Abstract
The chapter aims to broaden our appreciation of mindfulness by situating it within a deeper Buddhist context. We highlight dimensions of mindfulness that are implicit within canonical Buddhist teachings, but which are often overlooked in contemporary psychological literature. We do this by identifying three threads within the teachings, then weaving these threads together to elucidate the connections between them. The first thread is the notion that there are different types of mindfulness, captured by various Pali words: sati (awareness suffused with spirit of recollection), appamada (awareness suffused with an ethos of ethical care), and sampajañña (awareness suffused with a sense of spiritual development). The second thread is the teaching of Paṭiccasamuppāda (the law of conditionality), and Buddhaghosa’s interpretation of this as involving five different niyāmas (orders of causality): utu-niyāma (physical), bīja-niyāma (biological), citta-niyāma (mental), kamma-niyāma (ethical), and dhamma-niyāma (spiritual). The third thread is the idea of the spiritual path, and the notion that this comprises various stages; we focus here on the contemporary teachings of Sangharakshita, who identifies five stages (based on the Sarvāstivāda Five Path schema): integration, skilful intention, spiritual death, spiritual rebirth, and spontaneous compassionate activity. We then weave these threads together into three broad phases of practice that a person might ideally progress through: phase 1 (cultivation of sati, appreciation of utu-, bīja- and citta-niyāma, and stage I of the path); phase 2 (cultivation of appamada, appreciation of kamma-niyāma, and stage II of the path); and phase 3 (cultivation of sampajañña, appreciation of dhamma-niyāma, and stages III, IV and V of the path).
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Notes
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Throughout its long and illustrious history, numerous traditions have emerged and developed within Buddhism; in broad brush strokes, we can paint a picture involving the early Therevadan schools; the later Mahayahan movement; followed still later by the Vajrayanan (Tantric) efflorescence; moreover, even within these different traditions can be found diverse schools of thought. As such, any presentation and interpretation of Buddhism is necessarily partial, drawing only on select sources while ignoring other equally interesting or worthy sources. The authors here have taken their interpretation of Buddhism from one of the foremost contemporary Buddhist teachers, Urgyen Sangharakshita, who has been central to the efforts to transmit and interpret Buddhism to the “West” (Subhuti 1994). Sangharakshita was born in London in 1925, originally named Dennis Lingwood. After being posted to India during the Second World War, he stayed on to pursue his interest in Buddhism, studying under numerous revered Buddhist masters (including Dhardo Rimpoche, teacher of the Dalai Lama; recounted in Sangharakshita 1997). He was ordained within the Therevadan tradition in 1950, whereupon he received the honorific “dharma name” Urgyen Sangharakshita, a Pali term meaning “Protector of the Sangha”. He returned to England in 1964, and after leading the English Sangha Trust for 2 years, founded the Western Buddhist Order (WBO) in 1967, a monastic order, encompassed by the wider Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO). In 2010, the movement changed its name to the Triratna Buddhist Order/Community; this change, eschewing the word “Western”, was partly to reflect the dissemination and migration of the movement across the world (e.g. India is currently the country with the largest number of members). “Triratna” is a Sanskrit term which means the “three jewels”—referring to the tripartite model of Buddha (teacher), Dharma (teachings), and Sangha (community)—to which members are said to turn for refuge (i.e. commit to) at their ordination.The emergent Triratna movement is considered one of the main forms that Buddhism has taken as it has been transmitted to the West, with around 80 centres/groups in the UK alone (Bluck 2006). The movement is innovative in that it does not exclusively situate itself within any of the dominant Asian Buddhist traditions (a fact that has perturbed some traditionalists within the wider Buddhist community who value the “authority of lineage and Asian precedent”; Vishvapani 2001, para. 60). Rather, Sangharakshita has sought to select practical and doctrinal elements from across various traditions, with the aim of presenting a “core of common material” constituting the “essence” of Buddhism which, divested of anachronistic cultural accretions, may be “relevant” to the “West” (Subhuti 1994). His attitude to the canonical texts is encapsulated thus: “Some of the discussions and classifications of the Abhidharma are very helpful, but others are less so. We must therefore study it with the analytic and critical spirit of the Abhidharma itself…. If we were to swallow everything indiscriminately … we would probably get intellectual, spiritual, or aesthetic indigestion” (Sangharakshita 1998, p. 17). The two central meditation practices taught within the movement are: the mindfulness of breathing, which is a canonical Therevadan teaching, as recommended in the Anapanasati sutta (sutra on mindfulness of breathing) for example (Roth 2006); and the metta bhavana, which likewise has roots in the Therevadan tradition, such as the Karaniya mettā sutta from the Khuddakapatha (Blackburn 1999). For practitioners who are more experienced (e.g. ordained), the movement also promotes more advanced practices including the “Six Element” practice, a meditation on the insubstantiality of self which also has origins in traditional Therevadan Buddhism (e.g. the Bahudhàtuka sutta); and the Sadhana practice, a deity visualisation meditation associated with the Tibetan Vajra tradition (Nyima and Gyaltsap 2013). In addition to these, the movement has developed pujas based on various teachings, such as the “Heart Sutra” (Prajñāpāramitā sutta), a classic Mahayanan teaching (Conze 2001); and a “sevenfold puja” based on the Bodhicaryavatara (“Way of the Boddhisattva”) by the eighth-century teacher Śāntideva (2002), which features within the Mayahanan and Vajrayanan traditions (Batchelor 1987).
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Lomas, T., Jnanavaca (2015). Types of Mindfulness, Orders of Conditionality, and Stages of the Spiritual Path. In: Shonin, E., Van Gordon, W., Singh, N. (eds) Buddhist Foundations of Mindfulness. Mindfulness in Behavioral Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18591-0_14
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