mind-less: adj. 1. without intelligence, senseless. 2. unmindful, careless.
mind-ful: adj. 1. attentive. 2. careful.
mind-ful-ness: noun.
- Non-judgmental moment-to-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings, senses, and bodily sensations.
- Accepting with equanimity whatever life presents.
- Focusing on the present moment and not the past or the future.
- Purposely taking notice of the world around you, particularly its simplest moments.
- Choosing to respond to life in a calm, compassionate, considered manner rather than reacting to it unthinkingly, unconsciously, and habitually.
Here is a rough depiction of some of the differences between being mindless versus being mindful:
Mindfulness practice holds the promise of helping you become a better person, a happier person, and one who leads a fuller, richer life without any change in circumstance.
While the practice of mindfulness consists of basic principles and teachings, there is no dogma that must be taken on faith. Rather, it is an experiential philosophy that says, “Try these things and see if they work for you.”
While I will provide you with the principles and teachings, it falls on you, through application, to prove its benefits to yourself. I can proverbially “lead you to the water” but the drinking part, that’s up to you!
“Everyone knows that it takes time and perseverance to master an art, a sport, a language, or any other discipline. Why should it not be the same with training the mind?
It is a worthwhile adventure. We are not talking about acquiring some ordinary ability, but rather about a new way of being that will determine the quality of our entire life.”
Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk and author of “Why Meditate?“
In basic terms, mindfulness can be summarized using the acronym “CAAL“:
- Concentration.
- Awareness.
- Acceptance.
- Love
Concentration
Concentration is the practice of directing your attention to where you want it rather than following unconsciously to wherever your wandering, unobserved mind takes you. In short, a wandering mind is problematic to leading a peaceful life.
Developing the skill of concentration is achieved through formal meditation practice coupled with informal mindfulness techniques deployed throughout one’s day.
Awareness
If our goal is to lead a peaceful life it helps to remain aware of the following:
- Awareness of the present moment and choosing to preferentially reside there (versus our tendency to dwell on our unchangeable past or fret about an unknowable future).
- Awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. These are used as an early-warning system to alert us when our wisdom is going off-line.
- Awareness of one of the primary causes of suffering – resisting reality.
- Awareness of impermanence, the truism that nothing stays the same, that everything is in constant flux. To resist impermanence is to invite suffering.
- Awareness of the many factors impacting human behaviour. Armed with this knowledge we just naturally adopt universal compassion as our credo.
- Awareness of our highest intentions, including to bring peace and goodwill into the world.
- Awareness of a broader perspective on life. This helps us stop taking life, and ourselves, so seriously.
- Awareness of our interdependence and interconnectedness with others and, ultimately, with everything in the universe. Doing so helps overcome our self-absorbed, self-centred egoism.
Acceptance
Acceptance means that we adopt the attitude that whatever life brings our way, we’re okay with it, it’s all manageable. By doing so we drop all the usual drama and, instead, just deal with each situation matter-of-factly; we practice equanimity.
Love
Universal love is an essential component of mindfulness, because if you’re harboring anger, jealousy, envy, greed, selfishness, impatience or any of the other base traits of humanity, you cannot be mindful – these two states of mind are like oil and water.
Love is choosing to live your life with compassion, generosity, understanding, and goodwill toward everyone you encounter, without exception (see this post for why this is the right thing to do).
“In the practice of mindfulness, the mind is trained to remain in the present, open, quiet, and alert, contemplating the present event. All judgments and interpretations have to be suspended or, if they occur, just registered and dropped. The whole process is a way of coming back into the present moment, of standing in the here and now, without getting swept away by the tides of distracting thoughts.”
Bhikkhu Bodhi, Buddhist monk
“Mindfulness is the presence of mind, the quality of awareness, often described as “bare attention”.
Joseph Goldstein, “Mindfulness – A Practical Guide to Awakening”
Mindful Moments: Some examples
To help make the concept of mindfulness a bit more concrete, let’s look at some examples of mindful moments:
- You are walking through the woods trying to clear your head over an argument you just had with your parents. You regret the hurtful things you said to them out of anger and now are worrying about your future relationship with them. Your mind turns the past and future over and over in an endless loop. Then, suddenly, a clearing opens up in the woods and there, in the vast expanse right in front of you, is the most amazing sunset you’ve ever seen, and you are instantly awestruck. At that moment, all those negative thoughts fall away and your entire world closes down to just that experience. You have left the past and the future and, once again, are living fully in the present moment – you are mindful. In this more peaceful state you see the wise path forward with your parents and commit to calling them when you get home. You enjoy the rest of your woodland stroll.
- You are taking a shower after two hours of tiring, sweaty yard work and your senses open up completely to the experience – the warm water cascading over your body, the scent of the lathered soap, the sound of the drops hitting the shower walls, the blurring of your sight as the water runs down your face, and the sweet taste of the water as you take small sips to quench your thirst. At that moment, that shower is your entire world – you are being mindful!
- You are sitting comfortably in your backyard on a mild spring day taking in the warmth, the sound of the birds in the trees around you, and the scent of flowers just coming into bloom. Suddenly, your yard-obsessed neighbour fires up his gas-powered beast of a lawnmower, jolting you out of your serenity. A surge of judgmental anger takes hold of your being and thoughts of what you’d like to do to him race through your mind. Then, you notice these unhelpful feelings and choose to pause, breathe, slow down your mind, and relax. You laugh at yourself for your habitual reaction to life’s unpleasant moments and remind yourself, once again, that pleasant and unpleasant are both just part of life. In your now-mindful state you smile and wave good-naturedly to your neighbour, closing your eyes and resting as you wait patiently for him to complete his chore.
- You are playing your favourite sport and a crucial moment arises requiring your total focus. Suddenly, conscious awareness of the spectators drops away, all goes calm and quiet, all sensory input ceases, and your entire world narrows to the task at hand – you are “in the zone” in sports parlance and all worldly matters cease to exist for you at that moment. Welcome to mindfulness!
- You are focused on an important report for your manager that is due tomorrow, trying to get the words just right. Suddenly, an email notification pops up on your screen and part of your mind starts wondering what it’s about. Then, your phone rings and rings and rings, sounding urgent, and another part of your mind begins making up stories about who may be needing you. And then a colleague interrupts you to ask a question and suddenly you feel anxious and stressed – there’s just too much going on. And then you realize that your mind is scattered. You choose to turn off your email notifications, you put your phone on do-not-disturb, and you advise your colleagues that you need two hours of quiet time. Your mind settles and you’re able to focus productively on just the task at hand – you’ve chosen to be mindful.
- Your friend comes to you in a frantic state. You drop what you are doing, your full attention turns to her, and you just listen – no mental commentary, no judging, no thinking about what you’re going to say – you just listen, thus being mindfully attentive to your friend’s needs.
- Your spouse speaks to you in a harsh, aggressive manner over something he feels you should have done. You feel unjustly accused and really hurt. But in that moment you become aware of your body tensing, your blood boiling, your jaw clenching, and your racing mind – and you pause, slow everything down, and breathe. Rather than judging his outburst as childish and lashing out at him, your heart feels compassion because you know this isn’t his true self talking. You simply let him say his peace and resolve to speak to him later once he’s calmed down and both of you are more receptive to a wiser, heartfelt discussion about the issue. Responding with compassion and wisdom, rather than reacting in our habitual, unthinking way, you’ve chosen the path of mindfulness.
- You are driving to work along the same seemingly-boring and overly-familiar route you have for the past six years, only today you have your four-year-old grandchild with you and she begins asking you questions about what she’s seeing and hearing. Suddenly, through her eyes, you begin noticing new things about that “boring” route that you’d never really noticed before. The drive isn’t boring this time – in fact, it’s rather pleasant and interesting! Welcome to mindfulness practice!
What we can glean from these examples is that you are being mindful when:
- Your attention is focused on what is happening at this present moment.
- You choose not to dwell on an unchangeable past or fret about an unknowable future.
- You focus on one task at a time and give it your undivided attention.
- You experience life directly through your senses minus commentary, opinions, or judgments.
- You choose to respond to life’s challenges and frustrations with compassion rather than reacting unthinkingly and automatically with ego-centric aggression.
- Through practice you develop moment-to-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations and use these as your guide to pause before being taken over by our often-unhelpful instinctual reactions to the things in life we don’t like. Instead, we learn to create a wee bit of space to allow us to choose a path of calm wisdom.
While mindfulness practice can’t make the unpleasant aspects of life disappear, it can provide you with the tools to live a life of peace amidst life’s inevitable squalls.
Without question, implementing a daily mindfulness practice has made my life materially better – one of peaceful contentment regardless of circumstance. And I know it can do the same for you.
Warmest wishes,
Rob @ Living a Mindful Life
“The teachings others can give you are to show you the path, but that isn’t real knowledge. When people genuinely meet the dharma, they realize it directly within themselves. So the Buddha said that he is merely the one who shows the way. In teaching us, he is not accomplishing the way for us. It is not so easy as that. It’s like someone who sells us a plow to till the fields. He isn’t going to do the plowing for us. We have to do that ourselves.
Teachings can be most profound, but those who listen may not understand. Never mind. Don’t be perplexed over profundity or lack of it. Just do the practice wholeheartedly, and you can arrive at real understanding—it will bring you to the place the teachings talk about.”
Ajahn Chah, Buddhist monk, Tricycle magazine