MINDFULNESS IN THE PRESENT FOR THE FUTURE

I have been re-reading some works of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [pictured below], who has been one of my all-time favourite writers since I first studied his works in French in high school. Many of his books have, at least in part, a sort of existentialist flavour about them.

Saint-Exupéry, who was a Humanist, was a man of action. An aviator, he was one of the pioneers in exploring flight over the desert, the Andes, and at night. He was the prose poet of the skies, and his books are great examples of the genre of writing which I refer to as ‘literary mindfulness’.

His books remind us that we are alone – sometimes terribly alone – and that the only way we can give meaning to our lives is to join others who, like us, seriously accept a certain ‘discipline’ in a quest for a value greater than ourselves. In giving selflessly of ourselves to some great cause we are all born anew.

Saint-Exupéry says, in effect, ‘Why speculate about life, about whether it is useful or useless ... or simply absurd. Give a meaning to life. Do something useful – act – and then you will begin to exist.’ If we do that, we are then freed from the sensation of void which is otherwise all around us. Saint-Exupéry calls this le principe de l’action.

We have to be ‘born’ by means of some acte de naissance, which turns out to be an acte de déliverance, which is the beginning of true freedom. This occurs when, with effort, we focus on a goal outside of ourselves. However, in order to mould the future, we must focus attentively on our present ‘duty’. In Citadelle (The Wisdom of the Sands) Saint-Exupéry writes:

Construire l’avenir, c’est construire le présent. C’est créer un désir qui est pour aujourd’hui, qui est aujourd’hui vers demain.

In English, ‘To build the future is to build the present. It is to create a desire which is for today, which is today about tomorrow.’

Applying all of this to our mindfulness practice, we must always focus on the here and now – the only reality – without dwelling on the future. Yes, we should have goals –  Saint-Exupéry has much to say about them – but, in his words, ‘to build the future is, primarily and exclusively, to think the present. Even as the creating of the ship is exclusively the inculcating of a trend towards the sea.’

We often link the English word 'present' with that other English word 'moment'. However, the Shakyamuni Buddha is reported to have seen the present as being much wider than a mere moment in time. In the Buddhist concept of time, mindfulness may begin with this moment but it is cultivated through continuity through or over time.

Here is some more wisdom from Saint-Exupéry's Citadelle ... 'there is no progress without acceptance of that which is, the Here and Now  – that from which you are ever setting forth.' Also, 'my forest extends over several domains without, perhaps, covering the whole of any one of them; and, conversely, my domain includes several forests though, perhaps, none of them is wholly contained in it.' After all, is not the 'whole' just a word used to describe the sum total of the 'parts'? Is there really such a thing as the 'whole'?

‘The only course of action which has a meaning,’ writes Saint-Exupéry in Citadelle, ‘is a course of action leading you from God [in whom Saint-Exupéry had, at best, a weak belief], the fountainhead, to those objects of the visible world which have been given by Him a meaning, a colour and an inner life.’

In other words, we must focus our attention, not on the ‘world’ of supposedly transcendental ideas and values, but on the ordinary ‘things’ and objects of existence, the daily occurrences in space and time which comprise our earthly existence. It is there that we will find our true identity.

Yes, it is by means of those little things of our everyday existence that we are able to rise up to greater things, for they contain, in potentiality, those greater things. In the words of Saint-Exupéry, 'A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral,' and 'A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.'

Saint-Exupéry would agree with the view of Professor John Anderson that any talk of the so-called transcendental must be stated in terms of the common reality we all know. Indeed, it cannot be stated in any other way, there being only one way of being, and one order or level of reality. True pluralism necessitates a complete denial of any conception of a universe or totality or total collection. Totality is simply a relation between container and contained – between whole and part.

Saint-Exupéry disappeared on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean in July 1944. He was never seen again after he took off. His plane simply disappeared. He left behind the unfinished manuscript of Citadelle and some notebooks, which were published posthumously.

In 1998 a fisherman found, east of Riou Island, south of Marseille, Saint-Exupéry’s silver identity bracelet. In 2000 the remains of Saint-Exupéry’s plane were discovered in the seabed off the coast of Marseille, near where the bracelet was found. In 2003 the remains of the plane were recovered. [See photos above.]

‘True love begins,’ he wrote, ‘when nothing is looked for in return.’

[For those who are interested, here is a copy of an address which I gave some years ago on Saint Exupéry's Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), my all-time favourite book. I intend in due course to do a blog on The Little Prince and its relevance to our practice of mindfulness. Stay tuned.]

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MINDFULNESS [PART 2]

This is the second in a series of blogs discussing the ideas of some of the early Greek philosophers with a view to delineating what there is of value to us today as regards our mindfulness practice.

As mentioned in my previous blog on the ideas of Thales, mindfulness is not a philosophy in itself. However, there are a number of philosophical ideas and principles that can be said to underlie the practice of mindfulness in its secular and non-sectarian form, and some of those ideas and principles are of quite ancient provenance.

Let’s look at the ideas of Anaximander (c610-c546 BCE) [pictured above], successor to and pupil of Thales, and how those ideas relate to the practice of mindfulness.

Thales thought that the basic “stuff” (material substratum, essence or “first principle”) of things was water. Anaximander raised a logical objection, namely that how can one take one thing as a description of all things? Clearly, Thales exaggerated the “moist” at the expense of the “dry”. What this means is this ... any theory of reality must account for the existence of opposites, for if there were only water, there could not be anything hot, or any fire.

So, for Anaximander the basic “stuff” and qualities of life are opposites ... and those opposites are in conflict. He postulated a theoretical entity (apeiron) to explain observable phenomena. The word apeiron can mean “infinite” as well as “indefinite” (especially the latter, and in a qualitative as opposed to quantitative sense).

One defect in Anaximander’s otherwise realist methodology is that he attempted to explain the observable in terms of some supposed basic unobservable entity, namely the apeiron. As we saw in our last blog, logic compels us to reject the unobservable as the cause of the observable. Nevertheless, Anaximander is to be otherwise commended for his honest and rigorous insistence on and pursuit of the real.

What do we learn from the empirical naturalist Anaximander? For one thing we learn the importance of demarcation and differentiation, that is, marking off one thing from other things. We also learn that there is a simple unity containing opposites – not a unity in the sense that all things are one but that a single logic applies to all things, there being a continuous process among different things.

So, in our mindfulness practice we learn to focus our attention on whatever comprises the action of the present moment. Our thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations will often be contradictory in nature but they nevertheless constitute the “content” of our experience.

When we stay in the action of the present moment, being mindful (in an immediate and direct way) of whatever we are thinking, feeling and experiencing from one moment to the next, we are able to separate out thoughts and feelings about ourselves and others from the person each one of us really is. We look and see ... and the mind empties itself of its content from one moment to the next ... and what was previously unconscious becomes conscious.

Like Buddha Shakyamuni Anaximander taught that all things were impermanent. In the words of Anaximander, in Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s physics, “Whence things have their origin, thence also their destruction happens, as is the order of things; for they execute the sentence upon one another - the condemnation for the crime - in conformity with the ordinance of time.” However, there is nevertheless a certain regularity and predictability about life by reason of a certain balancing out of all opposites which act on, dominate and otherwise contain each other. Things flow in and out of consciousness, for such is the flux of life.

Anaximander questioned the existence of the gods in the same way that Buddha Shakyamuni was agnostic on the question of God’s existence. Both taught that one could attain “deliverance” independently of any external agency. Good news indeed.

In my next blog we will look at the ideas of Anaximenes (585-528 BCE) and how his distinctive ideas relate to the practice of mindfulness.

Recommended Reading: John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd ed (A & C Black, 1920); John Anderson, Lectures on Greek Philosophy 1928 (Sydney University Press, 2008). 

RELATED POSTS

MINDFULNESS, PROFESSOR JOHN ANDERSON AND THE FACTICITY OF THINGS
EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MINDFULNESS [PART 1]

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MINDFULNESS [PART 3]
EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MINDFULNESS [PART 4]

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MINDFULNESS [PART 1]

Today I begin a series of blogs discussing the ideas of some of the early Greek philosophers with a view to delineating what there is of value to us today as regards our mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness is not a philosophy in itself. However, there are a number of philosophical ideas and principles that can be said to underlie the practice of mindfulness in its secular and non-sectarian form, and some of those ideas and principles are of quite ancient provenance.

The ancient Greeks produced some great thinkers. Although notably disinclined to theology, the Greeks made great philosophers. (Both theology and philosophy attempt to “explain” things, but philosophy, at its best, does so by rejecting unobservable agencies as the cause of observable things. That is the greatness of philosophy, especially Greek philosophy.)

Let’s go back to the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. We begin with some of the more important Presocratic philosophers. First, Thales (c624-c546 BCE).

Thales (pictured below) can be called the founder of philosophy. He was “doing logic” – for logic is about things, and the relations between things, not words or ideas – some 150 years before Socrates.

Thales had travelled to Egypt to study geometry. (It seems that the Greeks derived their philosophy from the Egyptians.) He was the first upon whom the title, Sophist, was conferred, and in his advanced years was visited by Pythagoras whom Thales instructed in the disciplines of a scholar.

It is written that Thales, a proto-scientist, opined that the earth was made of, or rested upon, water, but for Thales that was simply a hypothesis to be tested, and was offered only as an attempted explanation as opposed to some final evaluation. Water was perhaps something out of which things came and into which things returned, as opposed to being a supposed characteristic of all things at all times.

Thales was a naturalist and an empiricist. What is important and lasting about Thales' ideas is not so much his search for a supposed common “substance” of all things but his attempt to provide an overall theory which was general, which was based on observation, and which made no appeal to supernatural causes. (Thales wrote that “all things are full of gods”. That was his attempt at desupernaturalisation – that is, bringing the gods down to earth.)

Thales reminds us ever to reject unobservable agencies as the cause of observable things. Cause-and-effect belong to the observable here-and-now, for life itself is nothing more than a continuum of living things living our their livingness in time and space. Never forget that.

How true that is of the practice of mindfulness! There is a continuity of moment-to-moment experience and awareness ... a continuous process or transformation from one state to another (cf water-ice-steam). Everything is observable, and all things observed exist and are observable on the same plane of observability. Furthermore, there must be a continuity between what is proposed as an explanation for any occurrence and the occurrence itself, for if there were no such continuity it would not be possible for us to say how observable effects are produced ... nor even that they are effects at all.

The legacy of Thales is this ... there is only one order or level of reality. No wonder we speak of the practice of mindfulness in terms of the presence of bare and curious attention to, and choiceless and non-judgmental awareness of, the action of the present moment ... from one moment to the next.

In my next blog we will look at the ideas of Anaximander (c610-c546 BCE) and how those ideas relate to the practice of mindfulness.

Recommended Reading: John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd ed (A & C Black, 1920); John Anderson, Lectures on Greek Philosophy 1928 (Sydney University Press, 2008). 


RELATED POSTS

MINDFULNESS, PROFESSOR JOHN ANDERSON AND THE FACTICITY OF THINGS
EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MINDFULNESS [PART 2]
EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MINDFULNESS [PART 3]
EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND MINDFULNESS [PART 4]