Awareness vs 'afflicted mind' - Why I teach mindfulness, not meditation

I teach mindfulness but not meditation and usually I practise mindfulness but not meditation. I think the distinction is important.

Knowing you are aware

In mindfulness, you are not only aware of what is going on but  you know that you are aware.  It's like the difference between walking and knowing  that you are walking. The knowing is what makes the difference when it comes to mindfulness. Mindfulness is something we naturally dip in and out of.  When you deliberately practise mindfulness you try to be mindful more often.  In my opinion it cannot do harm and is an asset worth cultivating.

Longer time

In meditation you focus your attention on an object such as your breath over a period of time, say twenty minutes.  This can lead to:

• a sense of calm 
• or of restlessness 
• or what what Buddhist meditators sometimes call 'afflicted' mind.

Afflicted mind

In 'afflicted mind' painful thoughts, emotions and memories arise. That's why I have real doubts about introducing meditation to groups of strangers - in the workplace for instance - about whom I know nothing and who I may never see again: I don't want to leave anyone to cope with that 'afflicted mind.'

But I am happy to introduce mindfulness itself to anyone - it is immediately beneficial and doesn't do harm.

(These thoughts were prompted by an article in Tricycle Magazine called The Mindfulness Solution by Andrew Olendzki, author of Unlimiting Mind and director of the Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies. The article is probably only accessible if you have a subscription to Tricycle).

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Mindfulness improves relationships in these four ways

Mindfulness can improve relationships, if only because the practice tends to make people more empathic. Mindfulness also makes people less reactive and that helps relationships too. I would summarise the benefits of mindfulness practice on relationships like this:

1. We become more empathic.
Empathy is the ability to understand how another person feels. It improves relationships at home and at work. In neuroscience research, it has been found that the “insula”, a structure in the brain which is involved with empathy, is strengthened in people who practice mindfulness.

2. We become less reactive.
This “pause for thought” improves listening skills and gives us time to choose more helpful responses. Improvements in the interaction between ‘thinking’ and ‘emotional’ parts of the brain help to lower reactivity and to give us a vital space in which to make better choices. These improvements result from mindfulness practice and have been observed by neuroscientists.

3. We brood and ruminate less.
Ruminating or brooding on the faults of others, from intimate partners to work colleagues, worsens relationships. Because in mindfulness we are encouraged to return continually from our thoughts to our direct experience of reality, with acceptance, we are far less likely to spend time and energy on rumination. This is an extremely valuable effect of mindfulness practice. Rumination can prolong negative emotions and can harm relationships and our own well-being for years.

4. We become less 'clingy.'
Because of that fall in reactivity (Point 2 above) we notice automatic reactions such as 'clinging' and can step back from them. 'Clinging' to another person (unless, of course, you're a baby!) can lead the other person to push you away as they seek to maintain their psychological space. Mindfulness helps you to arrive at an empathic relationship between two independent people who are choosing to be in the relationship. You should also get better a spotting situations in which 'clingyness' leads you into destructive relationships.

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What is acceptance in mindfulness? The story of a stolen watch

Acceptance is one of the most difficult concepts in mindfulness practice. It doesn't mean agreement and it doesn't mean dismissing the impact of hurtful events that happen to us. What does it mean? Here are some possibilities but first a true event: 

Many years ago somebody stole a watch from me. I really liked the watch and the person who gave it to me had gone to a lot of trouble to buy it and get it engraved. Then the watch was taken. Another person was able to confirm my suspicions as to who the guilty party was but the guilty party had moved on and so had the possibility of getting the watch back. 

What has acceptance got to do with the watch? Well, the loss of the watch still hurts - though only when I think of it - and if I could get it back I would. On the other hand the loss of the watch doesn't interfere in any way with my life. So here are some thoughts on acceptance:

1. Acceptance is awareness without interference. We interfere with our awareness largely through self-talk and, to a lesser extent, talking to other people. When I remember the watch I feel a little dart of loss - but I don't interfere with the feeling by talking to myself or anyone else about the watch, and the dart of loss goes as quickly as it arrives.

2. Acceptance means not deliberately re-running an experience in a loop in the mind. So I choose not to repeat to myself the story of the watch, the loss, and the judgments about the theft (what a rotten thing to do, etc). Instead I acknowledge and feel the loss and then move forward. Which brings me to:

3. Acceptance is a way of relating to our experience that enables us to move forward with today and tomorrow. I could relate to the theft of the watch by dwelling in the story and the feelings surrounding the story. Instead I allow myself to feel the feeling and then move on to the next thing I need to do.

Acceptance has many other facets and I will amend this article as time goes by so as to arrive at a comprehensive attempt at an explanation.

 

No, you don't need to meditate for 20 minutes a day - mindfulness is not meditation

"I tried to do mindfulness but then I let it go," is a statement I hear again and again on my mindfulness days.

What the speaker means is that he or she was told to practice mindfulness of breathing or of the body for twenty to forty minutes a day, managed to do so for a few days and then gave it up.

Life and its demands got in the way. So did the fact that mindfulness meditations can be somewhat boring. So they gave it up. What they gave up, though, was meditation and not mindfulness. We tend to get the two mixed up because of the Buddhist origins of mindfulness as it is practised today and because meditation forms part of Buddhist practice (though whether most Buddhists sit down and meditate is another question - I suspect they do not, but live more or less by Buddhist principles).

To me mindfulness, especially as we practice it in a non-secular form in the West, is an attitude we bring to daily life. We cultivate that attitude by returning our attention again and again to awareness of whatever is going on in reality in the moment and doing so without becoming lost in self-talk about it. What we are returning from are the fantasies, memories and mental talk in which we frequently lose ourselves and our well-being.

To do this we need to use short mindfulness practices that remind us to be mindful: coming back to awareness of breathing or of the body for instance many times a day.

This is similar to the approach taken by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche in his book The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness and is a traditional approach taught to him by his father.

So if you can't/won't meditate, don't drop mindfulness: build it into your day with the sort of short practices you will read about on this blog and on my website.

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One paragraph to mindfulness

Does it take months to experience the benefits of mindfulness? No - in my case it took minutes. I discovered mindfulness in the late 1980s while browsing in Easons bookshop in O'Connell Street in Dublin. I noticed a book called “The heart of Buddhist meditation” which was so unusual to see on a bookshelf at the time that I picked it up. The book opened at a page on Bare Attention which it described as follows: “ … attention or mindfulness is kept to a bare registering of the facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech or by mental comment which may be one of self-reference (like, dislike, etc), judgement, reflection. If during the time, short or long, given to the practice of Bare Attention, any such comments arise in one’s mind, they themselves are made objects of Bare Attention, and are neither repudiated nor pursued, but are dismissed, after a brief mental note has been made of them.”

I tried it there and then and I liked it. I have been practising mindfulness, to a greater or lesser extent, ever since. The point I want to make is that I began to practice mindfulness after reading that paragraph, and so can you. You don’t have to undertake lengthy periods of focussed meditation - such periods were probably designed for people living as Buddhist monks or nuns and not for those in the hurly burly of wider society. Mindfulness is an attitude you can bring to your experiences as you go through your day. The purpose of the short practices I write about here and elsewhere (including my forthcoming book Mindfulness on the Go) is to remind us to be mindful. If you spend a few minutes every day observing your breathing and perhaps another few minutes observing your posture as you walk or sit, without getting caught up in thoughts as you do so, this should help you to bring a useful degree of mindfulness to your normal activities.

(The author of the book was Nyanaponika Thera and its full title is "The Heart of Buddhist Meditation - A handbook of mental training based on the Buddhist way of Mindfulness.") His book, The Power of Mindfulness, is free on Buddhanet.

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Second arrows - how we add to our own distress and what we can do about it

I recently mentioned the Buddhist metaphor of the two arrows in relation to regret but the metaphor is relevant to all forms of distress.

As I wrote at the time: "If you were struck by an arrow you would be in pain, no doubt about it. But if you dwell on that experience by going over and over it in your memory or by entertaining revenge fantasies for years afterwards, then you are shooting a second arrow into yourself."

Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön says this, in Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living:

“If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart...”

(Yes, you would be dead if someone shot an arrow into your heart but this is a metaphorical arrow so that's okay).

Part of the practice of mindfulness is to be willing to experience the first arrows that come every day (let-downs, bad turns, cravings, pain) and to do what you need to do but without adding to them by cycling scenes and thoughts in your head again and again. For instance, you could practice returning your attention to your breath or to your surroundings whenever those old scenes start re-running.

This is easier to do if you have a formal mindfulness practice but even if not, you can adopt the two arrows metaphor as part of your approach to daily living.

Returning: the essence of mindfulness practice

What would you call mindfulness if you were not allowed to use the word? For me, the alternative name is "returning." Because the mind wanders ceaselessly, it is necessary to return our attention again and again to whatever we're doing just to get through an ordinary day. When we practice mindfulness we return as a deliberate act, not just to get through the day. We find that returning our attention to the moment whenever we find we have drifted away, enhances our experience of living.  

We return our attention in a particular way. In other words, we return our attention with acceptance of reality. So if it's raining, and I wish it wasn't, I don't waste emotional energy condemning the fact that it is raining. It is raining, and there it is. The thing that needs to be done if I'm going out into it is to put on a raincoat or carry an umbrella. Maybe I am not going out. In that case, maybe the next thing that needs to be done is to make a cup of tea. 

But at the heart of all this is returning - and doing so without criticising ourselves for having drifted away.

Mindfulness is not an anaesthetic

You can feel despair, depression, fear, anger, frustration although you practice mindfulness every day - that’s my experience anyway. Claims that mindfulness will put you into a state of permanent peace are just that - claims. 

It is necessary to be willing to practice mindfulness alongside painful emotions. Mindfulness practice keeps you out of the forest of thoughts, rumination and brooding which worsens any and all of these experiences. Moreover, your day includes good experiences that have nothing to do with negative emotions and mindfulness practice allows you to notice these too. 

So you can allow emotional pain to accompany you through your day so that you do not become consumed by your pain although it is still pain and it is still unpleasant. Thich Nhat Hahn writes somewhere that you should “walk like a free man and not like a slave.”

In a sense, that is what mindfulness of emotional (and physical) pain is about: going through your day like a free person who has pain but who is not a slave to that pain.

Mindfulness of thinking and observing the observer

I like mindfulness of thinking because I like thinking and because I want to find out the ways my thinking is leading me by the nose, so to speak. 

I was interested this morning to notice three layers of thinking: first, the picutres and sounds that make up images, fantasies and so on; second, the sort of thought that says, 'Oh, there's not much going on there' or 'Theres a lot of distraction going on there' which is a sort of judging form of thinking, one step back from the images and sounds; third, there's the thought that says 'Oh, here I am observing my judging mind and the images and sounds my judging mind is judging: what a clever boy am I." That's the observing form of thinking, I guess. 

Mindfulness of thinking can be endlessly fascinating - so long as I realise that the judgement that it's endlessly fascinating is thinking also!

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