There is further instruction on how to discipline the mind and create happiness in the more detailed Sixteen Steps of Mindfulness. This is a meditation instruction which trains awareness of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, so it is a type of more detailed practice of it. The first four are to do with the physical body, and you focus on the physicality of breathing.
The next four continue to focus on breath, because it is the anchor for concentration, but on each breath the awareness is focused on one aspect of feelings, which are sometimes interpreted as refreshment, ease, being sensitive to mental fabrication and calming mental fabrication. To make that a bit easier, ‘refreshment’ can be interpreted as ‘joy’ and ‘ease’ is ‘happiness’. ‘Mental fabrications’ includes sensations (the physical aspect of emotion), perception, volitions (desires, aversions) and contact (what the senses are perceiving). So this isn’t wholly passive. For the first two you are deliberately cultivating ‘free joy’ and ‘free happiness’ meaning the pure emotion not linked to anything. How do you do this? Well, you have the ability in the mind to create any mental picture. If I say, visualise a blue lotus, you might have to go look at a blue lotus picture for a while to ‘get it’, then you just ‘will’ it, and it appears on the mental field. To get the hang of ‘free joy’ you might have to create the conditions that make you happy, perhaps feel grateful for something, and then look for the ‘pure’ emotion, when you feel ‘joy’, what is that exactly, as a sensation and a vague… something? Whatever it is, it is under your will, like anything in the mind, and THERE IS ONLY MIND, which is why magick works! THE WORLD IS A MENTAL FABRICATION
The ‘watching mental fabrications’ is in two parts, to be aware (mindful) and then to CALM them. What does ‘calm’ them mean. Take sensory perception. You are looking into the world and perceiving it, you can see, smell, taste, hear and feel it and are aware of this… and then you calm it. How do you calm it? If you are watching perception, say a ham sandwich or a video on youtube, how do you calm a ham sandwich or video on youtube? You can’t calm those things, because they are ‘out there’, not a part of direct volition (although you can influence them through time and space). It clearly means your reactions to them. This you CAN calm.
In other words, you are lessening the link between what you perceive and your feelings. You are learning to DISAVOW THE WORLD and FREE JOY, i.e. to have emotions chosen (or not) willed, disciplined and under conscious choice in the mind (which later will become tantamount to changing your perceived reality, but as I said, we’ll get to it later).
The next four are to be sensitive to the mind, gladden the mind, steady the mind and release the mind. Alternative translations are to see, make happy, concentrate and liberate.
The next four are: focus on inconstancy, focus on dispassion, focus on cessation, focus on relinquishment. Alternative translations are: see impermanence, see desire disappear, observe cessation and let go.
So these sixteen steps are formal meditations, i.e. ideas/practices held in the mind exclusively over a long period of time. Actually each one cycles with in and out breaths, but the instructions are designed for ‘ass on the cushion’ formal practice, whereas the Seven Factors of Awakening are more constant qualities.
Aside
Recap
The meditation is based on using breath as an anchor, as the in/out breath is rhythmic, you breathe in and you breathe out, and you can choose to control and regulate it, but when you do not, then it just takes over itself unconsciously; it’s an automatic process. This is used to switch the mind between different activities, and this rhythm makes concentration easier. So after the first four (tetrad) of the breath itself (a single session of meditation) then the feeling part is concentrated. So on an inbreath you feel joy, on the outbreath happiness, on the next inbreath, observe mental fabrication (the total sum of consciousness, i.e. whatever your mind is internally creating or senses perceiving, in other words, all the sh*t that’s going on), and on the outbreath, calming it, i.e. making sure there is no will involved, that there is no ‘spark lighting your fire’, that you are not reacting to anything nor creating more thoughts, mental pictures, inner-talk etc. Then back to breathe in, feel happiness, breathe out, feel joy, and so on for the full session.
The full sixteen are:
1 – 4, for the first two (one in and one out) being aware if the breath itself is long or short. For the next (third) be aware of the sensations of the body, and for the last out-breath of the triad, be sure you are not adding physical sensation (by being triggered or having strong emotion of focusing attention on one particular physical sensation and being desirous, or more likely averse (because it hurts to stay still).
Next triad: Feeling
In – Refreshment/joy
Out – Happiness
In – See all mind contents
out – Calm all mind contents
Next triad: Mind
In – See (mind)
Out – Gladden (make happy)
In – Steady (concentrate)
Out – Release/liberate
Last triad: Mental Qualities
In – See inconstancy/impermanence
Out – Dispassion/see desire disappear
In – Cessation/see cessation
Out – Relinquishment/let go
So a part of this practice is to, for example, gladden, to practice this ability to feel a ‘free emotion’ on in-breaths, meaning you are doing it again and again. It’s a bit like lifting a dumbbell. You don’t go to the gym and lift a dumbbell once, there is the idea of ‘reps’ i.e. repetitions, you keep lifting it to build the muscle. If you realise you can ‘gladden the mind’ not based on sense input, yipee, yipee! But it’s a concept, a proof of concept. To do this repeatedly, as a meditation, actually builds a skill. This willed activity can be used to replace mind contents. To put that another way, in the future, when the mind is off spinning its usual BS and causing unhappiness, then a developed ‘letting go’ muscle and ‘gladdening’ muscle can replace then. You could try that now, in a moment, just changing a mood by will power, and it will work, but not for long. Like holding up a heavy dumbbell before you’ve developed the muscle.
So the mind can ‘gladden’ but also create pretty much anything, a mental picture or inner voice or whatever, and it’s doing that all the time, but you also have will over this, you can choose it. It’s the same with ideas or understandings and thoughts. They come up constantly, and pass away, without choice, but you also have will. You can choose to have a thought or idea or understanding. So for example, if you are doing the corpse meditation, the idea is of your own mortality, that you will die. That’s an ‘understanding’ that ‘dawns’ on you, dawn means morning time, a light (of awareness) is shone on it (enLIGHTenment). With this particular meditation, the goal is to hold an idea, an insight, and to hold it continuously. This is easier said that done, as what is an idea? It’s a vague, wispy… knowing. An awareness. So the meditation is visual, as a crutch, you imagine your body dead and in various stages of decay, and holding this picture, causes the understanding/knowing/idea to arise, that you will die, and you try and hold this pure ‘knowing’ for an extended period, and to begin with the meditation might be mostly mental pictures and it might be 1% knowing, but you are building the ‘idea’ muscle.