Buddha on Mindfulness
Edited by Peter Y. Chou
WisdomPortal.com
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Instead of quoting ancient
Buddhist texts on the subject of mindfulness, I've selected passages
from a recent book Encountering Buddhism: Western Psychology & Buddhist
Teachings edited by Seth Robert Segall
(State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 2003). It's instructive to
see how Buddha's concept of mindfulness is interpreted and applied by
modern-day practitioners of meditation and psychotherapists. I enjoyed
reading this book because the authors dedicated it to their teachers in
Buddhism and in Psychology. Among them, I recognized two old friends from my
days at Brandeis University— Larry
Rosenberg and Jon Kabat-Zinn.
It warms my heart that they have practiced mindfulness and have shared and
taught this great art to so many others. I also enjoyed the three epigraphs
to this book: "The Tao that can be spoken
is not the Tao" "Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must be silent." Samuel Beckett once said:
"Every word is like an unnecessary stain **********************************
The first and foremost item on the
Buddhist agenda for healing— not necessarily in its textual formulation but
certainly in its practical application— is mindfulness. Since the entirety of
our virtual world is being constructed in the present moment, it is crucial
to learn to pay attention to this moment. Paying attention sounds simple; one
might think we do it all the time, but we actually pay attention very little
to what is going on in our present experience. The human mind is constantly
swinging into the future and the past, and like a pendulum it passes through
the present moment barely enough for us to keep our bearings... The Buddhists
are not saying that we should cut off our sensitivity to the full range of
experience and live ordinary life in some sort of eternal present. But in
order to get beyond some of the embedded habits of the mind, in order to get
free of some of the distortions and confusions to which we are subject, we
need to train ourselves to attend very carefully and very deliberately to the
process by which we construct past and future experience in the present
moment. And this is largely what mindfulness practice is all about. It is
accessing the present moment, and it involves cultivating the intention to
attend to what is happening right now. Left to its own inclinations, the mind
would much rather weave its way through some thought pattern that makes us
feel good about ourselves, and lead us away from any kind of insight that
might threaten our ideas about ourselves... The mind needs to be carefully
and gently encouraged through constant practice to look carefully and deeply
at what is unfolding in the immediately present moment. One can do this while
driving a car, during a meditation retreat, or it can be done sitting here in
this very moment: by simply attending carefully to what arises and passes
away in experience. Andrew Olendzki, "Buddhist
Psychology" (Ch. 1), Seth Robert Segall (Ed.), **********************************
The eightfold path comprises the
following (K. S. Dhammananda, What Buddhists Believe 4th Ed., 1987, p.
90; R. Dhamma, The First Discourse of the Buddha, 1997):
When the mind is calm, there is
space for the development of insight or vipassana. Vipassana means learning
to see clearly. The important ingredients of insight (vipassana) meditation
are mindfulness and observation. The cultivation of right mindfulness is so
important to the Buddha's teachings, that it has been described as the
"heart of Buddhist meditation". Unlike in tranquility meditation,
where the practitioner is encouraged to let go of thoughts that impinge, with
insight meditation, the meditator is encouraged to be mindful of whatever
enters the mind. T. Nyanaponika (The Heart of Buddhist Meditation,
1992) explains mindfulness as "the bare and exact registering of the
object [of attention]". Normally, we infuse what we perceive with
subjective judgments and associative thinking. Mindfulness helps us to
silence this internal dialogue, and to "see things as they really are,"
without labeling them good or bad. Buddhist practice is based on the
four foundations of mindfulness (SatipatthanaSutta, Treasure of the
Dhamma, 1994, p. 277). this means developing continuous awareness of the
(1) body (e.g., posture, breath), (2) feelings (whether pleasant, unpleasant
or neutral), (3) mind (thoughts, emotions, intentions, volitions, etc.), and
(4) mental objects (mental phenomena relevant to awakening, such as the seven
factors of enlightenment and the five hindrances to meditation). According to
the Buddha, if we are mindful of each phenomenon as it arises, we can learn
to differentiate, for example, between the injured arm and its damaged
condition (body), the unpleasant nature of the associated pain (feelings),
the anger and annoyance at the perpetrator (mind), and the way pain affects
our ability to achieve meditative concentration (mental objects).. On the
other hand, if a person does not differentiate between these different
experiences, then suffering arises, which is pain multiplied by all the
extraneous additions. In short, mindfulness increases the individual's
awareness of the circuitous nature of the mind expounded by the Buddha in the
idea of dependent origination, of how one thing leads to another, and enables
us to learn to separate our responses and feelings about the situation from
the situation itself. Why does mindfulness occupy such a
central position in the Buddha's teachings? The Buddha has repeatedly advised
people to accept things only when they have experienced them for themselves.
Insight meditation, especially mindfulness, gives the practitioner a method
and the internal resources to do this... Mindfulness allows the meditator to
freely observe and experience what unfolds without needing to change or
justify it. In this way, we gain insight into the true nature of things.
Through bare attention, we learn to see things as they really are, without
the leveling effect of subjective judgments and preconceptions... Mindfulness
brings the meditator into direct confrontation with the continual presence of
change and impermanence in a profound way. During meditation, when we
experience within ourselves how everything is constantly changing,
"rising and falling", and how no phenomenon, whether mental or
physical stays the same for two moments, we gain insight into impermanence.
This insight helps us to appreciate that change is in the nature of things
and that clinging to anything that possesses such a characteristic will
inevitably lead to suffering (dukkha). The Buddha advocates paying bare
attention to our thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise, without
falling into the habitual tendency of judging or criticizing them. The idea
behind mindfulness is to become continually aware of and to "name"
our thoughts, feelings, and emotions objectively and accept them fully for
what they are. In acquiring this awareness and understanding, the person
develops the freedom to break the hold of compulsive habits. Epstein (Thoughts
Without a Thinker, 1995, p. 102) explains that "training in this
attitude of mind is why meditation is practiced." Belinda Siew Luan Khong, "The
Buddha Teaches an Attitude, Not an Affiliation" (Ch. 3), **********************************
Buddhism means a commitment to the
practice of mindfulness. Seth Robert Segall, "On Being
A Non-Buddhist Buddhist: **********************************
At University of Massachusetts
Medical Center (UMMC) in Worcester, Jon Kabat-Zinn had recently established
his Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program (SRRP), the basis of which is
mindfulness meditation supplemented with Yoga practice, group discussion, and
some cognitive techniques. The 10-week program (now referred to as the
Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Program), using groups comprised of about
30 people with a widely diverse set of presenting problems, has shown
effectiveness for managing chronic pain and anxiety disorders, and for
persons suffering from problems such as AIDS, cancer, and depression.
Although I was not teaching in the SRRP program, I had the opportunity to
participate in the program, and then collaborate on research. Jon
Kabat-Zinn's ability to adapt traditional techniques to a contemporary
medical environment was compelling. He was able to work with people from a
wide range of backgrounds who were not necessarily seeking meditation as a
personal spiritual practice, but rather for relief from their symptoms. His
flexibility, in the context of his own extensive orthodox training in
meditation practice, was profoundly influential in supporting my own perspective
that this type of adaptation was both possible and appropriate... I began to
focus my own work on the importance of cultivating "bare attention"
to the physical and emotional experiences that arise. Another key aspect of
mindfulness meditation is the importance placed on explicit integration of
meditative practice into all aspects of daily life. This emphasis also fits
better than does TM, I believe, with developing a meditation-based approach
to treating a syndrome such as compulsive binge eating disorder. From a therapeutic perspective,
both mindfulness and mantra-based meditation approaches have something to
offer. Insight or mindfulness meditation has the distinction of more actively
engaging the individual in a transformative way with the nature of salient
issues than does mantra meditation. In my experience clinically, there is a
more rapid movement with mindfulness meditation than with mantra-based
meditation toward what I would call "wisdom functioning"— drawing
on those higher levels of choice and possibility that are within our
capabilities but are often blocked out by more powerful and immediate
conditioning effects or survival needs. Jean L. Kristeller, "Finding
the Buddha/Finding the Self: **********************************
Western Psychology has also
recently begun to recognize the potential value of the Buddhist concept of mindfulness,
and the Buddhist techniques designed to foster it, as a way to supplement and
enhance cognitive-behavioral treatments... The Samadhi component of the
eightfold path emphasizes "right concentration", "right
mindfulness", and "right effort". J. Rubin (Psychotherapy
and Buddhism, 1996) has commented on the similarity between the Buddhist
idea of "mindfulness" and Freud's concept of "evenly-hovering
attention" as a technical aspect of the psychoanalytic method. The most
precious gift we can give anyone is the quality of our attention. those
moments we have had with others that seem most meaningful to us have been moments
when others have freely and genuinely given us their full attention. In
existentially based psychotherapies, such attention is given with no other
purpose than to be fully present. This means, to the extent that it is
humanly possible, leaving all private concerns at the office door; letting go
of all concerns for the previous client at the start of the new therapy hour;
letting one's attention be "bare attention", rather than analytic
attention; listening with one's body rather than with just one's ears. The goal,
over and over, is to attend to this client-therapist interactive field
in this moment, just as in meditation the goal is to attend to this
breath in this moment, over and over... Mindful concentration is an
essential ingredient to forming a positive therapeutic alliance and to the
kind of deep listening that, within the Rogerian paradigm (C. R. Rogers, Client-centered
therapy, 1951), creates the interpersonal space where transformation and
healing occurs. Seth Robert Segall,
"Psychotherapy Practice as Buddhist Practice" (Ch. 8), |