Mindfulness:
An introduction

Our mind can be our ally or our enemy, our enhancer or our detractor, our savior or our assailant. It's our choice. We must use it well if it's to serve us properly, if it's to bring us well-being; yet, often we don't. The way we can use our mind "well" is thru mindfulness.

Mindfulness is neither a New Age phenomenon nor a product of the hippie generation. Its origin can be traced back to as early as the first millennium BC, to the foothills of the Himalayas, when Shakyamuni Buddha, the Buddha of this era & the founder of Buddhism, attained enlightenment.

Yet, mindfulness is also something that even modern-day academics like Ellen Langer, a Psychology Professor at Harvard University, has researched & written about. She noted that both mindfulness & its counterpart, mindlessness, have "the power to change our lives."

In particular, in her book, Mindfulness, she wrote that mindfulness has been shown to affect cheerfulness, alertness & even lifespan.

Mindfulness is a counter to mental rigidity, which occurs when you lock yourself into ways of thinking. Mindfulness releases you from dependence upon habitually-referenced mindsets & elevates your creative ability. Later, activities are presented to help you to increase your mindfulness.

Mindfulness isn't concentration

Concentration is when you focus your mind on one thing, such as when you're removing a splinter from a small child's finger.

Concentration requires willpower to force the mind to focus on an entity. Without concentration, there can't be mindfulness; however, there's a distinct difference between them.

Concentration focuses attention; Mindfulness determines upon what the attention will be focused & detects when attention strays..

SATI exerpt from Mindfulness in Plain English by Venerable Henepola Gunaratana

Mindfulness is the English translation of the Pali word 'Sati.'

Sati is an activity. What exactly is that?

Well, this is one of those questions without a precise answer, at least not in words. Words are devised by the symbolic levels of the mind & they describe those realities with which symbolic thinking deals.

Mindfulness (Sati) is pre-symbolic. It's not shackled to logic. Nevertheless, Mindfulness can be experienced - rather easily & it can be described, as long as you keep in mind that the words are only fingers pointing at the moon.

They're not the thing itself. The actual experience lies beyond the words & above the symbols.

Mindfulness could be described in completely different terms than will be used here & each description could still be correct.  

Mindfulness (Sati) is a subtle process that you're using at this very moment. The fact that this process lies above & beyond words doesn't make it unreal - quite the reverse.

Mindfulness is the reality which gives rise to words - the words that follow are simply pale shadows of reality. It's important to understand that everything that follows here is an analogy. It's not going to make perfect sense. Please don't sit around scratching your head & trying to figure it all out.

In fact, the meditational technique called Vipassana (insight) that was introduced by the Buddha about 25 centuries ago is a set of mental activities specifically aimed at experiencing a state of uninterrupted Mindfulness or Sati.

When you first become aware of something there's a fleeting instant of pure awareness just before you conceptualize the thing, before you identify it. That's a stage of Mindfulness  (Sati).

Ordinarily, this stage is very short. It's that flashing split second just before you focus your eyes on the thing, just before you focus your mind on the thing, just before you objectify it, clamp down on it mentally & segregate it from the rest of existence.

It takes place just before you start thinking about it - before that little 'yak, yak' machine inside your skull says, "Oh, it's a dog." That flowing, soft-focused moment of pure awareness is Mindfulness (Sati). In that brief flashing mind - moment you experience a thing as an un-thing.

You experience a softly flowing moment of pure experience that is interlocked w/the rest of reality, not separate from it.

Mindfulness is very much like what you see w/your peripheral vision as opposed to the hard focus of normal or central vision. Yet this moment of soft, unfocused, awareness contains a very deep sort of knowing that's lost as soon as you focus your mind & objectify the object into a thing.

In the process of ordinary perception, the Mindfulness (Sati) step is so fleeting as to be unobservable. We've developed the habit of squandering our attention on all the remaining steps, focusing on the perception, cognizing the perception, labeling it & most of all, getting involved in a long string of symbolic thought about it.

That original moment of Mindfulness just gets lost in the shuffle. It's the purpose of the above mentioned Vipassana (or insight) meditation to train us to prolong that moment of awareness.

When this Mindfulness (Sati) is prolonged by using proper techniques, you find that this experience is profound & it changes your whole view of the universe.

This state of perception has to be learned, however, & it takes regular practice.

Once you learn the technique, you'll find that Mindfulness has a number of interesting characteristics.

Three Fundamental Activities

There are 3 fundamental activities of Mindfulness (Sati). We can use these activities as functional definitions of the term: 

• Mindfulness reminds us what we're supposed to be doing
• it sees things as they really are
• it sees the deep nature of all phenomena

Let's examine these definitions in greater detail.

Mindfulness (Sati) reminds you what you're supposed to be doing. In meditation, you put your attention on one item. When your mind wanders from this focus, it's Mindfulness that reminds you that your mind's wandering & what you're supposed to be doing. It's Mindfulness that brings your mind back to the object of meditation.

All of this occurs instantaneously & w/out internal dialogue. Meditation isn't thinking. Repeated practice in meditation establishes this function as a mental habit which then carries over into the rest of your life.

You should be paying bare attention to occurrences all the time, day in, day out, whether formally sitting in meditation or not. This is a very lofty ideal towards which those who meditate may be working for a period of years or even decades.

Our habit of getting stuck in thought is years old & that habit will hang on in the most tenacious manner. The only way out is to be equally persistent in the cultivation of constant Mindfulness (Sati).

When Mindfulness is present, you'll notice when you become stuck in your thought patterns. It's that very noticing which allows you to back out of the thought process & free yourself from it.

Mindfulness then returns your attention to its proper focus. If you're meditating at that moment, then your focus will be the formal object of meditation. If you're not in formal meditation, it'll be just a pure application of bare attention itself, just a pure noticing of whatever comes up w/out getting involved -

"Ah, this comes up... & now this & now this... & now this."

Mindfulness (Sati) is at one & the same time both bare attention itself & the function of reminding us to pay bare attention if we've ceased to do so.

Bare attention is noticing. It re-establishes itself simply by noticing that it's not been present. As soon as you're noticing that you haven't been noticing, then by definition you're noticing & then again you're back to paying bare attention.

Well, that all sounds very involved, but there's nothing complex about it. It's just the words. It's just a thing you'll learn to do by feel, the way you play baseball.

Mindfulness creates its own distinct feeling in consciousness. It has a flavor - a light, clear, energetic flavor. Conscious thought is heavy by comparison, ponderous & picky. But here again, these are just words.

Your own practice will show you the difference. Then you'll probably come up w/your own words & the words used here will become superfluous. Remember, practice is the thing.

Mindfulness (Sati) sees things as they really are. It adds nothing to perception & it subtracts nothing. It distorts nothing. It's bare attention & just looks at whatever comes up.

Conscious thought loves to paste things over our experience, to load us down with concepts & ideas, to immerse us in a churning vortex of plans & worries, fears & fantasies. When mindful, you don't play that game. You just notice exactly what arises in the mind, then you notice the next thing. "Ah, this... & this... & now this." It's really very simple.

Mindfulness (Sati) sees the true nature of all phenomena. Mindfulness & only Mindfulness can perceive the 3 prime characteristics that Buddhism teaches are the deepest truth of existence.

In Pali these 3 are called:

• Annica (impermanence)
• Dukkha (unsatisfactoriness)
• Anatta (selflessness - the absence of a permanent, unchanging, entity that we call soul or self)

These truths, by the way, aren't presented in Buddhist teaching as dogmas subject to blind faith. The Buddhists feel that these truths are universal & self-evident to anyone who cares to investigate in a proper way.

Mindfulness is that method of investigation. Mindfulness alone has the power to reveal the deepest level of reality available to human observation. At this level of inspection, one sees the following: 

• all conditioned things are inherently transitory
• every worldly thing is, in the end, unsatisfying
• there are really no entities that are unchanging or permanent, only processes

Mindfulness works like an electron microscope. That is, it operates on so fine a level that one can actually see directly those realities which are at best theoretical constructs to the conscious thought process.

Mindfulness actually sees the impermanent character of every perception. It sees the transitory & passing nature of everything that is perceived. It also sees the inherently unsatisfactory nature of all conditioned things.

It sees that there is no sense grabbing onto any of these passing shows. Peace & happiness just can't be found that way. And finally, Mindfulness sees the inherent selflessness of all phenomena.

It sees the way we have arbitrarily selected a certain bundle of perceptions, chopped them off from the rest of the surging flow of experience & then conceptualized them as separate, enduring, entities. Mindfulness actually sees these things. It doesn't think about them, it sees them directly.

When it's fully developed, Mindfulness sees these 3 attributes of existence directly, instantaneously & w/out the intervening medium of conscious thought. In fact, even the attributes which we just covered are inherently arbitrary. They don't really exist as separate items.

They are purely the result of our struggle to take this fundamentally simple process called Mindfulness & express it in the cumbersome & inherently unsuitable thought symbols of the conscious level.

Mindfulness is a PROCESS, but it doesn't take place in steps. It's a wholistic process that occurs as a unit: you notice your own lack of Mindfulness & that noticing itself is a result of Mindfulness & Mindfulness is bare attention & bare attention is noticing things exactly as they're w/out distortion; & the way they're is Anicca, Dukkha, & Anatta (impermananent, unsatisfactory & self-less). It all takes place in a flash-bang.

This doesn't mean, however, that you'll instantly attain liberation (freedom from all human weaknesses) as a result of your first moment of mindfulness.

Learning to integrate this material into your conscious life is another whole process. And learning to prolong this state of Mindfulness is still another. They're joyous processes, however & they're well worth the effort.

Awareness of Thought & Physical Reaction

Inevitably, while practicing mindfulness, your mind will wander. Learning to observe where it wanders to is also a practice in awareness.

Thoughts are of 2 varieties.

Non-afflicting: Thoughts like "I wonder what's for dinner?" or "Should I watch TV or read a book?" come & go all the time w/out getting a rise out of the body. They don't matter that much.

Afflicting: Thoughts like "I wonder why my spouse & I don't get along?" or "I'm scared that my disease is going to kill me" get a definite rise out of the body. They produce an emotional response like fear, guilt, or anger. Because such thoughts draw us out of the present moment, as well as getting stored in the body, they're very powerful.

One of my patients, a young nurse who experienced anxiety attacks, was amazed when she realized that the anxiety didn't spring full-blown from nowhere.  

There were certain thoughts that always preceded her attacks while others kept them going. When she learned to control her thoughts, her anxiety disappeared.

Going Beyond the Mind: The Witness

Try this experiment before reading further. Since the mind speaks in words, for the next minute become the witness, the listener of your mind. Close your eyes, breathe a sigh of relief, take 3 abdominal breaths & listen to your mind for one minute.

What happened? You probably had one of 2 experiences. Either you watched your thoughts go by or strangely, there were no thoughts at all. My patients are often amazed that when they watch the mind closely, it tends to stop or slow down.  

Usually the experience of witnessing the mind - whether the mind falls silent or keeps on running - is one of peacefulness. You don't stop existing if the mind becomes quiet. You're still aware of your own existence & your own consciousness & that awareness is quite peaceful. Try the experiment again for a minute.

Meditation develops the ability to become aware of a completely nonjudgmental part of the mind, that of the Witness. The Witness is the part of your mind that watches - that's aware of thinking. Since the Witness is beyond the ego, it isn't caught up in judging & is thus content in any situation.  

Another name for the Witness is the Self, or the unconditioned mind. It's the same in everyone because it's not conditional on what our experiences have been. It exists previous to experience & the arising of the different parts of the mind. In many different psychologies & philosophies, the ego is called the self with a small "s" because it represents our own personal history, complete with all the limitations of our attitudes & fears. The Self w/a big S represents completely unlimited potential.

Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is.
In the very here and now, the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows how to dwell in mindfulness night and day,
'one who knows the better way to live alone.'

Bhaddekaratta Sutta