Mindfulness

Mindfulness refers to the energy inherent in all people to bring their full awareness to any particular thing. Some people are led to develop their mindfulness in order to live more centered, less stressful lives. For others, mindfulness is a spiritual practice, a means of seeing more deeply into themselves and into all of life.

The Buddha (560 B.C.E.–480 B.C.) gave many discourses describing how mindfulness could be cultivated through various practices. Today, mindfulness (or meditation) practices are taught by ordained clergy of many spiritual traditions, by lay meditation practitioners, and by educators and health professionals. These practices have become important activators of spiritual and religious development for many who practice them.

Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, author of the influential work on mindfulness, The Miracle of Mindfulness, equates mindfulness with living fully in the present moment. To do so, individuals must do two things—in essence, stop and smell the roses. That is, first people need to stop their mind's tendency to constantly review the past and anticipate the future, and simply rest in the here and now. Second, they need to smell, look, listen, or simply be fully with whatever it is that is present in their particular here and now. Through meditation, mindfulness practitioners train themselves to concentrate their attention on a [Page 291]single thing, to develop “one-pointed attention.” This special kind of attention is nondiscursive in nature, that is, observing something without creating concepts about it.

In his Satipatthana Sutra or Discourse on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, the Buddha described methods for doing just this, being mindful of the body in the body, mindful of feelings in the feelings, mind ful of the mind in the mind, and mindful of objects of mind in the objects of mind. Mindfulness of the body in the body denotes experiencing the body directly as opposed to thinking about it, thus the phrase “in the body.” In a similar way, feelings are experienced directly, and mind or awareness itself is experienced simply by watching what is going on in one's consciousness (e.g., planning, judging, etc.). Finally, one can learn to watch the particular contents of one's awareness (e.g., plans, judgments, or sensory input like the smell of a rose) as they arise, change, and pass away.

Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something. In Zen and Vipassana (or Insight) seated meditation, practitioners use mindfulness of breath to support the development of states of pure awareness. Other forms of formal, body-focused mindfulness practices include walking meditation, yoga, Eastern movement practices such as tai chi and qi gong, and ritual dance including the Hawaiian hula and the whirling of Sufi Dervishes. In Buddhist walking meditation, the practitioner breathes in, taking a step, then breathes out, taking a step, maintaining awareness of each step and breath. In the West, labyrinth walking is a Christian form of walking meditation. Meditative walking differs from ordinary walking in that its objective is the walk itself, each step itself, and not a final destination. In yoga, probably the best-known form of meditation on the body, awareness is focused on both moving in and out of and holding particular physical poses while maintaining breath awareness. Yoga is used as a preparation for formal, seated meditation and as a meditation in its own right.

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