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Defining Mindfulness
Mindfulness can be thought of in a lot of different ways. But my basic working definition of mindfulness is it’s the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. So I’ll repeat that because it’s a lot. Paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, which is really the only moment we ever could pay attention or do anything else, and non-judgmentally. That turns out to sound really easy to operationalize, it turns out it’s probably one of the most difficult things for us human beings to actually string moments of this kind of attentional quality together. So in short, if you just wanted one word for mindfulness, it’s a synonym for awareness, but I would add sort of pure awareness. It’s not colored, it doesn’t have a particular kinds of angles or agendas to it. It’s meant to be a completely open-field of awareness that is grounded in open-hearted presence.
So it does have an ethical quality to it, of non-harming. And of course that’s how we use it in medicine under the Hippocratic Oath, first do no harm. What I’ve come to actually understand that as is relationality, meaning how am I to be in relationship to the entire universe, starting with like, “Who am I? What am I? I say I have a body, but who’s the I that’s claiming to have a body that’s separate from me?” So there’s all sorts of interesting questions about relationality to the body, to the mind, to the heart, to others, to the planet, to the world. And when we navigate those relationships with awareness and with clarity and kindness, then it is profoundly healing and transformative to our lives. And there’s a great deal of scientific research that’s pointing very much in that direction. And suggesting that what I just said is actually the case.
Cultivating Mindfulness
When you boil it all down, although there are all these different methods for cultivating mindfulness, the real method is to just be who you already are, and not trying to get anywhere. So it’s like non-striving as a part of this. Non-Judging, non-striving, what the Zen-people call, “Beginner’s mind.” But there’s nothing Buddhist about it, it’s just human, not getting caught in all of your filters of judging, liking, disliking, wanting, not wanting, but noticing how easily we are caught in all those grasping, clinging, aversion and so forth. And the noticing actually marinades something in us that, over time, begins to feel like discernment, clarity, wisdom, knowing something about how to live life with integrity. And that knowing is not from up here. It’s not merely a conceptual knowing. Of course, concepts are a part of it, if I didn’t have concepts, I wouldn’t be able to wag my tongue like this and have you understand anything.
So thought is not unappreciated here, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of anything. We’ve got thinking, which we get tremendous training in in school. And sometimes we think so much, we can’t even get to sleep at night because it can be torment, all of our thoughts about this and that. And on the other hand, a quality that’s also native to us, deep human capacity, navigates any kind of airtime or training in our educational process, until very recently, now that mindfulness is moving in many ways into primary and secondary schools and education is awareness itself. And awareness is at least as powerful as thinking, because think any thought you like even the infinite nature of the universe, so the multi-verse, and that thought, however big it is, can be held by awareness. So it can be held in awareness, and therefore you could even see next steps in where that thought might lead one, which is into the unknown. So the knowing is one quality of awareness, and the knowing the not knowing is another quality of awareness. Being aware of what it is that we do not know, and learning how to actually be comfortable in the not knowing, that’s its own kind of knowing. And mindfulness is all of that.
Loving Life
So in a way, ultimately, I’ve come to see mindfulness as a love affair with life, with the present moment, with all sorts of hidden dimensions of our own human experience. The cosmologists love to talk about hidden dimensions, in terms of the universe not being four dimensional, but maybe 11 dimensional. And a lot of those dimensions didn’t unfurl at the infinitesimally small moment or right after The Big Bang or something like that. But if they can talk like that, then maybe we can also recognize that there are a lot of hidden dimensions to our own humanity. One of which is we’re almost never here for it. Because we’re so agenda driven that we’re always on the way to some better moment or pushing away what we don’t like and completely off balance. And yet, the only moment we are ever alive is this one. So the present moment is a hidden dimension, unless we reclaim it and learn how to inhabit it. And that’s what mindfulness is all about. And there are an number of ways to do it. It’s not like one-size-fits-all or there’s one right way and all the other ways are misinformed and wrong. On the other hand, there are an infinite number of wrong ways to cultivate it where it’s really just more perseverating, more thinking, more proliferating of thoughts. And you can do an awful lot of thinking about mindfulness without cultivating mindfulness at all, you’re just thinking. It is an art form, and a love affair in some way with life in ways that are very subtle and profoundly satisfying.