So what is this thing called mindfulness? For even the most uninitiated in the world of meditation and spirituality the word probably creates some dull resonance in the back of your mind. It has become a buzzword within the ‘new age’ and holistic health world, but what does it really mean engage in mindfulness and to be mindful?
Mindfulness in basic terms is: Paying attention to what you are doing while you are doing it. Many of us, I might even take a risk here and say all, live in our thoughts of the future or memories of the past much of the time. We may be thinking about what’s for dinner, the project we have due next week, the presentation we will give to the board, our high school sweetheart and what became of him/her, the mortgage payment that is past due….the list goes on and on.
The main elements of mindfulness practice are to be present with your immediate experience with attention and concentration. Let’s define our terms.
- Present: being, existing, or occurring at this time or now; current, at this time; at hand; immediate.
- Attention: the act or faculty of attending, esp. by directing the mind to an object.
- Concentration: exclusive attention to one object; close mental application
Say for instance that you are eating a banana. You might be aware that you are eating, but also thinking about 10 other things. This is not mindfulness.
Mindfulness of banana would mean that you are attending only to the immediate object (the banana) that is currently in your space of experience in that moment. True mindfulness is rich and deep and most of all direct. You are experiencing directly the object you are engaged with; in this case the banana. You would notice the texture of the banana skin, the smell coming off the banana, the feeling of your fingers as they peel the banana, the tenderness of the flesh of the banana as you bite into it, its texture as you chew, the sweetness of the banana as your taste buds encounter it…
One other aspect of mindfulness is the attitude you bring to your practice. Gentleness and patience with the self are two of the most important qualities to cultivate in relationship to yourself. If one castigates one’s self or uses every occasion for thought as a n excuse to indulge in self-flagellation/critiscism etc, we are missing the point completely. One needs understand that it is the nature of our mind to wander and part of being mindful is knowing that our mind is wandering when it wanders. So as we are present and attentive to the banana, our breath, or whatever the object of mindfulness practice is. We will find our attention and concentration shift to our thoughts, to a sound in the room….etc. We then notice that we are not paying attention and concentrating on what we intended to, we come back again and again, using a gentle voice and perhaps a slight whisper in the mind to ‘come back’ as if we were talking to a young child wandering in the wrong direction.
To be continued….(next post What is Mindfulness PART II)
Filed under: Breath, Buddhism, Mindfulness, Practice
