Bringing Attention to Ordinariness

Television is extraordinary. They can put all kinds of fantastic adventurous romantic things on the television. It’s a miraculous thing, so it’s easy to concentrate on. You can get mesmerised by the ‘telly.’ Also, when the body becomes extraordinary, say it becomes very ill or very painful, or it feels ecstatic or wonderful feelings go through it, we notice that!

But just the pressure of the right foot on the ground, just the movement of the breath, just the feeling of your body sitting on the seat when there’s not any kind of extreme sensation – those are the things we’re awakened to now. We’re bringing our attention to the way things are for an ordinary life.

When life becomes extreme, or extraordinary, then we find we can cope with it quite well. Pacifists and conscientious objectors are often asked this famous question: ‘You don’t believe in violence, so what would you do if a maniac was attacking your mother?’ That’s something that I think most of us have never had to worry about very much! It’s not the kind of ordinary daily occurrence in one’s life. But if such an extreme situation did arise, I’m sure we would do something that would be appropriate. Even the nuttiest person can be mindful in extreme situations.

But in ordinary life when there isn’t anything extreme going on, when we’re just sitting here, we can be completely nutty, can’t we? It says in the Pāṭimokkha discipline that we monks shouldn’t hit anyone. So then I sit here worrying about what I would do if a maniac attacks my mother. I’ve created a great moral problem in an ordinary situation, when I’m sitting here and my mother isn’t even here. In all these years there hasn’t been the slightest threat to my mother’s life from maniacs–from California drivers, yes!

Great moral questions we can answer easily in accordance with time and place if, now, we’re mindful of this time and this place.

So we’re bringing attention to the ordinariness of our human condition: the breathing of the body, the walking from one end of the joṅgrom path to the other, and to the feelings of pleasure and pain. As we go on in the retreat, we examine absolutely everything, watch and know everything as it is.

This is our practice of vipassanā – to know things as they are, not according to some theory or some assumption we make about them.

This reflection by Luang Por Sumedho is from the book, Mindfulness—The Path to the Deathless, (pdf) pp. 60-61.