In Buddhism, there are five omnipresent mental factors. These factors are present in every moment of our mental experience and play a fundamental role in shaping our thoughts, emotions, and actions. Understanding these factors can help us cultivate mindfulness and develop a deeper awareness of our own minds.
The five omnipresent mental factors are:
Contact: Contact refers to the meeting of the sense organs with their corresponding sense objects. It is the initial connection between the mind and the external world. For example, when the eye contacts a visual object, such as a beautiful sunset, the mental factor of contact arises. It is through contact that sensory information enters our awareness.
Feeling: Feeling refers to the subjective experience that arises in response to contact. It can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Using the previous example, when the eye contacts a beautiful sunset, the feeling of pleasure may arise. Feelings color our experiences and play a significant role in the arising of desire or aversion.
Perception: Perception is the mental factor responsible for recognizing and labeling objects or experiences based on past conditioning. It involves categorizing and conceptualizing sensory input. For instance, when we see a sunset, perception helps us recognize it as a sunset based on our past experiences and knowledge.
Intention: Intention refers to the mental factor behind our thoughts, emotions, and actions. It is the motivation that drives our behavior. Intention can be skillful or unskillful, wholesome or unwholesome, depending on the underlying mental states. For example, if we appreciate the beauty of the sunset and wish to capture it in a photograph, the intention to take the photo arises.
Attention: Attention is the mental factor responsible for directing and sustaining our awareness on a particular object. It is the faculty that selects what to focus on amidst the vast array of sensory information available. Attention plays a crucial role in determining the clarity and depth of our awareness. In the case of the sunset, attention allows us to immerse ourselves fully in the visual experience, noticing the colors, shapes, and textures.
These five omnipresent mental factors work together to create our experiences. Let’s take an example of someone walking in a park. As they walk, their eyes come into contact with various objects such as trees, flowers, and birds (contact). This contact generates feelings of pleasure, indifference, or even discomfort (feeling). Through perception, the person recognizes and labels these objects as trees, flowers, or birds (perception). Based on these perceptions, intentions may arise, such as feeling a sense of awe towards the beauty of nature or wanting to take a closer look (intention). Finally, attention directs the person’s focus to the details of the objects they find interesting or captivating (attention).
To become more aware of these mental factors, we can practice mindfulness. By cultivating mindfulness, we develop the ability to observe our thoughts, emotions, and actions as they arise in the present moment. We can observe the contact between our senses and the external world, notice the feelings and perceptions that arise, and become aware of the intentions and attention that shape our experiences.
Through meditation and mindfulness practices, we can develop a deeper understanding of these mental factors and their impact on our lives. By recognizing the patterns and tendencies of these mental factors, we can gain insight into our habitual patterns of thinking and reacting. This increased awareness allows us to respond to situations with greater clarity and wisdom.
So, let’s look deeper at ways to cultivate awareness of the five omnipresent mental factors:
Meditation: Engage in regular meditation practice to develop mindfulness. During meditation, observe the arising and passing of the mental factors as they manifest in your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. Pay attention to the contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention that arise in each moment.
Daily Mindfulness: Bring mindfulness into your daily activities. As you go about your day, bring your attention to the present moment and notice how the five mental factors are at play in your experiences. Observe the contact with your senses, the feelings that arise, the perceptions that shape your understanding, the intentions that drive your actions, and the attention you give to different objects.
Reflective Practice: Set aside time for reflection and contemplation. Review your experiences and examine how the five mental factors influenced your thoughts, decisions, and interactions. Look for patterns and tendencies that may be causing suffering or hindering your growth. This reflection can help you develop insight and make conscious choices.
Wise Discernment: Develop the ability to discern the wholesome and unwholesome qualities of the mental factors. Notice when unwholesome intentions or unskillful attention arise and consciously redirect them towards more wholesome and skillful states. Cultivate wholesome intentions such as kindness, compassion, and generosity, and train your attention to focus on objects that promote wellbeing and understanding.
Non-Identification: Practice observing the mental factors without getting caught up in them. Recognize that these factors are impermanent and not self. Instead of identifying with them and taking them personally, see them as passing phenomena arising and ceasing in the mind. This non-identification allows you to cultivate a sense of spaciousness and freedom in relation to the mental factors.
By developing awareness of the five omnipresent mental factors, we can gain a deeper understanding of our own minds and the nature of experience. They can influence our actions in both unskillful and skillful ways, depending on the underlying qualities and intentions present. Here are examples of how each mental factor can contribute to unskillful or skillful actions:
Contact:
– Unskillful Action: When contact arises with an object that triggers craving or attachment, it can lead to unskillful actions. For example, if someone encounters a delicious dessert, the contact may trigger a strong attachment, leading to overindulgence or greed-driven behavior.
– Skillful Action: On the other hand, contact with objects that promote wholesome qualities can lead to skillful actions. For instance, when someone comes into contact with a person in need, it may trigger compassion and motivate them to offer assistance or support.
Feeling:
– Unskillful Action: Unpleasant feelings, such as pain or frustration, can give rise to unskillful actions driven by aversion or anger. For instance, if someone experiences a setback at work and feels intense frustration, they may react impulsively and lash out at colleagues.
– Skillful Action: Pleasant feelings can motivate skillful actions. For example, feeling joy and contentment from a meditation practice may inspire someone to cultivate kindness and share their positive energy with others.
Perception:
– Unskillful Action: Misguided or distorted perceptions can lead to unskillful actions. For instance, if someone perceives a person from a different cultural background as a threat due to stereotypes or biases, it can lead to discriminatory behavior.
– Skillful Action: Skillful actions can arise from clear and accurate perceptions. For example, recognizing the interconnectedness of all beings through the perception of interdependence may lead someone to engage in acts of altruism and environmental stewardship.
Intention:
– Unskillful Action: Unwholesome intentions, such as greed, hatred, or delusion, can lead to unskillful actions. For instance, if someone harbors ill will towards another person, their intention may be to cause harm or seek revenge, resulting in unskillful actions.
– Skillful Action: Skillful actions arise from wholesome intentions, such as compassion, generosity, and wisdom. For example, if someone cultivates the intention to alleviate suffering, they may engage in charitable acts or offer support to those in need.
Attention:
– Unskillful Action: Unskillful actions can arise from unwise attention. If someone dwells on negative thoughts or fixates on flaws and faults, it can lead to unskillful actions rooted in resentment or self-criticism.
– Skillful Action: Skillful actions can emerge from wise attention. For instance, if someone directs their attention to the present moment with mindfulness, they can respond skillfully to situations and make wise choices that promote well-being and understanding.
It’s important to note that these mental factors often arise in combination and interact with each other, influencing our actions in complex ways. Recognizing their impact and cultivating mindfulness can help us discern unskillful patterns and intentionally cultivate skillful actions that lead to greater happiness, well-being, and the welfare of others.
We should not confuse the five omnipresent mental factors with the five aggregates. These are two distinct frameworks used in Buddhism to understand the nature of human experience. While they are related, they focus on different aspects of the mind and are used for different purposes. Here’s an explanation of the difference between the two:
Five Aggregates: The five aggregates are a framework used to analyze and understand the nature of human existence. They are Form, Feeling, Perception, Mental Formations, and Consciousness. The aggregates describe the components that make up our experience and sense of self. Form refers to the physical body and sensory experiences, Feeling refers to the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral tone of experience, Perception refers to the recognition and labeling of objects, Mental Formations refer to the mental factors and volitional activities, and Consciousness refers to the awareness and cognition of objects. The aggregates are impermanent, subject to change, and lacking inherent self-identity. They help us understand that there is no fixed and independent self-entity behind our experiences.
Five Omnipresent Mental Factors: Let’s just recap what has been said about the five omnipresent mental factors. They are mental qualities that are present in every moment of our experience. They are Contact, Feeling, Perception, Intention, and Attention. These factors are considered universal because they arise in relation to all objects of perception and play a fundamental role in shaping our thoughts, emotions, and actions.
Understanding and working with these mental factors can help cultivate mindfulness and develop a deeper awareness of our minds.
While there is some overlap between the mental factors and the aggregates (such as Feeling and Perception), the main difference lies in their purpose and scope. Mental factors focus on the specific mental qualities that arise in every moment, emphasizing their role in shaping our experiences and actions. On the other hand, the aggregates provide a broader framework for understanding the components of our existence and the nature of selflessness.
Both frameworks are valuable tools for contemplation and insight in Buddhist practice. They help us develop a deeper understanding of the mind and the nature of reality, leading to the cultivation of wisdom and liberation from suffering.
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Mindfulness
is traditionally based on the four foundations and that is what I want to
address here, but before I do that, I want to discuss an issue I have with the
modern mindfulness movement. To be more specific, their definition of
mindfulness. People who know me will tell you that I am not a traditionalist
and my issue is not about secularism versus traditionalism, it is solely about
their interpretation.
Mindfulness
cannot be summed up in a single statement, it is too vast for that, yet that is
what has happened. Their definition is:
Mindfulness is an awareness of what
is happening in the present moment, brought about by purposefully paying
attention in a non-judgemental way.
Mindfulness
was never meant to be a standalone practice. It was part of the three basics of
the path, namely ethics, awareness and wisdom. The above definition only covers
one of these basics of the path; awareness. A thief breaking into your house, a
solider on the battlefield about to kill someone and a person putting poison
into someone’s food are all examples of being aware of what is happening in the
present moment. All of them lack ethics and wisdom.
My
next gripe concerns the part that reads, ‘Paying attention in a non-judgemental
way.’ I wonder if that is even possible and I certainly think it is not
beneficial. We make judgement calls all the time, from what we wear, what we
eat, the job we do and so on. It is impossible to live without some form of
judgement.
If
I am harming someone and I bring myself back into the present moment and I
don’t judge what I am doing, how am I going to change my behaviour?
If
mindfulness is going to be affective it needs to cover all three aspects of the
basics of the path and that is why I have devised a practice called AWARE. I
feel this can be a bridge between traditional and secular mindfulness.
You
bring yourself into the present moment by using a breathing exercise, focusing
on your senses or bringing your awareness back to your body. Once you are in
the here and now, you can start the AWARE practice.
AWARE
stands for Attention, Why, Assess, Reality, Examine
A –
bring your clear attention to what you are doing. Are you on autopilot? Are you
being led by unconscious habits, behaviour or biases? This covers the awareness
aspect of the three basics of the path.
W –
ask yourself, ‘Why am I doing it. What is my motivation, what is my intention?’
This covers the wisdom aspect.
A –
assess if your behaviour is beneficial. Is it ethical, is it helping me to be
the person I want to be? Is it compassionate or hurtful to myself and others?
This covers the ethics aspect.
R –
is it based in reality? Or am I generalising, catastrophising or letting my
imagination run wild? This covers the wisdom aspect.
E –
examine a more mindful, beneficial and compassionate way to act. A way that is
based in fact and not fantasy. A way that helps support me and others. This
covers all three aspects.
I
personally believe by adopting the AWARE practice once you have brought
yourself back into the present moment, you will be able to make changes to your
behaviour, you will be able to change and grow. That, I feel, is the whole
purpose of mindfulness. So, now let’s look at the four foundations.
The four foundation practices of
mindfulness are of being aware of our bodies, of our feelings, of our minds and
of our mental states.
The purpose of these practices is to
get to know ourselves better. It will help us understand what is working for us
and what isn’t. This will allow us to change more effectively and positively.
Awareness of
body
The first practice is for the body.
We need to be aware of our body and all the actions carried out by it. But we do not need to see it as
‘my’ body. If we think of it as ‘my’ body, it could lead to attachment
and give us a false sense of identity. Reflect on the time and effort we spend
on this body just to look good. Imagine how much money is spent each year on
plastic surgery and beauty products. It would appear we are completely obsessed
with our bodies. We might be mindful of how the body looks but very rarely
spend time on observing the actions it carries out.
There are many ways of contemplating
the body, but a simple and effective one is doing a full body scan. You can
find guided body scan meditations on my website.
In today’s world, we always seem to
be running from pillar to post, so this meditation will help you get back in
tune with the body and calm your mind at the same time. I am sure you will be
surprised at how much tension you are carrying around with you and what
different sensations you have in various parts of the body.
The full body scan is one of my
favourite practices and I am always surprised at the sensations I am carrying
around. Over the years I have noticed certain sensations correspond to
different emotions and experiences. When I was young, I started to have asthma
and I noticed that 10 to 15 minutes before an attack I would start to get an
itching sensation under my chin. This gave me ample time to take my tablet and
prevent the attack from taking hold. Many sensations in the body are there for
a reason, but unfortunately, we have lost the art of reading our bodies and
rely too much on our minds. This application of mindful awareness will bring
you back in touch with your body.
As we become more in touch with our
bodies you may ask how can we integrate this awareness into our daily practice?
Whatever you do with the body affects you and those around you. So, this is
where a daily reflective practice will help you. Look back on the day and see
what actions you have carried out with the body. The ones that are conducive to
responsible living should be noted. This will ensure that, through repetition,
they can become spontaneous. The ones that are not conducive to living
responsibly should also be noted and a clear effort should be made to refrain
from doing them again. It is through staying mindful of our bodily actions that
we will be able to live responsibly.
Awareness of
feelings
Another application for mindful
awareness is feelings. Now, I am not talking about emotions here, many people
get the two mixed up. Emotions are mental states whereas feelings arise when
our senses coming into contact with something. There are three types of
feelings, namely pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. One of these three are
present during every moment of our experience. They may be strong or weak, but
they are always present.
Here are some examples of how
feelings occur. You may be walking down the street and you pass a good-looking
person; this brings up pleasant feelings. As you walk further, a dog barks at
you and unpleasant feelings arise. A bit later, you walk past a group of people
you do not know, none of them are of interest to you, so you have a neutral
feeling.
If we are not mindful and leave our
feelings unchecked, pleasant feelings can lead to clinging desires, painful
feelings to hatred and neutral feelings to apathy. When paying attention to feelings, the important
thing is simply to notice them, become aware of them, without either clinging
to them or pushing them away.
Here are two ways we can mindfully
get in touch with our feelings. Firstly, during meditation, after you have
spent some time watching your breath, notice what comes into your mind and
observe what feeling is attached to that experience. Don’t try to change or
judge the feeling, just become aware of it and then let it go on its way. Then
do the same with the next object that comes into your mind. You can do this for
as long as you like and then return back to your breathing awareness. This practice helps you notice how
you feel and what’s going on with you. It also helps you to understand that a
feeling is present in every experience you have.
As with your awareness of your body
you can also review your feelings during your daily reflective practice. When
you think of an incident that happened that day, check to see what feelings it
invoked in you. Did it bring up pleasant, painful or neutral feelings? Don’t
try to control the feelings, just be mindful of them.
Being watchful of our feelings helps
us see what desires we are chasing when a pleasant feeling is present and what
is being invoked by our unpleasant feelings. We can also learn to simply
observe an experience, without getting all tangled up in it. This will help us
to form neutral responses, instead of getting attached to pleasant feelings or
repelled by unpleasant feelings.
Awareness of
mind
The next area of focus is on our
minds. We can apply mindful awareness to explore deep into our minds. If I am
honest, this was always the most difficult for me to get my head around. How
can the mind look at itself? The answer that came to me is that we look at the
mind as though we are looking in a mirror. When we talk about the mind we tend to think of it as a
single thing, but it is actually a sequence of instances that arise from moment
to moment in response to the perceptions coming to us from the six senses –
things we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch and from internal mental states.
The mind is a process and cannot exist alone. So, when we look at the mind, we
are actually looking at the processing going on in the brain.
We rarely stop and spend time
observing our minds. We just let thoughts, hopes, fears and dreams come and go
unchecked. But our minds, if left unrestrained, can lead us into all kinds of
situations. So, we practice simply observing our minds. We do not engage with
what we see – we just allow it to arise and go. I understand that this is
easier said than done, but with practice, patience and effort, it is
achievable.
During your meditation or a daily
reflective practice, observe your mind and see what state it is in: is it
tired, lazy, angry, happy or disturbed? Note the state, but don’t try to change
it. Ask yourself, “How is my mind at the moment?” “Is it full of desire, full
of anger, or full of ignorance. Is it present in the moment or distracted?” We
need to look at our mind in this way, and just see it as it is, not pass any
judgement or think of it as ‘my mind’.
You can also focus your awareness on the way each thought arises,
remains and then moves away. This helps us to stop blindly following one
thought after another. We gain insight and understand that we are not our
thoughts and we do not need to chase after each and every one. In fact, we
cannot find any part of our mind to identify with, it is just a constantly
changing process.
Once you have learned how to
dispassionately watch your mind, whenever your mind is disturbed, you should
firstly examine it and then, with calmness, act in a proper way – a way that is
not going to harm yourself or others. Developing awareness of the mind will
help us lead a life where we are not becoming disturbed or disturbing others. We come to know the mind as it
really is – a process.
Awareness of mental states
The final application of mindfulness
is concerning mental states. A mental state is an awareness of objects that
come in contact with our senses, which occur on a moment to moment basis. As we
bring awareness to these moments of consciousness, we begin to strengthen our
ability to take mindfulness into our daily lives.
There are pleasurable mental states,
such as happiness, compassion, empathy, contentment, and painful mental states,
such as greed, apathy, anger, selfishness and so on.
We are not looking to oppose these
mental states, but just become aware of them, acknowledge them, learn from them
and let them go. There are several ways of letting the mental states go and
here are the ones that have worked for me.
You can change the painful into a pleasurable,
such as replacing greed with generosity or hatefulness with compassion.
Thinking of the consequences of the painful mindset can be another way of
letting go. If we understand that this mindset is leading us down a wrong path,
we should not follow it. We could for example bring to mind the insight that
all things that arise are impermanent, the painful mental factor is not going
to last, so just let it go. All of these practices are not easy, but they are
doable, it just takes effort.
Reflection
We should also look to reflect on
mental factors and here is a suggested practice.
Sit
comfortably and place your awareness on your breath.
When a
mental state arises, and it will, if it is strong enough to disrupt your focus
on the breath, rest your awareness in that new state, allowing yourself to be
aware of what the state is, such as joyful mind or angry mind, fearful mind or
contented mind, until it naturally subsides. If the mental state is strong,
notice what it feels like in the body. Is there tightness,
discomfort, pain? Where is it located?
Now look at
the consequences of this mental state. Will it lead to a sense of peace in your
life or lead to more difficulty?
If another
mental state arises and is strong enough to hold your attention, continue to
practice with it. If one doesn’t, then return to watching your breath until
your meditation session has finished.
This brings us to the end of the four foundations of mindfulness. If we are going to be mindful and live a responsible life, we have to be fully aware of, but not tangled up in, our bodies, our feelings, our minds and our mental states. By being mindful, we will be able to take full responsibility for all of our actions. This will ensure that our minds become calmer and we spend more time in the present moment, not being tossed backwards and forwards from past to future. Being mindful means being conscious of every thought, feeling, emotion and action. Repeatedly during the day, take a few moments to bring mindful awareness to your breath, body sensations, mind, feelings and mental states. Then use the AWARE practice as this is a good way of helping yourself to settle down into the present moment and to expand your formal meditation practices into your everyday life.
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Many years ago when I first moved to India, I went to see a Buddhist teacher to get a personal instruction. We chatted for around thirty minutes, and then he told me at the end of each day to sit quietly and review all my actions, thoughts, feelings and emotions for that day. (more…)
