Our ways of looking are shaped by our views, our patterns of attention, our emotional states, inclinations, intentions and more. Working with these factors we can participate in seeing and sensing the self, others and the world in ways that are onward leading. This talk includes extracts from a practice diary working with a difficult sankhara that was shaping and coloring the perception.
Hedonic tone (vedanā) as a feature of human experience is the major factor in governing involuntary attention – vedanā rules much of our attention. The reflections unpack the role of feeling tone on attention, intention and the cultivation of mindfulness. Learning to cultivate attention beyond gratification and avoidance and to uncouple attention from pleasant or unpleasant feeling tone.
Kafka and the girl with a lost doll.
Satipaṭṭhāna and Suttas in general – a little history.
Satipaṭṭhāna as a cartography of human expericence: the 'raw materials' to establish mindfulness in. (This is not the satipaṭṭhāna as exercise but their use as a map of the somatic, hedonic, affective and discursive aspects of mind.) This orientation helps greatly with the actual practice of satipatthana exercises outline elsewhere.
