Stress-based Mindfulness Reduction

Ajahn Amaro turns the name of mindfulness-based stress reduction around to describe how people lose mindfulness under pressure. Taking the three kinds of craving from the first sermon (for sense pleasure, for becoming, for non-becoming), he shows distraction, doom-scrolling, anger, compulsive worry and helping, numbing and dullness as habitual responses to difficulty, and how the same habits enter meditation as striving to get rid of defilements. He proposes seeing an awake mind knowing a pattern, instead of “my problem”, and discusses the four factors supportive of stream entry, right effort and right intention without self-view, and tracing proliferating thought back to its source.

The question session, from about 1:01, covers sīla and mindfulness, working under pressure, and addiction and rehabilitation.