Hello again. Welcome back to the forest. You may remember that in the last session of this module, we talked a bit about how practicing mindfulness in the forest, or amongst trees might be good for our health and well-being, even if there doesn't seem to be a necessary connection between mindfulness and being in nature. In this session, we're going to return to the Satipatthana Sutta, which you may remember is the teachings on the foundations of mindfulness, which is an important text that we've considered in a number of places during this course. Something that might surprise you if you're a sense of that text has been formed by the way that therapeutic protocols like MBSR and MBCT have made use of it, is that it contains some rather clear instructions on practicing mindfulness in a way that relates our experiences to the natural world around us. In fact, as you may recall from our module on philosophy and Buddhism, the Satipatthana calls on practitioners to practice the four foundations of body, emotions, thoughts, and Dharma, sometimes rather confusingly translated as mental events. When we look in more detail though, we find that each of those four sections of the text contains some subdivisions. The section on the body, for instance, which is the crucial one for us today, commences with guidance on practicing mindfulness of the breath, and then moves on to invite mindfulness of bodily posture, and mindfulness of movement. These other subsections that had been adopted by most contemporary mindfulness protocols and products. But in fact, there are three more subsections. The next two are often grouped together as analytical contemplations because their ostensible purpose is to reveal the body's true nature. In these two sections then, the practitioner is invited to consider the body in its totality, including, especially, those aspects of the body that we might usually consider unattractive or repulsive. I think it's worth quoting this, since the language of the text really communicates the effect it's going for. The practitioner is instructed to reflect this. In this body, there are head hairs, body hairs nails, teeth, skin, flesh tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, pleura, spleen, lungs, large intestine, small intestines, gorge feces, bile, phlegm, purs, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin oil, saliva, mucus, fluid in the joints, urine. This subsection is part of the first foundation of mindfulness because it calls on us simply to acknowledge these features of our bodies without judgment and with acceptance. Most common tree suggest that an important purpose of this section is to help practitioners liberate themselves from lust and vanity, from a preoccupation with beauty and attractiveness, which are seen as unhealthy attachments, and as serious impediments to mindfulness, and liberation. In today's cultures that are obsessed with beauty and fame and sex, it's perhaps understandable that this practice is often seen as a problem since it's less likely to attract new customers than to send the existing ones running out of the door. Also, the case that subsections like this one, requires some careful navigation in the context of trauma sensitivity today, as we'll see in the module on trauma in this course. The commentaries often connect to this subsection, which is sometimes clusters the repulsiveness contemplations, with the last subsection in the mindfulness of the body. The last section is usually known as the cemetery contemplations, or sometimes the channel ground contemplations, because it contains a series of meditations on the decomposition of the body after death. Like the repulsiveness practices, these practices are very graphic, inviting practitioners to contemplate stages of decomposition, to imagine a body being torn apart by animals and to see the bones finally reduced to dust. Again, from some of the same reasons, like the repulsiveness contemplations, mindfulness of death is not usually included in therapeutic or commercial mindfulness programs. Its purpose though, is rather similar rather than being an invitation into a morbid state of mind, the cemetery contemplations are supposed to encourage practitioners to accept the transient, and impermanence of their bodies, and thus free themselves from attachment to its material form, including our vanity about its appearance, its talents, or its abilities. However, tying the repulsiveness section to this section on death in this way, risks ignoring the intervening section, which carves both of these into a new light. Rather than being about repulsiveness or impermanence of the body, these sections could instead be about reflecting on the ways in which the body is organically entangled and unified with the natural world around us. Our bodies are made up of all of these aspects, all of which will collapse, and fade, and change into other things as time passes, including perhaps becoming food for animals or soil that supports the growth of plants. The intervening section that works all of this magic for us, is usually called mindfulness of the elements [inaudible] This short section which talks about mindfulness of earth, water, fire, and air, is often overlooked, especially in modern secular cultures that sometimes you, the language of the elements as superstitious or mystical. However, overlooking this section could be a mistake since it's this section that most clearly places the practitioner into the context of the living natural world around us. First of all, the word element is a translation of the Pali term datu which can also be translated as properties or qualities. That is, there's no need for anyone to read this text as an appeal to a pre-scientific idea that all things were comprised of Earth, water, fire, and air. Rather, the invitation is for the practitioner to bring their attention to the ways in which the qualities associated with those elements arise in our bodies. Indeed, sometimes translations of this section avoid mentioning the elements at all, and instead replace them with the qualities that we might hold them to represent. Instead of Earth, we see solidity or stability. Instead of water, we see fluidity or cohesion. Instead of fire, we see heat, or temperature, or sometimes caloricity. That's the organic process of converting matter or calories into energy. Instead of air, we see movement or flexibility. As a suitor invites the practitioner to attend internally and externally to the arising and passing of these qualities in our awareness of the body. The idea here I think is that using these qualities provides a way for us to reframe our experience of our body. Helping us to step back from our tendency to analyze and narrate our sensations, and instead simply to see them as expressions of these general qualities or elements which are common to the world around us. When we feel muscle tension, for instance, can we experience in that tension the properties of Earth and water? So solidity and cohesion. When we hear our blood pulsing in our ears in our practice, can we experience the qualities of water and fire, fluidity and heat? Even more interesting, since the invitation directs us outwards as well is for instance to feel the touch of a breeze on your cheek and to reflect on whether that sensation belongs to you, to the breeze, or whether it's simply an expression of the element of air giving rise to both. One of the effects of this practice could be the disruption of our sense of separateness from the world around us. Instead, we might experience our bodies as sites of expression for the natural flow of these elements. For instance, this breath is not mine. I'm not this breath. This breath is not myself, this is air expressing its properties in the world. The idea here is that this practice might enable us to participate in say, the expression of air as an element of the world before we start attempting to insert our sense of self into that experience. Before this breath is mine it's simply the movement of air, hence there's a sense in which our conception of self emerges from these qualities of the world. That is, we are caused by the elements. Now, this neatly reverses the way we usually engage with our sense of self as the origin of our experiences. The self emerges as a result of those experiences, but not the other way around. This experience of continuity with the world around us can be enhanced by practicing this exercise outside in nature, near a stream, amongst trees, on a mountain, next to a campfire on the beach, anywhere the elements are clearly at work. Although of course, they're at work everywhere, including in your kitchen, at the bus stop, or in the shower. We're turning to the imaginal practices of the mountain and lake meditations that we touched on in the 2nd session of this module asking whether they are really forms of mindfulness meditation or whether they do something else. Seeing them as imaginal variations on this elemental mindfulness practice might help us to fold them into a mindfulness regime effectively. Given the important implications of these elemental practices, it's interesting to reflect that the natural world and especially trees played a really important role in the life of the Buddha himself. We've already seen how the Buddha achieved enlightenment while sitting under the Bodhi tree and how when pressed for confirmation of his awakening, he took his two fingers and pressed them down into the soil and the Earth bore witness. But it's also recorded that the Buddha was born as his mother leaned against a tree for support, and that the Buddha died surrounded by trees who bore witness to his passing from this realm. It's partially for that reason that the Dalai Lama's climate appeal to the world in 2020 stated that were Buddha to return to our world, he would certainly be connected to the campaign to protect the environment. The Buddha he said, would be green. Hopefully, this session has offered some ways to understand how our place in the natural world might be foundational and helpful to mindfulness practice. Perhaps it has also managed to suggest some of the ways in which practicing outside in nature might support our practice. Even though as we've seen, mindfulness can be cultivated anywhere where so ever you are. Indeed the only place it can be practiced is here and now. Some audio guidance for the elements practice from the wonderful Dawn Scott is included in the course materials. In our next session, we're going to move on to consider how the mindfulness movement such as it is relates to social and political questions of territorialism and colonization as well as environmentalism, and then we'll wrap up with some material about gardening. See you soon.
