Let us take the example of a pleasant visual object which has
aroused our liking. At first that liking might not be very active
and insistent. If at this point the mind is already able to keep
still for detached observation or reflection, the visual perception
can easily be divested of its still very slight admixture of lust.
The object becomes registered as "just something seen that has
caused a pleasant feeling," or the attraction felt is sublimated
into a quiet aesthetic pleasure. But if that earliest chance has
been missed, the liking will grow into attachment and into the
desire to possess. If now a stop is called, the thought of desire
may gradually lose its strength; it will not easily turn into an
insistent craving, and no actual attempts to get possession of the
desired object will follow. But if the current of lust is still
unchecked, then the thought of desire may express itself by speech
in asking for the object or even demanding it with impetuous words.
That is, unwholesome mental kamma is followed by unwholesome verbal
kamma. A refusal will cause the original current of lust to branch
out into additional streams of mental defilements, either sadness
or anger. But if even at that late stage one can stop for quiet
reflection or bare attention, accept the refusal, and renounce
wish-fulfilment, further complications will be avoided. However, if
clamoring words are followed by unwholesome bodily kamma, and if,
driven by craving, one tries to get possession of the desired
object by stealth or force, then the kammic entanglement is
complete and its consequences must be experienced in their full
impact. But still, if even after the completion of the evil act,
one stops for reflection, it will not be in vain. For the
mindfulness that arises in the form of remorseful retrospection
will preclude a hardening of character and may prevent a repetition
of the same action.

The Exalted One once said to his son, Rahula (Majjhima 61):

"Whatever action you //intend// to perform, by body, speech or
mind, you should consider that action... If, in considering it, you
realize: 'This action which I intend to perform will be harmful to
myself, or harmful to others or harmful to both; it will be an
unwholesome action, producing suffering, resulting in suffering'--
then you should certainly not perform that action.

"Also //while// you are performing an action, by body, speech or
mind, you should consider that action... If, in considering it, you
realize: 'This action which I am performing is harmful to myself,
or harmful to others or harmful to both; it is an unwholesome
action, producing suffering, resulting in suffering'--then you
should desist from such an action.

"Also //after// you have performed an action, by body, speech or
mind, you should consider that action... If, in considering it,
you realize: 'This action which I have performed has been
harmful to myself, or harmful to others, or harmful to both; it
was an unwholesome action, producing suffering, resulting in
suffering-- then you should in the future refrain from it."

2. //Tranquility//. We shall now consider how stopping for bare
attention also helps one to attain and strengthen tranquility
(//samatha//) in its double sense: general peace of mind and
meditative concentration.

By developing the habit of pausing for bare attention, it becomes
increasingly easier to withdraw into one's own inner stillness when
unable to escape bodily from the loud, insistent noises of the
outer world. It will be easier to forego useless reactions to the
foolish speech or deeds of others. When the blows of fate are
particularly hard and incessant, a mind trained in bare attention
will find a refuge in the haven of apparent passivity or watchful
non-action, from which position it will be able to wait patiently
until the storms have passed. There are situations in life when it
is best to allow things to come to their natural end. He who is
able to keep still and wait will often succeed where aggressiveness
or busy activity would have been vanquished. Not only in critical
situations, but also in the normal course of life, the experience
won by observant keeping still will convince us that we need not
actively respond to every impression we receive, or regard every
encounter with people or things as a challenge to our interfering
activity.

By refraining from busying ourselves unnecessarily, external
frictions will be reduced and the internal tensions they bring will
loosen up. Greater harmony and peace will pervade the life of every
day, bridging the gap between normal life and the tranquility of
meditation. Then there will be fewer of those disturbing inner
reverberations of everyday restlessness which, in a coarse or
subtle form, invade the hours of meditation, producing bodily and
mental unrest. Consequently, the hindrance of agitation, a chief
obstacle to concentration, will appear less often and will be
easier to overcome when it arises.

By cultivating the attitude of bare attention as often as
opportunity offers, the centrifugal forces of mind, making for
mental distraction, will peter out; the centripetal tendency,
turning the mind inward and making for concentration, will gather
strength. Craving will no longer run out in pursuit of a variety of
changing objects.

Regular practice of sustained attention to a continuous series of
events prepares the mind for sustained concentration on a
//single// object, or a limited number of objects, in the strict
practice of meditation. Firmness or steadiness of mind, another
important factor in concentration, will likewise be cultivated.

Thus, the practice of keeping still, pausing and stopping for bare
attention, fosters several salient components of meditative
tranquility: calmness, concentration, firmness, and reduction of
the multiplicity of objects. It raises the average level of normal
consciousness and brings it closer to the level of the meditative
mind. This is an important point because often too wide a gap
between these two mental levels repeatedly frustrates attempts at
mental concentration and hinders the achievement of smooth
continuity in meditative practice.

In the sequence of the seven factors of enlightenment, we find that
the enlightenment factor of tranquility (//passaddhi
sambojjhanga//) precedes that of concentration (//samadhi-
sambojjhanga//). Expressing the same fact, the Buddha says: "If
tranquilized within, the mind will become concentrated." Now in the
light of our previous remarks, we shall better understand these
statements.

3. //Insight//. It has been said by the Exalted One: "He whose mind
is concentrated sees things as they really are." Therefore, all
those ways by which bare attention strengthens concentration also
provide a supporting condition for the development of insight. But
there is also a more direct and specific help which insight
receives from keeping still in bare attention.

Generally, we are more concerned with handling and using things
than with knowing them in their true nature. Thus we usually grasp
in haste the very first few signals conveyed to us by a perception.
Then, through deeply ingrained habit, those signals evoke a
standard response by way of judgements such as good-bad, pleasant-
unpleasant, useful-harmful, right-wrong. These judgements, by which
we define the objects in relation to ourselves, lead to
corresponding reactions by word or deed. Only rarely does attention
dwell upon a common or familiar object for any longer time than is
needed to receive the first few signals. So, for the most part, we
perceive things in a fragmentary manner and thence misconceive
them. Further, only the very first phase of the object's life-span,
or a little more, comes into the focus of our attention. One may
not even be consciously aware that the object is a process with an
extension in time--a beginning and an end; that it has many aspects
and relations beyond those casually perceived in a limited
situation; that, in brief, it has a kind of evanescent
individuality of its own. A world perceived in this superficial way
will consist of shapeless little lumps of experiences marked by a
few subjectively selected signs or symbols. The symbols chosen are
determined mainly by the individual's self-interest; sometimes they
are even misapplied. The shadow-like world that results includes
not only the outer environment and other persons, but also a good
part of one's own bodily and mental processes. These, too become
subjected to the same superficial manner of conceptualization. The
Buddha points out four basic misconceptions that result from
distorted perceptions and unmethodical attention: taking the impure
for pure, the impermanent for lasting, the painful and pain-
bringing for pleasant, and the impersonal for a self or something
belonging to the self. When the seal of self-reference is thus
stamped again and again upon the world of everyday experience, the
basic misconception, "This belongs to me" (//attaniya//) will
steadily put forth roots into all the bodily and mental factors of
our being. Like the hair-roots of a plant, these will be fine, but
firm and widespread--to such an extent, in fact, that the notions
of "I" and "mine" will hardly be shaken by mere intellectual
convictions about the non-existence of self (//anatta//).

These grave consequences issue from that fundamental perceptual
situation: our rush into hasty or habitual reactions after
receiving the first few signals from our perceptions. But if we
muster the restraining forces of mindfulness and pause for bare
attention, the material and mental processes that form the objects
of mind at the given moment will reveal themselves to us more fully
and more truly. No longer dragged at once into the whirlpool of
self-reference, allowed to unfold themselves before the watchful
eye of mindfulness, they will disclose the diversity of their
aspects and the wide net of their correlations and
interconnections. The connection with self-interest, so narrow and
often falsifying, will recede into the background, dwarfed by the
wider view now gained. The processes observed display in their
serial occurrence and in their component parts a constant birth and
death, a rise and a fall. Thereby the facts of change and
impermanence impress themselves on the mind with growing intensity.
The same discernment of rise and fall dissolves the false
conceptions of unity created under the influence of the egocentric
attitude. Self-reference uncritically overrides diversity; it lumps
things together under the preconceptions of //being// a self or
//belonging to a self//. But bare attention reveals these sham
unities as impersonal and conditioned phenomena. Facing thus again
and again the evanescent, dependent and impersonal nature of life-
processes with and without, we will discover their monotony and
unsatisfactory nature: in other words, the truth of suffering.
Thus, by the simple device of slowing down, pausing and keeping
still for bare attention, all three of the characteristics of
existence--impermanence, suffering, and non-self--will open
themselves to penetrative insight (//vipassana//).

Spontaneity
through training, the practice of pausing, stopping, and
keeping still for bare attention will itself become quite
spontaneous. It will grow into a selective mechanism of the mind
that, with an increasing reliability and swiftness of response, can
prevent the upsurge of evil or unwise impulses. Without such a
skill we may intellectually realise those impulses to be
unwholesome, but still succumb to them due to their own powerful
spontaneity. The practice of pausing mindfully serves, therefore,
to replace unwholesome spontaneity or habits by wholesome ones
grounded in our better knowledge and nobler intentions.

Just as certain reflex movements automatically protect the body,
similarly the mind needs spontaneous spiritual and moral self-
protection. The practice of bare attention will provide this vital
function. A person of average moral standards instinctively shrinks
from thoughts of theft or murder. With the help of the method of
bare attention, the range of such spontaneous moral brakes can be
vastly extended and ethical sensitivity greatly heightened.

In an untrained mind, noble tendencies and right thoughts are often
assailed by the sudden outbreak of passions and prejudices. They
either succumb or assert themselves only with difficulty after an
inner struggle. But if the spontaneity of the unwholesome is
checked or greatly reduced, as described above, our good impulses
and wise reflections will have greater scope to emerge and express
themselves freely and spontaneously. Their natural flow will give
us greater confidence in the power of the good within us; it will
also carry more conviction for others. That spontaneity of the good
will not be erratic, for it will have deep and firm roots in
previous methodical training. Here appears a way by which a
premeditated good thought (//sasankharika-kusala//) may be
transformed into a spontaneous good thought (//asankharika-kusala-
citta//). According to the psychology of the Abhidhamma, such a
thought, if combined with knowledge, takes the first place in the
scale of ethical values. In this way we shall achieve a practical
understanding of a saying in //The Secret of the Golden
Flower//:[7] "If one attains intentionally to an unintentional
state one has comprehension." This saying invites a paraphrase in
Pali terms: //Sasankharena asankharijam pattabbam//, "by
premeditated intentional effort spontaneity can be won."

If the numerous aids to mental growth and liberation found in the
Buddha's teaching are wisely utilized, there is actually nothing
that can finally withstand the Satipatthana method; and this method
starts with the simple practice of learning to pause and stop for
bare attention.

Slowing-down
~
Against the impetuosity, rashness and heedlessness of the untrained
mind, the practice of pausing and stopping sets up a deliberate
slowing-down. The demands of modern life, however, make it
impracticable to introduce such a slow-down of function into the
routine of the average working day. But as an antidote against the
harmful consequences of the hectic speed of modern life, it is all
the more important to cultivate that practice in one's leisure
hours, especially in periods of strict Satipatthana practice. Such
practice will also bestow the worldly benefits of greater calm,
efficiency and skill in one's daily round of work.

For the purpose of meditative development, slowing-down serves as
an effective training in heedfulness, sense-control, and
concentration. But apart from that, it has a more specific
significance for meditative practice. In the commentary to the
Satipatthana Sutta, it is said that the slowing down of movements
may help in //regaining lost concentration// on a chosen object. A
monk, so we read, had bent his arm quickly without remembering his
subject of meditation as his rule of practice demanded. On becoming
aware of that omission he took his arm back to its previous
position and repeated the movement mindfully. The subject of
meditation referred to was probably "clearly comprehending action,"
as mentioned in the Satipatthana Sutta: "In bending and stretching
he acts with clear comprehension."

The slowing-down of certain bodily movements during strict
meditative training is particularly helpful in gaining //insight-
knowledge (//vipassana-nana//), especially the direct awareness of
change and non-self. To a great extent, it is the rapidity of
movement that strengthens the illusions of unity, identity, and
substantiality in what is actually a complex evanescent process.
Therefore, in the strict practice of Satipatthana, the slowing down
of such actions as walking, bending and stretching, so as to
discern the several phases of each movement, provides a powerful
aid for direct insight into the three characteristics of all
phenomena. The meditator's contemplation will gain increasing force
and significance if he notices clearly how each partial phase of
the process observed arises and ceases by itself, and nothing of it
goes over or "transmigrates" to the next phase.

Under the influence of pausing for bare attention, the average
rhythm of our everyday actions, speech and thoughts will also
become more quiet and peaceful. Slowing down the hurried rhythm of
life means that thoughts, feelings, and perceptions will be able to
complete the entire length of their natural lifetime. Full
awareness will extend up to their end phase: to their last
vibrations and reverberations. Too often that end phase is cut off
by an impatient grasping at new impressions, or by hurrying on to
the next stage of a line of thought before the earlier one has been
clearly comprehended. This is one of the main reasons for the
disorderly state of the average mind, which is burdened by a vast
amount of indistinct or fragmentary perceptions, stunted emotions
and undigested ideas. Slowing-down will prove an effective device
for recovering the fullness and clarity of consciousness. A fitting
simile, and at the same time an actual example, is the procedure
called for in the practice of mindfulness of breathing
(//anapanasati//): mindfulness has to cover the whole extent of the
breath, its beginning, middle and end. This is what is meant by the
passage in the sutta, "Experiencing the //whole// (breath-) body,
I shall breathe in and out." Similarly, the entire "breath" or
rhythm of our life will become deeper and fuller if, through
slowing-down, we get used to sustained attention.

The habit of prematurely cutting off processes of thought, or
slurring over them, has assumed serious proportions in the man of
modern urban civilization. Restlessly he clamors for ever new
stimuli in increasingly quicker succession just as he demands
increasing speed in his means of locomotion. This rapid bombardment
of impressions has gradually blunted his sensitivity, and thus he
always needs new stimuli, louder, coarser, and more variegated.
Such a process, if not checked, can end only in disaster. Already
we see at large a decline of finer aesthetic susceptibility and a
growing incapacity for genuine natural joy. The place of both is
taken by a hectic, short-breathed excitement incapable of giving
any true aesthetic or emotional satisfaction. "Shallow mental
breath" is to a great extent responsible for the growing
superficiality of "civilized man" and for the frightening spread of
nervous disorders in the West. It may well become the start of a
general deterioration of human consciousness in its qualitative
level, range and strength. This danger threatens all those, in the
East as well as in the West, who lack adequate spiritual protection
from the impact of technical civilization. Satipatthana can make an
important contribution to remedying this situation, in the way we
have briefly indicated here. Thus the method will prove beneficial
from the worldly point of view as well.

Here, however, we are chiefly concerned with the psychological
aspects of mindfulness and their significance for meditative
development. Sustained attention, helped by slowing-down, will
affect the quality of consciousness mainly in three ways: (a) in
intensifying consciousness; (b) in clarifying the object's
characteristic features; and (c) in revealing the object's
relatedness.