When I was a kid being mindful meant something like being sensitive to context.
Nowadays we hear the word mindfulness quite a bit but it refers to something completely different.
Misguided popular culture references aside mindfulness relates to a specific type of awareness and being mindful in this context means embodying the attentional skills of mindfulness.
Where Does Mindfulness Come From?
Where Does The WORD Mindfulness Come From?
‘Mindfulness’ was the English word used to translate the Pali word “sati” in the 19th century.
Pali is the historical language of Theravada Buddhism. Theravada is practised in Southeast Asia and among the various forms of Buddhism in the world it is considered the closest to the original teachings of the Buddha. One key practice in Theravada Buddhism is Satipaṭṭhāna, which means “Establishing Mindfulness.”
How Did Mindfulness and Mindfulness Practices Become Well Known?
In the 50s, 60s and 70s, Westerners began going to Southeast Asia to learn mindfulness practices. They brought those practices back to the West and began to teach them within a Buddhist framework. Many of these people wrote books which helped establish them as leading teachers in the growth of Buddhism in North America during this time.
Alongside a dramatic increase in the 1980’s and 90’s of scientific research into meditation (neuroscience in particular) it was discovered that mindfulness practices could be extracted from the context of Buddhism.
The understanding of the attentional skills involved in Mindfulness became the basis for Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPs) which sought to develop these skills in a secular context. MAPS have become important in performance skills in areas such as music and sport as well as clinical settings for pain management, addiction recovery, stress reduction, and as a powerful support in psychotherapy.
Among the most well known MAPS is Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) which is the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. The Unified Mindfulness System created by Meditation Teacher and Neuroscience Researcher Shinzen Young is another uniquely comprehensive Mindfulness System. UM draws upon both contemplative practices the world over and neuroscience research. Its exhaustive approach to terms and definitions has created the following definition of mindfulness as three attention skills working together.
These are:
- Concentration
- Sensory Clarity
- Equanimity
Where Do The Skills Of Mindfulness Come From?
Mindfulness Skills – Concentration
The discovery that our ability to concentrate could be developed through training goes back a LONG way. It was probably first discovered in India well before the time of the Buddha. The language of Sanskrit contains two common words for an intentionally developed and highly focused state: samādhi and dhyāna.
Over the millennia developing the skill of concentration has come to be understood across cultures, religions and geography.
There are various terms describing intentionally cultivated states of high focus:
- Greek: hesychia (Eastern Orthodox Christianity)
- Latin: recollectio (Roman Catholic Christianity)
- Arabic: Dhikr (sometimes Zikr) (Islamic Sufism)
- Hebrew: kavana or devekut (dvekus among “Dosim”) (Jewish Kabbalah and Hasidut)
- Chinese: shŏuyì (Daoism)
- Chinese: jìngzuò ([Neo] Confucianism)
These days we have terms for states of high concentration. Typically we associate these with performance and or sport – terms such as being ‘in the zone’. We also hear about being in a ‘flow state’. This term has grown out of research in the area of positive psychology which has demonstrated that a high level of focus is intrinsically rewarding no matter the object of your focus.
Both of the above are significantly different to the intentional cultivation of a state of high concentration. This is developed over time and can become habitual and readily accessible at any time.
Mindfulness Skills – Equanimity
The idea of equanimity as a kind of indifference to circumstances where we forge onward and even welcome the endurance of difficulty has its beginnings in various practices and traditions. These include asceticism and stoicism (among others). Asceticism held that intentionally exposing oneself to discomfort purifies our consciousness.
This IS NOT the equanimity we describe when we talk about it as one of the skills of Mindfulness.
There is a relationship though.
Our (the Unified Mindfulness) definition is:
The ability to let sensory experience come and go without push or pull.
This definition grows out of the Buddha’s unique contribution to contemplative practice. Prior to his breakthrough discoveries the Buddha did have early experiences with asceticism. But he grew something new, broader and more accessible from these early experiences. This was an approach to experience which he described as the ‘Middle Way. This is the application of equanimity to ALL kinds of sensory experience.
While Asceticism was focused on the painful and held that intentionally exposing oneself to this discomfort purified consciousness the Buddha discovered something different. That if you bring a large enough amount of equanimity (the ability to let sensory experience come and go without push or pull) to pain or pleasure it can cause big perceptual and behavioural changes (purification).
How? Because you are changing the way you relate to sensory experience.
Without equanimity we greet our experience with craving or aversion. Equanimity is a third option. A way of opening to sensory experience. Instead of the knee jerk avoidance of pain or the clinging to pleasure we’re practising and developing an alternative. We’re learning to focus our attention skills on our sensory experience as it rises, lingers or passes and we’re allowing it to do just that. We discover deeply felt pleasure without clinging and painful experience with reduced suffering.
So purifying experience means that we are able to bring the attention skills of mindfulness to whatever experience arises. In doing so we FULLY experience it. As a complete experience its impact passes through us. We are not interfering and causing its effects to linger either through suppression or clinging.
Mindfulness Skills – Sensory Clarity
The Buddha retained the tradition of elevating base level concentration through systematic exercises and he refined the theory and practice of asceticism into the theory and practice of equanimity.
Concentration and equanimity are two of the attentional skills of mindfulness that we can practice and develop. The third is Sensory Clarity.
Sensory Clarity in the Unified Mindfulness System is the ability to track and explore sensory experience in real time. It is also another of the 3 attention skills of mindfulness and it lies at the practical heart of the Buddha’s unique contribution to contemplative practice.
The Buddha outlined the reality, cause (non-equanimity) and a way out of suffering in his 4 Noble Truths. The way out of suffering included the practice of Vipassana (also known as Insight Meditation). This practice expanded meditation beyond the absorption and calm of concentration practices. Now concentration and equanimity were supporting the exploration and tracking of sensory experience in real time (sensory clarity).
How Does Sensory Clarity Help?
We might call this approach ‘Untangle and Be Free’.
Without sensory clarity we are largely unaware of the dynamic and interactive activity of our sensory experience.
Say you find yourself feeling overwhelmed but not exactly sure how you got there. Something may have happened and you experience a little burst of auditory thought (self talk) about it. That triggered some visual thoughts which triggered some strongs emotional feeling in the your body. Those discomfort of those feelings gave rise to another visual thought etc, etc. The result of largely unconscious interactive inner activities like these is that we feel tired, emotional, exhausted, resentful, overwhelmed, stressed or whatever it is that this process merges itself into.
We could describe the component parts of all of this inner activity as strands of sensory experience (both mental and somatic) which become tangled into something large and overwhelming.
Untangle and Be Free is the process by which we untangle these strands using practising sensory clarity (supported by concentration and equanimity). We separate out the strands of our experience into these component parts.
The Unified Mindfulness System divides up sensory experience in a particular way so that we can be aware of exactly what we’re experiencing in each moment. This includes what part of your experience is:
- physical sound or silence
- mental talk or mental quiet
- physical sight
- mental image
- physical body sensation
- emotional body sensation
The effect of this practice is twofold. One the one hand it has a dramatic effect on reducing the impact of this ‘tangling’. This has a huge effect on reducing suffering. On the other hand when you apply sensory clarity to pleasant experience your experience is richer, greater and more fulfilling.
Sensory Clarity has a profound impact on how you relate to all of your experiences. We learn about ourselves deeply and these same skills can also help overcome compulsive behaviours and manage change.
Each of the mindfulness skills supports the others in very tangible ways. Through practising mindfulness skills we are present and not avoiding or clinging to our experience. Mindful awareness is a skill that can be practised and developed with broad applications through all aspects of society, including education, sports, business. With mindfulness we are more deeply able to meet our lives and the experience of each moment completely and skillfully. We discover a wellspring of happiness and fulfilment independent of conditions right where we stand!
Conclusion
In terms of mindfulness being the attentional skills of concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity working together you could say that it was the Buddha who discovered mindfulness.
As mentioned the value and cultivation of high concentration has been widely known in human cultures across time. Early examples/versions of equanimity appear in a range of cultures including shamanic ordeal and stoic philosophy.
It seems to be the Buddha who first realised the true potential of sensory clarity. It sets mindfulness practices apart from other forms of meditation in is its clear understanding of the role and practise of equanimity and its emphasis on sensory clarity.