In my vocabulary, I want to distinguish between awareness and thinking. Mindfulness means being aware of what is happening now. We cannot be directly aware of ‘what was,’ nor of ‘what will be’ – except as aspects of the ‘now.’ We do think about what was, and we do think about what will be, just as we think
about what is – but awareness can only be of ‘what is.’
Say I have a bodily feel, with some images and words, relating to my art class which I enjoyed earlier today. By being aware of my ‘memory’ (that is, aware of the bodily and mental events in the present), I can recall and think about my participation in the class, about that ‘past.’ But, when I do that, I am not, precisely speaking, aware of the ‘past’ as most people mean it – that is, as something gone, done with, over and finished. Such a past is an abstraction.
Don’t chase after a past, and don’t long for a future.
What has gone is finished with, and the future is not yet come.
Invincible, unmovable, see clearly whatever is present now –
this, right here – and so develop wisdom.
– An Auspicious Day, Bhaddekaratta Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya, 131). Translated by Christopher J. Ash.
There is that approach. And, one can also take the approach that the past and future are present, here now. The past is functioning in my present, or I couldn’t talk about: “I spent two hours on a watercolour, and didn’t get to use water at all. I spent my time drawing.”
So, there is awareness, and there is thinking. We’ll look more closely at ‘awareness’ later; but for now, let’s say: you can’t think of something unless you are aware of it first. So the natural, ancestral field for mindfulness is awareness of the ‘what is.’ It may get some support from thinking, but it is primarily the bodily dwelling in immediate awareness. Says the Nikāya Buddha:
Invincible, unmovable, see clearly whatever is present now –
this, right here – and so develop wisdom.
Today, right away, do what needs to be done.
Who knows? Death could know you tomorrow.
Because mindfulness is about now, because the basic fact of awareness is available to us, it can therefore be recognized and cultivated by each of us.
Given that it appears (falsely) easier for us to indulge the ‘default mode’ of mind (as neuroscientists call it) – that mode of functioning given over to rumination and distraction – then why would we put in the tremendous effort which it takes to be mindful? Isn’t it easier to be mindless a lot of the time?
From the Nikāya Buddha’s point of view, it’s good to develop mindfulness for one’s “pleasant abiding, here and now.” That is, at some stage, mindful ushers in a less stressful way of being. (With training, you can see the results immediately.) This way (or, Way) doesn’t exclude thinking; but includes thinking as a conscious activity in the present. This is one reason why stress reduces.
However, primarily, he sees it as a means to developing insight; from learning to think freshly, and with reference to our present-moment knowing. And, his wish is that we learn to think freshly into that particular affliction which causes so much suffering in the world, that which we might, in our modern Western culture, call: ‘everyday narcissism’ (sakkāya-diṭṭhi).
The Pāli English Dictionary etymology of Sakkāya-diṭṭhi is helpful: diṭṭhi = view; and, sat+kāya = the body existing, or being. It’s the view of oneself based on thinking that the body exists on its own; or from its own side. Sakkāya-diṭṭhi is usually translated as ‘personality view.’
As I see it, the origin of the term points us to the process of locating a ‘fixed self’ in our aware processes (‘self’ as a locatable something, and not as process). We do this on the basis of the belief or view that the body exists as a separate unit. In philosophy this is called reifying – making a fixed ‘thing’ out of a process. The error comes from depending more on our concepts, rather than on our present-moment awareness.
The Nikāya Buddha recommends abandoning this habit. But to arrive at that possibility, we need to become very intimately acquainted with the functioning of: i) our bodily-form; ii) our pleasurable, painful or neutral sensations (also called feeling-tones, or hedonic valuing); iii) the many states of our psyche (mind); iv) and how all of this functions dynamically. These are the four domains for our mindfulness which reveal our narcissistic patterns.
How else will we have insight into our basic problem situation, but by remembering to give attention to our very being in everyday situations, in all our activities? This remembering, and this non-conceptual presence in real, everyday situations, constitute mindfulness. And, how else will we be clear about the ‘I’ of ‘I am subject to death’?
“A contemplative is one who acts with full awareness when going backward and forward. She acts with full awareness when looking ahead or about her, when bending and stretching her limbs, when dressing, and when carrying things. She acts with full awareness when eating and drinking, chewing and tasting; and when defecating and urinating. When walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, and keeping silent, she acts with full awareness.”
– From The Four Placements of Mindfulness Sutta (Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta), translated by Christopher J. Ash.
“When mindfulness of breathing is cultivated and practised in this way, even one’s last in-breath & out-breath are known as they cease; they are not unknown,” he said to his son, Rahula.