What Is Mindfulness in Buddhism? Right Mindfulness and The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
- David Roylance
- Aug 28
- 25 min read
Updated: Aug 29
Mindfulness in Buddhism is one of the most important aspects of The Teachings of The Buddha for a Practitioner who is working to transform the mind. For someone who is beginning The Path, Right Mindfulness can initially be understood as “awareness of mind.” As the Practitioner develops, however, that awareness needs to become increasingly refined through learning and practicing The Four Foundations of Mindfulness: awareness of bodily sensations, feelings, conditions of the mind, and mental objects. These Four Foundations provide the Practitioner with the awareness necessary to recognize what is occurring within the mind as discontentedness is beginning to arise, so that the mind can be actively trained rather than repeatedly allowing the same conditioned responses to occur.
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness can be understood as the life cycle that discontentedness is going to take as it is arising. An experience occurs through The Six Sense Bases, an existing craving/desire/attachment is triggered, bodily sensations begin to arise, those bodily sensations can develop into a conditioned feeling, that feeling can develop into a longer-lasting condition of the mind, and if the process continues, it can feed and strengthen the deeper mental objects, defilements, taints, and pollutions already present within the mind. The purpose of developing Right Mindfulness is to become increasingly aware of this process so that the Practitioner can get ahead of it, ideally recognizing the arising conditioned feeling while it is still only a bodily sensation and then applying Right Effort to “cut it off and let it go.”
This is why The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are a linchpin in the transformation of the mind. All of The Teachings of The Buddha work together as an interconnected Path, and no single Teaching should be separated from the others as though it alone produces Enlightenment. Yet without awareness of mind, the Practitioner would have little ability to recognize where unwholesome qualities are arising or when wholesome qualities need to be cultivated and maintained. Right Mindfulness provides the awareness necessary to see the mind clearly, while Right Effort provides the active training necessary to change it. When these are developed together, the Practitioner is no longer merely learning about the mind intellectually. They are beginning to recognize the causes and conditions of discontentedness within their own experience and transform the mind through ongoing practice.
Table of Contents
Mindfulness Is Awareness of Mind
Right Mindfulness is the seventh step of The Eight Fold Path and is part of the mental discipline a Practitioner develops together with Right Effort and Right Concentration. A beginning Practitioner can think of mindfulness as “awareness of mind,” but that simple definition becomes much deeper as The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are understood. The Practitioner gradually becomes aware not only that the mind is discontent, but also of the different stages through which that discontentedness is developing. This allows awareness to become increasingly precise rather than waiting until anger, anxiety, excitement, irritation, boredom, or another conditioned feeling has already taken hold of the mind. Through developing awareness of bodily sensations, feelings, conditions of the mind, and mental objects, the Practitioner is able to work with arising unwholesomeness and gradually train the mind toward its elimination and non-arising.
This is an important distinction because Right Mindfulness is not merely knowing that one is angry after shouting at someone, realizing that one has been irritable for the past three days, or recognizing that the mind has spent several hours chasing excitement. Those observations are useful, and awareness at any stage is better than remaining unaware, but the mind can become much more refined than that. A Practitioner can learn to recognize the process increasingly early, eventually becoming aware of subtle bodily sensations indicating that a conditioned feeling is beginning to form. At that point, there may not yet be a fully developed feeling of anger, excitement, frustration, sadness, or another conditioned response in the mind. There is simply the physical indication that the process has begun.
The deeper development of Right Mindfulness is therefore not passive awareness for its own sake. Awareness has a purpose. The Practitioner is learning to recognize the mind sufficiently early so that they can do the work necessary to transform it.
Right Mindfulness Makes Right Effort Possible
Right Mindfulness and Right Effort need to be understood together. Right Mindfulness allows the Practitioner to know what is happening; Right Effort provides the energy, intention, and action necessary to skillfully respond to what has been recognized. Without Right Mindfulness, the Practitioner will not recognize the unwholesome quality until it has already become deeply established. Without Right Effort, the Practitioner may recognize what is happening but make no effort to prevent, abandon, replace, or transform it.
The Buddha describes four aspects of Right Effort. A Practitioner works to prevent unwholesome mental states that have not yet arisen, abandon unwholesome mental states that have arisen, produce wholesome mental states that have not yet arisen, and maintain and further develop wholesome mental states that are already present. For example, abandoning anger before it influences speech and actions, producing generosity and compassion where these qualities are lacking, and maintaining loving-kindness and sympathetic joy once they have arisen.
The relationship between Right Mindfulness and Right Effort becomes especially clear when the Practitioner begins recognizing bodily sensations associated with an arising conditioned feeling. Right Mindfulness recognizes the early warning: something is happening in the body that indicates anger, excitement, irritation, or another conditioned feeling is beginning to form. Right Effort then skillfully prevents that unwholesome quality from continuing to develop. This might involve redirecting the mind, changing activities, walking away from the conditions feeding the response, bringing attention to something wholesome, or using another skillful method the Practitioner has developed through their training. Right Mindfulness sees the process; Right Effort interrupts it.
Over time, this is no longer merely an exercise in preventing unskillful speech or behavior. Through continued training, situations that once produced anger, frustration, irritation, or other unwelcome feelings can eventually occur without the unwholesome state arising at all. This is the long-term objective: not becoming better at controlling conditioned feelings after they have arisen, but transforming the mind so thoroughly that those conditioned feelings eventually no longer arise.
The Six Sense Bases: Where Experience Enters the Mind
To understand how The Four Foundations of Mindfulness function, a Practitioner also needs a basic understanding of The Six Sense Bases. The six internal sense bases are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. They experience the six external sense bases of forms, sounds, odors, flavors, physical objects, and mental objects. Through contact between these internal and external sense bases, experience is brought into the awareness of the mind.
This is occurring throughout every waking moment. The eyes see a form, the ears hear a sound, the nose detects an odor, the tongue tastes a flavor, the body contacts a physical object, or the mind recognizes a mental object. The problem is not that the sense bases exist or that contact occurs. The problem is the untrained and undisciplined mind carrying cravings/desires/attachments into those experiences and then basing its inner feelings on external conditions.
Consider something as ordinary as watching the news. The eyes make contact with the forms appearing on the television or computer screen while the ears make contact with sounds. The mind becomes aware of what is being seen and heard. Something within that experience can trigger a craving/desire/attachment already present within the mind—perhaps a strong desire that people behave differently, that an event should not have occurred, that a political leader should act differently, that the world should conform to one's expectations, or simply that an unpleasant condition should disappear.
Before the Practitioner has consciously formed the thought, “I am angry,” there are already physical changes taking place. This is where developed Right Mindfulness becomes invaluable. The Practitioner begins recognizing the bodily sensations that tell them the mind is starting to react to the contact occurring through the eyes and ears. Instead of remaining absorbed in the news and continuing to feed the arising response, the Practitioner has an opportunity to intervene through applying effort to cut off and eliminate the arising discontentedness as a bodily sensation.
The Six Sense Bases are therefore deeply connected with the work of mindfulness. They are the doorways through which the unEnlightened mind experiences pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant conditioned feelings, while also explaining how the mind chases pleasant feelings through these same doorways because of sensual desire. A Practitioner cannot stop seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, or recognizing mental objects, nor is that the goal. The training is to eliminate the craving/desire/attachment that causes the mind to become discontent through these experiences.
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in The Words of The Buddha
The Buddha describes Right Mindfulness through The Four Foundations of Mindfulness:
And what, Monks, is Right Mindfulness?
Here, Monks, a Monk resides reflecting on body as body, dedicated, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside craving and worry for the world; he resides reflecting on feelings as feelings, dedicated, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside craving and worry for the world; he resides reflecting on mind as mind, dedicated, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside craving and worry for the world; he resides reflecting on mental objects as mental objects, dedicated, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside craving and worry for the world. This is called Right Mindfulness.
(Reference: DN 22)
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness: The Life Cycle of Discontentedness
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness can be understood through this progression:
Bodily Sensation → Feeling → Condition of the Mind → Mental Object
Right Mindfulness = Awareness of What Is Arising
Right Effort = Training the Mind to Interrupt It.
This progression describes what can occur when arising discontentedness is not recognized and released. If the Practitioner can identify the arising experience as a bodily sensation and cut it off there, that is ideal. If that opportunity is missed, the Practitioner should cut it off and let it go as a feeling. If it is missed as a feeling, the experience can affect the broader condition of the mind for hours, days, or even weeks. If it is not released there, it can feed deeper mental objects such as sensual desire, ill will, complacency, conceit, and other pollutions within the mind. Together, bodily sensations, feelings, conditions of the mind, and mental objects comprise The Four Foundations of Mindfulness and describe the process experienced as discontentedness is arising.
The sooner the Practitioner recognizes the process, the better. At every stage, awareness still has value and Right Effort can still be applied. But the ideal is to place a blockade at the earliest stage. Rather than allowing arising discontentedness to move from bodily sensation into a conditioned feeling, the Practitioner recognizes the warning and lets go while it is still only a bodily sensation.
This is how the mind becomes increasingly protected and preserved.
Body as Body: Awareness of Bodily Sensations
The first Foundation is awareness of the body as body, which is developing awareness of the bodily sensations that are prior to the arising of conditioned feelings. This is one of the most important skills a Practitioner can develop because bodily sensations provide an early indication of what the mind is about to experience before the conditioned feeling has fully formed in the mind.
With arising anger, for example, a Practitioner can train the mind to notice sensations such as tingling in the body moving upward toward the head, tightening in the chest or throat, heat in the face, pressure in the skull, or another recognizable physical change. These examples should not be seen as an inflexible list that every person must experience identically. Different Practitioners may notice somewhat different physical signs. The important training is learning one's own mind and body well enough to recognize, “These are the bodily sensations that occur when anger is beginning to arise.”
Pleasant conditioned feelings will also have recognizable bodily sensations that the mind can be trained to recognize. A Practitioner can train the mind to become aware of the experience of tingling across the shoulders, up the back of the neck, and over the skull—the experience some describe as “warm fuzzies.” Perhaps someone receives praise, sees an attractive object, is told exciting news, receives something they wanted, or experiences another condition that produces an agreeable response. Before the mind becomes absorbed in happiness, excitement, elation, or thrill, a Practitioner who has developed the mind will notice the bodily precursor.
This is where the training becomes increasingly subtle. The Practitioner is not waiting for the mind to be fully angry before practicing. They are not waiting until excitement has taken over the mind. They are learning to recognize the physical signal that tells them a conditioned response is beginning to form.
Prior to discontentedness arising in the mind, a Practitioner with well-developed Right Mindfulness can observe bodily sensations that indicate discontentedness is about to arise. Through recognizing these bodily sensations and applying Right Effort, the Practitioner can “cut off and let go” without allowing the conditioned feeling to penetrate into the mind. Once the experience has become a feeling, eliminating it is more challenging.
This is why the bodily-sensation stage is the ideal place to create the blockade.
Feelings as Feelings: Pleasant, Painful, and Neither Painful-nor-Pleasant
If the Practitioner misses the bodily sensation, the next stage is the conditioned feeling itself. The Buddha describes three types of conditioned feeling within his Teachings: pleasant feelings, painful feelings, and feelings that are neither painful-nor-pleasant.
Pleasant conditioned feelings can include happiness, excitement, elation, thrill, exhilaration, and euphoria. Painful conditioned feelings can include sadness, anger, frustration, irritation, annoyance, guilt, shame, fear, stress, and anxiety. Feelings that are neither painful-nor-pleasant can include boredom, loneliness, shyness, feeling displeased, uncomfortable, or unsatisfied.
It is often easier for a beginning Student to understand why painful conditioned feelings need to be eliminated. Few people find it challenging to understand the goal of no longer experiencing anger, fear, anxiety, frustration, or sadness. The more challenging aspect of The Teachings is understanding why conditioned pleasant feelings also need to be eliminated.
The reason is that a pleasant conditioned feeling is still the untrained and undisciplined mind allowing its inner experience to be determined by an impermanent external condition. The mind is happy because something happened the way it wanted. It is excited because it received something desirable. It is elated because another person said something pleasing. It experiences thrill or exhilaration because the senses contacted an agreeable object. The mind has not yet become liberated from conditions; it is still dependent upon conditions to produce its internal feelings and mental states.
That dependence creates instability because all conditioned objects are impermanent. The circumstances producing today's happiness will change. The person providing praise may later criticize. The possession that once generated excitement will become ordinary, break, disappear, or be replaced by the desire for something else. The event producing exhilaration will end. If the mind depends upon impermanent conditions to create pleasant feelings, then when those conditions change, the same mind becomes vulnerable to painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings. As the unEnlightened mind chases pleasant conditioned feelings through The Six Sense Bases, it is also inviting painful and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings because the external conditions upon which those pleasant feelings depend cannot remain permanent.
The objective is not to transform a Practitioner into someone dull, joyless, or incapable of appreciating life. It is precisely the opposite. The objective is to train the mind away from conditioned happiness toward the unconditioned peacefulness, calmness, serenity, contentedness, and joy of the Enlightened mind. If the mind remains unwilling to let go of impermanent conditioned happiness, it cannot experience unconditioned happiness and joy which is permanent.
If the Practitioner failed to recognize the bodily sensations and the conditioned feeling has already formed, Right Mindfulness now recognizes the feeling itself. Right Effort is then applied to cut it off and let it go. This is not as early as the ideal intervention point, but the Practitioner should not conclude that the opportunity has been lost. The principle is always to recognize and let go as soon as awareness becomes available and aim to improve by continuing to cultivate the mind.
Mind as Mind: Awareness of the Condition of the Mind
If the conditioned feeling is not recognized and released, it can begin affecting the general condition of the mind. This is what is meant here by mind as mind: awareness of the broader condition or state in which the mind has come to reside.
A feeling may initially arise and pass within a relatively brief period, but sometimes the mind continues carrying the residue of that feeling. A person becomes grumpy. They remain irritable. They are agitated for the remainder of the afternoon. They carry resentment into the evening. Perhaps the condition lasts several days. In more deeply established situations, a particular condition of the mind can be maintained for weeks because the person continues thinking about the event, recreating the feelings, strengthening the underlying craving/desire/attachment, and repeatedly feeding the same state.
At this stage, the Practitioner missed the opportunity to block the process at the bodily sensation and then missed the opportunity to let go of the conditioned feeling shortly after it arose. But Right Mindfulness can still recognize: “The mind is irritable.” “The mind has been grumpy for the past three hours.” “The mind is continuing to dwell in resentment.”
That recognition is valuable because the Practitioner can still apply Right Effort. Perhaps the conditions feeding the state need to be changed. Perhaps certain thoughts need to be cut off. Perhaps the mind needs to be redirected. Perhaps, once calm, the Practitioner needs to investigate the craving/desire/attachment that caused the original discontentedness. The longer the condition has persisted, the more work may be required, but the appropriate response is not resignation. The Practitioner cuts it off and lets it go at the earliest point they are able to recognize it.
This is also why developing awareness of bodily sensations is so valuable. The Practitioner learns from experience that allowing a small sensation to continue unchecked can eventually result in hours or days of an unpleasant condition of mind. The mind begins to understand the wisdom of getting ahead of the process.
Mental Objects: The Deeply Rooted Containers Within the Mind
If the arising discontentedness is not interrupted as a bodily sensation, conditioned feeling, or condition of mind, it can feed the deeper mental objects already present within the mind. These can be understood as deeply rooted containers, tendencies, pollutions, taints, or defilements that repeatedly shape how the unEnlightened mind responds to experience.
The Ten Fetters are these deeper pollutions. The Buddha identifies personal existence view, doubt, wrong behavior and observances, sensual desire, ill will, desire for form, desire for the formless, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance as The Ten Fetters. These are aspects of the mind that need to be eliminated to attain Enlightenment. These are taints or pollutions that prevent the brightness and radiance of the Enlightened mind from being experienced.
Consider anger again. If an event triggers ill will and the Practitioner repeatedly allows the bodily sensations to become painful feelings, allows those feelings to become ongoing irritability or resentment, and continues dwelling in the experience, the underlying fetter of ill will is being fed rather than weakened. The mind is rehearsing hostility. It is strengthening the pathways through which anger, resentment, frustration, and irritation continue to arise.
The same occurs with pleasant conditioned feelings. If the mind repeatedly welcomes the bodily sensations of excitement, allows those sensations to become conditioned happiness or elation, and then continually seeks the external objects producing those experiences, the deeper fetter of sensual desire is being fed. Sensual desire is desire for pleasures through The Six Sense Bases and ill will is hostility, hatred, anger, aggression, resentment, frustration, irritation, and annoyance.
This gives the Practitioner a much deeper reason for practicing mindfulness. The goal is not simply to have a better afternoon. The Practitioner is attempting to stop feeding the very pollutions of mind that keep the mind in the unEnlightened state.
When the symptoms of a mental object are arising, a well-developed Practitioner will need to recognize them through awareness of mind and choose to ‘cut off and let go’ of the arising defilement. This will gradually transform the mind to experience Enlightenment.
Putting the Blockade at the Bodily-Sensation Stage
A useful way to understand this training is to imagine placing a blockade in the life cycle of discontentedness. The ideal place to put that blockade is before the conditioned feeling forms.
If you were crossing the sea from one country to another, you would like to prevent water from ever entering the boat. Once water begins coming into the boat, you have a serious problem that requires immediate attention, and removing the water can be far more difficult than preventing it from entering in the first place. The same principle applies to the mind. A Practitioner would like to train the mind to recognize an arising conditioned feeling while it is still only a bodily sensation and then “cut it off and let it go” before that feeling penetrates further into the mind. By creating this blockade at the earliest stage, the Practitioner protects and preserves the mind from having to experience the conditioned feeling at all. Repeated over time, this training becomes increasingly refined until the mind is able to recognize and release the arising process consistently. Eventually, through diligent practice, the mind can be fully transformed so that conditioned feelings no longer arise and no longer need to be experienced.
This does not mean that a Practitioner who misses the bodily sensation has failed. If the conditioned feeling has formed, cut it off and let it go there. If that opportunity is missed and the mind has become irritable, grumpy, anxious, excited, or otherwise established in a particular condition, cut it off and let it go there. The important principle is to stop the process wherever it is recognized while continually training to recognize it sooner next time.
Over months and years, this becomes increasingly refined. The mind begins noticing earlier signals. The Practitioner may eventually recognize that a certain tightening in the throat almost always precedes anger, that a particular tingling across the shoulders accompanies conditioned excitement, or that another subtle bodily sensation appears before frustration develops. The moment those signals are recognized, Right Effort can be applied. That is how the Practitioner gets ahead of the curve.
“Cut Off and Let Go” Is Not Suppression or Repression
New Students will sometimes hear this Teaching and assume that “cutting off and letting go” means suppressing or repressing feelings. That misunderstanding occurs because they imagine that a fully developed conditioned feeling already exists and that the Practitioner is attempting to force it downward, ignore it, deny it, or pretend it is not present.
That is not what is being described.
Suppression would involve a conditioned feeling that has already formed. A person is angry but pretends not to be angry. They experience sadness but refuse to acknowledge it. They are frustrated but push the frustration deeper into the mind while continuing to carry it. Nothing has actually been released; the feeling remains.
The more advanced application of The Four Foundations of Mindfulness is different because the Practitioner is training to become aware before the conditioned feeling has formed. The mind recognizes the bodily sensations indicating what is beginning to happen and applies Right Effort at that earlier stage. There is no fully developed anger that must be pushed down because the Practitioner is training the mind not to allow that conditioned anger to form.
This distinction is essential.
The sequence is not: anger arises completely → deny the anger.
The training is: bodily sensation indicates arising anger starting to appear → recognize it through Right Mindfulness → apply Right Effort → cut off and let go → anger does not form as a conditioned feeling.
At first, a Practitioner may rarely accomplish this. They may notice anger only after the feeling has formed. That is still useful. They cut it off and let it go there. Later, as the mind develops, perhaps they begin noticing anger during its first few seconds. Eventually they recognize the physical warning that precedes it. The training becomes earlier and earlier until the mind consistently stops the process before the conditioned feeling arises.
This is not suppression. It is transformation through training.
What Right Mindfulness Looks Like in Daily Life
A Daily-Life Example: Watching the News
Imagine that a Practitioner is watching the news. The eyes are making contact with forms and the ears are making contact with sounds. The mind recognizes the information being presented. Something in the story conflicts strongly with what the Practitioner wants, expects, believes should happen, or is attached to. That contact triggers an existing craving/desire/attachment within the mind.
The Practitioner begins to notice tingling moving upward toward the head, tightness in the chest or throat, heat in the face, or pressure in the skull. The mind has not necessarily reached the point of thinking, “I am furious." Instead, Right Mindfulness recognizes the bodily signs of arising anger, indicating that a painful conditioned feeling is beginning to form.
That awareness is Right Mindfulness.
Now Right Effort becomes active. Rather than continuing to watch the news, replaying the story, arguing internally with the people on the screen, reading additional comments, or otherwise continuing to provide fuel for the arising conditioned feeling, the Practitioner redirects the mind. Perhaps they turn off the television and go for a walk. Perhaps they ride a bicycle. Perhaps they simply get out of the chair and walk to the kitchen for a glass of water. The specific activity is less important than the skillful intention: stop feeding the arising unwholesomeness and redirect the mind before the conditioned feeling forms.
This is Right Effort in daily practice. The Practitioner is preventing an unwholesome quality from fully arising and protecting the mind from a painful conditioned feeling. Once the mind is peaceful and clear, it may then be wise to investigate the craving/desire/attachment that was triggered. What did the mind want? What expectation existed? What was the mind attempting to control? What object of its affection was threatened? A Practitioner can use arising discontentedness as a kind of “red light” indicating that an underlying craving/desire/attachment needs to be identified and eliminated.
The news did not force anger into the mind. The experience exposed something within the mind that still needed to be trained. There are one or more cravings/desires/attachments/wants/expectations that need to be identified and eliminated.
A Daily-Life Example: Pleasant Conditioned Feelings
The same principle applies when the external condition is agreeable. Imagine that someone praises the Practitioner. Perhaps they say, “You did an amazing job,” or compliment their appearance, work, intelligence, success, or another quality. The ears make contact with an agreeable sound. The mind has a craving/desire/attachment associated with approval, recognition, praise, status, or being seen positively.
The Practitioner may notice pleasant bodily sensations beginning to arise: perhaps tingling across the shoulders, up the back of the neck, and over the skull—the “warm fuzzies.” A beginning Practitioner may immediately welcome this experience because it feels good and even indulge in it. A more developed Practitioner recognizes that this too is an impermanent conditioned response.
The training is not to become cold toward the person or reject their kindness. The Practitioner can respond politely and with gratitude while not allowing the mind to become dependent upon the praise for its inner state. They recognize the bodily sensation, cut it off and let it go, and remain in the middle. In doing so, the mind is gradually trained away from needing approval, admiration, excitement, or other external conditions to create pleasant feelings.
This is a much deeper form of freedom than simply trying to maximize pleasant experiences while minimizing painful ones. The mind is being trained to no longer depend upon either side. The mind is being transformed to no longer experience conditioned feelings so that it can be developed to experience permanent unconditioned happiness and joy.
A Daily-Life Example: When the Practitioner Notices Too Late
Consider another situation in which the Practitioner wakes up irritable and carries that irritability through the morning. Perhaps they snapped at someone, felt annoyed while driving, became frustrated during work, and only around lunchtime finally recognize, “The mind has been grumpy for several hours.”
The bodily-sensation stage was missed. The conditioned feeling was missed. Now Right Mindfulness is recognizing the condition of the mind.
The Practitioner should not think, “I missed my chance, so there is nothing I can do.” The Four Foundations provide another opportunity. The condition of the mind is now what can be observed and released. Right Effort is applied there. The Practitioner stops feeding the thoughts sustaining irritability, redirects the mind, perhaps changes their environment or activity, and works to return the mind to peacefulness.
Later, once calm, the Practitioner can investigate what happened. Was there an expectation upon waking? Was the mind craving more sleep? Was there frustration about an obligation the mind burdened itself with? Was there resentment toward someone? What was the craving/desire/attachment beneath the condition of mind?
The lesson is not guilt over having noticed too late. The lesson is: next time, notice sooner.
Breathing Mindfulness Meditation Develops the Internal Mechanism to Let Go
Breathing Mindfulness Meditation plays a critical role in developing this ability, but the purpose here is not to provide full meditation instructions. That belongs in dedicated Teachings on Breathing Mindfulness Meditation. What matters for understanding The Four Foundations is recognizing what the meditation is training the mind to do.
During meditation, the Practitioner directs the mind toward the breath. Inevitably, especially while the mind is untrained, thoughts, perceptions, feelings, memories, plans, and other mental activity arise. The Practitioner becomes aware that the mind has moved away from the breath, cuts off and lets go of the distraction, and brings the mind back to the breath. This occurs repeatedly.
This is active training.
When mental activity arises and the mind is no longer on the breath, the Practitioner does not need to analyze the thought, judge it, or become absorbed in where it came from. The mind recognizes that it has wandered, cuts off and lets go, and returns to the breath. This training develops Right Mindfulness and Right Effort while strengthening the ability to eliminate unwholesome feelings, perceptions, and choices in daily life.
Through thousands of these repetitions over multiple days, weeks, months, and years, the mind develops an internal mechanism for letting go. It is like exercising the mind to train it to be stronger and more disciplined.
Something arises.
The mind notices.
The mind releases.
The mind redirects.
That ability is then carried into daily life. When the Practitioner is watching the news and notices the bodily sensations associated with anger, the mind has already spent countless meditation sessions practicing how to release and redirect. When pleasant sensations arise after praise, the mind has practiced letting go. When an intrusive thought begins to pull the mind toward an old resentment, the mind knows how to stop following it.
Breathing Mindfulness Meditation is therefore not a way to become relaxed. It is training the mind to acquire the mental discipline needed to cut off and let go.
Developing This Ability May Take Months or Years
Practitioners develop this awareness at different rates. Some Students are naturally aware of bodily sensations from the beginning. On the first day they learn this Teaching, they may immediately recognize, “Yes, I know exactly what happens in the body when anger begins,” or they may already be able to notice the “warm fuzzies” associated with pleasant conditioned feelings.
Others need time to develop this sensitivity. They may initially experience anger without recognizing any bodily precursor at all. Through meditation, observation, reflection, and daily practice, they begin noticing the sequence. After several weeks or months they may identify one or two reliable bodily signals. With additional practice, the awareness becomes clearer.
Developing consistent awareness of bodily sensations can require months or years. The challenge is not simply noticing a bodily sensation once; the deeper training is learning to notice it and ‘cut off and let go’ every time it arises.
That consistency represents a highly trained mind.
A Practitioner may successfully recognize anger at the bodily-sensation stage on Monday but miss it completely on Tuesday. They may notice pleasant excitement immediately in one situation but become fully absorbed in it in another. This is normal within gradual training. The objective is not perfection on the first day. The objective is diligent, ongoing development.
Eventually, the mind becomes so familiar with the life cycle of discontentedness that the earliest signs become obvious. What once developed automatically into anger is now interrupted before anger forms. What once became excitement and craving is released at the bodily-sensation stage. The mind has learned a different response.
This is cutting off arising discontentedness “sooner and sooner” until the benefits accumulate toward liberation and the associated discontentedness eventually no longer arises.
That development may occur more quickly for some Practitioners and more slowly for others. The important measure is not comparison with another Student. The important measure is whether one's own mind is becoming more aware, more disciplined, and increasingly capable of letting go over multiple years through gradual training and gradual practice which produces gradual progress.
The Goal Is Non-Arising, Not Management
One of the most important points in understanding this Teaching of The Four Foundations of Mindfulness is recognizing the ultimate objective.
The goal is not to spend the rest of one's life constantly experiencing anger and becoming increasingly skilled at controlling it. The goal is not to experience conditioned excitement forever but become more sophisticated at hiding it. The goal is not merely to manage anxiety, irritation, boredom, and the cravings that produce these conditioned experiences.
The goal is to transform the mind so that these conditioned feelings eventually no longer arise.
This happens through repeated training. Each time the Practitioner catches the arising process earlier, they weaken the mind's old conditioned habits. Each time they refuse to feed a painful or pleasant conditioned feeling, the underlying craving/desire/attachment/want/expectation receives less reinforcement. Each time they recognize a condition of mind and let it go rather than dwelling in it, the deeper mental object is deprived of fuel. Each time they examine and eliminate the underlying craving that produced the discontentedness, the mind becomes progressively purified.
If the Practitioner repeatedly cuts off and lets go of arising discontentedness, the craving/desire/attachment producing that particular discontentedness can eventually be eliminated, at which point the associated discontentedness no longer arises.
This is why The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are so vitally important to transformation. They give the Practitioner awareness of the mind at the points where training can actually occur.
From Conditioned Happiness to Unconditioned Joy
The transformation of the mind should not be understood merely as removing unwanted experiences. The Buddha's Path is moving the mind toward something fundamentally different: the peacefulness and joy of an Enlightened mind.
The unEnlightened mind repeatedly looks outward for conditions that will make it feel good. It wants agreeable sights, pleasing sounds, delightful odors, desirable tastes, enjoyable physical experiences, pleasant thoughts, approval from others, possessions, relationships, status, entertainment, and countless other conditions. When those conditions are present, the mind experiences conditioned happiness or excitement. When those conditions change, as all conditioned objects eventually do, the mind moves toward painful feelings or neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings.
This is an exhausting way for the mind to live because peacefulness is always dependent upon the world cooperating with its cravings.
The Enlightened mind is no longer dependent upon those impermanent conditions for its inner state. Temporary conditioned pleasant feelings and unconditioned joy are completely different and fundamentally change an individual’s experience in the world. Unconditioned joy is not based upon any external conditions and continuing to hold onto temporary pleasant feelings prevents the mind from moving fully toward the unconditioned state of Enlightenment where the mind will always be joyful and happy.
Therefore, “cutting off and letting go” is not deprivation. The Practitioner is relinquishing the mind's dependence upon unstable conditioned pleasures in order to develop something far more reliable: inward peacefulness, calmness, serenity, contentedness, and joy that do not depend upon continuously arranging the outside world according to one's cravings.
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness as a Linchpin of Transformation
A Practitioner can study impermanence, craving, The Four Noble Truths, The Natural Law of Kamma, The Five Precepts, The Ten Fetters, The Eight Fold Path, and many other Teachings. All of these are important, interconnected aspects of The Path to Enlightenment. But knowledge alone does not transform the mind. All of these Teachings need to be practiced by integrating them into daily life.
The Practitioner will need to be able to see The Teachings operating within their own daily experience.
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness provide that awareness.
They allow the Practitioner to observe the bodily sensations warning that a conditioned feeling is beginning. They allow recognition of a conditioned feeling if it has formed. They allow recognition of a broader condition of the mind when that feeling has persisted. They allow the Practitioner to understand the deeper mental objects, defilements, taints, and fetters that are being activated and reinforced.
With that awareness, Right Effort can be applied.
Without that awareness, Right Effort has little opportunity to function skillfully because the Practitioner does not recognize what needs to be prevented or abandoned until the mind has already been significantly affected. This is why The Four Foundations of Mindfulness function as a linchpin in the transformation of the mind. They connect understanding with actual moment-to-moment training.
The Practitioner learns to see the process.
Then they learn to interrupt the process.
Then they learn to interrupt it earlier.
Then they learn to interrupt it consistently.
Eventually, through sufficiently developed practice and purification of the mind, the conditioned response itself no longer arises.
Walking The Path with The Buddha
The Four Foundations of Mindfulness are not merely four subjects to memorize. They are a practical framework for deeply knowing the mind and recognizing the life cycle of discontentedness as it is occurring.
At first, a Practitioner may become aware only after the mind has already become angry, anxious, excited, irritated, bored, lonely, or otherwise discontent. That awareness is still valuable. With training, the Practitioner begins noticing sooner. They recognize the conditioned feeling as it develops. With further development, they begin recognizing the bodily sensations that precede the feeling. Eventually, the mind becomes sufficiently aware and disciplined to consistently place a blockade at that earliest stage, “cutting off and letting go” before the conditioned feeling forms.
Right Mindfulness provides the awareness. Right Effort provides the skillful ability to discipline the mind through its own internal effort. Breathing Mindfulness Meditation develops the internal mechanism for letting go. The Six Sense Bases help the Practitioner understand where contact and experience occur. Investigation reveals the cravings/desires/attachments underlying the discontentedness. Continued practice stops feeding the deeper mental objects, defilements, taints, and The Ten Fetters.
This is gradual training of the mind.
The objective is not to suppress feelings, hide feelings, control feelings, or become more efficient at managing an endlessly discontent mind. The objective is to fully transform the mind so that conditioned feelings eventually no longer arise because the mind has been trained not to form them.
When the Practitioner deeply learns, reflects on (i.e. independently verifies), and practices The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, they develop the awareness necessary to protect and preserve the mind, apply Right Effort where it is needed, stop strengthening the pollutions that keep the mind unEnlightened, and gradually move away from conditioned discontentedness toward the unconditioned peacefulness and joy of the Enlightened mind.
Learn. Reflect. Practice. Verify for Yourself.
David Roylance is a dedicated Practitioner, Teacher, and published author who has taught The Teachings of The Buddha since 2005. Based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, he guides Household and Ordained Practitioners worldwide through courses, retreats, and special events on The Path to Enlightenment.
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