Four Applications — Investigating The Ground
Learning to Explore Experience Systematically
First Floor - Small Vehicle • Module 2
Estimated time to complete: 75 minutes
A Compass for the Territory
We’ve glimpsed the first hallmark—impermanence—and had a taste of investigating it directly. But one hallmark doesn’t make a complete map. Three more remain, and the territory they describe requires more than intellectual understanding. It requires investigation. Before we continue mapping, we need a compass.
This module introduces that compass: what Buddhist tradition calls the “four applications of mindfulness.” The word “mindfulness” here carries a specific meaning—quite different from how many contemporary meditation apps and wellness programs use the term. We’ll clarify that meaning, then put it into practice.
Our goal for now is simply to learn the technique and start practicing to familiarize ourselves with what we’re looking at and how to look at it. The full theoretical framework, including why this method matters and how it evolves through sustained practice, will come later in the Path section of the curriculum. Here, we’re learning to use the compass. Later, we’ll understand its full design.
What to watch for: The four objects of investigation—body, feeling, mind, and mental phenomena—and how “research questions” give us a way to look at them. Notice how the technique differs from the meditation itself.
Video 1: Introduction to the Four Applications
Duration: 15 minutes
Bridge: Four Spheres, One Method
The video introduced four spheres of experience we can investigate: body, feeling, mind, and mental phenomena. Each offers a window into how we actually experience being alive, and we’ll explore each in detail as the curriculum unfolds. For now, what matters is understanding that these aren’t separate practices but four aspects of a single investigative method.
The key insight is the role of research questions. Questions like “Is this lasting?” or “Is this pleasant or painful?” aren’t asking for intellectual answers. They frame how we observe—giving us a way to look that reveals what’s been there all along. We’ll say more about this after clarifying what “mindfulness” actually means.
What to watch for: The Buddhist definition of mindfulness as “remembering the virtuous object of attention.” How mindfulness and awareness work together. The distinction between this classical meaning and contemporary usage.
Video 2: Mindfulness & Awareness
Duration: 15 minutes
Bridge: From Definition to Practice
In classical Buddhist meditation theory, mindfulness (Sanskrit: smṛti) means something quite specific: remembering what you’re paying attention to and returning to it when you wander. This differs from how contemporary programs like MBSR or meditation apps use the term to indicate a state of passive openness or non-judgmental awareness of everything. The classical meaning is more active: you choose an object of attention, you try not to forget it, and when you do forget, you come back with what the tradition describes as a slight sense of delight, or even a feeling of relief, to no longer be lost in thought. In this way, one practices making a fresh start over and over without self-critical attitudes and begins to prefer mindfulness over distraction.
Awareness (Sanskrit: samprajanya) is the broader monitoring that develops as mindfulness stabilizes. Think of learning to drive: at first you have to apply various techniques to consciously remember to check mirrors, signal, watch your speed. Eventually, a kind of effortless awareness emerges where you’re monitoring everything at once without having to remind yourself. Mindfulness is like the effortful remembering; awareness is what grows from sustained practice. In the Path section, we’ll explore how this awareness can develop the meta-cognitive capacity to monitor the quality of attention itself without interrupting it.
For now, what matters is the basic mechanism: choose an object, attend to it, return when you wander, cultivate awareness over time.
The guided meditation that follows puts this into practice. It uses the hallmark of impermanence—which we encountered in the previous module—as a research question applied to the body. This isn’t meant to be done once and set aside. Return to this meditation five to ten times over the coming days and weeks. Learn its outline until you can guide yourself through it. Eventually, you’ll condense it, adapt it, make it your own, get the hang of it, and effortlessly apply it in any passive or active context. That’s how techniques become actual meditation—not by following steps forever, but by using steps until you understand what they’re pointing toward. Remember this as we introduce other meditations in future modules.
What to watch for: How the research question “Is this lasting?” frames the investigation. Notice what you actually observe—not what you think you should observe.
Video 3: Guided Meditation — Four Applications: Impermanence
Duration: 14 minutes
A few Insights:
When I first started meditating, I thought I knew what it meant to be “mindful” and “aware”—to “observe body, feelings, mind, and phenomena without judgment.” The words seemed clear enough. But over time, I discovered that I’d been living in a perceptual bubble that obscured the way I interpreted my direct experience. The research questions helped me look more curiously, closely, and attentively at what had been in plain sight all along but somehow invisible.
A street photography teacher once gave his students an assignment: stand on a single corner in New York City for four hours and photograph whatever you find interesting. The students, wrapped in their habitual mental bubbles, felt stumped and bored by the assignment. They had passed corners like this hundreds of times and never found them particularly interesting. So to help them engage, the teacher listed a few things to look for—interesting cars, buildings, people, signage, events, sidewalks, or anything else you haven’t noticed before.
These suggestions functioned like research questions. They weren’t the point of the exercise—the point was to train the students to be more aware, to ask themselves what genuinely interested them in any environment. But the questions gave them a way in, a handle on how to look. When the teacher returned four hours later, those previously stumped students had photographed dozens of things not on his list. Now they were so interested and absorbed in what they were photographing that they didn’t want to stop.
Practicing the four applications of mindfulness can have the same effect. The technique introduces various things we can investigate—body, feeling, mind, phenomena—and gives us some initial research questions that frame how we look. But the ultimate aim isn’t to master a checklist. It’s to engender a more open and curious awareness so that we investigate the things we rush past every day within our own experience and discover the jewels that lie in plain sight.
Questions for Reflection
These questions are designed as ongoing investigations to inform your meditation practice, not one-time exercises.
1. The Research Question Experience When you used “Is this lasting?” to investigate bodily sensations, what happened? Did you find yourself answering conceptually (“Of course it’s not lasting”) or actually looking moment to moment? Notice the difference between thinking about impermanence and observing it directly.
2. Returning with Delight The instruction emphasized returning to your object of attention with “a slight sense of delight” rather than frustration. Did you experience anything like this? What would it take to cultivate that attitude? How might it change your relationship to distraction?
3. What You Ignored Like the photography students who initially found the street corner uninteresting, are there aspects of your experience you habitually rush past? Body sensations you never notice? Feeling tones you dismiss? Mental phenomena you don’t examine? What might you discover if you stood at that corner a little longer?
4. Technique vs. Meditation There is a difference between learning a technique and learning how to actually meditate. As you practice, watch for moments when you’re self-consciously following the technical steps versus moments when something shifts and you’re genuinely curious and exploring the mental and emotional landscape of your experience. What characterizes each?
This module is part of Tarpa's Palace of Learning curriculum, a secular educational program exploring Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and contemplative practice. All content © 2025