Mindfulness: The Definition Contains The Instructions

This talk was given as part of the Atlanta Mindfulness Institute's Community Meditation Group on April 5, 2020. This talk examines the components of the mindfulness definition: paying attention on purpose to the present moment without judgment. We explore ways in which each part of the definition contains instructions for living a more mindful life. When practiced as a whole, this definition becomes a roadmap to a joyful and peaceful journey.

Transcript

So I'm going to talk a little bit tonight about mindfulness and how the definition can become really important instruction.

And I'd love to unpack this and look closely at the definition of mindfulness with you tonight because one,

I think it's so rich with instruction.

Each of its four components are little instruction manuals within their own right.

And put together they give us a roadmap of a very powerful life-changing practice.

I think you already know that or I don't think you'd be here.

And in these times of the corona pandemic with so much uncertainty,

So much fear,

To ground back into the depth of mindfulness and to be reminded of what is important and what we can do versus what we can't do right now seems critical to me.

So just to refresh us as to what are these four components,

The definition of mindfulness that I use which was from my teacher John Kabat-Zinn is paying attention on purpose to the present moment without judgment.

So before we even get into the first of these four,

Paying attention,

I'd just like to invite you to reflect on your own life for just a minute.

So if it's useful to you just to sit back and close your eyes so you can access your memory and your interiority.

Just to let your mind float back over just today.

Where has your attention been today?

How conscious have you been about where your attention has been moment to moment?

How conscious have you been?

And as you reflect on some memories from today which probably gives you a good idea of where your attention was because memories flow from attention,

Have these places where you brought your attention supported your intention of a peaceful compassionate mindful life.

So in reflection where you found yourself paying attention?

Do they support this journey that you're on?

So just a hold that for until we come to the end of this and perhaps we'll have a little time to talk about this.

But attention is such a precious commodity.

Essentially how we spend our time and where we place our attention will determine how our life turns out.

I could argue that attention is our greatest asset and everyone and everything is constantly trying to get it right?

Spouses,

Partners,

Employers,

Employees,

Kids,

Parents,

Friends,

Pets,

But it's not the people that we know it's the people that we don't know that are trying to get our attention that are so troubling to me and that I think are leading to so much of our suffering.

And I don't mean the stranger on the street or the neighbor you've never met.

I mean the advertisers,

Social media,

The forces that depend on your attention for their survival.

You know our attention is more hijacked than it ever has been.

People complain to me so often that their attention is terrible that they can't even read a book anymore.

I had someone tell me recently who used to have a meditation practice about a year ago he really just stopped meditating that he can barely get through one story in the newspaper without looking at his phone,

Without becoming distracted.

Like is it possible to spend from 6 p.

M.

To 715 without picking up the phone?

And this fella who was talking to me said he so wants to find that quality of attention and concentration that he had when he had a daily practice but he's fearful that he'll never find it again.

And of course he will because that's neuroplasticity.

Wherever,

Whatever we practice develops.

The other day I had Magoo at this little forest that I take him to to walk sometimes and there were you know a handful of people in a fairly large area but every single person I passed and I'm not kidding had their head in their phone.

We're in the middle of this beautiful forest.

It was stunning to me.

It matters where we place our attention.

Where we place our attention is what we tend to think about and maybe this seems obvious but I actually don't think it is when we are going through our day.

Think about for example the last time you saw a movie.

I saw a very powerful movie the other night and the next morning that movie had ended you know eight hours before but it was still very much in my mind in my thoughts and this is what happens in our life.

Where we place our attention in this moment leads to the next moment.

So where do you want to place your attention?

This is a very important question and this brings us to the second part of the mindfulness definition on purpose.

When we're operating on autopilot the opposite of mindfulness we know how attention works.

Something very pleasurable or very painful happens and that tends to grab our attention.

Not so much on purpose but just because it has a big enough wow factor.

Moving through our day on autopilot we certainly bring enough attention to what we're doing in order to get it done.

Sometimes better sometimes not so much but when we start practicing mindfulness and again I think every single person here knows this you really get to see the difference between when you're a hundred percent present and when you're more like 50% present.

So how do we pay attention on purpose?

When I think about this question I think about two possibilities that are slightly different from one another.

The first is how we bring purposeful attention in any given moment.

It begins with awareness that we're not particularly present most likely and with this awareness we can pause we can invite that powerful pause and we can bring intentionality to the experience.

We choose where we want our attention to be and with the intention to direct our attention to a particular place situation or person the full moment is revealed to our senses.

And I'll give you an example just today just about four o'clock I was sitting outside and it was such beautiful weather I was in the quiet of my small backyard with the green grass underneath my feet the cherry tree in front of me a big blue sky above me and funny Willa Dean chasing a bumblebee so aware so grateful and then my mind began to wander I mean I was right there and next I wasn't and as my mind wandered to the umpteen emails I've gotten from Trek for me to buy a new bicycle which I have three I was gone I was gone like I still saw Willa Dean jumping up in the air I the tree was there the sky was there but the gratitude just fell away the vivid nature of everything kind of dampened and luckily mindful I was able to remember oh yeah I don't have to do that I don't have to reach for my phone to see if that one mountain bike I really would like to have is on sale that doesn't bring me peace it brings me another bicycle more debt and I can't ride for but it's amazing how I can forget all of those details and forget that the most important thing to me is to have peace presence and compassion on this in this life so the other possibility is consciously working with intention purpose each day taking the time to explore what values are most important to you and you might find yourself right now with a little more time than usual I don't not everybody has that but some people do and you know taking the time to get really conscious about what principles guide you because these frame the path of this life journey and once we can get consciously aware of things we have this ethical guidepost that we can consistently reflect on and gain a greater understanding of when we're in alignment and therefore most likely more peaceful and when we're out of alignment and most likely heading down a path of suffering so again just to use an example I have a deep value of non-harming and I am often reflecting on how my own thoughts and words and actions embody this value and when I struggle to live up to this value and the fourth part of the definition of mindfulness without judgment reminds us that it is indeed not useful to bring judgment to when we're struggling to when we find ourselves messy and when we make mistakes but I'll come back to that piece of non-judgment but quite the opposite when I fail to live up to my value this guiding principle of non-harm I actually have an opportunity to explore the circumstances of the experience this is mindfulness to look at what hijacked my intention of non-harming if I said something that wasn't very charitable or hurt somebody that I love my mindfulness wasn't as strong as I needed it to be and when I can look at this with kindness I can grow and learn and that strengthens my path to peace and compassion here is so warranted because when I'm not coming from a value of non-harming I'm usually suffering in some way already with fear or feelings of inadequacy or shame all mind states that deserve compassion so just to give you an example of a way to work with values and intention purposeful attention each morning and many of you have heard me say this each morning before I begin my meditation practice I spend some time quietly reviewing and reflecting on the value of non-harm and for me in keeping with the five precepts found in Buddhist psychology I set about each morning to not harm but to nurture every living being and the other four phrases are basically rifts on this broad vow each day to not harm and they break the non-harming down into specific parts again because I want to pay attention on purpose to what's most important so the second one is vowing not to speak dishonestly or destructively or divisively but instead to speak and listen from the heart to vow not to engage in any sexual misconduct but to treat every human being with respect and dignity to vow not to take anything that isn't freely given to me but to practice generosity and gratitude and to not intoxicate the mind and body but to cultivate why see wisdom this is just an aspiration but it's an important one as each of our values are to us it's really an important part of mindfulness to spend the time to know what are these and how do we bring mindfulness to them each day so this brings us to the third component of the definition the present moment I'm fairly certain that if you have not touched into the beauty the groundedness the serenity of the present moment you probably wouldn't be here today the present moment as I'm guessing all of us know is actually the place that life happens and when our mind is wild and conditioned to jumping from the past to the future and back again to the past it's the present moment that we miss that it skips over and it's our life that we miss out on and in addition and I think this is so important right now in this pandemic the present moment is also an antidote to anxiety and fear and I'm not suggesting that there aren't some people that when they touch into this present moment who are already very sick or even just emotionally distressed I'm not minimizing that this isn't painful and I'll actually talk about that but pain is different than anxiety and fear and I actually think that we could all use a lot of present moment experience right now to ease the fires of anxiety around this pandemic but mindfulness is more than just the recognition of the present moment we can actually recognize that anxiety is present but if we're subtly bringing aversion to that experience if the body is contracted if the mind is pushing away that's actually not mindfulness it may be a bit of what we call self-awareness in Western psychology but in the true understanding of mindfulness this is not it with mindfulness when we bring awareness to the present moment it's a non-judgmental awareness it's a balanced awareness in which we're neither wanting more of whatever's here nor are we wanting to push away from what's here so equanimity or balance is embedded in mindfulness and you may be familiar with the meditation teacher Tara Brock who has really popularized the acronym RAIN RAIN stands for recognize allow investigate and nurture and this can be a very useful process to engage in when we become aware that the present moment is difficult perhaps we recognize that we're sitting in fear but with the next step allow we begin to relax the body we began to open up to the aversion and with the I in RAIN investigate we continue to turn toward the experience to become more intimate with it this is mindfulness to really know it to see where it is in the body and in the mind and with nurture we bring that non-judgmental component to it offering care and compassion to whatever is being experienced so moving to the fourth and final part of the definition of mindfulness without judgment this is a whole talk this is a whole course in fact it actually is a course called mindful self-compassion the need for this class comes from the fact that the vast majority of us live with a pretty deeply rooted and loud inner critic and just sidebar this is a useful topic for you and you'd like us to spend more time talking about this component of mindfulness the without judgment shoot me an email let me know I'm always interested in what you all would like to hear about that supports your practice but the inner critic seems for many of us to always be lurking waiting for the next thought or word or action just to see if commenting is needed well this inner critic is also really just a habituated thought stream that we've been cultivating most of our lives so even though I talk about it as if it has a life of its own I also really want to be careful about this because even though it's been very powerful in many of our lives it isn't actually more powerful than mindfulness it's a thought pattern and when we find ourselves in a tough spot aware of the harshness internally we bring attention to this that first part of mindfulness and then we set our intention in that moment the second part of mindfulness to turn toward it not to run away not to become more destructive toward ourself or others and we move into what the experience is like in the present moment that third part of mindfulness and when we find ourselves able to do this saying yes I can be with this harsh judgmental feeling the judgment of the judgment begins to relax and when mindfulness begins to show up in our lives more and more dropping the judgment over and over a new sense of neutrality is born of balance and of compassion and this compassion and balance become more and more of our lives so looking closely at the definition of mindfulness we begin to see the instructions contained within it so perhaps this week you'll think more consciously about attention where you place it maybe you'll think about intention touching into your values what are they how do they drive this path what's possible from being in the present moment and being more mindful about letting go of the judgment so often associated with our thoughts words and actions so I think I'll stop there thank you for your attention I hope this has been useful and I'd like to just invite us to take a couple of moments now just to sit back in our chairs to close the eyes if that's comfortable and to come into silence and just let these words be digested see if there's anything that arises in your own mind that feels important to speak to or to perhaps come back to on your own just noticing what's here you

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