Yesterday as I took down the Christmas tree and made some of the last of the holiday calls to old friends, I determined that I would get back on track and take us through the interesting but more complex Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness.
The first three foundations or establishments of mindfulness seem relatively straight forward compared to the fourth. In the first, we investigate the body with mindfulness, including the breath, the posture, the activities, the anatomical parts, the elemental make-up and the body in death. In the second, we explore the first flicker that accompanies any arising experience, the sense that this experience is positive, negative or neutral. And we see how this first feeling tone leads to wanting and then grasping, not wanting and then pushing away, or neither one which leads to confusion and wandering. In the third foundation, we take our courage in hand and dive into the experiences of mind - the emotions, moods, the experience of grasping or pushing away, the experiences of confusion, delusion, memory and fantasy, and we have learned how slippery this investigation of the mind can be
In the fourth foundation called mindfulness of dharmas, we are asked to bring mindfulness to the way things are. We are also asked to use our prodigiously busy minds to “think” about the way things are. So we are bringing awareness to the way things are and we are also bringing our capacity to think, evaluate, discern, and decide what to “do” about the way things are.
Just to give you an idea how complex this fourth foundation can be, I’ll give you a little overview that I got from reading Andy Olendzki on the subject. Andy Olendzki founded or co-founded the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (BCBS). He is a Buddhist scholar and has taught there for many years. Relatively recently, he left and has been teaching in many different venues including several colleges. I have taken a number of retreat/courses with him and, not only have I learned a lot about Buddhist psychology, I have also been impressed with his depth of knowledge and understanding. For those of you who have been to BCBS, he built the stone structure called a stupa in the middle of the lawn which is featured on the BCBS home page. It fell down once, and he rebuilt it. Such is his dedication to the dharma.
The Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness is made up of mindfulness of the five hindrances, the five aggregates of clinging, the six sense doors, the seven factors of enlightenment, and the Four Noble Truths.
Andy Olendzki writes the following: https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/the-fourth-foundation-of-mindfulness/
"Now with the fourth foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of mental objects or of mental phenomena, we are sometimes told in meditation instuction to simply notice when a thought arises, be mindful of it, and allow it to pass away unobstructed. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but actually the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is directing through a much more precise exploration of the inner landscape of mental experience…. Almost as a guided meditation, the fourth foundation of mindfulness investigates 108 mental objects, and in the process manages to guide the meditator through the whole curriculum of Buddhist psychology: five hindrances, five aggregates, six sense spheres, seven factors of awakening, and four noble truths.
"These are subjects familiar to all students of Buddhism. But in working with them as objects of meditation we are asked to look not just at their presense or absence in the mind, but also at how these factors are in motion. And in practice we are directed by the text to working with the arisen mental states in particular ways: when they are hindrances we want to loosen our attachments and abandon them; when they are factors of awakening, which are beneficial for the growth of understanding, we are invited to learn how to cultivate, develop and strengthen them.
"This goes well beyond an agenda of passive observation of phenomena, and takes us into the realm of transformation.”
108 is a significant number in a great many realms. For a deeper dive into the meaning of the number 108 see the article “What’s So Sacred About the number 108?” in the link below. Olendzkie arrives at the 108 mental objects through the Buddha’s teaching in each category of the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness. For each of the five hindrances, this instruction applies:
1) When there is sense desire in him, a person is aware: ‘There is sense desire in me’;
2) or when there is no sense desire in him, he is aware: ‘There is no sense desire in me’;
3) and when the arising of unarisen sense desire occurs, he is aware of that;
4) and when the abandoning of arisen sense desire occurs, he is aware of that;
5) and when the future non-arising of abandoned sense desire occurs, he is aware of that.For each of the Five Aggregates - form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness, there are three states to consider:
1) Such is material form (or feeling or perception or volition or consciousness);
2) such is its origin;
3) such is its disappearance.
And for each of the other three categories, there are a prescribed number of mental “objects” or occurrences to be aware of for each, the total of all these adding up to 108.
This may seem confusing and off-putting. I alternate by being inspired and discouraged with the precision of mindfulness of the way things are that the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness asks of us. But remember, this is the path to full awakening. It also gives you an idea what those monks are doing when they sit in meditation for days, months, years… Their minds are discerning in finer and finer grain, the way the mind works with unarisen states, with arisen states, with disappearing states, with developing states. They are learning to abandon all unwholesome states no matter how subtle. They are learning to nurture all wholesome states. And as their minds become more adept at awareness of these objects, their attachments weaken and begin to fall away. They become increasingly free.
And we know some of this falling away of attachment and increasing freedom in our own minds and hearts - because the fruits of practice are not reserved for only the most experienced meditators. These fruits have been felt by each and every one of us and will continue to be felt and discovered as we continue along the path.
So the two most important instructions in meditation apply equally to the adepts and the novices:
First you begin. And then you continue.
https://www.himalayanyogainstitute.com/what-is-so-sacred-about-the-number-108/#:~:text=In%20Buddhism%2C%20it%20is%20also,usually%20made%20of%20108%20beads.
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Recently, two people sent me Chris Hayes’s NY Times opinion piece, “I want your attention. I need your attention. Here is how I mastered my own." https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/opinion/chris-hayes-msnbc-attention.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
For those of you who watch MSNBC or who have recently stopped watching the news and the news you stopped watching was MSNBC, Chris Hayes has a regular evening news hour. And although I never questioned his intelligence and political acuity, I would not have imagined this level of self-awareness in him.
This morning, I received an email and signed up for a program featuring Jon Kabat-Zinn. The program is entitled, “Awareness in Action: The Radical Path of Engaged Practice.” JKZ explores the question: “What Is Your/Our Karmic Assignment? Activist Embodied Dharma in the Face of the Full Catastrophe of the Human Condition and the Planetary Poly-Crisis.” https://www.upaya.org/program/awareness-in-action-the-radical-path-of-engaged-practice-online-january-19-2025/
Most of you know Jon Kabat-Zinn as the founder/developer of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and author of Full Catastrophe Living. More recently, Jon has explored questions of diversity, equality, inclusiveness in the medical profession and Buddhism and Activism.
What I was struck by with these two threads is how public figures deeply engaged in the political-social sphere are turning their sharp exploratory skills inward while major Buddhist figures with considerable chops on looking inward are exploring how we bring our practice into the world, what our larger purpose or calling or remit is in this one precious life we have been given.
I think this is a hopeful trend.