My own definition of mindfulness is very simple:
Mindfulness is the gentle effort to be continuously present with our experience.
But 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.”
Kabat-Zinn, if you haven’t heard of him, is a famous teacher of mindfulness meditation and the founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.
First of all, mindfulness involves paying attention “on purpose”. Mindfulness involves a conscious direction of our awareness. We sometimes (me included) talk about “mindfulness” and “awareness” as if they were interchangeable terms, but that’s not a good habit to get into. I may be aware I’m irritable, but that wouldn’t mean I was being mindful of my irritability. In order to be mindful I have to be purposefully aware of myself, not just vaguely and habitually aware. Knowing that you are eating is not the same as eating mindfully.
Let’s take that example of eating and look at it a bit further. When we are purposefully aware of eating, we are consciously being aware of the process of eating. We’re deliberately noticing the sensations and our responses to those sensations. We’re noticing the mind wandering, and when it does wander we purposefully bring our attention back.
When we’re eating unmindfully we may in theory be aware of what we’re doing, but we’re probably thinking about a hundred and one other things at the same time, and we may also be watching TV, talking, or reading — or even all three! So a very small part of our awareness is absorbed with eating, and we may be only barely aware of the physical sensations and even less aware of our thoughts and emotions.
Because we’re only dimly aware of our thoughts, they wander in an unrestricted way. There’s no conscious attempt to bring our attention back to our eating. There’s no purposefulness.
This purposefulness is a very important part of mindfulness. Having the purpose of staying with our experience, whether that’s the breath, or a particular emotion, or something as simple as eating, means that we are actively shaping the mind.
Left to itself the mind wanders through all kinds of thoughts — including thoughts expressing anger, craving, depression, revenge, self-pity, etc. As we indulge in these kinds of thoughts we reinforce those emotions in our hearts and cause ourselves to suffer. Mostly these thoughts are about the past or future. The past no longer exists. The future is just a fantasy until it happens. The one moment we actually can experience — the present moment — is the one we seem most to avoid.
So in mindfulness we’re concerned with noticing what’s going on right now. That doesn’t mean we can no longer think about the past or future, but when we do so we do so mindfully, so that we’re aware that right now we’re thinking about the past or future.
However in meditation, we are concerned with what’s arising in the present moment. When thoughts about the past or future take us away from our present moment experience and we “space out” we try to notice this and just come back to now.
By purposefully directing our awareness away from such thoughts and towards the “anchor” or our present moment experience, we decrease their effect on our lives and we create instead a space of freedom where calmness and contentment can grow.
Mindfulness is an emotionally non-reactive state. We don’t judge that this experience is good and that one is bad. Or if we do make those judgements we simply notice them and let go of them. We don’t get upset because we’re experiencing something we don’t want to be experiencing or because we’re not experiencing what we would rather be experiencing. We simply accept whatever arises. We observe it mindfully. We notice it arising, passing through us, and ceasing to exist.
Whether it’s a pleasant experience or a painful experience we treat it the same way.
Cognitively, mindfulness is aware that certain experiences are pleasant and some are unpleasant, but on an emotional level we simply don’t react. We call this “equanimity” — stillness and balance of mind.
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Hi Anabel,
You might also want to check out the following news story on how mindfulness can be used to treat addictions: https://www.wildmind.org/blogs/news/researchers-see-promise-in-treating-addictive-behaviors-with-mindfulness-meditation
How would you distinguish mindfulness from reflection, and reflection from ordinary thinking?
I ask because I'm sometimes confused by ambiguous terminology. For example, "meditation" can mean one-pointed concentration on, say, the breath; however, I also read about "meditation" on a concept like impermanence or an emotion like fear. That in turn seems distinct both from mindfulness, which is closer to a nonclinging, nondirective awareness of sensation, thought, and feeling; from reflection, which actively pursues a line of inquiry; and from ordinary thinking, which is more haphazard and associative. What I'm calling "reflection" seems somewhat like the second usage of "meditation" above, a sort of middle state that partakes of both concentration and open awareness.
So for instance, would it be accurate to interpret advice to "meditate on" impermanence—with or without study aids like a real or imaginary corpse—as a suggestion to reflect on it? And is that a practice separate from, if complementary to, one-pointed concentration?
The terminology often is ambiguous, and it may be used in different ways by different traditions or teachers.
To take the first three terms you flag: mindfulness, reflection, and ordinary thinking:
Ordinary thinking is usually done without mindfulness, by which I mean without an awareness, during the act of thinking, that we are thinking, and without an awareness, again during the act of thinking, of whether the thinking we are doing is helpful/unhelpful, purposeful/distracting, kindly/unkind, etc.
I've already incidentally described mindfulness: a kind of in-the-moment watchfulness and evaluation. Mindfulness can be applied in different ways. We can choose to be mindful of one particular thing (our thoughts, or a particular physical sensation, for example) or we can choose to have more of an open focus, being aware of a broad range of sensations without necessarily paying particular attention to any one of them. It's like a flashlight that can either be set to a narrow or a diffuse beam. These two different approaches lead, in my experience, to different kinds of meditative experiences, with one-pointed concentration leading to the four jhanas, and open-focus attention leading to the non-dual realm of the ayatanas (often, and mistakenly, in my opinion, called the "formless jhanas").
Reflection I'd describe as "mindful thinking," where we're thinking as a conscious act. We may be reading, or reflecting on our experience, or guiding ourselves through a traditional reflection such as the six elements. Mindfulness is present, but there's also directedness, in the sense that there is a purpose to the thinking and we are attempting to stay on the track of that purpose while reflecting.
"Meditation" is a very broad term. Some practices lend themselves to an open-focus approach (one could hardly do walking meditation in a state of complete one-pointedness) while others lend themselves more to one-pointedness. I think of the two approaches as being complementary.
Advice to "meditate on impermanence" I'd have to take as a suggestion to reflect on it in the kinds of ways you suggest, otherwise the instruction would be something like "notice impermanence" (noticing wouldn't involve reflecting -- just noting that our experiences are changing). Again, I think both approaches are complementary.
I hope this is helpful.
How do you be mindful without being caught in the attempt to be mindful? For example, if you freeze up or get anxious, because you are taking it very seriously?
Hi, Melolo.
That's going to happen sometimes, especially early on. There can be "instant supression" and everything becomes kind of wooden. It's something that get worked through with practice, like with anything else. You know when you're first learning to drive? Everything is clunky, and you keep freezing and getting flustered? And you keep practicing and eventually your driving becomes flawless and effortless? It's like that with practicing mindfulness as well.
Thanks! It helps to know that. It really is a clunky process at first.
i wish this was around when i was in the 4th grade i would know much more than i know now. teacher would be teaching and i had as many as a 101 thoughts going thru my mind.
Hi, Hopefully someone can carify this, I don't understand:
I have just read that I am supposed to exercise by paying attention to breathing...and every time when my mind wonders (which happens a lot and I notice other sensations, like tight chest)...I should direct my attention back to breathing as the plurpose is to not to pay attention to those other things...and ...this is where I struggle understanding: yet at the same time I read that I actually should notice and learn about those anxiety symptoms, like tight chest etc...!
Surely if I pay attention to those symptoms I have not been paying attention to breathing! If I want to notice the symptoms I will literally want my mind to wonder from breathing...Am I supposed to try and resist paying attention to symptos or am I supposed to pay attention to them and breathing??? Help me please, to make sense to this which now does not make sense to me...
Hi, Ari.
Generally, we when the mind gets distracted we bring our attention back to the breathing. And this often works. You keep getting distracted by certain thoughts, you keep letting go of the thoughts and returning to the breathing, and in time the amount of thinking decreases.
But when there are particularly strong experiences that our attention is drawn to over and over, then it's a good idea to figure out a better way to deal with the situation. And then it's often appropriate to give the stimulus, whether it's a sound, an emotion, or a physical sensation like tightness in the chest, your attention.
And if you do that, then you may or may not be paying attention to your breathing. That's not a big deal. The purpose of meditating is to develop mindfulness, and you can develop mindfulness by paying attention to things other than the breathing.
Sometimes you'll be paying attention to the breathing and the sensation. For example you may have a pain somewhere in the body and you find it's helpful to imagine the breath flowing around and through the part of the body that's sore. Or if your chest is tight it's pretty difficult to notice the chest and not the breathing.
But other times you may not notice the breathing much at all.
Is this helpful?
Hi Bodhipaksa,
thank you for the comment, that was heplful indeed! It really clarified the basic idea of how to pay attention, and it starts to make sense...So, basically I can choose where my attention is - and then when distracted from that thing-can bring back attention to that thing, whether it was breathing or something else...
I hope you don't mind if I still try to clarify a bit more: Do I understand the breathing exercise correctly? This is how I understand it now:
When I do my breathing exercise, and I have distracting thoughts coming...and I keep bringing my attention back to breathing. I try to keep my attention in breathing but it wanders...What happens is: I try to be mindful about breathing...develop mindfulnes as it were, but I also notice -or observe- those distracting thoughts..so in that situation, I do notice those other things, but as if I am just observing them coming and going...and choose to come back to paying attention to my bretahing...
Thanks for your help,
Ari
That sounds good.