Answering the question ‘What is mindfulness?’ is relatively easy in theory. From a study of the Mindfulness Sutta (Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta) we could say that it means being attuned, directly and continuously, to the following areas of experience, combined with the intentions which I name thereafter:
(kaya) our bodily form in its postures and all its activities,
(vedanā) the feeling-tones (pleasant, unpleasant, or neither) in all our experiences,
(citta) our mind-states, negative and positive, both superficial and profound – including mental-emotional dispositions or attitudes, and hence including thoughts. And,
(dhammā; or, in English: dhammas) the interplay of form, feeling-tones and ‘mind-states.’
However, the practice depends on the cultivation of quite precise intentions. In Buddhist mindfulness we give this dedicated attention to our experience because we undertake to become peaceful, awake humans; people who know things as they really are. Also, it supports our undertaking to treat ourselves and others well. Knowing things as they really are and treating ourselves and others well, these things support each other. They’re reciprocal endeavours, if we practice with heart.
All of this is necessary and valuable for humanity; but another undertaking emerges as the practice takes hold and deepens (though, in some it is strong to begin with). That is, we undertake to serve the truth, to place ourselves under how things are. This is to say, a yearning awakens in us for the deepest insight into the essential nature of consciousness, for the simple reason that we grow to love the truth.
(Of course, modern science and deep contemplative practice share a commitment to how things are. They differ in the domains of their study, and the methodologies appropriate to their different domains, but they do – at their best – share a love of truth.)
In practice, there is a lot of variation in how we apply and experience mindfulness. The differences stem mainly from the stages of development of the practice within individual practitioners, but they also arise from the difference of temperament in the cultures in which mindfulness has taken root. What mindfulness ‘is’ depends, then, on where you are in the journey of learning to be mindful, and who you are.
There are differences in the quality of mindfulness which arise, also, dependent on the choice of words used to transmit mindfulness. I have been reading an author, lately, for whom I have some respect, but he writes that mindfulness involves ‘disinterested observation.’ I avoid that language.
When I began mindfulness practice, I had an attitude, common among beginners, which fostered a type of distance from the processes of bodily and mental activity.
Once a practitioner told me that she had given up her Vipassana practice, now that she’d found Focusing. I asked her why, and she said that the ‘observing thoughts’ approach had made her too distant, and even dissociated, in her relationships; whereas Focusing had brought her warmth back.
It might be that the ‘distancing’ effect is unavoidable for beginners, because in the first place it tends to be thought which is doing the mindfulness. Nevertheless, I think that this needn’t be very strong, if a different kind of teaching is given, and so a different kind of training is practiced. I have seen ‘mindfulness’ referred to as ‘heartfulness,’ and I think this is a very important emphasis. I have noticed that the Pāli Nikāya texts can legitimately be translated in a way that brings intimacy in, softening the language so that the ‘disinterested observation’ danger isn’t there. (I’m not saying that we don’t need a kind of dispassion, but that’s a point for later.)
For the purpose of fostering heart in our mindfulness, I recommend that you know your experiences in a bodily way. Even your mental processes can be known from the bodily angle, rather than ‘watching’ from a privileged distance (as though there was a meta-layer of yourself; that is, a distant ‘witness’). The ‘stand back and watch it all pass by’ approach is not a wholesome one, in my view; no matter how often it is taught.
Even so, when all this is said and done, as I said, there will be in the early stages of mindfulness practice a tendency for ‘thought’ to do the knowing of kaya, vedanā, citta, and dhammā. This dynamic does change; yet, we can facilitate the change with skill (yoniso manasikāra), by learning both Focusing and mindfulness.
Mindfulness practice can develop into something more holistic, and eventually is found to be more akin to ‘presence’ than to thought-directed attention.
Next: Using phrases in our mindfulness.