MINDFULNESS IS NOT CONCENTRATION

The great Indian spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti [pictured right] spoke a lot about mindfulness without hardly ever mentioning the word. Listen to these words from his wonderful book Freedom From the Known:

‘Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. It seems to me that most of us are not aware, not only of what we are talking about but of our environment, the colours around us, the people, the shape of the trees, the clouds, the movement of water.’ 

Concentration is fixed and focused in a particular moment. Mindfulness, on the other hand, is a moment-to-moment activity … from one moment to the next and then the next and then the next and so on. 

Of course, we all need to concentrate from time to time on what we are doing. For example, we may be trying to balance a set of accounts or solve a legal or similar problem. We certainly need to concentrate when we’re engaged in any such activity. However, we do not need to concentrate as such each and every second of each and every minute of each and every hour of each and every day. What we need to do is to be attentive and aware of what’s happening in and around us.

A concentrated mind is anything but an attentive and aware mind. The concentrated mind excludes everything other than that the subject of your concentration. Awareness, on the other hand, is never exclusive. It is inclusive, universal and all-encompassing. Mindfulness — that is, bare (that is, diffused and unconcentrated) attention and choiceless (that is, non-judgmental and non-interpretative) awareness — is the direct, immediate and unmediated perception of ‘what is’ … as it actually happens from one moment to the next!

When we concentrate on something, we are totally blind, that is, inattentive, to all other things. Those other things quickly become the past without our ever having experienced them. Don’t let reality — that is, what happens from one moment to the next — die on you. Don’t experience it as a past event. Otherwise, you will instantly lose the immediacy, directness and actuality of the experience.

The Buddha advised us to observe and watch closely ... that is, mindfully ... whatever is occurring in time and space in the here-and-now, in the moment, from one moment to the next. Not only watch, but the Buddha went on to say, ‘and firmly and steadily pierce it.’

So, my friends, pierce the reality of each here-and-now moment-to-moment experience. Be attentive and aware. Only then can you say you are alive and no longer living in the past. Only then can you truly say you are living mindfully.

WALK PURPOSEFULLY!

‘Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration

on our usual everyday routine.’ Shunryū Suzuki.

‘Walk purposefully around the office!’

That was the directive given to my colleagues and me in a government department in which I was working as a lawyer. This happened over 35 years ago, but I remember the occasion as if it were yesterday. The directive came from the head lawyer, who was quite a whimsical fellow. We all thought he was a little odd, but I have since learned that we are all more than a little odd---each in our own way. Actually, the directive is a very sound one. Too many of us walk aimlessly, whether at work or elsewhere. We walk without a sense of purpose and without determination. 

I ask you this. How many times have you walked from one room of your house to another, and when you get to where you were headed you can’t remember why you wanted to go into that room? Even young people admit to me that this phenomenon happens to them from time to time. How many times do you drive your car from one suburb to the next and when you get to your destination you have no recollection of having driven along certain streets? It happens quite often, doesn’t it? Scary, isn’t it? We were not fully aware. We were not aware that we were at least at times aware. And we were not aware that we were at times unaware. In short, we were mindless instead of mindful.

I like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness:

Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way;

On purpose,

in the present moment, and
nonjudgmentally.

There is a deliberateness and intentionality about mindfulness. It is something done ‘on purpose’---that is, with conscious awareness. It is anything other than living and acting aimlessly---that is, mindlessly.

Whatever you may be doing---eating, walking, speaking, reading, driving a car---do it with conscious awareness of the process of eating, walking, speaking, reading, driving, or whatever the activity may be. This requires that we consciously direct our attention and awareness to the doing of the activity in question. All too often, we make no conscious attempt to maintain our focus and attention on what we are doing. So, when our attention shifts---as it inevitably will from time to time---we make no conscious attempt to bring our attention back to the activity. Instead, we’re off on a mental movie of some sort in which we are the producer, director and star. 

Here's some good news---the regular and systematic practice of mindfulness as well as mindfulness meditation will strengthen your ability to maintain conscious awareness of the action of the present moment from one moment to the next. 

You can start right now. The next time you walk around the office, to the shops, or from one room of your house to another---walk purposefully, and not just purposely. Walking purposely simply means that you mean to walk, that is, you're doing it on purpose. Well, of course you are walking intentionally, otherwise you wouldn't be doing it at all---unless perhaps you're sleepwalking. But are you walking purposefully? Are you mindful of the regularity of the pace of your walking, the movement of your body, the straightness and balance of your spine, the position of your head, the weight of your arms as they swing by your side, the stretch of your stride, and the sensation of your feet pressing against the floor or earth and then rising again step after step?

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to take great, big strides or walk very quickly. It means to walk with regular, measured paces, being conscious of every step you take and ever-mindful of the purpose of your walking. It means being in control of what you’re doing. It means walking, and looking ahead, with ease, confidence, deliberateness and of course conscious awareness of the action of walking---one step after another---from one moment to the next. In other words, walking in a relaxed way while be-ing totally with the present moment.

‘What is the path? What is truth?’ asked the disciple. ‘Walk on!’ said the Zen master. Purposefully. 

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THE SECRET TO LIVING MINDFULLY

OK, so there is no ‘secret’ as such, but it is true that very few people know how to live mindfully. Here’s a story from Buddhism. The story may well be apocryphal, but the advice certainly sounds like it came from the historical Buddha.

It is written that a philosopher once said to the Buddha, ‘I have heard tell of Buddhism as a doctrine of enlightenment. What is its method? In other words, what do you do every day?’

Before I tell you what the Buddha said, I want to make two comments. First, Buddhism does indeed teach enlightenment, which means---wait for it---waking up. Buddhism teaches us how to ‘wake up’ and stay awake. (No, I am not talking about insomnia.) Secondly, Buddhism does not teach a ‘method’ or ‘technique’, for methods and techniques are forms of mental conditioning. Buddhism is all about deconditioning the mind. It’s about letting go of anything and everything that holds us back from happiness and wellness.

Now, what was the Buddha’s answer to the philosopher’s question, ‘What do Buddhists do every day?’

‘We walk, we eat, we wash ourselves, we sit down …,’ said the Buddha.

‘But what is there that’s special in that?’ replied the philosopher. ‘Everyone walks, eats, washes himself, sits down . . .’

‘Sir, with us there is a difference. When we walk, we are aware of the fact that we are walking. When we eat, we are aware of the fact that we are eating, and so on. When others walk, eat, wash themselves, or sit down, they are not aware of what they are doing.’

There you have it---AWARENESS. The secret or key to living mindfully is ... to live with AWARENESS. Yes, it's that simple ... but it isn't all that easy. It takes lots of practice ... every day ... and each and every minute and moment of the day.

I just thought of another little story from Buddhism that's on the same point. It’s a gem. The South Korean Zen master Seung Sahn (pictured right) would say, ‘When you eat, just eat. When you read the newspaper, just read the newspaper. Don't do anything other than what you are doing.’

One day a student saw Seung Sahn reading the newspaper while he was eating. The student asked if this did not contradict his teaching. Seung Sahn said, ‘When you eat and read the newspaper, just eat and read the newspaper.’

The point of both of these stories is this. Whatever you do, whatever you are doing, do it with focused and undivided attention---that is, awareness. That, my friends, is the ‘secret’ to living mindfully.

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HOW AWARE ARE YOU? (SOME SUFI WISDOM)

There once was a famous Persian Sufi mystic of the 9th century named Bayazid Bastami (pictured left). It is said that before he passed away he was asked about his age. ‘I am 4 years old,’ Bastami purportedly said. ‘For 70 years I was veiled. I got rid of my veils only 4 fours years ago.’ So, there is hope for you and me.

Bastami would often talk about the importance of awareness. On one particular occasion, after he had been asked the question, ‘Well, what exactly is awareness?’, it is said that Bastami led the questioner and those with him to a river. Now, on the near side of the river was a small hill, and on the other side there was also a small hill. Bastami said, ‘We are going to put up a long wooden bridge---just one foot (0.305 m) wide---from this end to the other, and you will have to walk on it. And then you will know what awareness is.’

The person who asked the question of Bastami as to what was awareness was not exactly happy with Bastami’s response. He said, ‘But we have been walking our whole life, and we have never come to know.’

Bastami said, ‘Wait,’ and he did the experiment. Many of them started feeling very afraid, and they said, ‘We cannot walk. Just one foot wide?’

‘But how much do you need to walk on?’, asked Bastami. ‘When you are walking on the earth, you can walk on a one-foot wide strip easily. Why, then, can’t you walk on a one-foot wide strip hanging between two hills? What is holding you back?’

A few people tried the experiment. Well, they ventured along the bridge a couple of feet, but no more than that. They quickly returned to the near side of the river. ‘It is too dangerous,’ they said to Bastami.

A man walks over a plank bridge between the towers of the
cathedral in Bremen, Germany. Photograph: Joerg Sarbach/AP.

Then Bastami walked and a few followed him. When they reached the other side of the river, they said to Bastami, ‘Master, now we know what awareness is. The danger was such that we could not afford to walk in unawareness. We had to be alert. At any moment we could have been gone forever, so we had to keep alert.’

Fortunately, we are not called upon to undergo ‘experiments’ of that kind all that often, but the degree of awareness required for such an experiment is nevertheless the intensity of awareness that we ought to possess and use in our ordinary, daily lives. I kid you not. The awareness of which I speak is not concentration as that word is ordinarily used. No, true awareness is conscious wakefulness that is ‘choiceless’ and unadorned. That means a pure, unadulterated awareness and observation where the cognitive mind is totally at rest, that is, not thinking, analysing, judging, interpreting or comparing. It is pure consciousness without any thought. As Krishnamurti used to say, you and the object of awareness become one.

Now, why not try this experiment. No, I am not talking about you walking a tightrope or anything as dangerous as that. You can do this experiment anywhere. So, when to walk along the sidewalk, or down the hall of your home, walk as if each moment there is danger. Don’t try to visualize any particular danger ahead or around you---that is thinking---just focus your undivided, unadorned attention and awareness on what you are doing and the path you are walking step by step.

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THE ONLY WAY TO CHANGE WHO YOU ARE

Have you ever noticed how most of our attempts to change fail? Have you ever asked yourself why this is the case?

We read self-help books, we attend self-improvement courses, we join a yoga or pilates group, we learn to meditate. We have the best of intentions and for a while we seem happier in ourselves but sooner or later something unexpected or unpleasant happens and, wham, we are back to our old selves again---with the emphasis on ‘old selves.’ Yes, all too often any change in us is temporary and skin-deep. This is not surprising. After all, do we not live in a world of makeovers and quick fixes?

Here are a couple of Eastern stories or anecdotes that you might find helpful. I certainly find them illuminative and instructive.

Here’s the first one. A pupil asks his teacher, ‘And how does real change come about?’ Now, if someone asks me a ‘how’ question I usually reply, ‘Don’t ask “how,” for you are asking for a method or technique. Methods and techniques are conditioning, and we need to be de-conditioned.’ Anyway, this teacher was not put off by the pupil’s question.

So, the pupil wanted to know how ‘real change’ comes about. Here’s the teacher’s answer. ‘Through awareness.’ That’s right, we change through awareness. Not through changing our religion, our beliefs, our politics, our appearance, our clothes, or anything else. Through awareness.

‘And what does one do to become aware,’ asked the pupil. (Now, that’s a damn good way of asking the question. This time the pupil didn’t say, ‘How do I become aware?’ That would probably have been too much for the teacher.)

Now, listen to the teacher’s reply. ‘What does one do, when one is asleep, to wake from sleep?’ was his reply.

Here’s another little anecdote on the same point.

‘What is my self, O teacher?’ asked a pupil. The teacher replied, ‘For that you have to learn what is known as “the secret act”.’

‘What is the secret act?’ asked the pupil. ‘This,’ said the teacher, as he closed his eyes and then opened them.

All we succeed by most of our efforts at self-improvement is a change in our behaviour, and even that is usually short-lived. That’s right, our behaviour changes but not ourselves, that is, the person that each one of us is. Real, deep and lasting change only occurs through awareness, that is, self-observation. As I’ve often said---it’s not an original idea of mine---enlightenment means waking up. Yes, waking up. To ourselves, other people, and our world.

Whenever you are choicelessly aware and accepting of life unfolding from one moment to the next, you are in an enlightened state of consciousness. Whenever you resist and oppose what is, whenever you judge others or events, you are anything but enlightened. It’s as simple as that.

Don’t change your ‘self,’ or rather the many ‘selves’ that exist in your mind---for example, the angry self, the frightened self, the anxious self, and so on---but instead learn to change the person that you are. In order to change the person that you are, you must increase in self-knowledge. The latter comes, not from reading books, however helpful they may be, but from self-observation, that is, awareness.

Simply watch and observe your thoughts and feelings as well as your reactions to events with passive detachment, that is, dispassionately. You will learn plenty from so doing. You will see at work all the false selves which you have taken to be the ‘real you,’ that is the person that you are. You may see the ‘frightened self,’ which has arisen in your mind perhaps as a result of overly protective parents. You may see the ‘angry self,’ which perhaps is the result of an ‘egocentric, narcissistic and self-absorbed self’ which insists always on getting its own way and which demands the attention of others at all times.

All these false selves have given you an acquired, invented ‘identity,’ but it is a false identity, that is, an imaginary ‘I.’ These false selves are the result of past thinking and conditioning, but they are persistent little critters that want to hang onto their fake existence. Know this---no matter how persistent and powerful these selves may appear to be, they are only self-images in your mind. Yet there is often strong feeling associated with them such that they can lead us terribly astray.

The ‘real you’ is something altogether different. It is the mind-body complex that we call a person. You are much, much more than those hundreds of little, false selves---all those waxing and waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’---with which you identify, in the mistaken belief that they constitute the ‘real you,’ that is, the person that you are. Only the latter is ontologically real.

Personal freedom and transformation come when you ‘get real,’ that is, when you learn to think, feel, act and live from your personhood as a person among persons. The ‘secret’ is to get your mind off your many false ‘selves’ and rise above them. This, you must do, if you are ever to get real, but you must watch and, for a while, endure your false selves. Yes, endure them. Watch and follow them to their end. Suffer and endure their disturbance until it ends---and most assuredly it will. In time, you will come to see, know and understand where you have gone astray, and with self-knowledge, insight and understanding real psychological change will come naturally to you, as surely as night follows day. Listen to these wonderful words from the American spiritual teacher Vernon Howard: 'The quality of self-insight is the quality of the life.'

Now, close your eyes and open them. That’s the secret act. Literally and metaphorically speaking.

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THE AWARENESS OF AWARENESS

Awareness – choiceless awareness – is an integral part of mindfulness, but mindfulness (sati) is not simply awareness (viññāna), but awareness of awareness. Yes, awareness of awareness .. a ‘two-dimensional awareness’.

The Pāli word sati literally means ‘memory’. The word sati comes from a root meaning ‘to remember’. So, mindfulness is ... remembering what is present ... remembering to stay present in the present moment from one moment to the next ... as well as remembering in the present moment what has already happened.

In other words, mindfulness is all about remembering the present ... that is, 'keeping' the present in mind. Put simply, mindfulness is remembering to be 'here' ... and to stay 'here' ... now.

In an interesting article cited at the end of this blog Dr Dan Siegel writes:

Mindful awareness entails more than sensing present experience as it generates an awareness of awareness and attention to intention [sic]. These fundamental aspects of mindfulness can be seen as forms of meta-cognition ...

There it is ... an ‘awareness of awareness’. Mindfulness remembers awareness ... as well as the object of awareness. The work of being mindful, of practising mindfulness, is the work of reminding ourselves, not just to be aware, but also that we are aware ... indeed, that we are already aware.

Many psychologists refer to this activity as being that of a so-called ‘witnessing self’ ... a special relationship of ‘self’ to ‘self’, whatever that means. I have trouble with the whole concept of ‘self’ – my power-not-oneself is the power of ‘not-self’ (anattā) – so I like to keep things simple. (Ha!) In any event, 'un-self-consciousness' (wu-hsin / mushin) or 'no-mindedness' is, for me, the 'holy grail' of all meditative practice – 'a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club' (the immortal words of the ever-quotable Zen Buddhist Alan Watts).

Now, back to keeping things simple. First, there is the person who is aware. Secondly, there is the object of awareness. Thirdly, there is the act of being aware. It just so happens that the object of awareness can be awareness itself. Remember, it is the person who is doing the awareness ... not some supposed illusory ‘self’ or 'second mind' ... and mindfulness is all about the person that you are paying attention to that person ... and not to a 'self' ... within each unfolding moment and from one such moment to the next.

Yes, there are simply different ways of seeing. That is what the word vipassanā means. The word is composed of two parts – vi, meaning ‘in various ways’, and passanā, meaning seeing. So, vipassanā means ‘seeing in various ways’ ... as well as seeing things as they really are.

Buddhist meditation teacher, and renowned authority on Vipassanā (insight meditation), Patrick Kearney has written:

Mindfulness, in other words, implies not just awareness, but reflexive awareness, awareness bending back to itself. Normally, we are aware. We don’t have to make any special effort to be aware; we are already aware. We see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think. Technically, we can say that it is the nature of mind to contact an object; to be aware of something. So far, so good. We are already aware. But are we aware that we are aware? And of what we are aware?

Have you ever had the experience of driving a car along familiar streets and suddenly realising you have no memory of the previous three blocks? Clearly, while driving through those city blocks you were aware, for otherwise you would now be dead or seriously injured. But did you know you were aware? Were you aware of your awareness? Or did this understanding occur only at that moment when you remembered you are now driving this car?

This is mind blowing stuff ... not so much what Kearney has written, which is illuminatingly profound in its own way, but the bit about mindfulness being awareness of awareness. Is there a ‘three-dimensional awareness’ ... an awareness of awareness of awareness? What about a ‘four-dimensional awareness’ ... an awareness of awareness of awareness of awareness? Stop, I’m feeling sick. It's all too much.

Resource: Siegel D J, Mindfulness training and neural integration: differentiation of distinct streams of awareness and the cultivation of well-being, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci (2007) 2 (4): 259-263. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsm034

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Mindfulness takes meditation ... and applies it to one’s whole life.

All very good, but how does one meditate every moment of each day?

Now, when I use the word meditation I am not referring to those types of meditation where one goes into an almost trance-like state as a result of highly focused attention on some object, sound or whatever. I am referring to simply the presence of a choiceless awareness of, and bare yet curious attention to, whatever presents itself before you as your reality ... from moment to moment.

The essence of Mindfulness is to be always in the present moment. So, how does one actually go about living mindfully on a continuous moment-to-moment basis?

Well, a good starting point is to breathe consciously … slowly … and deeply as you go about your daily life.

Next, observe everything inside and outside of you. Feel the “life” all around you. Be fully present ... here and now ... in the present moment.

Here is a must. In order to know what is real you need to disidentify with your so-called “ego-self” as well as the various “me’s” within your mind ... indeed, all your “mental noise”, chatter and “movies”. Those things are not the person which, in truth, you are.

Here are some other tips ...

Watch, almost with disinterest, whatever happens, as if it were happening to someone else. Let there be no comment, judgment or attempt to change anything.

Note the presence of any unhealthy, painful thoughts or emotions. Don’t suppress or deny them. Step back with dissociation from the “activating event”. “See” and feel the emotion instead.

Practise willingness … and acceptance.

Finally, observe, and be constantly aware .. only to understand ... for awareness is insight.