Embodied said: The best way for me to learn better is to ask you :how do you apply satipatanna in your life moment to moment ? Since you wake up til you go to bed?
- Satipatthana basically means “keeping the mind focused on the task at hand”.
- When I drive, I concentrate on driving, not thinking about anything else.
- When I write do scientific work, I concentrate on that subject.
- When I do house work or eat, I am focused on getting those things done.
Those things normally do not involve defiled thoughts or dasa akusala, but if they do I will become aware of that. - However, when I deal with people or when I meditate, I am ALWAYS on the lookout for any defiled thoughts arising in mind. This is when I do Anapana.
- Part of Anapana involves cultivating moral thoughts and learning Dhamma (“ana” or “taking in”).
- Equally important second part of Anapana is forcibly suppressing defiled thoughts, speech, and actions (that is the “apana” or removal part of “anapana” or “ana” + “apana”).
- Well before we can understand deep Dhamma concepts, we need to cleanse our minds of dasa akusala. They keep popping up, sometimes unexpectedly. Such defiled thoughts keep popping up because we have a reservoir of them (called anusaya) in our minds. Our gati are closely related to those anusaya.
- These dasa akusala make our minds “burn”. Getting rid of them lead to “cooling down” of the mind and to niramisa sukha. Then it becomes easier to understand deeper Dhamma concepts like anicca, which belongs to the “ana” part of “Anapana”.
- Cleansing the mind is a step-by-step process, and Anapana is essentially how one does it.
- I don’t know how many of you have read the “Bhavana (Maditation)” or the first few subsections of the “Living Dhamma” section. I really hope you have done so, in order to get this IMPORTANT FOUNDATION established.
So, that is what I do all day long. Focus on the task at hand, and try to do Anapana whenever possible AND appropriate.