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Saturday, May 2, 2015

Can be Do Better Than "Mindfulness"?

'Mindfulness' as a word, a concept, has evolved in modern western society.  It's current use feels foreign to me as a Zen student.  The word 'mindfulness' has been associated with Zen practice since it first became popular in the US in the 60's.  I'm not sure it was an appropriate word to use then.  But the definition of 'mindfulness' has evolved and todays usage is clearly not a good description of Zen practice.  It's time to take a close look at the word.

This blog entry is inspired by a good article in the New York Times Magazine by Virginia Heffernan entitled "Mind the Gap" April 19, 2015.  It is well worth reading, but I'll summarize parts and go a bit further.

According to Ms. Heffernan,  in 1881, the term Mindfulness was coined by a British magistrate in what is now Sri Lanka.  He had learned Pali, the language of early Buddhism, in order to adjudicate disputes among Buddhists.  The word "sati" is the first of seven factors leading to enlightenment.  In 1881 the magistrate translated the term as "mindfulness" and initially it had the connotation of Victorian prudence as in "mind you manners".

The word laid dormant until dusted off by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Zen student in the '70s.  Ms. Heffernan writes that Kabat-Zinn used it to promote Zen practice without the religious baggage of Buddhism.  He wanted to secularize the word: "The awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment, and non-judgmentally".

From there, 'mindfulness' spread to all corners of the self help movement.  It is truly ubiquitous. And it has spread even further to the sciences where studies suggest mindfulness based cognitive therapy seems to help with a wide range of ailments.  Time magazine called mindfulness a revolution in January of last year.
    In the words' continuing evolution it is finding application in troubling ways.  'Mindfulness' is now helping the 1 percent to become more focused, effective and content with their goal of accumulating more wealth.  It's also being taught to the rest of us in hopes we will be more effective at our jobs as opposed to being distracted by thoughts of poor wages and working conditions.

It is time for Zen students to reconsider their attachment to the term.  Does it's new mutant meaning still express the heart of meditation?  In previous posts I've discussed my skepticism that Zen is mindfulness.  In this post I want to go all the way back to the roots of the term and ask "Can a better understanding of Sati illuminate what we do on the cushion?"

Ms Heffernan writes that the translation of Sati as "mindfulness" was "indeed rough".  And from what wikipedia says she's quite right.  The term sati is literally 'memory' and that a number of Buddhist scholars have started trying to establish "retention" as the preferred alternative.  My take from Wikipedia is that sati is the "memory of the present".
    I think this is absolutely fascinating.  For me, memory is the mind recreating a past event and presenting it to my current perception.  Memory is some kind of hallucination of past experiences.   How can one then have a memory of the present?  I have no idea, but it does bend my ideas of the time being a linear progression.

 In thinking about memory, we have to admit it is a mental creation, and that the creation is independent of ascending somatic inputs.  I could lose an arm, but that would not change my memories of swimming.
    But my memories do not appear to me as "mental" phenomena.  They are not intellectual constructs.  I do not really have a memory of a quadratic equation, but I do have a memory of learning it.  Sitting on a hard wooden chair, to small for my prematurely lengthen frame, the sun streaming in the high windows, the smell of the dust from the teachers chalk board floating in the air, the "duck and cover" posters on the walls, the emotional satisfaction of having grasped something elegant and pleasing.
      Memories are experienced with the whole self, with all the senses engaged.  Although they are mental phenomena they are experienced viscerally and emotionally, they involve the whole self.
     Do you remember your grandmother making cookies? A clear memory involves the sights and sounds as well as smells, and the emotional milieu.

   So what is it to have a memory of the present?  It is to be fully embodied in the present.  And this is exactly what all the ascending somatic inputs (feelings) as well as the brain generated inputs (emotions) are asking from us.  Our brains are being zapped constantly via ascending spinal pathways and through the twelve cranial nerves.  They are constantly yelling at us: "Remember this!!"

  We don't need to 'do' anything to have a memory of the present.  Really, 'doing' anything just drives the memory further away.  To have a memory of the present is the default state of the mind.

Most certainly we do NOT have to be 'mindful'.  Seeing ourselves as separate from our mind and then trying to pull our mind around to obtain some desirable mental state is horribly wrong in so many ways.

All we need to do is simply stop, moment after moment.  Non-judgmentally stop everything all the time. Just stop and one can not help but to have rich fully embodied memory of the present.

How does this look in activity?  F.M. Alexander wrote on the very clearly and precisely.  He talked about the inhibition of end-gaining where 'end-gaining' is caring more about the end than the process of gaining that end.  It was a wonderful, clear headed explanation of not only how to do 'Just Sitting' but also how to bring ones Zen practice into everyday life.

'Mindfulness' was useful: it helped bring Zen to the masses.  But our adoption was based in a faulty understanding of the heart of Zen practice, and the word has mutated into a cultural neoplasm.

It is time to move on.



2 comments:

  1. Khả năng của Ad rất hay, đa tạ anh đã share.
    Xem ở site : Yoga tại nhà

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  2. I saw a Google heading the other day 'Learn mindfulness, like the top CEOs'. Doesn't that say it all?

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