It’s a modifier. It’s just a color. “Yeah. But I really like blue. Blue makes me feel comfortable. It makes me… yeah, I think blue is the best color. All the other colors, well, they have something wrong with them. They’re not really… they don’t create the right mood. And if I was wearing red, it would probably send the wrong signal to you. No, blue is the perfect… blue was a good choice for this example. Blue is perfect.” Now I’m really attached to this word blue, this color blue.
And by the way, what shade of blue is in my mind that I’m so attached to? Is this a sky blue which is conjuring up feelings of calm? Or is it a sky blue that feels totally unfettered and free? Or, “Oh my god, there are no rails here. This is a little frightening.” Everybody’s reaction to the color blue is going to be different depending on their own conditioned responses to the color blue. Is it a blue of the sky? Is it a royal blue? A bright blue? Is it a dim blue? Is it a steel blue? Is it a hard color? A soft color? Does it change?
You only know the answer to that based on your experience. My idea of blue may not be your idea of blue at all. You may not like blue because blue reminds you of that guy that punched you in high school because he had a blue shirt on, and you’ve never liked blue shirts since then.
Coming to realize that we become attached to things and then saying, “Wait a minute, why is this so attractive to me? What’s happening here?” Not what happened in my past. That’s the role of therapists and analysts. This is what’s happening now in response to this word “blue.” Blue is a concept. It’s readily manipulated by your experience. And the path of wisdom only leads through your own experience. I could sit here and tell you what everything means and how to have meaning in your life and what you should do, and it is totally meaningless unless it goes through your own experience and you see your reactions to it.
The Buddha talked about the ways in which we engage in the spiritual path. And one of the points had to do with how one is in the world is related to one’s ethics, sense of virtue. You know, when something you have in your mind is, I don’t want to use the words “good” and “bad,” but let’s say shameful or admirable.
So I got fascinated by this idea of shame this afternoon. The Pali word is hiri2. And when we say shame, there are feelings of embarrassment, self-criticism, but that’s not actually what the word means. That’s our reaction. Shame has to do with an aversion to something that is disgusting. It’s an aversion to that which is not kind, that is not generous, that is not useful, that is not wholesome. That’s the real derivation of shame. The self-criticism part is extra. That’s our reaction to the aversion. And even the aversion is in reaction to what it is that we don’t like.
Seeing how all of this forms how we are in the world helps us to become more aligned with our own intentions. Our own intentions to kindness, to equanimity, to joy. We can’t hope to reach those if we are unconscious of what moves us. We have to be conscious of what moves us. We have to notice, “I’m being moved by this.”
So this afternoon, to go back to this person with the strong views and my reaction to her, I noticed that I was becoming irritated. I had feelings of defensiveness. I wanted to say, “No, you’re not right,” or “No, you don’t know all there is to know.” And in truth, another possibility would be for me to sit there and say, “How interesting that she thinks that. I wonder why she thinks that.” We were talking about what some people had named their children. “Well, that’s a stupid thing to name their children.” Okay. Well, that’s your opinion. “But yeah, well, that’s so odd. They’re just following some trend.” All of these opinions, right? And I’m thinking, “You don’t even know these people.” And then I realized I was being righteous. I was thinking, “Well, I would never say those things.” I went, “Whoops.” And instead, I said, “Ah, okay. So, she just finds those really odd names and she’s searching for reasons why people would do that. She’s actually quite curious.”
It’s my response, my judgment of how strongly she’s reacting, that’s making this negative. It’s me. When I own that this feeling is my response, then I am no longer at the mercy of feeling judged by her opinions or feeling unseen or feeling unheard or whatever those feelings might be. It isn’t becoming apathetic and unknowing. It’s the opposite of that. It’s becoming so intimate with your own responses that you recognize them and you’re not at the mercy of all the unconscious things that are going on in your mind. All the unconscious things that guard feeling safe, feeling meaningful. All of the things that make us feel comfortable.
So many of those things are unconscious. How nice it would be to be able to cultivate the things that make us feel comfortable. Okay. So, blue makes me feel comfortable. But if I overdo blue, it’s going to be oppressive and I’m going to feel closed in and I’m going to feel like I have to be blue. I can’t ever be green. And we begin to close in on ourselves. We can feel that closing in part. It’s like, “Ooh, it no longer feels safe. Now it’s beginning to feel closed in.” Or maybe even you notice that you’re very influenced by color. And so when somebody comes up and you have a quick reaction to them, you check, do they have black on or red or my favorite color, blue? What am I reacting to?
Because the conscious mind is very good at making up stories about what’s true. “If I don’t like you, it’s because you dress funny and you never wear blue.” Wait a minute. Who said I don’t like you? What’s that story about? What I’m really feeling is I’m reacting to your opinions. I see you a lot because I actually like you. And all of a sudden the mind is making up stories about how terrible you are.
We have to be able to see that happen. And the way that we become aware of what’s happening is not by some magical analysis where we understand everything there is to know about ourselves. It’s because we practice being here with things just as they are. And when we see the mind making a story about it, we say, “Story or what’s actually happening here? How do I respond to this? What part of this is an automatic response?”
One of the qualities of sitting in meditation and following your breath is when you notice it wanders away, you come back. You come back and you let go of whatever story was going on in your mind. That practicing letting go of the story that was going on in your mind proves very useful in everyday life because you have the practice. You have the ability to say, “I’m going to let go of that.” And of course, it doesn’t just leave because you say, “I’m going to let go of it.” But then you can say it again, and then you can laugh about how hard it is to let go of something. Or you can form self-criticism of how you can’t let go of it. And then you notice, “Oh, self-criticism. Oh, boy. That’s really useful.” Ah, self-criticism. Self-criticism. So, what self? Who said I had to be a certain way? Oh, I did.
Well, what is my intention? My intention is toward kindness and open-mindedness. Okay, that includes for me. Oh. Okay, I’m going to be kind to me. “Oh, no. I’m too terrible. I can’t… I don’t even know how to be kind to me.” Notice the frustration. Notice the leaning toward kindness. Notice the movement of your own heart for yourself. “I really wish I could do this. I really want to feel kind toward myself.” That is an act of kindness.
It all comes together. It all comes together in the ability to be here now with whatever shows up. Whatever shows up. The cultivation of equanimity is cultivating the ability to just ride what is here. Not to say it’s good or bad, not to have judgments, but discernment. Yes. “Oh, this is what’s happening. Here it is.”
The Buddha said that the spiritual path, the road to enlightenment, if you will, is not about all the practices, wearing the holy robes, showing up in the right places at the right times. It is only through direct experience that you can know and achieve wisdom. So he said, “Mind your ethics. Be kind. Be generous. Celebrate others’ good luck. Strive for equanimity and meditate. Sit in meditation and become mindful of the mind. Know what is happening. Know that you are sitting.”
There was a time when I was cutting a squash, unsuccessfully as it turns out, and I sliced my thumb very deeply. It bled profusely all over the kitchen and I was running around trying to clear it up and stop my thumb, and I passed out. It was like a light switch. The time between “I’m headed toward a chair” and finding my head on the table totally disappeared. And for that period, I did not exist. Now the heart was beating, the brain was working, the body was doing fine, but there was no awareness. There was no consciousness. Unlike when you fall asleep, you sort of gradually fall asleep and gradually wake up. This was on and off. I was surprised to find my head on the table.
Consciousness is a condition of what’s happening in your experience. It’s what’s happening and being aware of it. But it only arises in your experience. Your consciousness is not mine. Your experience is not mine. Your unconscious reactions are only in your experience. Live in the present, not the past or the future, neither of which exist except in the ideas about them. They do not exist. Only now exists.
But lest you think everything is about improving yourself, I’m going to read you a little poem by Mary Oliver called “Mindful.”
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for—to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world— to instruct myself over and over in joy and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant— but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentation. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these— the untrimable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?
May you come to know the delight of just being in the moment. The delight of seeing things just as they are. Oh, it’s this. May the burden of having to understand everything leave you. Be present for things just as they are and see how this leads to freedom. Thank you.
So, are there any questions, comments?
Yeah. Would you take the microphone, please? I was just wondering what the word equanimity means.
Oh yeah, it’s a tricky word. I knew when I said it I shouldn’t have said it. So, equanimity has two major features. One is an overview that is, because I see things over the span of time, I understand that things arise and pass away, and so I’m not blown off course by everything that happens, either good or bad. So there’s a kind of resilience or a balance that occurs as a function of seeing that things rise and fall and I don’t have to rise and fall with them. And the second thing has to do with resilience, and it is the equanimity that arises from being knocked over and the ability to just return. So that we’re not like steel rods, but we’re like trees, so that when experience arises, we don’t have to be lost because of that experience, but we can find our way in that experience without becoming chaotic. So equanimity is coming into balance with things as they are. Is that good? Okay.
Any other thoughts?
I’ll just share one.
Okay.
Thank you very much for your talk. It reminded me of one that I heard a little over a week ago. There’s a phrase that has been going through my mind on being present for what is, which is “sacred discomfort.” And as I sit sometimes, all I notice is discomfort, you know, physical discomfort, mental discomfort. But by putting that word “sacred” before it, it changes the way that I relate to it. Like, okay, this is not just like “put up with it” or, you know, “go take an aspirin” or something like that, but it’s kind of like, can I see it as important or with a certain sense of reverence?
I like that, Jim. That’s great. Just that one little phrase that I use as part of my practice to change the attitude towards a whole family of experience.
That’s really beautiful. You know, this morning when I was putting together this talk, it was after an extensive conversation which has been going on with my husband the last few days on our finances, which is a topic I really hate. And so I sat down and I started putting together my thoughts and I realized that my thoughts were totally chaotic and they were not coming together in any way at all and I wasn’t sure what I was talking about. And I decided to meditate, not to settle myself so much as to walk away from all of that chaos. Because as soon as I sat, it was like that sacred feeling where, “Oh, now I’m here.” There’s almost a sense of safety that comes from, “Oh, okay, let it be chaotic because I’m just going to sit here with it.” And so it’s not trying to fix anything. It wasn’t an act of fixing. And I think that’s what makes your phrase so beautiful is it’s just, “Oh, sacred discomfort.” Yeah, I love that. Thank you for that.
How do you balance knowing when to take action and intervene and when to accept what is?
So being aware of what is is not the same thing as accepting it. I once got chewed out over that word by a very eminent, venerable monk. So I’m sensitive to that word. And he said the Buddha never said anything about acceptance. Which of course has to do with your interpretation of the words. But when you see something that brings you discomfort, the question is, is this uncomfortable because of something that can be done about it, or is this uncomfortable just because I don’t like it? If there’s something that can be done about it, I can do something about it.
So the difference here that I’m trying to highlight is there are lots of things in the world that are happening that I find distasteful and abhorrent. Most of them I can’t directly affect. So I can spend my life in total despair over not being able to fix things in the world, or I can say, “And so what I’m going to do with this knowledge that this is unacceptable to me is I’m either going to do something directly about it or I am going to do something that counters it.” Like, today there was a report about more people moving toward aid trucks in Gaza and being bombed. And this is something that just destroys me when I hear this. I can’t do anything about that. It’s already happened, for one thing. I can object to that. I will object to that. I’m objecting to it now. And I can do something extra in the form of kindness as a way of expressing what I wish to see in the world. I can be extra careful of when I’m intolerant or feel intolerant, like this afternoon with the opinions, and say, “But the kind thing is just to hear what this person has to say and not feed into the angry, warlike attitude that I might be opposed to.” Does that make any sense?
So seeing things as they are and saying, “This is how they are,” is not the same thing as saying they’re okay. It’s saying, “Ah, I’m seeing it clearly now.” And being careful if it’s something I don’t like to develop ill will feelings, and if it’s something I do like and doesn’t cause harm to anyone, cultivating it. If I suddenly discover the delight of the ocean spray, I need a little more of that. Okay.
Seeing things as they are and saying to oneself, “This is how they are,” is not the same thing as saying, “It’s okay with me.” In this moment, I’m okay with how things are. I’m okay, not things are okay. Do you see the difference here? So that I can exhibit equanimity towards something I don’t like, I don’t want, that I’m opposed to, but I’m not going to allow myself to become angry and defensive and nasty as a consequence because that just increases the suffering.
Okay, thank you for that. Thank you.
You’re welcome.
I am torn. I was actually…
We’ll give it a try. First of all, I want to thank you. That was a very rich presentation. I had an experience this morning. The day did not go the way I thought it would in the morning and therefore I had a pattern of assuming that I would have to make up for the things that did not happen in the time that was left. And it was lovely to notice what’s unusual, and maybe because of this practice, was I was noticing that having consciousness about how that might not be realistic, and it’s almost like saying to somebody else, “I’m actually not going to be unkind that way today.” And it was a totally different day.
That’s beautiful. That’s exactly right. We have some choices that we can make, but if everything is unconscious, we’re not making choices anymore.
And to the extent that we believe things about ourselves, you know, “I’m this way,” which can be tied to both judgment and self-criticism, we are denying what’s actually happening in favor of what we think about it.
The original quote I started with… I have almost no battery left on this. “Fearless and honest introspection will soon reveal the basic flaws of the human condition. This is the noble truth of suffering,” which is wishing things were other than they are. But it’s the fearless and honest introspection part… there’s another quote here that’s wonderful. See if I can find it.
“To heal the individual wounds brought about by desire, the Buddha prescribed mindful meditation, the careful moment-to-moment observation of everything arising and falling in the field of phenomenal experience. When we are able to see what is actually occurring within us, wisdom will gradually and naturally evolve. The principle is simple, but it takes practice and a great deal of perseverance.”
To heal the wounds brought about by desire, the Buddha said, “Mindful meditation, the careful moment-to-moment observation of everything arising and falling in the field of phenomenal experience—your experience in these conditions at this time, right now.” When we are able to see what is actually occurring within us, wisdom will gradually and naturally evolve. The principle is simple, but it takes practice and a great deal of perseverance.
Practice, practice, practice. Please be happy.
Equanimity: A balanced state of mind, not swayed by pleasure or pain, gain or loss. It is a quality of resilience and stability that arises from seeing the changing nature of experience without attachment or aversion. ↩
Hiri: A Pali word that translates to a sense of shame or moral conscience. It is not about self-criticism but rather an internal aversion to unwholesome or harmful actions, acting as a guardian of virtue. ↩