four qualities of a teacher: GALE

in Thanissaro bhkkhis article on finding a good teacher, he lists four qualities to look for.

wisdom

1. generosity (aware and giving)

2. actions matter

virtue

3. doesnt deliberately LIE, and if so, is ashamed

4. even handed in applying rules (to themself, others, people they like and don't like).

acronym: GALE, generosity, actions, lying, and even-handed. 

on generosity, it's actually more or most important than they can recognize generosity whenever present, however small.  if a villain does a small kindness, the teacher can see both the kindness and the larger harm. the opposite is to see nothing positive just because a person is not liked. 

on actions matter, this is a belief that actions matter, that consequences matter. this is what is largely meant by Karma/Karma in the Buddhist canon. the opposites are that everything is fate and our actions don't matter. or, that one can do some chants or good deeds to erase the consequences of their actions.

on lying, it's straightforward in part: don't lie. but the way Thanissaro Bhikkhu presents it, he emphasizes having shame if you do lie. I think this is more pertinent, since modern culture excuses lots of little lies. it acknowledges that people do lie. it sets a bar: even if you catch a teacher in a lie, see if they admit to it and fess up. they should show shame, rather than justification and digging in. the opposite is shameless lying, and also convenient lies.

one even handedness, this means they aren't partisan in applying rules. for example, they don't justify some people's shady actions because they are friends or beneficial to our cause, but then denounce the other side's same actions. this is the anti hypocrite and anti double-standard rule. the opposite is partisanship. 

Is it easier to find an educated human than a heedful human?

As I wrap up my time in Kansas, I have an insight that has taken a long time to uncover. Laughably long, because it's easy to see once it is pointed out.

I have historically valued and lauded intelligence and education and knowledge. If someone has a PhD or 10 years of experience in something, that seems the most amazing. I then make the leap that they can see things with incredible nuance and discernment. That last step is not quite accurate.

I've seen and discerned how many "educated" folks aren't careful and aren't trustworthy. They know the vocabulary to a large extent. They know what other people know. They know lots of facts. But I have also seen them prone to shortcuts. Prone to anti-intellectualism. They are nannies (status quo rule followers) rather than nerds (investigators of how things work and how they can break). With stature, that gives them an excuse. "I know a lot, so just trust me on this one". I had a very senior economist from MIT glibly say that "energy efficiency doesn't work" to dismiss a line of inquiry. How can you trust someone as an umpire and gatekeepers who would be so uncareful in their words?

Education and deep experience is rare. This is true for Masters degree holders as well as Master Plumbers. And just using that title, which takes a lot of effort to get, it would seem like finding people of deep education is very rare. In the USA, this is probably about 1 to 3% of the population who have Masters or are masters of something.

But heedfulness is rarer.

This is puzzling in a way because heedfulness is cheap and requires no special equipment or tuition fees. To get a master's degree or to become a master tradesperson, that typically requires 12 years of normal schooling and then another 6-10+ years is specialty schooling. But, to be heedful, one might even have no schooling. One needs to look, observe, and act carefully. That is enough. If your job is to gather water from the local well, doing that job heedfully means taking it seriously and doing a good job. One can even have fun with it. But one can't use fun as an excuse to be non-heedful, to excuse mistakes and carelessness.

And, that's part of the thing with society. Modern society, with it's consumer siren song, celebrates carelessness and mistakes (that you get away with). Ancient society did similar things, so it wasn't a world where "things were so much better before XYZ". Very few cultures have emphasized heedfulness. In a weird way, all the religions and all the cultures that promoted "duty" to family or tribe were teaching some elements of heedfulness, albeit inadvertently. So, I do agree (also in a weird way) that the reactionary Christians in America are actually (inadvertently) teaching some heedfulness when they try to promote "traditional Christian values". Or, if I were looking for heedful kids, I'd find more coming out of a church then coming out of an Instagram feed; even a progressive Instagram feed.

So heedfulness is rarer than erudite education. I'm not sure on the number, but my guess is approx 1 out of 1000 or less. 

These days, I am trying to hone my heedfulness meter so I can find these folks. My main difficulty is that my heedfulness meter is biased to people who are heedful in the way I am. If they are heedful in a way that looks very different, it's very easy for me to miss them.

Lastly, and Topeka and Cornell has taught me this, heedfulness is not very correlated with education or social status.  You can find a lot of unheedful people who are doctors or policy makers. They are probably good enough for their jobs, but I wouldn't trust them to be gentle or careful when tempted by pleasure, greedy, or revenge.

Uudr 

Happiness is tricky, some questions to ask

Happiness is tricky and messy. Here are some questions to ask to look at your happiness:

Is your happiness based (only) on your own actions or depends on the actions of others?

Is your happiness bsed on your mind and mind's actions? Or dependent on comforts of the body?

Is your happiness in conflict in the happiness of others? This can be looked at both shallowly and deeply.

Shallowly: are you looking for some positionality or possession that someone else covets? If so, there can only be one winner.

Deeply: is your happiness dependent on the exploitation of others, indirectly?

Deep and edgy: is your happiness dependent on the exploitation of others, directly, but you look the other way?

(Note: your survival is likely dependent on harm to others, and this is unavoidable. It can be lessened, but dont get in fights about who is is holier than others. Your happiness does not need to depend on harm to others, because your happiness (in the buddhist perspective) actually does not depend on your survival)

A lot of happiness is self-indulgence, disguised as reasonableness, masking grandiosity and greed.

Due dilligence is good and consent is good, but neither are really sufficient if you want to be very heedful.

unperturbable

No matter what the conditions are outside, you don't have to suffer.

You find a basis for happiness beyond the touch of conditions.

That's the part of the dharma that is off the charts.

From Thanissaro Bhikkhu - 080819 A Dhamma Map.mp3

Brene Brown is 90-95% helpful, perhaps?

Brene Brown is 90-95% helpful. I think that's higher than me! She is well studied, well-researched. But she is not 100% helpful. Barely anyone is 100%. Even God and the Bible or <insert your favorite holy text> is fallable, even if only because your interpretation of the text is fallable.  So this idea of wise-judgment or discernment is pretty essential, regardless of if you are Buddhist or not. Taking something in whole-hog can be dangerous. See my post on NVC.


Let's take a specific example:

https://brenebrown.com/resources/atlas-of-the-heart-list-of-emotions/
A list of 87 emotions and about 8 anti-patterns for empathy (e.g., fake empathy)

As I read through her list, I'm struck by how much the emotions are about emotional narratives. They aren't (all) raw emotions. They are emotions with context and reactions and justifications or avoidance. So they are complex emotions; they are the emotions then mixed with contact with stories/ego, and then secondary emotions, and then maybe social context.

It seems, to me, like she is missing some basic things from the list of 87. And overemphasizing the secondary emotions.

She doesn't have unsafe (and safe). Some might not call these emotions, but in trauma work, that sense of safety is beyond words, possibly before emotions, and hard wired into the Amygdala, the Limbic system, and various midbrain structures. Most people don't experience "unsafe" by itself because they are primed to then go to the reaction. Often fear. Or frustration. Or blame. These, Brown lists. But a big part of Buddhism (IMHO) is to be able to experience safe and unsafe in it's raw form. And then to watch the chain of the brain.

In Buddhism we have Vedana, translated as feeling tone or emotions. A buddhist innovation seems to be to separate into 3 categories:  Pleasure and Pain and Neutral (or neither). Pleasure and pain are not directly listed in Brown's list, but there are synonyms or subcategories included. Again, the subcategories may be elaborations, and hence in Buddhism, they are seen as possible unhelpful elaborations: me-making and my-making, the chain of clinging or papanca.

The overemphasizing is the small space she gives to neutral. She has "calm" and "contented" and a few others. In my Buddhism, I've noticed how much of life is inherently neutral and impersonal. And how much my own story making is what turns it into something positive or negative, and personal. This distinction is lost in Brown's roadmap.

To praise Brown's work, it is excellent at helping people feel more. In the investigation phase of meditation, it's very good to ask whether one is feeling any of those 87 emotions. It's a tremendous vocabulary, and I think it's eye opening to read. One might spend a day or even a week on each one. So, in explore mode, these 87 are great.

In a normative sense, it can be problematic. Brown's arc is one of progress and change and healing. And so it is asking us to privilege and reinforce some emotions while trying to move away from others. Buddhism has some similar prescriptions. We are encouraged to give up anger (or a specific type of anger, to be precise), for example.  But, in both Brown's map and Buddhism's map, we really ought to look at and deeply understand that anger. We are looking toward transformation and resilience. Not avoidance or "smash".  That subtle distinction can easily get lost.

Her take on "more empathy"... again, probably 90-95% helpful. But some cautions.

There are people where more empathy is 100% helpful for right now. And there are people where more empathy is not helpful. A prime example is people in trauma; getting more into empathy and in touch with their emotions is not exactly the optimal trauma treatment. It starts with getting people safe in their bodies. It then goes toward something about "reintegration" and a "window of tolerance". For some people, it can be very story-based. And for those people, Freudian approaches can be very helpful. But for some people, Freudian approaches are "too much, too fast" and they can shut down. Because shut down can be a sever setback, we want to be extra, extra careful.

It is skillful to have empathy for people's lack of empathy. And there are ways of reading Brown's work that allows for those grey areas; and there are ways to read it that tend to exorcise those grey areas, which creates it's own clinging, judgment, hiding of our own judgments, etc etc etc.

A Pascal-ian Wager, 95%

So, I think approaching Brown as 90-95% helpful is very beneficial, because one is asked to look and judge for themselves. In the first pass of learning, you just copy and try to get bearings. But the 95% tells you that you can't memorize everything and that's the end. You gotta "be the scientist" and test it out to see if you get the effects. Sometimes you won't get the expected effect, and the 95% rule says, "that's good, keep looking".

If it turns out Brown was 100% correct, you haven't really lost anything. Looking with a careful, discerning eye gives you more knowledge. Knowledge form doing the work and checking, not just ingesting the work.

ON SHAME

Buddhism's take on shame is helpful to sharpen some of Brown's research on shame. Brown sees shame (in my reading) as universally negative, and some may say she has been a powerful force to bring light to the issue of shame. Shame leads people to hide and feel stuck. These are not fun experiences/emotions, so people (in a humanistic and human-centered way) might look to get rid of shame. One might say she is the leader of the war on shame.

To the extent that this "war on shame" is accurate (I think she probably has more nuance, and I am glossing it over and focusing on her main message, not her careful, technical work, which I appreciate), I think it overreaches. Buddhism talks about healthy shame, where we hurt someone or did something we ourselves consider unskillful. In those cases, we are "ashamed" of our actions. The thought of doing it again gives us a sick feeling in the stomach. And that shame protects us; it keeps us from doing the thing again. In that case, shame doesn't beat ourselves up.

One might say that this "shame" stuff is just an issue of using different definitions. Yes and no. Brene Brown's early books on shame talk about what should be defined as shame? Does embarassment count? Is regret shame? I think she settles on some element of hiding. And, yes, if we make a mistake and can openly admit it, then this is a best case scenario. We share with friends and don't feel hiding-shame. This may be optimal, but is it necessary or even common place. I don't think so. If we told a big lie and hurt other people, and we feel shame, we might have some desire to hide it and put it behind us. Angulimala, the Buddhist era serial killer (999 thumbs), probably felt shame about his past as a serial killer once he became a monk, and an accomplished monk at that. As the story goes, people he had hurt would shun him and throw things at him, even when he was highly attained. As he was an arahant, he probably could see that his serial killing had ripple affects, that it chained these people he had hurt to cling to anger and thoughts of revenge. So he might be double ashamed, ashamed at his actions and ashamed at the impacts of fermenting anger in those he hurt.

To be ungenerous to Brene's work to make a point, Brene acolytes (just like NVC acolytes) might say that Angulimala has to get rid of that shame. What would that even mean? To their credit, they don't mean that Angulimala should stop feeling ashamed by bypassing the pain he caused. But it's be easy for an inpatient follower to use Brene's work as a sort of bypass: "Brene says don't be ashamed. You can't tell me I hurt you because that causes me shame". A more patient follower might acknowledge mistakes but then encourage Angulimala to embrace the story or to find a way not to hide. This is probably useful in general, but has a couple of backfires and gotchas. Angulimala, having become an arahant, has gone beyond that tactic; he is beyond the stories and identification. His shame is only to the extent that it makes him careful and heedful in his actions. On the other side, there are apologists or even PTSD people who can get stuck in their stories. So even a transformative story of healing from shame can backfire. Cognitively, it may work. But in the limbic system and the emotions, it can have no effect.

Traveling Nunk, I was wrong, you definitely are deeply practiced

I just went to an online dharma discussion with Traveling Nunk (link).  And I can vouch that her teachings are very good, not fake, helpful.

And since I went into it feeling a bit suspicious. I want to admit my mistake and say I was wrong to be suspicious.

The monk/nun/mendicant is Sister Clear Grace. She has been written up twice in Tricycle:

Meet the Traveling Nunk and Her Mobile Monastery - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review https://tricycle.org/article/traveling-nunk-monastery/

Her claim to notoreity/novelty is that she outfitted a van and decided to go out driving her van and doing Buddhism. I tried to do this in late 2019 and utterly failed. I was expecting she would face similar difficulties.

I also was suspicious since she has some (major?) training in both Theravada and Thich Nhat Hanh / Plum Village, and although I value a lot of what Tai/Hanh teaches, I wasn't sure how much emptiness-based approaches and more traditional Pali canon / 4 noble truths approaches would jive.  Further skepticism (to further dig my own hole) was what I saw as her taking on certain elements of "engaged Buddhism" which suggests that taking on social causes is obligatory. My teachers have been cautious about engaged Buddhism, because it can distort the Buddhism.

I was very wrong.

First, her project/van, the Great Aspiration, is going to places where she feels called, which include homeless camps and other places. She is not glorifying this or trying to show off. In fact, I feel she does this respectfully and quietly. From what I heard from reading the Dear Jane letters by Ajahn Pannavaddho, one of the Zen patriarchs was very careful about engaged Buddhism and the Bodhisattva vows. That patriarch advised that one should take that vow, to alleviate all suffering in the world, but add the caveat at the end: in my mind. Therefore, the vow is to end all suffering in the world in one's own mind. Given how much the Buddha warned about the insufficiency of the world (Uno Loco, Atitto, Tanha Daso), all the attempts to clean up the world are bound to fail if it doesn't mean cleaning up the mind. And one can only start with one's own mind first. So, Sister Clear Grace made several statements suggesting that she not only understands this intellectually, but also knows it in her bones. This doesn't mean we don't strive for unlimited Metta/Goodwill or do what we can in the world. But it does mean we don't expect the world to change just because we try harder, and furthermore that we don't hang the clarity of our mind on the condition of the world.

Second, I think she skillfully merges Theravada teachings and Plum Village teachings. From what I understand of how Tai taught (I never saw him in person), he kept on keeping compassion and interbeing as central teachings, similar to how the Dalai Lama teaches, or the teachings on Tsewa (tenderness) by Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. Deeply influenced by my own conditioning to be a people pleaser, I am easily caught by unhelpful ways of approaching interbeing, patterns of self sacrifice. So I really appreciated the warnings to proceed cautiously in the Pali canon and Ajahn Geoff. Most notably, item 4 of the 5 daily remembrances: you will be separated from everything you hold dear.

In contrast to the Sharon Salzberg approach to loving-kindness which kinda hides the unhelpful reality of remembrance #4, Sister Clear Grace taught in way that doesn't hide this ordinarily brutal truth/reality. Initially, when she spoke of the beauty of being in nature and Sangha, I internally rolled my eyes and thought, "not another Buddhist positivity practitioner". But later she talked about the impermanence of beauty and about how beauty can also catch us into the "stories" or cycle of clinging. I was lucky to hear her present and cover the 12 steps of dependent co-arising (which in Tai's tradition are translated as interdependent co-arising, I believe). It was refreshing to hear (in both her words and he nonverbal cues) that it seemed like she had struggled with this thorny beast and thicket of brambles.

She spoke eloquently about the pleasures of meditation that are "not of the flesh" (technical Pali phrasing), that the Buddha encouraged. In my own understanding, these relate to finding sequentially more and more wholesome pleasures to help stabilize the mind, to do the work.

After speaking of that direct experience, she then remarked, somewhat casually and without fanfare, that even that experience ends. I heard some words of hers that I hope I will remember and resonate in me for a long time coming. "The Dharma shatters at every level."

In the beginning, the Dharma shatters some very coarse Kilesas, like ill will. But in the middle it shatters pleasure seeking, and even pride from virtue (what Ajahn Geoff discusses as the 9 types of conceit). I have experienced these two. And, towards the end, it even shatters itself. I think it was Ajahn Maha Boowa who wrote about his experience of enlightenment. He thought he had achieved it; he was quite learned and quite practiced. But he put his realization to the test. And he found that the pleasure/experience/total release that he had tasted was conditional; something like on the 3rd day of testing, he found a very subtle perturbation. Tan Ajahn had already achieved stream entry and was beyond many of the lower fetters (the lower 3 at least, probably the lower 7 of ten). But he was able to see little bits of the last 3. And so he kept practicing, watching, vigilant clear.

"The Dharma shatters at every level." I am touched to have heard that.

The Buddha himself wrote about this when touching on the nature of Nirvana. It's all to easy to mistake peak experience with Nirvana. And he cautioned that conceiving oneself as being Nirvana, having it, having caused it or anything of those terms is good indication you do not have the taste of Nirvana. In the end, the Dhamma shatters itself, the flame goes out. There is cessation and the knowledge of the cessation.

So, thank you Sister Clear Grace. I was wrong. I was not wrong to be suspicious; I'm suspicious of everyone's teachings including my own. But my suspicions were wrong, unfounded. I, of course, cannot vouch off a 90 minute zoom call on your attainments. But nothing you said was out of line with the word or tone of Buddhist teachings (as I understand them), and much of what you said was deep and in concert with my own understandings (which are admittedly meager).

CODA

I still don't LOVE emptiness and interbeing as teachings, not because I disagree with them when used well, but just because they are too often not used well. And I similarly don't like the word truth; it's got to many English meanings and connotations. I use skillful and unskillful, helpful and unhelpful, or kusala and akusala. (And, if it is the paramita of sacca, I would use reality, accuracy, unveiled reality, or fidelity.) But, as they say, those quibbles are just words and teachings, not the reality of the practice or fruit of practice itself. You appear (and so few do) to speak from direct practice and experience, and Tai was certainly as attained person who spoke from direct practice and experience. It reminds me of how my teacher Ajahn Geoff enjoys skewering the teachings of modern "masters" who overstate emptiness as a complete path, but he has deep respect for Dogen, who (I speculate) used emptiness as a descriptor of the whole path (as opposed to a shortcut).

May you, SCG (teavelingnunk), continue to teach and also progress in your own path. May all the power of all the Buddha, dhamma, and samgha protect you. May you have all the Metta blessings and look after yourself with ease.

PS

The website blog and YouTube channel as of feb2023 are very outdated, with the last update in late 2021, I believe. The most up to date is Facebook.

The website IS a good place to offer donations or to contact her, or her team of supporters. FB messenger also works.  Currently, she is in the middle of a 50 week weekly Zoom meetup. You can sign up for that via a pop-up on her webpage.

My 4 poisons of escape

In my Buddhist journey, I've done a good job with greed and anger. I'm not very materialistic. I don't get angry or offended easily.

But that doesn't mean I don't get caught. And my biggest way of getting caught is to look for escape.  These are my 4 poisons and the color coding I give to them.

Green poison; chess. Other mindless habits, like netflix?

Red poison; sexual and sensual desires, sometimes food

Blue poison; grandiosity

Black poison; escape

These aren't mutually exclusive. For example, I often have Green+Black together.

I'm pretty good at seeing the poisons. But that doesn't stop.me from taking them. It's like part of me is craving numbing out. And I get convinced to numb out.

I no longer trick myself into pretending these aren't poisons. I used to say that sex is natural. Yes, the urge is natural. But the indulgence in it needs to be skillful and careful. Not wishful thinking. Not heedless and making a mess. I used to say grandiosity was necessary, to dream big. Grandiosity can be helpful, sometimes. But the helpfulness is just a small part; the majority is "if only" thinking.

The antidotes to poison are where I should be focusing. Pleasures not of the flesh and skillful pleasures, like Jhana as tuaght by Ajahn Geoff. Or Metta meditation and practice. Or the looking at drawbacks.

The biggest impediment to abandoning the poisons is my impatience. It's like junk food. Yummy and filling in an immediate way. You pay for it later, or it's empty calories. And it crowds out other more skillful things, and habituated oneself to crave the unskillful things.

I've given up Junk Food sex. There, I had a long list of messes that sex created that I felt I needed to clean up. But I haven't given up Junk Food escape. Or junk food mindlessness. Those are solo affairs, so my desire to not get entangled with others (helpful in those cases) doesn't work with solo cases. Or, I should be more precise: it doesn't work reliably enough. It works sometimes. Like right now I had an urge to Netflix or watch porn, and instead I am recollecting Dhamma and writing this post.  But I am fairly certain I will succumb a few times this week. Escape, escape, escape... A dangerous friend. (Which is not actually your friend)

In praise of bed bugs, as training for the mind

The house I bought has bed bugs. Not an insane amount active, but when removing trim and ceiling tiles, I saw their telltale stain.

They have been good training for the mind.

I recall a passage where a well trained mind can have a mind not disgusted in the face of what is disgusting. And all combos of <reaction, trigger>, including being disgusted by what is attractive.

Bed bugs are definitely not pleasant. They itch. It is easy to get obsessed with them. There is a stigma. And there is a harm if I accidentally pass them on to others. It would be awful to cause an infestation in some other house.

But I gotta think about scale. They don't carry disease like mosquitoes. They are a nuisance. I am the itch, but also bigger than the itch (a la Thich Nhat Hanh). In the grand scheme of things, if I cannot even put up with the discomfort of an itch of a bed bug, what possible chance do I have against greed or delusion or the itches of addiction?

I'm also not just rolling over. I'm washing clothes, vacuuming, and caulking gaps. I'm replacing or refinishing floors.

But the training is to not get hijacked by needing the outside world conform to my vision of it. Or, to use that quote from Lou Reed /Laurie Anderson in rolling stone magazine:

To feel the pain but not be the pain.

Update april2023: not bed bugs. Probably mites or rat mites.  Even trickier (and smaller).

Good mind training.

30 minute video about the dangers of Getting What you Want

 I have a 30 minute video on the dangers of Getting What You Want.

It touches on getting what you want, transitory happiness, safety, and growth.

It uses graphs.

It uses Buddhism and hedonic treadmill ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwRmOor9VbU

Slidedeck link is https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1z6YZniHnAoASdjYuWwtX3uO-r1XNbfyRwFBbbfCuXN8/edit?usp=sharing

4 functions of meditation: CLIF

 In my own meditation, I've looked at my mind over many years and with many techniques in mind. There are many different ways to approach it. The Satipatthana sutta has 4 frames of reference and about a dozen lists. Those 4 frames are helpful, but they are ways of looking.

The 4 functions of meditations are frameworks of activity. These are mostly my own invention (to the best of my knowledge), though they mirror tetrad 3 of Anapanasati.

1. Concentration or Focus

2. Listening, Careful Observations

3. Insight, or different ways of looking

4. Fabrication or Creation. This is making the mind do things or see things.

In concentration, one is trying to keep the mind on one object. This is planting a deep pole into the ground. Stay here is both the intention and the result. It's okay to wander, but one is supposed to not focus on the wandering, but simply come back. It's like training a dog. It's about doing one thing over and over and, when needed correcting. And our minds are unruly dogs... They must be corrected over and over and over. The object of concentration can be the breath, an idea, a vision, or a mantra.

Somatically, I teach students to imagine grabbing a stick and sticking it in the ground, and then identifying with that stick and their object of meditation.

In listening, one is trying to make a careful observation of what arises, as quickly and as detailed as possible. This is the heart of awareness meditation, which is what Joseph Goldstein teaches to beginners. Watch it arise, name or note it, then begin again. Don't follow the storyline. If you feel an itch, name it and note it and then just watch it. Don't scratch immediately. Watch it and then, if you must, scratch it slowly, ie mindfully. One is not trying to do any analysis in the sense of picking any thought process apart, or trying to see connections.

Somaticizing listening, I suggest people hold out open hands and wiggle their fingers. Imagine being a spider in the middle of a spider web, and get super sensitive to the web. And notice anything that gets caught in that web.

In insight, the point is to see in a different way and to see connections. Insight comes mostly after listening. You can't have much insight if 90% of the story is in your blind spot. Listening let's you see the story and the blind spots. Now that you can see all the individual objects, you start seeing connections. A useful analogy might be that listening is snapshots/stills and insight is video clips. You see A happen first, then B happen next, and then you add C by choice, and then D happens.  Listening might mean sometimes you see B only. Or sometimes just D. Insight is seeing the patterns.  The Satipatthana sutta (4 frames of reference for mindfulness) is another form of insight. Instead of trying to look at time sequences or co-arising, one looks at individual moments, but from different perspectives. Suppose we mostly look at a person and see the face. Satipatthana suggest we look at the back of the person. And maybe zoomed in to the feet, then legs, etc (component parts). Then maybe zoomed out as one person in a large city or room. And then maybe with a boroscope like in a colonoscopy. Satipatthana, in all 4 frames, also says to look at it as arising and passing away (over time, or over the lifecycle) and also as a non personal observation ("independent and unsustained")

This can be passive, but it can also be active. Like in Satipatthana #3, we can look and ask specific questions. Is there greed, or no greed, or half-half greed? The active is setting the frame. Then we listen.

Somaticizing this, I suggest people get a rock or a mug or a pencil. And then I have them turn it over, put their eye really close, close there eyes and "look" with their hands, etc. This gets into the detail side of insight. And then, imagining the life cycle. The item breaking. But also the component parts. This is related to the Tangerine meditation made famous by Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.

Finally, there is Fabrication. This isn't the final method, in that you need to do the first three to reach the 4. They can come in any order and loop. I just list it last. It is the most active element. At it's heart, fabrication is getting good at arising or extinguishing any mental state. At it's perfection, anger is something you can turn on and off like a light switch. So is Metta/loving kindness. So is desire.

Sharon Salzberg encourages people to start with Metta meditation. It's a good technique for many (but not all). Metta meditation fabricates Goodwill for all people. Kindness is another term that is used. By doing Metta meditation, we are fabricating Goodwill and extinguishing ill-will. We wish nobody to be poisoned or wronged, even if they are "bad people" who cause lots of harm. Fabrication is the main part, but in the course of fabrication, we develop the focus element (#1). And the listening element (#2), because we notice places where it is hard to generate Metta. For example, many people have trouble generating Metta for noisy neighbors or other bothersome people. Probably more have problems generating Metta for themselves. Third, insight is developed, sometimes naturally or by accident, because we start seeing the arising of Metta and its passing, or the arising of ill will and its passing.

Fabrication (including fabricating Metta) is fully active. Hence, there is the possibility of "steamrolling" our emotions. Our emotions might be grief and sadness. Rather than sitting quietly and listening, we might force ourselves (inadvertently) to do Metta. This is what I call "yanky", like yanking the leash of a dog. It works, but it's not skillful. Sometimes we need to yank, but often we don't. The experimental mode of fabrication is to experiment... How can I use the minimum yank to generate Metta? How can I generate Metta with a lot of force because I want it quickly? How can I generate Metta by just allowing it to appear, rather than pushing for it to appear?

We want to get good at fabrication, but the Buddha was quite clear that the end of suffering requires the end of fabrication. We use fabrication as we need to, especially to keep our defilements and destructive habits in check. Convincing ourselves we don't need that 5th piece of cake is a fabrication exercise. We have to take that step first, so I'm not deriding people who take such a step. But I'm giving you a foreshadowing. At some point, you'll have to look at the urge for that 5th piece of cake. Seems impossible to stop the urge... It seems like you can only respond to the urge. But it is very possible to cut off urges before they become actionable. Hint: it requires insight. One tip is that it's possible to notice a pain in the body as just a pain in the body, before it becomes a pain in the mind. And then that pain generates it's own urges, mainly aversion and possibly ill-will and blame.

Somatically, I would give people a set of 10 stones and maybe a piece of paper with 4 quadrants. Fabrication is the arranging of the stones of our mind.

My annoyance of western reductionist approaches to meditation is that they tend to focus on just one of these 4 functions. Some emphasize focus. Some emphasize listening. Some emphasize insight (and fabricating insight is not possible... any fabricated insight is mostly false). Some emphasize fabricating things, like kindness or equanimity.

These are 4 beautiful tools. They are interrelated. In some sense, focus is fabricated. And insight leads better focus. Which leads to better insight. And that can allow us to disentangle processes, which means we can fabricate more adeptly. In the processes of these 4 functions, they all have arrows to every other one. So, in a technical sense, every teacher is right. Focusing on any 1 can get you all 4. But focusing on 1 can also get you only that 1. As early as possible, I think people should be given a taste of all 4.

Tetrad 3 of the Anapanasati has all 4.  Sensitive to the mind is listening. Gladdening the mind is fabrication. Steadying the mind is focus. Relinquishing and releasing the mind is insight, maybe with some fabrication.

Meditation and these 4 functions are value-free in that they can be used for skillful or unskillful purposes. If you want to manipulate the world and become all powerful (like Devadatta), you can use meditation for that defilement-filled purpose. But, to follow the Buddhist path requires adopting Right View, which is clarity on what is helpful and unhelpful, but also how things arise and pass away. Insight that is skillful is right view. But insight all by itself could be unskillful. You can see how things are fabricated, but maybe you are blind to the harmful consequences. Or you are greedy and care only about yourself, willful or oblivious to harming others.

May you explore and master all 4 functions. May you experiment and see for yourself. And may you use them to decrease suffering and increase deep happiness and contentment and peace.

UUDR