Monday, October 30, 2006
the purpOse of mindfulness
What is the purpose of mindfulness cultivated in meditation or yoga? Just what is it that we want to come to be mindful of?
We want to see clearly how the mind works and understand how the way the mind works affects us. Being ignorant of how the mind really works is the ultimate trap for you as a human being. The emotional ups and downs you experience are wrongly perceived to have external causes, rendering you helpless to what you experience in life and you feel that you are not in control all the time, open to whatever fate throws at you. Being aware of how your mind works, you rid yourself of this delusion and you truly choose and act as a free human being.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is a well known meditation teacher and he explains in the exerpt below how gaining mindfulness helps us to understand and cope with fears and anxiety.
. . .
Exerpt below from p. 345/6, Full Catastrophe Living: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn
As you look deeply into the process of your own thinkng from the perspective of calmness and mindfulness, you may come to see. . . .that much of your thinking and emotions occur in recognizable patterns that are driven by discomfort of one kind or another. There is the discomfort of being dissatisfied with the present and wanting something more to happen, to possess something more that would make you feel better, more complete, more whole. This pattern could be described as the impulse to get what you want and to hold on to it. . .
If you look deeply into it, you will probably find that, at a deep level, such impulses are driven, much as we might hate to admit it, by a kind of greediness, the desire for "more for me" in order to be happy. Perhaps it is money or control, or recognition or love that you want. Whatever it is you are craving at the moment, to be driven by such impulses meants that, on a deep level, you don't believe that you are whole as you are.
Then there is the opposite pattern, dominated by thoughts and feelings of wanting certain things not to happen or to stop happening, the desire to get rid of certain things or elements in your life that you think are preventing you from feeling better, happier, more satisfied. These patterns of thought can be described as driven by hatred, dislike, rejection, or a need to get rid of what your don't want or don't like so that you can be happy.
Mindfulness brought to our actual behaviour may drive home the realisation that we can be caught, in our mind and actions, between these two driving motives of liking/wanting (greed) and disliking/not wanting (aversion) -- however subtle and unconscious they may be -- to the point that our lives become one incessant vascillation between pursuit of what we like and flight from what we don't like. Such a course will lead to few moments of peace or happiness. How could it? There will always be cause for anxiety. At any moment you might lose what you already have or you might never get what you want. Or you might get it and find out it wasn't what you wanted after all. You might still not feel complete.
Unless you can be mindful of the activity of your own mind, you won't even notice that this is going on. A blanket of unawareness, our old acquintance the automatic-pilot mode, will ensure your will continue to bounce from pillar to post, feeling out of control much of the time. This is basically because you think happiness is solely dependent on whether you are getting what you want. . .
This process winds up consuming a great deal of energy. It can blanket so much of our life with unawareness that we hardly perceive that we may actually be basically okay right now, that it may be possible to find a core of harmony with ourselves in the midst of the full catastrophe of our fears and anxiety. In fact, when you think about it, where else could it possible be found?
The only way to free yourself from a lifetime of being tyrannized by your own thought processes, whether you suffer from excessive anxiety or not, is to come to see your thoughts for what they are and to discern that sometimes subtle -- but most often not-so-subtle -- seeds of craving and aversion at work within them. When you can successfully step back and see that you are not your thoughts and feelings and that you do not have to act on them, when you see, vividly, that many of them are inaccurate, judgemental, and fundamentally greedy, you will have found the key to understanding why you feel so much fear and anxiety. At the same time you will have found the key to maintaining your own equilibrium. Fear, panic, and anxiety will no longer be uncontrollable demons. Instead you will see them as natural mental states that can be worked with and accepted just like any others. Then, lo and behold, the demons may not come around and bother you so much. You may find that you don't see them at all for long stretches. You may wonder where they went or even whether they ever existed. Occassionally you may see some smoke, just enough to remind you that the lair of the dragon is still occupied, that fear is a natural part of living, but not something you have to be afraid of.
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We want to see clearly how the mind works and understand how the way the mind works affects us. Being ignorant of how the mind really works is the ultimate trap for you as a human being. The emotional ups and downs you experience are wrongly perceived to have external causes, rendering you helpless to what you experience in life and you feel that you are not in control all the time, open to whatever fate throws at you. Being aware of how your mind works, you rid yourself of this delusion and you truly choose and act as a free human being.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is a well known meditation teacher and he explains in the exerpt below how gaining mindfulness helps us to understand and cope with fears and anxiety.
. . .
Exerpt below from p. 345/6, Full Catastrophe Living: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn
As you look deeply into the process of your own thinkng from the perspective of calmness and mindfulness, you may come to see. . . .that much of your thinking and emotions occur in recognizable patterns that are driven by discomfort of one kind or another. There is the discomfort of being dissatisfied with the present and wanting something more to happen, to possess something more that would make you feel better, more complete, more whole. This pattern could be described as the impulse to get what you want and to hold on to it. . .
If you look deeply into it, you will probably find that, at a deep level, such impulses are driven, much as we might hate to admit it, by a kind of greediness, the desire for "more for me" in order to be happy. Perhaps it is money or control, or recognition or love that you want. Whatever it is you are craving at the moment, to be driven by such impulses meants that, on a deep level, you don't believe that you are whole as you are.
Then there is the opposite pattern, dominated by thoughts and feelings of wanting certain things not to happen or to stop happening, the desire to get rid of certain things or elements in your life that you think are preventing you from feeling better, happier, more satisfied. These patterns of thought can be described as driven by hatred, dislike, rejection, or a need to get rid of what your don't want or don't like so that you can be happy.
Mindfulness brought to our actual behaviour may drive home the realisation that we can be caught, in our mind and actions, between these two driving motives of liking/wanting (greed) and disliking/not wanting (aversion) -- however subtle and unconscious they may be -- to the point that our lives become one incessant vascillation between pursuit of what we like and flight from what we don't like. Such a course will lead to few moments of peace or happiness. How could it? There will always be cause for anxiety. At any moment you might lose what you already have or you might never get what you want. Or you might get it and find out it wasn't what you wanted after all. You might still not feel complete.
Unless you can be mindful of the activity of your own mind, you won't even notice that this is going on. A blanket of unawareness, our old acquintance the automatic-pilot mode, will ensure your will continue to bounce from pillar to post, feeling out of control much of the time. This is basically because you think happiness is solely dependent on whether you are getting what you want. . .
This process winds up consuming a great deal of energy. It can blanket so much of our life with unawareness that we hardly perceive that we may actually be basically okay right now, that it may be possible to find a core of harmony with ourselves in the midst of the full catastrophe of our fears and anxiety. In fact, when you think about it, where else could it possible be found?
The only way to free yourself from a lifetime of being tyrannized by your own thought processes, whether you suffer from excessive anxiety or not, is to come to see your thoughts for what they are and to discern that sometimes subtle -- but most often not-so-subtle -- seeds of craving and aversion at work within them. When you can successfully step back and see that you are not your thoughts and feelings and that you do not have to act on them, when you see, vividly, that many of them are inaccurate, judgemental, and fundamentally greedy, you will have found the key to understanding why you feel so much fear and anxiety. At the same time you will have found the key to maintaining your own equilibrium. Fear, panic, and anxiety will no longer be uncontrollable demons. Instead you will see them as natural mental states that can be worked with and accepted just like any others. Then, lo and behold, the demons may not come around and bother you so much. You may find that you don't see them at all for long stretches. You may wonder where they went or even whether they ever existed. Occassionally you may see some smoke, just enough to remind you that the lair of the dragon is still occupied, that fear is a natural part of living, but not something you have to be afraid of.