A Respone to Domyo Dharma Talk 'Beyond Mindfulness: The Radical Practice of Undivided Presence'

August 30, 2026

I recently listened to a Dharma talk from a Zen monk called Beyond Mindfulness: The Radical Practice of Undivided Presence, and I think some of the points were wrong, or at least not what the Buddha originally intended. As such, this serves as a kind of response to it. Do keep in mind that I am a layperson and not trained in Buddhism, while the speaker is a trained Zen monk. With that out of the way, let’s get started.

The original goal of Buddhist practice is getting free from suffering and ultimately freeing oneself from saṃsāra.

So what is suffering and saṃsāra?

Suffering is created not simply by what happens to us, but by how we react to things. For example, if our partner cheats on us, the act of cheating is one thing, while the anger, hatred, resistance, rumination, desire for revenge, etc. that follow are another. We experience something unpleasant, and then craving and aversion arise around it: we want pleasant things to remain and unpleasant things to disappear. These reactions are deeply ingrained habits that have built up over our lives.

To free ourselves from suffering, we therefore need to break these habitual patterns of reactivity.

When something we perceive as bad happens, we have a few options. The first is simply to follow our first instinct, embracing our habitual reaction: someone insults us, we get angry, and we punch the guy. The second is to distract ourselves from the supposedly bad thing that happened: for example, by reading, going to the gym, going to a bar, playing video games, taking drugs, and so on. The problem with this is that we do not work through it but suppress it instead to our subconscious, which inevitable affect our mood and state of mind, producing suffering.

The third option is neither to act on the reaction nor to suppress it, but to observe it. We allow the unpleasant experience to be there without feeding it and without pushing it down. By observing the anger, fear, craving, or whatever else has arisen, we begin to see that it is not a solid, permanent thing. Sensations change, thoughts change, emotions change, and impulses change. By repeatedly observing these things without automatically reacting to them, the habitual pattern gradually loses its power.

The problem is that when we are completely overcome by anger, lust, fear, or some other emotion, simply deciding to observe it may not be possible, the emotion is too strong. And we cannot directly see, touch, smell, or hear an emotion itself. So what do we do?

This is where I think one of the Buddha’s great insights comes in: meditation. In meditation, we practise observing experience without immediately reacting to it, particularly by observing the body. Although we cannot directly observe “anger” as an object, we can observe how anger manifests in the body: tension, heat, pressure, changes in breathing, tightening of the muscles, and so on. By repeatedly observing bodily sensations closely and learning not to react to them, we train the mind not to automatically follow every impulse that arises.

Over time, we can begin to recognize these habits in everyday life. Someone insults us and anger arises. Instead of immediately identifying with it and acting on it, we recognize what is happening. We can feel the bodily sensations, recognize the thoughts and impulses, and observe them without having to obey them.

In this sense, enlightenment or nirvāṇa is not some mystical state of consciousness, nor is it simply a state of being completely “alive,” “wholehearted,” or “present.” It is freedom from the processes that produce suffering: the deep patterns of craving, aversion, clinging, and ignorance that keep the cycle of saṃsāra going.

This is why I think the author misses the point when they describe the “Buddha’s Way of Being” as the moon itself. The experiences they describe of acceptance, centeredness, clarity, peace, wholeheartedness, aliveness, may be valuable and may arise as a result of practice, but they are not necessarily the goal. They are transitory experiences and states, and therefore they themselves can become objects of attachment.

If I start thinking, “This is what enlightenment feels like; I need to maintain this state of wholehearted presence,” then I have created another form of craving. I am once again trying to hold onto a particular experience and make reality conform to what I want. In other words, I have created another form of saṃsāra.

I do agree with the author’s basic metaphor that all kinds of different teachings can be fingers pointing at the moon. With different Buddhist traditions we get different meditation techniques such as Vipassana, Anapanasati, noting, Zazen, and all of them can help us find the moon. But the moon is not achieving some special state of conciousness, nor is the technique itself the goal, the goal is using these techniques to break free from our everyday habits and conditioning. And only by this metric they should be evaluated, how much they help us in producing equanimity.

The moon is: seeing the processes of the mind clearly enough that craving, aversion, and ignorance no longer control us, and therefore dukkha ceases.

Mindfulness is an essential part of this process, but mindfulness itself is not the final goal. It is a tool for seeing what is happening in the mind and for learning not to automatically react to it. The important thing is not to become permanently mindful in the sense of maintaining some special state of conscious presence, but to understand the mind deeply enough that its habitual patterns of reactivity gradually lose their power.

That, to me, is much closer to what the Buddha was pointing at with the “moon.”