Of course it would be absurd to advocate that all our little habits
be abolished, for many are innocuous and even useful. But we should
regularly ask ourselves whether we still have control over them,
whether we can give them up or alter them at will. We can answer
this question for ourselves in two ways: by attending to our
habitual actions mindfully for a certain period of time, and
second, by actually giving them up temporarily in cases where this
will not have any harmful or disturbing effects upon ourselves or
others. If we turn on them the light of //direct vision//, looking
at them or performing them as if for the first time, these little
routine activities, and the habitual sights around us, will assume
a new glow of interest and stimulation. This also holds good for
our professional occupation and its environment, and for our close
human relationships if they should have become stale by habit. The
relationship to one's marriage partner, to friends, to colleagues,
may thus receive a great rejuvenation. A fresh and direct vision
will also reveal that one can relate to people or do things in a
different and more beneficial way than one did before by force of
habit.

An acquired capacity to give up minor habits will prove its worth
in the fight against more dangerous proclivities. It will also come
to our aid at times when we are faced with serious changes in our
life which forcefully deprive us of fundamental habits. Loosening
the hardened soil of our routine behavior and thoughts will have
an enlivening effect on our vital energy, our mental vigor, and
our power of imagination. But what is most important, into that
loosened soil we shall be able to plant the seeds of vigorous
spiritual progress.

Associative Thought
to sequences of activity,
to judgements of people or things proceeds by way of associative
thinking. From the objects, ideas, situations and people that we
encounter, we select certain distinctive marks, and associate these
marks with our own response to them. If these encounters recur,
they are associated first with those marks selected earlier, and
then with our original or strongest response. Thus these marks
become a signal for releasing a standard reaction, which may
consist of a long sequence of connected acts or thoughts familiar
through repeated practice or experience. This way of functioning
makes it unnecessary for us to apply new effort and painstaking
scrutiny to each single step in such a sequence. The result is a
great simplification of life, permitting us to release energy for
other tasks. In fact, in the evolution of the human mind,
associative thinking was a progressive step of decisive importance.
It enabled us to learn from experience, and thus led up to the
discovery and application of causal laws.

Yet along with these benefits, associative thinking can also bring
many grave dangers if it is applied faultily or thoughtlessly and
not carefully controlled. Let us draw up a partial list of these
danger points:

1. Associative thinking, recurring again and again in similar
situations, may easily perpetuate and strengthen faulty or
incomplete initial observations, errors of judgement, and emotional
prejudices such as love, hate and pride.

2. Incomplete observations and restricted viewpoints in judgement,
sufficient to deal with one particular situation, may prove quite
inadequate and entail grave consequences if mechanically applied to
changed circumstances.

3. Due to misdirected associative thinking, a strong instinctive
dislike may be felt for things, places or persons which in some way
are merely reminiscent of unpleasant experiences, but actually have
no connection with them.

These briefly-stated instances show how vital it is for us to
scrutinize from time to time the mental grooves of our associative
thoughts, and to review the various habits and stereotype reactions
deriving from them. In other words, we must step out of our ruts,
regain a direct vision of things, and make a fresh appraisal of our
habits in the light of that vision.

If we look once again over the list of potential dangers deriving
from uncontrolled associative thinking, we shall better understand
the Buddha's insistence upon getting to the bedrock of experience.
In the profound and terse stanzas called "The Cave," included in
the //Sutta Nipata//, the Buddha says that the "full penetration of
//sense impression (phassa)// will make one free from greed" and
that "by understanding //perception (sanna)//, one will be able to
cross the flood of samsara" (stanza 778 f.).[10] By placing
mindfulness as a guard at the very first gate through which
thoughts enter the mind, we shall be able to control the incomers
much more easily, and shut out unwanted intruders. Thus the purity
of "luminous consciousness" can be maintained against "adventitious
defilements" (Anguttara, 1:51).

The Satipatthana Sutta provides a systematic training for inducing
direct, fresh, and undistorted vision. The training covers the
entire personality in its physical and mental aspects, and includes
the whole world of experience. The methodical application of the
several exercises to oneself (//ajjhatta//), to others
(//bahiddha//), and alternatingly to both, will help uncover
erroneous conceptions due to misdirected associative thinking and
misapplied analogies.

The principal types of false associative thinking are covered, in
the terminology of the Dhamma, by the four kinds of
//misapprehension// or //perverted views (vipallasa)//, which
wrongly take (1) what is impermanent for permanent, (2) what is
painful, or conducive to pain, for happiness, (3) what has no self
and is unsubstantial for a self or an abiding substance, and (4)
what is impure for beautiful. These perverted views arise through
a false apprehension of the characteristic marks of things. Under
the influence of our passions and false theories, we perceive
things selectively in a one-sided or erroneous way, and then
associate them wrongly with other ideas. By applying bare attention
to our perceptions and impressions, gradually we can free them from
these misapprehensions, progressing steadily towards the //direct
vision// of things as they really are.

The Sense of Urgency
stirred to a sense of urgency
(//samvega//) by things which are deeply moving, will experience a
release of energy and courage enabling him to break through his
timid hesitations and his rigid routine of life and thought. If
that sense of urgency is kept alive, it will bestow the earnestness
and persistence required for the work of liberation.

Thus said the teachers of old:

"This very world here is our field of action.
It harbors the unfoldment of the holy path,
And many things to break complacency,
Be stirred by things which may well move the heart,
And being stirred, strive wisely and fight on!"

Our closest surroundings are full of stirring things. If we
generally do not perceive them as such, that is because habit has
made our vision dull and our heart insensitive. The same thing
happens to us even with the Buddha's teaching. When we first
encounter the teaching, we receive a powerful intellectual and
emotional stimulation; but gradually the impetus tends to lose its
original freshness and impelling force. The remedy is to constantly
renew it by turning to the fullness of life around us, which
illustrates the Four Noble Truths in ever new variations. A direct
vision will impart new lifeblood even to the most common
experiences of every day, so that their true nature appears through
the dim haze of habit and speaks to us with a fresh voice. It may
well be just the long accustomed sight of the beggar at the street
corner, or a weeping child, or the illness of a friend, which
startles us afresh, makes us think, and stirs our sense of urgency
in treading resolutely the path that leads to the cessation of
suffering.

We know the beautiful account of how Prince Siddhatta first came
face to face with old age, illness and death while driving his
chariot through the royal city after a long period of isolation in
a make-believe world. This ancient story may well be historical
fact, for we know that in the lives of many great men common events
often gain a symbolic significance and lead to major consequences
far beyond their ordinary appearance. Great minds find significance
in the seemingly commonplace and invest the fleeting moment with
far-reaching efficacy. But, without contesting the inner truth of
that old story, we may reasonably believe that the young prince had
actually seen before, with his fleshly eyes, old people, sick
people, and those who had succumbed to death. However, on all these
earlier occasions, he would not have been touched very deeply by
these sights--as is the case with most of us most of the time. That
earlier lack of sensitivity may have been due to the carefully
protected, artificial seclusion of his petty, though princely,
happiness, the hereditary routine of his life into which his father
had placed him. Only when he broke through the golden cage of easy-
going habits could the facts of suffering strike him as forcibly as
if he had seen them for the first time. Then only was he stirred by
them to a sense of urgency that led him out of the home life and
set his feet firmly on the road to enlightenment.

The more //clearly// and //deeply// our minds and hearts respond to
the truth of suffering manifest in the very common facts of our
existence, the less often shall we need a repetition of the lesson
and the shorter will be our migration through samsara. The clarity
of perception evoking our response will come from an undeflected
directness of vision, bestowed by bare attention (//sati//); and
the //depth// of experience will come from wise reflection or clear
comprehension (//sampajanna//).

The Road to Insight

Directness of vision is also a chief characteristic of the
methodical practice of insight meditation. There it is identified
with the direct or experiential knowledge bestowed by meditation,
as distinguished from the inferential knowledge obtained by study
and reflection. In the meditative development of insight, one's own
physical and mental processes are directly viewed, without the
interference of abstract concepts or the filtering screens of
emotional evaluation. For in this context these only obscure or
camouflage the naked facts, detracting from the strong immediate
impact of reality. Conceptual generalizations from experience are
very useful in their place; but if they interrupt the meditative
practice of bare attention, they tend to "shove aside" or dispose
of the particular fact, by saying, as it were: "It is nothing else
but this." Generalizing thought inclines to become impatient with
a recurrent type, and after having it classified, soon finds it
boring.

Bare attention, however, being the key instrument of methodological
insight, keeps to the particular. It follows keenly the rise and
fall of successive physical and mental processes. Though all
phenomena of a given series may be true to type (e.g., inhalations
and exhalations), bare attention regards each of them as distinct,
and conscientiously registers its separate birth and death. If
mindfulness remains alert, these repetitions of type will, by their
multiplication, exert not a reduced but an intensified impact on
the mind. The three characteristics--impermanence, suffering, and
voidness of self-inherent in the process observed, will stand out
more and more clearly. They will appear in the light shed by the
phenomena themselves, not in a //borrowed// light, not even a light
borrowed from the Buddha, the peerless and indispensable guide to
these experiences.

These physical and mental phenomena, in their "self-luminosity,"
will then convey a growing sense of urgency to the meditator:
revulsion, dissatisfaction, awareness of danger, followed by
detachment--though certainly joy, happiness, and calm, too, will
not be absent throughout the practice. Then, if all other
conditions of inner maturity are fulfilled, the first direct vision
of final liberation will dawn with the stream-winner's
(//sotapanna//) indubitable knowledge: "Whatever has the nature of
arising, has the nature of vanishing."

Thus, in the unfoldment of the power of mindfulness, Satipatthana
will prove itself as the true embodiment of the Dhamma, of which it
was said:

"Well-proclaimed is the Dhamma by the Blessed One,
visible here and now, not delayed, inviting inspection,
onward-leading, to be directly experienced by the wise."

* * * * * * * *

NOTES

[1] See Nyanaponika Thera, //The Heart of Buddhist Meditation// (London;
Rider & Co., 1962).

[2] Comy. to Sutta Nipata v. 334.

[3] Anagarika B. Govinda, //The Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhist
Philosophy (London: Rider & Co., 1961).

[4] //The Way of Mindfulness//, Bhikku Soma (Kandy: Buddhist Publication
Society, 1975), p. 83.

[5] See //Path of Purification//, p. 135 f.

[6] //Ibid//, pp. 136 ff. The three rousing factors are investigation,
energy and rapture; the three calming ones, tranquility,
concentration and equanimity.

[7] A treatise of Chines Taoism, strongly influenced by Mahayana.

[8] About these important qualitative constituents of good, wholesome
(//kusala//) consciousness, see the author's //Abhidhamma Studies//
(Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1965), pp. 51 f.

[9] This may be a somewhat ironical reference by that great sage to the
fact that the well-known Mayayanic Bodhisattva vow of liberating all
beings of the universe is often taken much too light-heartedly by
many of his fellow Mahayanists.

[10] Compare also the passage on the significance of sense impression
(or contact) in the concluding section of the Brahmajala Sutta
(Digha 1).