Mindfulness by Sarah Shaw

Author:Sarah Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2020-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

This list in some ways looks the same as the Pāli list, though in a somewhat changed order. Six of these—feeling, volition, identification, contact, attention, and concentration—are found among the seven universal factors in the Theravāda list (unification is the word for “concentration,” here taken, as it is in the Pāli system, with citt’ekaggatā/cittaikāgratā, literally “gone to oneness”). Only one factor from the Pāli is absent: the life of the mind. This is related to the physical life, apparently, in this system, rather than an attribute of consciousness itself. Commitment (9) and willingness to act (4), occasional mental states in Pāli interpretations, are considered as arising in all consciousness in this system, as means of apprehending and responding to any object. This shows a slight shift in emphasis from the Pāli system, where they are found only in some specialized consciousness where the mind is more intensely focused, whether skillful or, if greed-based, unskillful. Most significantly, however, two factors that are only found in skillful or awakened consciousness in the Pāli system, mindfulness and wisdom, are here described as universally arising. The Abhidharmakośa says that mindfulness is “nonfailing with regard to the object; a dharma by virtue of which the mind does not forget the object, by virtue of which it cherishes it in order to express it (abhilaṣatīva).” Wisdom is termed here simply “discernment of dharmas.”

Clearly, there is a different view of the mind. Whereas in this system it is attention that “bends” or “applies” the mind to an object in any moment and identification that labels it, it is mindfulness that notes the object in the first place. Something is going on all the time by which any object of the sense is in some way retained and registered; this is the function of what is termed mindfulness here. There is also something occurring that in some way discerns it or makes a discrimination: that is called wisdom.

Thus, one noteworthy feature of the difference between the Pāli Abhidhamma and the Abhidharmakośa is in the aspect of memory. Although the early Buddhists were not as interested in the operation of memory as modern-day psychologists are, there was some discussion about its nature and the way it worked in daily life.

The Abhidharmakośa, echoing the still-usual meaning of smṛti in Sanskrit in non-Buddhist texts, suggests that memory operates simply by the faculty of noting the object. What we note, we can, potentially, remember. If all times are present, then what is noted can always be remembered: mindfulness has access to all events and impressions that have been experienced by a particular being in a given lifetime. But what about the skillful mind? In the Southern Abhidhamma system, mindfulness is a defining feature of all skillful consciousness. But by making it a quality present in all beings, something else is needed to fulfill the role mindfulness assumes as part of the “beautiful” mental states of skillful consciousness: some other quality needs to be suggestive of the care needed for the practice of the path.

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