Mindfulness & The 6 Animals
The objective on observation of your breath is that it is a bodily formation, governed not by CNS but by involuntary nervous system. But why then focus on breath. The reason is quite simple to understand.
As you may be a aware, the thing that you cannot keep under your control is the mind. But there is also good news, there is a very prominent thing of yours that is always in present, your body. The body unlike the mind will never go to the past or future. But for meditation we use the bodily formation of breath and that too is in the present, here and now.
But there is another problem, our 6 touch-agencies of rye, ear, tongue, nose, body and mind which keep going to their primary objectives. Eye to form, Ear to sound, Nose to odour, Tongue to taste, Body to tactile-sensations and Mind to things. Despite our focusing on the present breath, yet mind will stray.
Let us use a simile to understand this. Suppose there are 6 types of animals that one has caught,
- Crocodile
- Dog
- Fox
- Snake
- Bird
- Monkey
Supposing a person take 6 equal lengths of a strong rope, tie one end of each length to each of the 6 animals and then tie up the 6 ropes in other end so the knot is equidistant to all 6 animals. Now, imagine they trying to get to their normal locality, Crocodile will pull towards the lake, Dog to the village, Bird to the Sky, Fox to the Carnal ground, Monkey to trees and Snake to anthill. They will pull and pull and in the end the strongest will pull the other 5 as well towards its abode. If the Crocodile is the strongest animal, then it will be to the lake. Think of people watching TV, and while watching eating a meal on a plate with fork? The person will be glued to the screen and the fork will move from plate to mouth almost involuntarily because the mind focus is the TV and not the food.
Now imagine another situation where instead of tying the other end of the 6 ropes together you tie then to a very long and strong pole, buried two third on earth. The animals will pull and pull and after sometime not being able to even move one inch, and tired will lie down near the pole.
That is what Mindfulness does, overcome the fickle nature of our 6 touch-agencies and build not only mindfulness, but wisdom too.
Sugath_ras@sltnet,lk;sugathra@airindia.indusky.lk