by Jamesscotthenson | Feb 5, 2020 | Uncategorized
Mindfulness and Ethics
Mindfulness
can be defined as a nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment. This sounds
simple, and it is, but it’s also super not-simple. There’s a lot that goes into
returning to our most natural state being, especially in a very unnatural
world.
Mindfulness
is cool and lifechanging and all that, but it’s also a word we so often right
now that it has started to lose its meaning and potency as that force for
change in our lives. This sucks, but it makes sense. Any time something is
re-processed and re-purposed to make it more palatable (and profitable) many of
the most beneficial parts of it will be stripped away.
Mindfulness
as a fad (I’ve seen it called McMindfulness, which is apt) has led to the
deeper meaning being stripped away, and has seen what is a practice of wisdom
and compassion be co-opted by corporations as a way to keep employees happy in
jobs that no healthy human would be happy in. This is the unfortunate side
effect of anything we want without doing the work, and it is the problem with
removing a practice from its ethical roots for the sake of making it more
broadly palatable.
So what is
unpalatable about mindfulness? There are a few things.
- Mindfulness
is not always easy and requires discipline.
- Mindfulness
angles us into a dialogue with wisdom and compassion, and the necessity of both
- Mindfulness
begins to wear away at many of the things we hold most dear, many of which
society leverages for the good of society.
- Mindfulness
forces us to re-examine one of our most sacred and sentimental assumptions –
the idea that there is a “me”.
What Mindfulness Is Not
Mindfulness
is not a simple tool for making everything more tolerable.
Mindfulness
is not a quick fix for everything in your life.
Mindfulness
is not a way of becoming numb to the world around you.
Mindfulness
is not an excuse to avoid evolving because “everything is perfect as it is.”
Mindfulness
is not a relaxation technique.
Mindfulness
is not an amoral or neutral practice.
If any of
these statements are surprising, you should not blame yourself. Mindfulness,
when presented as an exclusively secular/mental health practice does often
claim these things. Part of this is to make it presentable to everyone – atheist,
Christian, agnostic, and everyone else, part of it is from a desire to avoid
morality-oriented positions, and part of it is either from a desire to avoid
the word meditation and all the associations that come with it or an ignorance
of mindfulness’ place within the world of meditation.
It is
essential to understand that mindfulness and meditation are not only not
interchangeable words, mindfulness is a type, and only one of many, of
meditation, and it is not even the type that is generally best to start with.
The most
important thing to understand is that mindfulness will not make you perfect, it
will not make all of life’s experiences equal or neutral, and you will still be
human – maybe even more human. You will still experience anxiety and pain and
anger and jealousy and heartache and heartbreak and sickness and death.
If you
only remember one thing, please remember this:
Mindfulness is not about changing
or improving our experience, but learning to observe and accept and embrace it
exactly as it is.
Mindfulness and Meditation
At its core, mindfulness is about
learning to observe your experience as a human without attachment or judgment. We mostly see this directed
outwardly in the context of mindfulness-as-self-help, but it applies to our
internal experience as well, and this is where things can get complicated. As
we come face-to-face with the swirling and shifting ground of our thoughts,
emotions, judgments, opinions, fears, worries, expectations, assumptions,
stories, identities, physical sensations, aches, pains, and everything else
that arises in us we find that it isn’t easy to be a human, and this isn’t
relaxing.
This
requires a steady mind, so many meditation traditions start off by teaching us
how to focus on the breath until we learn how to maintain it for at least a
little while. This is important because the mind isn’t used to staying on one
thing, so mindfulness of our experience is very frustrating as we get pulled
away over and over again. Focus takes
practice.
It is also
vital that we understand how to turn toward refuge when the internal stream
becomes too overwhelming or chaotic for us. We spend a lot of our lives escaping
what’s going on inside of us, and this seems to be more and more prevalent as
the rates of anxiety, depression and general stress are on the rise. It can be
overwhelming when we immerse ourselves in everything we have been avoiding. Being
able to rest on the breath or a mantra is a way of turning away from the sharp
edges of our experience for a few moments until we are ready to begin wearing
them down and desensitizing ourselves to them again.
The Shortcomings of Secular
Mindfulness
This started out as an exploration of mindfulness as a practice inextricable from the Buddhism from which it emerged. As I wrote, I realized that it was less about this, and more about the problem of mindfulness being promoted as nothing more than a tool to help us feel better or to make a boring corporate meeting less miserable. Mindfulness and ethics is what we’re really talking about here.
While it
is unarguable that mindfulness has its roots as a Buddhist practice and there
some aspects of mindfulness best understood in a Buddhist context, the more
significant issue can be addressed through acknowledging the spiritual or moral character of
mindfulness. I put spiritual in italics because it is a squirmy word – I am not
sure it is the correct one, but I cannot think of something more appropriate.
Keep this idea in mind: mindfulness
cannot be divorced from wisdom, compassion, and the idea of no-self. Wisdom and compassion are not unique to this
practice and are present in any valid ethical system. The idea of no-self is somewhat uniquely Buddhist. There are
notions of no-self in the mystical traditions of every religion, though often not
as explicitly as it is in Buddhism. This is important because the observation
of the impermanence of self cannot be avoided in mindfulness practice.
A quick
note on citations: this is all I read, write, and talk about so I cannot
remember where different bits of information came from. Because of this, I am
including my ongoing and often-updated reading list at the end. I assume
everything I talk about here is on that list somewhere, though podcasts are
another avenue I utilize but have not listed on a per episode basis.
Starving to Death Instead of
Drowning
I don’t
really like writing things like this. I don’t like to seem like I am sniping at
people who do work similar to me, or claiming to be the expert that has
everything right. I also dislike the easy credibility/legitimacy that can be
found by criticizing others, and I am not seeking that.
That being
said, I cannot help but have some concern and even worry over the presentation
of mindfulness I see in our society, specifically, the fad/cure-all nature of
its presentation.
I’m a fan
of mindfulness as a lifestyle. I’m a fan of mindfulness as a way of being. I’m
a fan of mindfulness in (what I see as) it’s proper context of an
ethically-directed practice or, at the very least, as part of a more profound
discipline.
I am not a
fan of mindfulness as the silver bullet, easy fix it is being offered as,
especially in the field of mental health or personal development. I have seen
it bring harm to people, and I have seen it make things harder for others. This
makes sense – you cannot divorce something from its foundations and still
expect it to work as well as it did when it was built on something completely
different.
Let’s say
someone is going to the lake for the weekend. They don’t know how to swim, so
they decide to learn beforehand. Instead of finding an instructor who will
teach them everything, they take the quickest route and learn to float because
it’s the easiest way – the body already knows how, so why not. They don’t want
to bother with actually learning to actually swim, they just want to not drown.
So, they
go to the lake, and the boat sinks. They manage to escape the debris and begin
to float. And they float, and they float, and they float, hoping to make it to
shore eventually, though when and where they land is out of their control. Eventually,
they starve to death floating around in the water rather than drowning.
I see this
happening a lot with mindfulness. People read a book or two and begin to teach
others, or people read a book or two that’s the extent of their self-education.
Some even get a certification and start teaching, but certifications are unregulated
and do not guarantee any foundational teaching or depth of study. As I
mentioned at the beginning, some fail to even explain that mindfulness is a
type of meditation, rather than being synonymous with meditation. This is
problematic.
Look, I get it. I had to learn about this all through books and certifications as well. I was lucky to come to it through the lens of Buddhist teaching and philosophy but I still approached from a secular/mental health perspective. I saw it as a cure-all for a while, and I sought ways to strip it of its Buddhist constraints to make it more palatable to everyone. I wasn’t ever able to see it as amoral, but, years back, I did not address the morality and ethics as necessary or essential. This was a mistake.
Mindfulness
without its ethical underpinnings is just a slower death through suffering – it
is not enough to simply be aware of the present moment. We cannot use
mindfulness to numb ourselves to very real social problems, but we run the risk
of doing exactly that if we remove the ethical foundations of the practice in
the name of making it more palatable for everyone.
The B-Word
I’ve
avoided this word for quite a while.
I live in
West Texas. From what I understand, we are more Christian than Pakistan is
Muslim, and we are dominated by a strict sect of Christianity. This is not a
welcoming ground to talk about Buddhism.
And I get
it. People have their beliefs, and that’s cool. People want to believe that
their belief system encompasses all the wisdom the universe has to offer, and
that makes sense.
It makes
sense, but it doesn’t make it True.
There is a
functionality and correspondence to everyday experience in Buddhism that I have
not found in other religions. Buddhism offers an understanding of the human
condition that is verifiable and action-oriented. I am not even sure you have
to believe anything at all to find the truths of Buddhism useful – it is a
grounded practice, one anyone can do. You don’t need to be a Buddhist in any
sense.
But, all
that said, I do not think it is wise or beneficial to completely divorce
mindfulness from its Buddhist roots.
Mindfulness
is rooted in Buddhism whether we like it or not. This may or not be a problem
for you. Where I live, it has been a problem for some people, so let’s break a
few things down.
It’s
important to consider the idea that many of the core tenets of Buddhism can be
explored and even accepted without compromising whatever your current religious
or lack-of-religious belief is. Most every faith embraces psychology to some
extent these days, and Buddhism is, in many ways, a psychology, and maybe the
best one I’ve come across.
Let’s set
one thing aside at the very beginning: we are not going to talk about
reincarnation. I don’t have an opinion on it because I haven’t died yet (that I
know of – rimshot), and, it’s actually the subject of some debate even among
religious Buddhists. It is unnecessary to our conversation here either way.
I’m also
not going to go into many of the mystical or magical aspects of the story of
the Buddha, who was a real person named Siddhartha Gautama and lived about 2500
years ago. The backstory is also not really necessary, neither is the
supernatural stuff, that is also a subject of some debate, even among religious
Buddhists.
You may
see a pattern here: religious Buddhists, like people of every faith, have a
wide and varied perspective on what is and is not necessary and true within their
faith.
Here are
the things that I see as necessary, and that I know a million people would have
million different ideas about:
The Four Noble Truths
Gautama
tried a lot of different ways to understand our lot in life. After years of
arduous practices, he had a moment of realization, and arrived at 4 Truths
about the nature of the mind, the self, and being human. It’s important to note that these are things to reflect on rather than
ideas to accept as absolutes. This isn’t a set of rules so much as a set of
explanations that you have to apply to your own life and practice.
The First Noble Truth
This one
seems simple, but it’s also not-so-simple. The most common way I’ve heard this
phrased is that “life is suffering.” From what I’ve read, this is accurate, but
it also needs clarification. The word Gautama used was dukkha, a Pali word with
a lot of different meanings. These include satisfactoriness, pain, imperfect,
impermanent, empty, unsubstantial. You get a general idea. More than anything
these all engage some notion of change or being ungraspable. We don’t like
things like that.
This is
not meant to be optimistic or pessimistic, it’s meant to be a statement about
reality. This world dukkha applies to all aspect of human life, including times
of happiness, because they too are impermanent and will shift on us.
The Second Noble Truth
So the
first Noble Truth tells us that life is inherently and inescapably unsatisfactory,
and the Second Noble Truth tells us why: attachment.
This isn’t the healthy kind of secure attachment we talk about in counseling,
but the pathological desire we have for things that we think we will make us
happy. Some of these are easy to see: wealth, sex, prestige, fame, etc. There
are some less tangible things we use to comfort ourselves as well – beliefs,
opinions, concepts, theories, identity, and a host of other mental
constructions that we try to solidify into something we can hold on to.
We are in
a constant struggle to fulfill cravings, but there’s a problem with this: they
cannot be satisfied in any real way or for any length of time.
You are
excited to see a movie, you see it, and it’s no longer new.
You are
hungry, you eat, you are no longer hungry, but you will be again.
You are
tired, you sleep, you feel rested, but you will get tired again.
You meet
someone you love, you have a life together, they will die and so will you.
Everything we think is stable is actually
dependent on something else.
You cannot be hot without the idea of cold, you cannot be bored without the
concept of interested, you cannot fear death without seeing life as the right
way of being. These are not solid, they only exist in relationship to each
other.
In short: Everything, everything,
everything changes in this life, there is nothing to hold on to, nothing that
will not shift. I
hear people say God is unchanging and eternal, and maybe he is, but our
understanding and relationship to him through this understanding changes
throughout our life, so there is no permanence in that perspective or
relationship. There is nothing to grasp on to in the way that we want to grasp
on to things.
Learning
to observe this impermanence also brings us into close contact with one of the
deepest roots of our suffering: a misapprehension of what we are. At the heart of a mindfulness practice is the
observation of the impermanence of everything. This is seen in the world as
people, places, fads, countries and entire cultures come and go. We can see
this in ourselves as well: thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, everything
that makes up this idea of “me” is an endless flow of change. This solid self, this “me” we spend so much
time defending and providing for is actually very hard to find. At the very
core of all of this, even this person I am so invested in is hard to find.
The Third Noble Truth
This one is
pretty simple: attachment and desire cause suffering, but there is a way out of
it. We do this weird thing where we take
our desires and our wants and our beliefs as True and real and us.
Why do I
want a cookie? Because I want it.
Why do I
desire sex with that person? Because I feel like I do.
Why do I
believe what I believe? Because it’s what I believe.
We like to
think these things are substantial, but there’s not much more reflection than
we see here. So much of our lives are lived chasing one thing and then another
and another, always looking for that small bit of satisfaction that immediately
turns into the search for something else.
So, what’s
the way out?
Learning
to reflect on these things, without attachment. Cultivating an understanding of
the inherent emptiness of these desires, and letting them come and go without
clinging or rejecting.
This
doesn’t mean nothing matters, and we don’t have anything to look forward to,
only that the things external to us don’t get to drive us, they don’t get to
run the show and keep us locked in the rollercoaster cycle of
craving-attainment-joy-despair-craving.
The Fourth Noble Truth
So, we
have the truth of suffering, the truth of why we suffer, the truth that there
is a way out, and then we arrive at the actual path itself. It’s important to note that this path has a
clear ethical direction to it – there is nothing amoral about it. Called the
Noble Eightfold Path, it consists of a series of nonlinear, non-rule-oriented
areas of proper behavior:
- Right
Understanding
- Right
Thought
- Right
Speech
- Right
Action
- Right
Livelihood
- Right
Effort
- Right
Mindfulness
- Right
Concentration
The use of
the word “right” here is essential – it has a deeper meaning and context than
our ordinary understanding of it as an absolute or the simple opposite of
wrong. Terms like appropriate, complete or well-directed may be a better fit,
as these 8 ideas have a lot of space in them for interpretation and
application. Let’s look at that.
The Noble Eightfold Path
In no
particular order:
Right Speech, Right Action, and
Right Livelihood seem to pertain to things we do. How we speak of others, whether
or not we gossip, how we behave, the things we do and things we avoid, and how
we make our living – whether or not we do this in a way that helps others or
harms them.
Right Thought and Right
Understanding seem to point toward wisdom as being important. The thoughts we cultivate and
nourish matter, and it is important that we see the world and the mind and
cravings and desires as they are if we are to walk this path. Thoughts of
selflessness and compassion are more skillful than selfish or self-absorbed
thoughts, and we should focus on compassion and gratitude more than their
opposites.
Lastly, Right Effort, Right
Mindfulness, and Right Concentration point toward inherently positive things,
but seem to imply that there are correct ways of doing even things that are
good. We need to
direct our effort toward skillful mind states, so mindfulness and concentration
are not necessarily useful in and of themselves. Concentration on things like
greed, hatred, lust, and a host of other things will not benefit us or anyone
around us, and mindfully cultivating and planning things that bring harm is not
skillful.
Why Mindfulness and Ethics Matters
Mindfulness
emerged from a tradition with a deep sense of ethics. Compassion was central,
as was wisdom and ethical behavior. This is important because mindfulness
divorced from these things becomes a liability – to ourselves and to society at
large.
The important thing here is the
clearly implied and inherent direction to all of this – it is not amoral or
neutral, it is not just a tool to cultivate peace and equanimity to everything.
There are things that are helpful and things that are not helpful, there are
things that are skillful, and there are things that are not skillful.
Being
mindful of the destruction one’s drinking problem is wreaking on their children
and having equanimity toward the damage and long-term scarring this behavior
brings is not okay. One needs to learn to steady the mind enough to bring
mindfulness to the things that might drive the compulsive drinking, put in the
effort to seek out help, and try to find a more skillful way to live. Things
are not all neutral, some things bring suffering and destruction to those who
depend on us. There is something in the nature of this world, in the nature of
the mind that keeps us from growing and evolving amid this kind of behavior.
Wisdom and Compassion
Mindfulness
needs wisdom and compassion and wisdom and compassion need each other.
Wisdom without compassion leads to
arid intellectualism.
Many acts can be done mindfully, but are not necessarily good acts to be
performing. It would take a high degree of mindfulness to plan and execute a
robbery, blackmail or even a murder, but we should not cultivate a desire to
perform these acts well. Psychopathic behavior may be mindful, but it is not
skillful.
On the
other hand, compassion without wisdom
leads to foolish people with good intentions (I recently heard this called
“idiot compassion”). Working as a counselor, these were often the most
destructive people I would encounter, though usually indirectly as I worked
with someone to repair the damage the compassionate fool had done. We see this
in society at large in policies that bring harm to people in the name of
feeling good for a moment, and in religion, as well-meaning leaders step into
places they do not have the skill or training to be.
We need both
wisdom and compassion in our mindfulness to avoid making a mess one way or
another, this is implicit and essential in the Buddhist path, and that offers
us a guardrail against these two ditches.
The Self
This one
is more difficult and pushes back at something we all believe, though we do so
without much examination. I do not think there is a religious problem here, and
this can even be verified for those who are more scientifically minded.
If someone is using a mindfulness practice to find peace or be happier, then this part of the equation – this no-self – becomes a problem. It can, in fact, be terrifying or mentally harmful if you are not ready for this. It is difficult even when you are looking for it!
This idea
of the self very much matters because so much of what we do emerges from it.
I need this, even if it means others cannot have it.
I deserve this more than
him/her/them.
My family is especially important.
\
My city/state/country has a divine
right to prosper, even if its at the expense of others.
It’s not
that explicit, of course, but the self, this ego we cart around with us, very
much creates an us/them mentality in everything
we do. When everything goes through the filter of “me”, we will always assess
everything based on what it does for us, at the expense of everyone else.
Swim and Float
None of
this is to say that there’s no benefit to an amoral mindfulness. I’ve seen it
help people when used as a simple tool to help with the smaller trials of
everyday life. It’s helped people deal with stress at their work, their
screaming kids, and not to throw a fit in traffic. These are good and decent
things.
That being said, I do think there is value in
exploring and understanding, if not embracing, the spiritual and ethical roots
of the practice, especially if one is going to dive into it in any real way.
It seems indisputable that mindfulness has its roots in Buddhist thought, which traces itself back to Hindu/Vedic roots. There are mindfulness orienting practices in every tradition though, from the mysticism of Christianity to Sufi Islam.
The
unifying principle in all of these is the idea of there being an underlying
ethical perspective that emphasizes wisdom and compassion – if we are honest
these other traditions speak of love as the most significant aspect of these
practices. These are not only beneficial characteristics, but they may also be
necessary for a complete practice.
Formal Practice
Informal
practices weave into our lives seamlessly. We like taking a mindful walk, doing
the dishes without all the stories, and watching our breath during that boring
meeting at work that you have every Monday even though nothing has ever been
accomplished in any meeting, ever, much less one that happens every single
Monday without fail. We like these fun, peaceful moments into our lives and
being all Zen for a few seconds before returning to the hustle and bustle and
struggle of being a human.
This is
all well and cool, but there is a lot more to this practice of mindfulness.
Learning to steady our mind through concentration meditation allows us to
experience a more continuous mindfulness throughout our day, and investing in a
formal practice of mindfulness itself helps us process through so many of the
difficult things in our lives.
Neither of
these is easy, but I’m not sure that many things are easy in life that are
worth having. I am also not sure that we can be mindful – that we can dig down
into the deeper aspects of being a person on this planet – without a formal
sitting practice. There are too many distractions for us these days.
Think of
how many worlds we live in: the world of our mind, work world, other people’s
perceptions world, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Bumble, Tinder, eHarmony,
Match, (etc., etc.) world, the worlds of our television shows, and all the
things I am missing. Our minds shift from one world to the next to the next,
and a few moments of quiet observation on the bus ride to work or school is not
going to help us parse this in any significant way.
A formal practice gives us a set
amount of time – 20-30 minutes – where we aren’t doing anything else except
focusing and watching the mind.
It’s the difference between taking the stairs instead of the elevator versus
having a dedicated eating and workout plan that we stick to daily. The results
speak for themselves.
There is another, more subtle benefit to a formal sitting practice: it is a rare thing in this world to do one thing, and doing one thing is good for us. We tend to sit, looking at our phones – texting, Snapchatting, scrolling Reddit, playing a game (maybe all at the same time) while also watching Netflix, and even having a conversation if someone happens to be nearby (and they are probably doing all of these things as well). Sitting, doing one thing, for a small part of our day, can actually be life-changing in and of itself.
So, What is Mindfulness?
We haven’t
really answered this question in any real way, and I am not sure I can. We can
go with all the standard definitions like “a nonjudgmental awareness of the
present moment” (still my favorite), but this definition leaves a lot to be
desired.
Mindfulness
is a nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment, but this applies to
everything. A nonjudgmental awareness of the traffic jam, the neighbor and
their thumping stereo or stomping footsteps, the barking dog, the rain on our
day off. But it also a nonjudgmental awareness of our own beliefs and opinions,
of the shifting seascape inside of us – thoughts and emotions and aches and
pains, and all with the understanding that these things are impermanent and insubstantial.
Mindfulness is about allowing
ourselves to move with the unceasing flow of time around us, not getting stuck
on any one thing.
As we’ve discussed already, this might be pleasant during a difficult meeting
or boring bus ride, but it still applies equally when looking at the things we
like and cherish and love – our opinion on something does not imbue it with
permanence.
Mindfulness
is an informal practice, a formal practice, a way of being, all at once, and
each feeds into the other. It is difficult to be truly skillful in any of these
without investing in all three.
Mindfulness
is an ancient practice, with its roots tracing back into the traditions of
India, but being clearly delineated in the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama 2500
years ago, and having been refined, elaborated on, and, unfortunately, twisted
and dumbed-down since then. Mindfulness is inherently an ethically-oriented
practice, emphasizing wisdom and compassion, most clearly laid out in the Noble
Eightfold Path.
All that
being said, mindfulness is a practice that is compatible with any of the great
moral and ethical systems that occupy our hearts and minds in modern times.
Whether we call it centering prayer or choiceless awareness, mindfulness can
adapt itself to our lives, provided we are willing to act skillfully and with
love.
How Do We Practice?
As
mentioned, there are formal and informal practices, I encourage people to begin
with a formal practice, make it a habit, and stick with it. Here’s how to build
mindfulness and concentration:
- Set a timer for however long you want to practice – 5 or 10 minutes might be a good place to start.
- Take up a dignified posture. This can be in a chair or on a cushion on the floor. Sit in a way that you can do so comfortably for 20 minutes or so. Let your spine be straight but relaxed.
- Let your hands rest comfortably, let your eyes close naturally.
- Take a moment to notice everything coming in through your senses:
- What do you hear?
- What do you smell?
- What can you taste?
- What do you see (we are at least seeing the backs of our eyelids)?
- What does the temperature feel like on your skin?
- Notice the places where your body makes contact with the chair or floor.
- Let yourself explore these things, see what they feel like.
- Turn your attention to your breath, let yourself watch it come and go. When you get distracted, return to the breath – there is no one there who needs the distraction analyzed or explained.
- After a few moments of this, begin counting the breath – one on the inbreath, two on the outbreath, and so on. If you get distracted, go back to one. If you make it to ten, go back to one. If you find yourself striving to get to ten, count one/two, one/two. This isn’t a competition or a performance – it’s about focusing the mind.
- When your timer goes off don’t jump up. Take a moment to observe the mind and body, accepting it all exactly as it is. Then, move your fingers and your toes to ease your nervous system back into wakefulness, and, when it is comfortable, open your eyes.
Want more? I write a lot. I also have a podcast and post videos and mini-blogs on Instagram.
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