Khanti - Wat Pah Nanachat

forest monks, we uphold the development of mindfulness in
daily life, but how do we go about it, practically speaking?
What are you mindful of? There is no kind of floating quality
of mindfulness or awareness – mindfulness is always of
something. So what are you mindful of? The basic answer to
that question in our daily life as monastics is the Vinaya rules
and the korwat observances. These are our ‘pegs for
mindfulness’. Another analogy: visualize a radar screen and a
moving object – a missile perhaps – moving across the screen.
A radar operator is able to track the moving object easily and
accurately by means of a grid. The object moves, say, from
square A4 to B6, or whatever. Similarly, the Vinaya rules and
the observances give you a grid in which you can constantly be
returning to the present moment and keeping track of what you
are doing with your body, how you are speaking, how you are
acting. This is a meditation. It’s a mindfulness practice. All
these things: how you put your shoulder bag down, how you
fold your sitting cloth – there is an incredible number of
observances that we keep. If you look at it in one way, it’s “so
much stuff to learn” and it’s “such a hassle”, and it can feel like
people are always getting on your back because you’re not
doing things the right way. And then you change the way
you’re doing it, and then someone else tells you off because
you’re not doing it the way that you’ve just stopped doing it.
Then it turns out the person who has admonished you had
trained in another monastery and had been taught something
else, and so on and so on, until maybe you just want to bellow
in frustration. But if you can be patient, approach the Vinaya in
the right way and consciously try to develop a wise attitude
towards it, then you will gradually learn how to use these
training rules as tools for awareness. Then you will find that
keeping them can sharpen and noticeably increase your
mindfulness.
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