Contemplation of the Mind in Practicing Four Foundations of Mindfulness

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, also known as the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, is a fundamental Buddhist practice and the first of the Thirty-seven Factors of Enlightenment. The practice of Four Foundations of Mindfulness is to become aware of the continual creation and decay (kṣaṇabhaṅga), impermanence, suffering (duḥkha), and no-self (anātman) through contemplating the four aspects of body, feeling, mind, and phenomena.
 
Among the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, contemplation of the mind means to contemplate the transiency of our mental activities. How do we put it into practice? In his work The World of Chan, Master Sheng Yen pointed out that our mental activities are linked to the body and sensations. All our afflictions take the body's five physical faculties as their medium, and use our tactile and perceptual sensations to choose seeking and avoiding. Encountering suffering, we feel sorrow; experiencing pleasure, we feel delighted; delight engenders greed; and worry generates hatred. Mind therefore includes all of the five sensations — pain, pleasure, sorrow, joy, and equanimity — as well as the three poisons of greed, aversion, and delusion.
 
To contemplate the mind is to devote our attention to thoughts arising in the mind, as well as observe the arising and perishing of each thought. What are we actually thinking about? What are the characteristics of our mind? What is our mood? Which of the five sensations is each thought related to? Which of the three poisons is it linked to? The purpose of contemplating the mind is not to suppress mental activity, but to clearly observe what the mind is doing. If this contemplation practice is successful, our personality will certainly become stable, and wisdom will emerge.
 
When contemplating the mind, we are aware of the arising and perishing of our thoughts, and that in the course of their arising and perishing, no permanent characteristics of mind to are to be seen. Then we can see the truth of impermanence for ourselves, and transform our life from become disgusted with and wearied of our afflictions to accepting and enjoying the life of impermanence marked by non-self.
 

 
Related articles:

The Sutra on Impermanence – The Teachings of Impermanence

Contemplation of the Mind in Practicing Four Foundations of Mindfulness

Living in Impermanence – Embrace Impermanence with an Even Mind

A Brief Introduction to the Sutra on Impermanence

Learning the Contemplation on Impermanence from the Masters – Master Class for Living with Impermanence



Resource: Issue 428 of Humanity Magazine (April 2019), Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation
Translation: Li Siang-ling
Editing: Keith Brown, Chang Chia-cheng (張家誠)