My understanding of Buddhist practice and the four noble truths

I found myself trying to neatly summarise how my thinking about Buddhist practice has developed recently, and my thoughts seemed to take the rough shape of the four noble truths.

1. The uncultivated mind will tend to get entangled in the messiness of life. This is painful or at least unsatisfying in a deep way.
2. It is craving and aversion that lead the mind to become entangled.
3. The mind can learn to let go of craving and aversion, and experience peace, freedom, and wellbeing far beyond what we might imagine possible... even an end to distress and entanglement that produces distress. When the mind is disentangled, there is a gatheredness and clarity that enables deeper and deeper understanding, letting go, and peace.
4. The path to this seeing clearly is a wholesome, appreciative way of living that prioritises ethical living, truth, clarity, and care and nourishment of the heart and psyche*. We are encouraged to live nobly, with self-respect and respect for others, and without acting on craving, in eight areas of life. As we develop this beautiful way of living, the heart and mind become increasingly peaceful and content to rest within. Craving and aversion diminish.

*This was also Socrates' aim, interestingly. Compare with Rob Burbea: "So much about this practice is really about taking care of your heart. At every level and every direction. What does it mean to take care of your heart?" (From the orientation talk of his Practising the Jhanas retreat.)

How to practise in line with these aims

So, with all this in mind, how should we practise? To be brief, our goal is care of the heart, so any approach that cultivates the wholesome and abandons the unwholesome ought to be worthwhile. And we are looking to practise letting go and to diminish craving. If our aim is to have a disentangled mind an anchor—like the breath or the presence of lovingkindness—can be a way of letting us know that the mind is present, nourished, and disentangled. This is very different from trying to nail our mind to an anchor.

Openness of heart, openness of being easily outweighs focus and concentration.—Rob Burbea

Ajahn Amaro's simple guidance for practice

I often find these words from Ajahn Amaro helpful, from his free ebook The Breakthrough.

With meditation, when there's a substantial quality of calmness and focus, when the mind is stable and can rest in the present moment, when it can stay with the breath for extended periods of time and attend to the present reality without drifting; when you find that your mind has arrived at that kind of stability, there's no need to pay particular attention to the breathing. You use the breath as an anchor to help fix the attention on the present moment. The breath acts simply as a marker, a reference point for the present. But if the attention is resting easily in the present, you don't need to provide such an anchor. You don't need to fix the attention in place because it's already stable, attending to the present moment. When you find that the mind has arrived at that kind of steadiness - not drifting off into abstractions about past and future or distracted by sounds you hear or feelings in the body - whenever the attention rests easily in the present moment, allow the breath to become part of the general field of experience. Open up the awareness to all experience, to know the sounds you hear around you, the feelings in the body, the thoughts that come and go - broaden the point of attention to encompass the whole of the present moment, to include all aspects of experience.

Then whatever arises, whether it's a thought, a sound, a sensation, the way to maintain the quality of clarity, of non-entanglement, is to apply the reflections on change, unsatisfactoriness and not-self. If we hear the sound of a plane going overhead, we maintain objectivity and clarity by reflecting that the sound is changing. Likewise with a feeling in the body - whether we like it or don't like it or it's neutral, just notice that the feeling is changing. The same with a thought in the mind, a mood or a memory. We use these reflections on anicca, dukkha, anattà to maintain that quality of non-entanglement. We are able simply to attend to the flow of experience. We watch the process of experience itself, rather than getting caught up with the content of what's being experienced. We therefore deliberately let go of the content in order to observe the process of experiencing, to watch the flowing of the river of our consciousness. There are rivers of perceptions and feelings. Thoughts come and go. Feelings come and go. Sounds and sensations come and go.

As we develop the practice, the heart can simply rest in that awareness, rest in that knowing, be that very knowing which receives all experience, participates in it, knows it fully without confusion, without adding anything to it.

Ajahn Dune Atulo's formulation of the four noble truths

Finally, my interpretation of the four noble truths is also influenced by Ajahn Dune Atulo, who stated them like this:

• The mind going outward to satisfy its moods is the cause of suffering (samudaya, the second noble truth)
• The result of the mind going outward to satisfy its moods is suffering (dukkha, the first noble truth)
• The mind seeing the mind clearly is the path leading to the cessation of suffering (magga, the fourth noble truth)
• The result of the mind seeing the mind clearly is the cessation of suffering (nirodha, the third noble truth).

Final thoughts

I suppose I'm interested in a path that feels right and works effectively rather than has complete textual accuracy. I'm not sure we can reverse engineer meditation from the texts. We have to be informed by them, absolutely, but we also have to feel our way forward in our own experience.