Mindfulness: Be Simple and Easy, Just Rest in Awareness (II) – A lesson from Munindra, a Bengali Buddhist master and scholar

The Practice Is to Be Simple

Mediation can help us to gain the simplicity of life. (Photos by Wang Zhang)

Munindra highlighted simplicity and ease. Joseph Goldstein says he must have repeated thousands of times, “Be simple and easy. Take things as they come.”  Still, that is a challenge for many.

Sometimes students misunderstood Munindra’s  use of “simple.” When they saw him bargaining intensely, even for a bag of peanuts, they questioned his action and reminded him, “You said to be simple and easy. What are you doing?” He would pause, then respond, “I said to be simple, not a simpleton.” As Roy Bonney understands this, “Essentially, what I took form it is that it’s really important to have a practice and recognize the truth of world, but don’t be a fool in the world.”

Munindra taught that true meditation can have a refreshing or relaxing effect:

When mind comes to a silent state, then we recoup our energy again. Meditation is not forcing, not straining oneself. It is harmonious wok with the whole being, not fighting. If we understand the process of meditation, it is so simple. As long as we do not understand, it is an extraordinarily difficult task because our mind is not trained not to cling, not to condemn, not to judge, just to be with what is at the moment. But once you understand the Law [Dharma], then it is the most simple thing—it is a way of life. As one develops mindfulness, after some time it takes care of itself; it becomes effortless, automatic.

Appreciating Munindra’s free-form approach, Sharon Salzberg says, “His view of meditation was very big—live mindfully—it’s OK if you go to the bazaar for a cup of chia [tea]… He left me with a very big sense of , as he put it, ‘living the life,’ of not being so prescribed and formalistic or stylized about practice, but really understanding its roots in transforming one’s mind.”

Jack cornfield puts it succinctly: “He didn’t divide life from meditation,” and that is why he was such a vital model for people East and West.

The Benefits of Seeing the Truth of Each Moment

Mindfulness is an opportunity to experience everything anew. Munindra said,

People can do things better when they are mindful. It is not only beneficial on a spiritual level, it is also beneficial on a physical level. It is a process of purification too. When mind is purified, many psychophysical diseases are cured automatically. People understand their own anger, hatred, jealousy—all these unwholesome factors which arise in the mind and which we do not understand generally. So many psychophysical diseases, which we accumulate unconsciously or by reflex action emotionally, [can] come under restraint, but not by suppressing. By coming close to and seeing them, people become free from many physical ailments, many mental ailments. They become more sweet, more loving.

Sati always provides the brilliance of a lamp in shadowy places, a way out of the stress and darkness in life, wholesomely and clearly. He described how:

All the  dirt accumulated in our unconscious, subconscious, we are just following life after life. So when you observe silence, all kinds of thoughts come up on the surface. It is not somebody sending it to us; it is part of our life. You get caught up with the thought because, say, somebody scolded you in the past but you suppressed it. But when the mind is silent, not talking, not busy, anything can come up. At that time, you see things because of awareness. You are asked to develop mindfulness because sati illuminates [the] whole mental field.

Resting in the awareness of each fresh moment is not asking someone to live nothing but meditation. As Munindra put it, it is a way of life, “a beautiful way to live and die”. Says Sharon Salzberg.

This is the direct path for the purification of beings, for the surmounting of sorrow and lamentation, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of the true way, for the realization of nibbana—namely, the foundations of mindfulness.

–THE BUDDHA, MN 10.2

Related articles

• Book review of “Living this life fully: stories and teachings of Munindra” (existentialbuddhist.com)
• Mindfulness Meditation (sexymoxiemama.wordpress.com)
• Meditation Is Rest: Rest Makes Your Mind Efficient (wakingtimes.com)
• What Mindfulness Is Not! (dranilj1.wordpress.com)