Quotations and descriptions are not enough.
I was visiting a local crafting group the other day as they had the facilities I need to repair a lovely old patchwork quilt, tables laid out wide enough to take it all and room to move around the edges. Little pieces had come unstitched and other pieces of fabric had actually rotted with age. The quilt was made nearly forty years ago and some of the fabrics used in it were either very fine or much much older than that, being cut from someone’s mother’s old summer dresses.
Although I was engrossed in my work there, I did overhear other conversations, as well as chat with the people who came to look at my project. I heard the word mindfulness a few times, how mindful both crafting and sewing are, how relaxing and enjoyable, and how good for us.
I didn’t and don’t dispute any of this BUT mindfulness is being short-changed in the west now as it becomes more and more mainstream. I found myself in a brief exchange with one woman about this very factor, and tried to explain how much bigger mindfulness actually was. And then I thought about it myself , and realised that I should write about this, as I too can get taken away from its true meaning by just enjoying my ‘mindful gardening’.
Probably the two most famous quotes for defining mindfulness come from Thich Nhat Hanh and Jon Kabat-Zinn. I use both of them in my specialised teaching of mindfulness for ADHD, Neurodiversity and PTSD course, which is an adaptation of Be Calm Be Happy, a Plum Village UK practice training based on the contemporary adapted approaches devised by Thich Nhat Hanh for his engaged Buddhism philosophy.
‘Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose — in the present moment — non judgmentally.’ J. K-Z
‘Keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality- being 100% aware in the present moment.’ T N H.
They are not quite saying the same thing, though it is close. TNH’s version is the closer one to my lived experience and understanding from all my study and reading around the topic, because it includes consciousness and the word alive. I like the inclusion of this word because I feel it is truly feeling alive in the mindful moment that makes it so different from the usual everyday moment. For some people that moment can extend into all reality.
It did for me for a few months, many years ago. That was a very powerful experience, and although the intensity of it faded with time, the memory of it is etched into me, and when I get renewed glimpse it reinforces my understanding of the true meaning of being mindful. But it is also very unattached to the practicalities of the world I live in, and if I lived in a monastery I might have been able to maintain it, but in the real word I had to disengage, to come back to earth if you like. I had to get on with life in human terms but to bring that insight back with me.
What it did leave me with was invaluable. It was an insight into who I really was. That insight was freed from all the agendas and inputs I had received from all the people I had ever known throughout my entire life. To sum it up, it was what the Delphi oracle had inscribed above its doorway —
Know Thyself
Knowing yourself is key to mindfulness. It is the longer goal or purpose of the practise. This means understanding yourself at the deepest level. Who are you, what made you this way, what is real and what is fiction, what do you avoid exploring in yourself? These are all questions to consider whilst in mindful contemplation.
The practice is a series of meditative exercises which enable you to calm your mind and lower defences, so that you can look deeply into yourself, to explore what you can and cannot cope with or manage in life. We all have different attributes and thus can all be better at this and not that. Mindfulness contemplation allows you to recognise this and not self judge for not being able to do differently to your own nature.
Spiritual bypassing
This is when people use the practice to achieve a status, or act with an appearance of equanimity which does not involve the deepest explorations of one’s self. It is very common, even amongst meditating monastics, as TNH states in his translation of the Diamond Sutra, he has observed it amongst his own monastics. These people do all the right things but it does not come from the right place in their hearts, or in their consciousness. Sometimes they even convince themselves that it does, but it is possible to see the opposite. They use the practice to specifically avoid looking deeply into their own hearts and minds. Thus although they may be very skilled meditators, they are not truly mindfully aware, they cannot be.
None of us get it right, but understanding what it is we are working towards really matters. Jon Kabat Zinn spoke of this to us when we chatted with him over lunch at an eight day retreat he was running some years back. He also had concerns that mindfulness was being watered down into another quick fix. There is nothing quick fix about this approach to life, though you can feel some benefits very quickly. But the life transformational moments come after time and practice have evolved.
True mindfulness needs us to go into the heart of our pain and suffering and to understand it for what it is. One example for me was my total terror of and rejection by my father for 32 years, until he died. I have written about this story elsewhere but what I realised after he died was that I had been protected from him instead. He was very judgmental and never saw who I was, only that I didn’t meet his needs and expectations, and rejected who he saw I was, a worthless failure. This would have undermined me so terribly for my whole life, but although I took on board his rejection as based upon my essential worthlessness, I was able to bury that enough to actually live my life in terms true to myself. What a lucky escape that was after all. Thank you dad for rejecting me after all.
Mindfulness healing
This taught me to understand that everything is for our benefit, no matter how painful it is, and by standing in the fire of our pain, we weaken it and strengthen ourselves instead. But most people are still running from that pain, or cannot see it. Without my deep mindfulness practice I would not have understood and still been struggling with massive self-worth issues. Without mindfulness exploration I would not have seen my true nature. Thank you Dad for making me understand what happens from the other side, you pushed me to find this side of life. I am sorry for your own lack of deep insight into yourself, me and life generally. I can see clearly what a scared man you really were now.
Those kinds of hidden wounds and self beliefs undermine us and prevent us from being our best selves. That is why mindfulness is ultimately healing. But it cannot undo the damage done to early childhood trauma that has no remittance in context. When a shock occurs, it depends on how quickly it is healed and addressed as to whether it turns into internalised trauma and become embedded into the structure of the nervous system. The sooner the better. If left, it hardens into a protective shell, which is like a poisonous timebomb waiting to go off. That was my experience, personally and observationally with others I have worked with or know. I have used my mindfulness to accept the damage done to me, and the limits I now have that my nervous system still needs to heal from but may never do due to neural pruning and neural growth patterns which developed in response to my own traumatic childhood. I know my limits and respect the unique insights this gave me from experience.
Which brings me back to the Quilt analogy. The broken pieces and those coming un stitched are signs it has lived and been used, including a few tea stains that have only partly been removed. The wounds we carry are signs that we have lived too, however young or old we were when they were influected. And now it is time to unpick them carefully, stitch by stitch, and then create some toning fabrics tacked into templates and carefully piece them back in, using tiny stitches, so that it is not an obvious mend. Mindfully stitching ourselves back into place, mending the broken pieces and the worn out pieces, and making ourselves whole once more.
The point of mindfulness is to mend those wounds safely, give us the tools to manage the explosive time bombs, and to grow and become far deeper and more true to ourselves as a result. Knowing thyself means knowing thy measure, i.e. your strengths and limits. Do not force yourself to go beyond what is your actual capability, but for sure explore the boundaries and push yourself to grow.
For my husband, and myself, mindfulness and knowing ourselves is a way of life through which everything is expressed. When we face a challenge, we turn to the teachings of mindfulness and Buddhist psychology to choose a response. We take time to reflect upon what is the best course of action. Sometimes nothing, sometimes a decisive response is needed. Sometimes we have to step back and allow other people to be less insightful that we might hope them to be, that once upon a time we were both also very unskilful in how we went about living life. We both remember and understand the overall suffering that unskilfulness brings with it.
Mindfulness cannot solve all the worlds problems until everyone wakes up to themselves and their shallow approach to life. But it does make you a better happier and more balanced person, and the more people who practice it deeply, the better the overall experience of life is. Struggle becomes ‘challenge’, catastrophe becomes ‘new way of moving forwards in life’, and so on.
When you look deeply, you live deeply. When you live deeply, you are more your true self than anything others might want to impose on you. When you are true to yourself, you are more fulfilled by whatever life you live.
In summary — can you see how both definitions are right in some part, but TNH gets closer to the truth of the matter? It is our consciousness, our awareness, our ‘awakeness’ that really matters, and the courage to take the journey to the heart of ourselves. Mindfulness is the best way I know of achieving that journey, if you have the courage to undertake the effort required. But can that be summarised in a simple definition, when it takes a life time to realise?
So yes, mindfully enjoy the simple things in life, but know that for mindfulness to have any real impact, you do need to dig more deeply. Build your mindfulness skills, learn and deeply understand how the teachings of impermanence, non-self and interconnectedness apply to life, and enjoy this life mindfully. I’m off to work in my garden, no digging as I honour the soil structure and do not want to disrupt it in any major way. I am growing the food that we will eat in coming months to sustain us with no or very little carbon footprint, and that is another facet of mindfulness which I shall write about next.