tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44822328501731916802024-03-13T10:21:31.646-07:00Sweeping The PathMindfulness in Real LifeRichard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-83114950357630789622022-03-24T12:18:00.012-07:002023-10-06T07:13:15.871-07:00Sweeping the Path<p>For the latest posts, please click <a href="https://www.richardgilpin.co.uk/mindfulness-blog" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">here</span></a>.</p><p>For the archive, please scroll downwards or use the labels on the right-hand side.</p>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-35519645907974853572021-08-25T05:18:00.028-07:002023-07-06T07:33:54.329-07:00The Power of Practice<p>Recently I met up with an old friend I hadn’t seen for a couple
of years. We had planned to walk and talk on the seafront but a high wind made this difficult, so we headed one block inland and found a table outside a busy café-bar.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We both wanted a mug of black tea but the place served only pomegranate tea, which arrived after
much delay in small glass cups. By this point, I had picked up from our
conversation the extent of the difficulties and frustrations that had beset my
friend through the pandemic, such as family problems and ill-health.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What particularly irked him, he confessed, was how his formal
meditation practice had also broken down. His longstanding commitment to sit daily,
or at least regularly, had buckled under the strain of events and tumbled, along
with his mood, into a downward spiral. The last straw was not
being able to attend a residential retreat that had been called off because of
the lockdown.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I felt bad for my friend, struggling as he was with
adversity and loss and knowing how important mindfulness practice was for him. Life
can be such a pain, I thought. The wind whistled around us and I began to feel
cold. The boozy drinkers nearby grew louder and, it seemed, more abrasive
in tone. I wanted to get away. My glass of pomegranate tea looked so puny and my
friend, his eyes cast downwards, so lost in his circumstances. I wished we had gone walking on the seafront after all.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Sweet Sufficiency</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyBL1zN3uxmqvqtagVr2YyJ51VN6DEAeyLEGotcRWg3riu2h40vlGzaKMmLG1hK7JTFeWWzMink5Ckz_Sy6Ih7q3TU_GeoUBWg7rMQiCuyo1yPRAgoVJg5cdKgQu3IlvoozKt9abRP5pQ/s640/IMG_5361.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="640" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyBL1zN3uxmqvqtagVr2YyJ51VN6DEAeyLEGotcRWg3riu2h40vlGzaKMmLG1hK7JTFeWWzMink5Ckz_Sy6Ih7q3TU_GeoUBWg7rMQiCuyo1yPRAgoVJg5cdKgQu3IlvoozKt9abRP5pQ/s320/IMG_5361.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>We sat on in silence. Then he lifted his head and told
me something he had recently realised. Throughout his years of practice he had often wrestled
with the language of renunciation due to its implication of quitting and spurning
things. It also bothered him that it encouraged a certain fixation on the
very object or behaviour that is relinquished. <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Recent events, however, had offered him a deeper, truer
understanding of renunciation – one that is about things being sufficient and acceptable
just as they are. “This is enough,” explained my friend, sweeping his hand in
the air as if scattering seeds in a field, and referring to, well, everything. All of it. It
dawned on me, as I huddled in my chair, bracing against the wind and sipping lukewarm
tea through pinched lips, that my friend was just fine despite his circumstances.
If anyone, it was me who was resisting the conditions of the moment.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He went on to tell me more about discovering new reserves of
equanimity and poise in life. It was a glimpse of how the residue of his
years of practice allowed his appreciation for life and natural wisdom to
flourish regardless of what was going on. This is the power of mindfulness, one that
leads to no barriers for attention, where nothing is excluded or clung to, and where
every experience, no matter how taxing, holds the potential for insight.<o:p></o:p></p>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-43931534177166685552021-07-09T03:54:00.055-07:002023-07-06T07:39:44.538-07:00 If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Tranquillise Him<p>I marvel at the subtle and slippery nature of mindfulness in
all of its guises, whether that be as a theoretical construct, a psychological
process or a set of practices. Mindfulness resists all efforts to be pinned
down. It presents itself as a vast canvas for our projections.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And project we do. The fields of health, education, business, politics, sport and entertainment are awash with mindful-this and
mindful-that. Do such manifestations herald a kind of cultural transformation?
What kind of future do they point towards? It has been 40-odd years since the <a href="https://time.com/1556/the-mindful-revolution/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">‘mindful revolution’</span></a> began and 20 years
since it gained traction, yet any semblance of a ‘mindful society’ appears as
far away as ever.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Cultural Appropriation<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT6rvJ2Bs24uqa97nSFWtoZo8V24PuDNfwsifW8kFse-ww3vug1a41C0z882RuJr970MxxDxjBbZkv1pSlgwfcFepmH12vj2ey3VTqQ1XH-5N__nMKv3dfWr-OwXZqG7eVCMNLVSe3W0c/s276/BM+Buddha.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="276" data-original-width="275" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT6rvJ2Bs24uqa97nSFWtoZo8V24PuDNfwsifW8kFse-ww3vug1a41C0z882RuJr970MxxDxjBbZkv1pSlgwfcFepmH12vj2ey3VTqQ1XH-5N__nMKv3dfWr-OwXZqG7eVCMNLVSe3W0c/w199-h200/BM+Buddha.jpg" width="199" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ronald McBuddha</span></td></tr></tbody></table>This is not to undervalue the many good-hearted and
well-intentioned mindfulness practitioners in western societies or the growing
army of trained facilitators who help stressed and struggling people through teaching
meditation skills. But the evidence base for any <i>systemic</i> change is meagre.
What we are witnessing is hardly a revolution, is it? The last 20 years demonstrate
considerably more success at monetising mindfulness than mastering it. <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What might the West have missed in the uptake? Answers to
that pressing question can be found in both the forces that shaped mindfulness’s
journey westward and the toxic influence of contemporary neoliberal ideology it
contacted along the way. These would fill a book. Since this is a blog post, let
me contribute just one image that captures something of the current predicament.
Like all archetypal symbolism, this image shows up all over the place but rarely
receives attention.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Unconscious Awareness</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Meet the ‘crouching buddha’ (sometimes called the ‘resting
buddha’). In the UK, where I live, statues like these can be found in gardens
and on mantelpieces across the land. Even without any knowledge of Buddhist
iconography, one might guess that this is a non-traditional form. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpM3TlAZxkjN34GDWIC3vtuRcY2L3DTxoQQihBsfhpONYphpF9zGPsekLVCA6sNzpZAn1KTHDsWGyniu7m6JXz-gY191A_b_upWE6y36YV5VRSZcpygj1wU2o0t7-Lq6yOTf5PaUNEnk0/s640/Resting+Buddha.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="399" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpM3TlAZxkjN34GDWIC3vtuRcY2L3DTxoQQihBsfhpONYphpF9zGPsekLVCA6sNzpZAn1KTHDsWGyniu7m6JXz-gY191A_b_upWE6y36YV5VRSZcpygj1wU2o0t7-Lq6yOTf5PaUNEnk0/w250-h400/Resting+Buddha.jpg" width="250" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Crouching Buddha</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Curiously, nobody seems to know when or where this form originated.
I canvassed a selection of world-renowned scholars of Buddhist art, museum curators and antique dealers. None of them could say for
sure. <div><br /></div><div>However, they did make highly uniform and educated guesses: the form is
contrived; it is most likely between 20 – 40 years old; it was probably first manufactured
in East Asia for the western consumer market. All asserted that its function is
purely decorative, unlike traditional Buddha forms. As a symbol for western
mindfulness, it’s a neat fit.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Ambivalent Attachment<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>‘Mindfulness’ may not be ‘Buddhist’ but Buddhism is
fundamental to <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/09/origin-of-species.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">understanding mindfulness</span></a>.
Put on the spot, few western mindfulness ‘experts’ (trainers, researchers,
advocates etc.) now dispute this. Yet many convey an ambivalent or confused
relationship with Buddhism. When I have probed such people on this matter, their
prevailing tendency is to retreat, one way or another, into the comfortable
certainties of a secular-materialist worldview that has gone largely <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/10/grand-narratives-iii.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">unexamined</span></a>.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Each to their own. But the irrational part is these people are
equally unwilling to disregard the Buddhist fundament. They may have a limited
grasp of how contemporary subdivisions of <a href="https://download.e-bookshelf.de/download/0015/4623/21/L-G-0015462321-0049961865.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">traditional, secular and immanent Buddhism</span></a> contextualise much of what they do, but they love the rootsy legitimacy that ‘ancient
wisdom’ confers upon their work and so are happy to employ the B-word in fast and
loose ways.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I wonder if these people privately worry that mindfulness
de-ethicised and reduced to proficiency in present-moment attentiveness
doesn’t make great sense. Perhaps they even intuit that the tangible,
pragmatic benefits of meditation are necessarily linked to larger philosophical
and spiritual enquiries that go beyond all isms. If so, such thoughts are
rarely shared. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>‘Code-switching’</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This ambivalence about the origin and complex nature of
mindfulness often takes the form of ‘code-switching’ (read all about it in this
important <a href="https://repeaterbooks.com/product/mcmindfulness-how-mindfulness-became-the-new-capitalist-spirituality/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">book</span></a>).
It works like this: the mindfulness advocate when engaging people in a secular
setting (e.g. a school, boardroom or a funding organisation) deliberately
downplays (‘switches off’) any reference to Buddhism. </p><p class="MsoNormal">When that same advocate
is around others open to Buddhism or where there is a perceived benefit to
promote the spiritual aspect of mindfulness, they will ‘switch on’ the Buddhism
to declare their mindfulness programme to be a vehicle for teaching the <i>dharma</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have been running mindfulness courses in secular settings
for 14 years and can attest to how easy it is to ‘code-switch’, often without
realising I’m doing it. It is deceptive and misleading. It leads to confusion
for all concerned. It is not a good look for practices supposedly grounded in honesty
and mutual respect. I feel relieved – a little embarrassed too – when my words
are challenged and my insincerity is brought to my attention.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I wonder, too, if ‘code-switching’ might provide a clue for
understanding some of the current dislocation of western mindfulness. For it is
the kind of psychological sleight-of-hand that we tend to resort to when we
don’t totally understand what we’re dealing with, or we haven’t thought things
through, but we’re not willing to admit it. Rather than acknowledge our
inconsistencies, we will obfuscate, prevaricate, complicate – do anything, in
fact, to ensure that we remain in a state of comfortable ignorance. The crouching
buddha nicely symbolises such a state of wilful clouding over. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Wakey Wakey<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gmY1s92gRyOI8j62me1w14jInQzQhyphenhyphenGAOmDOu3dBAW_rldKbAfN_52l86cmhpy0pTjlFVEfVYpopSce6GDmqij-hJkNFdBbMc7QGBdR5e6TgyF5YPWyZJtZY2V-2EL_SkOlGmjX1qe8/s538/SB2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="538" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3gmY1s92gRyOI8j62me1w14jInQzQhyphenhyphenGAOmDOu3dBAW_rldKbAfN_52l86cmhpy0pTjlFVEfVYpopSce6GDmqij-hJkNFdBbMc7QGBdR5e6TgyF5YPWyZJtZY2V-2EL_SkOlGmjX1qe8/s320/SB2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sitting Buddha</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Traditionally, Buddhist statues serve a purpose: to remind
the observing human of wholesome qualities – joy, compassion, wisdom and
serenity – they already possess and may further cultivate. Statues come in
numerous styles and postures but they commonly display a certain vigour and grace. </div><div><br /></div><div>Statues symbolise not just the <span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">historical buddha but <i>your</i> inner one. ‘Buddha’
is <span style="color: black;">an honorific title meaning ‘one who is awake’. It refers
to the</span> wise and compassionately aware aspect of you. <span style="color: black;">How ironic that the crouching buddha form is ‘one who is not
awake’ – a representation of a being who holds nothing in mind and is ignore-ant
of the world.</span></span><b><o:p></o:p></b><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></p>An interesting thing you can do with Buddhist statues is to
imitate them. For example, if you sit like the
buddha in the adjacent image – grounded through the sitting bones, upright
spine, shoulders relaxed – over time you will notice an energetic balance of mental calmness, stability and alertness. These qualities lay a solid foundation for the development of one’s practice. </div><div><br /></div><div>By contrast, try sitting like the crouching buddha. When I tried it,
I felt confined and detached. It’s the sort of posture I could easily slide into if I were feeling listless or bored. It’s a posture that also engenders a certain self-consciousness and
conceit, which are shadow qualities of mindfulness.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Crouching Buddha Hidden Meaning</b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">On
the upside, here’s a little scoop about the crouching buddha: he may be
contrived but he has a precedent. According to Dr. Christian Luczanits, senior lecturer
in Tibetan and Buddhist Art at <a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/art/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">SOAS</span></a>, there is a unique
representation of the historical Buddha leaning on his knee from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandharan_Buddhism" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">Gandharan period</span></a> (3<sup>rd</sup> century BCE –
1200 CE), which resurfaced in a modified form in </span>13<sup>th</sup> century China. It signifies the moment after enlightenment when the Buddha is reflecting
on whether or not to teach his experience.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZG1BXvoBUQEkDeUnn4aABuvP2enRt-SOnzDL7F5gE9iZkkJ6ARc5rLkCo2388QTll0atdsma0GWeoxLyWPXnKri8qYI7FwIsRC-UWUPaHjsm-Dq1zad50r7oizOqhd1u8xqXcFpyRvGI/s722/Gandharan+example+2.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="722" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZG1BXvoBUQEkDeUnn4aABuvP2enRt-SOnzDL7F5gE9iZkkJ6ARc5rLkCo2388QTll0atdsma0GWeoxLyWPXnKri8qYI7FwIsRC-UWUPaHjsm-Dq1zad50r7oizOqhd1u8xqXcFpyRvGI/w320-h222/Gandharan+example+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Thinking Buddha</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">It
is, therefore, a thinking posture, not dissimilar to more recent sculptures
such as Rodin’s <i>The Thinker</i>. Note that the head remains alert. It seems
that even at his most vexed and in need of a bit of self-propping-up, the
Buddha was regarded as a person concerned with how best to engage with the
world. </span></div><div><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Alas the same cannot be said for his crouchy descendent, who is not thoughtful, regards only himself and is, therefore, a fitting symbol for all forms of <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/09/taking-mick-out-of-mindfulness.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">McMindfulness</span></a><span style="color: black;"> that have wheedled their way into our lives over the last two decades</span>.<o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, the next time you see an advert for mindful baking, or
read about soldiers improving their kill rate through meditation practice, or
hear some ‘expert’ explaining how they can plot your mindful awareness on their new graph, you may want to pause to consider the subtle and slippery nature of
mindfulness in all of its guises. And breathe. These are the proverbial blind
men surrounding the proverbial elephant, knowledge slipping through their
fingers. Be careful around them because they have the power to blind you too.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In these <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">testing
times, navigating the world of mindfulness is a job in itself. Know that you
are not alone. There are many of us, sheltering indoors, doing our best to wise up. In idle moments we prop ourselves up on our knees in
front of Netflix and watch <i><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Headspace:
Unwind Your Mind </span></i>the way you can’t not look at a car crash, while out
in the back garden our little buddha statues doze quietly, cold as stone. It</span>’s no revolution but at least i<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">t</span>’s a wake-up call.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p></div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-14460464442632078282021-03-19T03:25:00.002-07:002021-03-19T09:39:44.664-07:00Bodyfulness<div class="separator"><div class="separator">An easy misunderstanding to fall into with mindfulness practice is to see it as purely psychological in nature. Its emphasis on embodied awareness offers a strong clue that it’s as much an education in body as it is in mind. In this regard, mindfulness is an uncomfortable fit with mental health paradigms that are only interested in what happens from the neck up.</div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator">Participants on secular mindfulness courses, for example, quickly discover that ‘practice’ involves spending lots of quality time with a universe of physical sensations that normally get overlooked or screened out. Inspired by their two months of training, many go on to change their lives in ways reflected in what they do with their bodies, and how they treat them. </div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator"><b>Walking the Walk</b></div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8lM4cVTiojmsfWGQSnL3tbtDYwgjD_EK0ChH6FXMFetpitFZLwwPX7jnnRQwKjQ55TwopcnVzWU1rJasH8s9o1oRS6WGGDhX5sM4aY3LclxsU_pfukiakJteAqhyMwHag6otWL3PNtXE/s1283/IMG_5118.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1283" data-original-width="820" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8lM4cVTiojmsfWGQSnL3tbtDYwgjD_EK0ChH6FXMFetpitFZLwwPX7jnnRQwKjQ55TwopcnVzWU1rJasH8s9o1oRS6WGGDhX5sM4aY3LclxsU_pfukiakJteAqhyMwHag6otWL3PNtXE/s320/IMG_5118.jpg" /></a></div>In this regard, ‘mindful living’ comes down to embodiment. It is the cultivation of an ongoing, uncomplicated sensitivity to what is happening now: perceptions, sensations, hedonic tones, impulses, actions, all of which arise in a world continually seeking a response. </div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator">There is, in fact, little about mindfulness that you cannot outwardly learn from a dog or a cat. Animals are perceptive, receptive, attentive and modest. They are naturally self-contained. Unconcerned with past and future, they dwell effortlessly in awareness, retaining a knowledge that humans easily forget, something the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau put so neatly: “Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment” (<i>Reveries of The Solitary Walker</i>, 1776 – 78). </div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator"><b>Balancing Act</b></div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator">Fortunately, humans are not entirely divorced from the natural wisdom of animals. Since the time of Hippocrates (460 – 370 BC), the so-called ‘father of modern medicine’, the psychological benefits of fresh air and exercise have been well understood. What we put into our bodies affect our minds. Even just a few minutes a day of aerobic exercise changes how the body regulates stress hormones. On some level we know that when we trade time outdoors for time peering into a screen we are taking risks with our emotional wellbeing.</div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator">Spending quality time with your body is an act of kindness. Contact with nature and activities devoted to moving the body are vital to human welfare. Unlike animals, humans are prone to overlooking such simple truths. For us, sustaining healthy behaviours requires wise attention and effort. These mental qualities of wise attention and effort lay the foundations for a mindful life, which is carved from a judicious consideration of cause and effect. </div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator"><b>Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes</b></div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator">I have found the simple act of running around parks and fields to be a memorable education in body as well as mind. When I am alive to the moment, I am as connected to what’s happening inside me as to what’s going on around me. My body moves as a seamless whole, an incredible machine of interrelating parts in communication with each other and their environment.</div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1FLNa16pByxTwVQQF6nZMlI8rDz4eX8_-4Y56B5GzXiW6dx_HBX_eLQkRRJZ_wCp_2BkhjKFtXHrrWdOfwGH7y0CT9p5Q60w-NV3hkuBtDn0CRVpfYFWVkEC5ziDixIRjqBEs1qNIr20/s640/IMG_2631.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1FLNa16pByxTwVQQF6nZMlI8rDz4eX8_-4Y56B5GzXiW6dx_HBX_eLQkRRJZ_wCp_2BkhjKFtXHrrWdOfwGH7y0CT9p5Q60w-NV3hkuBtDn0CRVpfYFWVkEC5ziDixIRjqBEs1qNIr20/s320/IMG_2631.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>At such times, I might become aware of how the breath regulates itself while maintaining its delicate correspondence with the viscera and skeleton. I notice how muscles harmonise with each other, and how the posture adjusts itself so finely to the forces of speed and momentum.</div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator">If I can fully relax into this and the thinking mind lets go, tensions I didn’t know existed often spontaneously come into awareness and then release themselves: joints stop clicking, muscles unclench, limbs free up, feet land more softly and gracefully on the ground. In these moments, my animal nature come to the fore. It is bursting with life.</div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator"><b>Knees and Toes</b></div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator">At other times, when the mind is preoccupied with its stories or resistant to physical exertion, there is a lingering sense of disconnection. Like those dissatisfying mental health paradigms, I become the one who is interested only in what is happening from the neck up. A hardness invariably creeps into the running experience. Things start to grate. Body parts feel out of sync with each other. The feet meet the ground with a thump. The smash of thoughts inside my skull feels just as unyielding.</div><div class="separator"><br /></div><div class="separator">With mindfulness, I can pick up on this, hold it in mind, and a sensitive response becomes possible again. There is a newfound receptivity to whatever is showing up; there is less struggle and grabbiness. If I invite or encourage attention into my lower legs, ankles, toes and soles of my feet, often I’ll rediscover the simple joy of taking just one step. New relationships open up within the body and there is a brightness of contact with the grass, the air, light and shade. The world comes alive. The body swings back into rhythm. I am a humble, happy animal again.</div></div>
<br />Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-46736936789218833722021-01-18T08:11:00.203-08:002021-01-20T08:41:37.876-08:00Origin of the SpeciesWith its assimilation into popular culture as an everyday life practice, the story of where mindfulness came from often gets obscured, if not ignored. If you live in the West and are curious as to how you wound up sitting cross-legged on a cushion while watching your breath, here is a very potted history of mindfulness (in reverse chronological order).<br />
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It makes sense to begin with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">Jon Kabat-Zinn</font></a>, the American molecular biologist who is sometimes regarded as a founding father of mindfulness due to his development of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness-based_stress_reduction" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">MBSR</font></a>) programme at the University of Massachusetts in the 1980s. It is true that Kabat-Zinn offers a significant starting point for the so-called ‘mindfulness movement’, but in terms of how mindfulness came to the West, he is merely the latest fresh-faced star in a much older and richer epic.<br />
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<b>The Burmese Connection</b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6odz_1tyVSQTatwS9AFT3iT5Qf9xWaezV0eDMdCQwx2B2Nr4Ka1DTlhUFB8vmvYLNIZkpydr-w-_KjBmOJV97H8wDPnf-qERARkfARab3weT57AxGJzpU0CDLFf6W-YPV6Q4SGgrifhg/s640/IMG_4216.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6odz_1tyVSQTatwS9AFT3iT5Qf9xWaezV0eDMdCQwx2B2Nr4Ka1DTlhUFB8vmvYLNIZkpydr-w-_KjBmOJV97H8wDPnf-qERARkfARab3weT57AxGJzpU0CDLFf6W-YPV6Q4SGgrifhg/w240-h320/IMG_4216.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues took their cue directly from Eastern meditation teachers – the kind whom westerners first began having large-scale contact with during the 1960s when travel to South-East Asia and the Indian subcontinent became a focus of counter-cultural interest. A significant point of contact here was the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassanā" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">vipassana</font></a></i> (insight) meditation movement. This was a popular outgrowth of Burmese <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theravada" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">Theravada Buddhism</font></a> that distilled and democratised formal practices of mindfulness whilst retaining the ethical framework and social vision in which they were embedded. This <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassana_movement" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">movement</font></a> went on to guide and influence many of today’s senior meditation teachers, including Kabat-Zinn’s, in Europe and North America.<br />
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Follow the mindfulness trail back further and two interlinking stories come to the fore. First, there is a revival of interest in particular meditation styles and techniques in late 19th/early 20th Century Burma, which was engaged in a counter-imperialist struggle against Britain at the time. The figureheads of this revival were the teachers who taught the teachers who taught the westerners of the 1960s.<br />
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The same colonial period also gave rise to the first serious western interest in ‘Buddhism’ – a term invented by British academics and missionaries. Some of these westerners ordained as monastics and became the first Europeans to self-identify as Buddhists. Others took up the subject for the purposes of academic enquiry, which would later prove just as significant. These developments took place in the context of what became known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_modernism#:~:text=Buddhist%20modernism%20emerged%20during%20the,Orientalists%20and%20reform-minded%20Buddhists.&text=It%20de-emphasized%20or%20denied,hierarchy%20and%20other%20Buddhist%20concepts." target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Buddhist Modernism</span></a>: the cultural fusion of traditional Buddhism and Western-style critiques of religion.<br />
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<b>The Indian Connection</b><br />
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All Buddhist traditions, Burmese or otherwise, naturally trace their roots to the historical Buddha of ancient India. By virtue of curiosity, determination and liberal doses of good luck, European explorers in Asia during the 19th Century did the same by initiating a rediscovery of a longstanding tradition that had all but died out in its homeland.<br />
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Through chance detections of long-buried ruins, laborious excavations and the piecemeal deciphering of inscriptions on ancient relics, they wove together a tapestry of irrefutable facts about a distant past. This helped to give flesh and bones to a historical figure that many had, until then, thought a myth. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">Siddhattha Gotama</font></a>, also known as ‘the Buddha’ – an honorific title meaning ‘one who is awake’ – turned out to be an Indian sage from the 5th Century BCE and, as it transpired, the architect of the core methods and forms of mindfulness in use today.<br />
<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>The Global Connection</b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2cXtP4oJfFZTwdsvnGJJzUL6OdHT61jA6nB3-Ppi_xIzgyfz9ZWMGVEEdZ5BFyvqAJo2yat9-jNuDfgCPIaT3e0996t-lO7WiLhcAXYTI4ZUM1ruFbOoKuoYBCamnCB2YfzYxJPXiyIk/s640/Weather+vane+final.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="455" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2cXtP4oJfFZTwdsvnGJJzUL6OdHT61jA6nB3-Ppi_xIzgyfz9ZWMGVEEdZ5BFyvqAJo2yat9-jNuDfgCPIaT3e0996t-lO7WiLhcAXYTI4ZUM1ruFbOoKuoYBCamnCB2YfzYxJPXiyIk/w229-h320/Weather+vane+final.jpg" width="229" /></a></div>In the centuries after his death, Gotama’s teachings were passed on, first by word of mouth, then in written formats, and later translated, reclassified, interpreted and reinterpreted. They travelled in all directions and in numerous forms. <div><br /></div><div>To the north, they melded with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">Taoism</font></a> in China and also came to dominate religious life in Tibet. To the east, they manifested in what became known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">Zen</font></a>. From here, they would eventually sail the Pacific to pop up in North America, decades before Kabat-Zinn was born. Kabat-Zinn did not invent anything, rather he blended pre-existing Theravada and Zen practices with American Transcendentalism. He rebranded this composite as a scientific method that would be palatable to Western healthcare paradigms. The success of this rebranding exercise is what makes him deserving of a place in the story of mindfulness.<br />
<br />It would appear that Gotama’s teachings also went west during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">Hellenistic period</font></a> (1st - 3rd Centuries BCE), where they mingled with some of the practical philosophies thriving in ancient Greece, such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">Stoicism</font></a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism" target="_blank"><font color="#674ea7">Epicureanism</font></a>.<br />
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The rest, as they say, is history.<br />
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</div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-58924663908300591262020-11-18T09:35:00.006-08:002021-10-01T02:14:43.411-07:00Jumping the Sharks (II)If you are interested in how mindfulness can contribute meaningfully to the world you inhabit, there are two angles you could take on <i>Mindful Escapes</i>, the BBC’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mf8k" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span>“bold new genre</span><span>”</span></span></a> of recycled nature footage overlaid with generic meditation instructions. One is that it’s no big deal – a pleasant arrangement of imagery on the old gogglebox and a harmless way to spend some downtime. Besides, if it’s a mindfulness revolution you’re after, it will not be televised!<div><br /></div><div>The other angle is to see the programme as both a symptom and product of something that has gone terribly wrong with the transmission of mindfulness – a deceptive advert for its practices and a sign of what is to come in our brave new mindful world. For here is a high-profile broadcast – a likely introduction to the subject for many – that endorses experiential avoidance. On every level, this is antithetical to mindfulness. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Reality Check</b></div><div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvtWPf_4vqiLmMoMTYXb_FEhVss-_DiuojA3QnK_PKGyv2COzNS8LPT_jWu9xrOvFzt6buOSOJK3HNAgD1GzJV73SEwgS1i3YQGGgN-ew5f0CkJFUbyWqeq1iFQbVddrivb1E6zP3K328/s750/TV+Sunrise.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="750" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvtWPf_4vqiLmMoMTYXb_FEhVss-_DiuojA3QnK_PKGyv2COzNS8LPT_jWu9xrOvFzt6buOSOJK3HNAgD1GzJV73SEwgS1i3YQGGgN-ew5f0CkJFUbyWqeq1iFQbVddrivb1E6zP3K328/w320-h227/TV+Sunrise.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image courtesy of Michael Leunig</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table>Narrator Andy Puddicombe, who is an influential figure in the meditation business courtesy of Headspace, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2020/mindful-escapes" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">claims</span></a> that <i>Mindful Escapes</i> is “an immersive experience that merges the external world with our internal landscape.” What does this mean (if it means anything at all)? Are viewers supposed to have a <i>jhana</i> experience? Or perhaps some kind of tech-induced altered state – like in the movie <i>Videodrome</i> but without the brain tumours? Well, it didn’t work for me (or anyone else I know). </div><div><br /></div><div>If <i>Mindful Escapes</i> ‘does’ anything, it is to pacify, to lull and, most of all, to dissuade from any need to know. Contrast this to the regular, longstanding objectives of mindfulness practice: to sensitise, to empathise, to see clearly, to take responsibility, to live heartfully. If there were a Trade Descriptions Act for mindfulness programmes, this one would never have aired. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Tranquillity 2.0</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Watching this programme brought to mind something mental health-related I once read about. It concerned a new and amazing intervention that went public in the 1950s. Like mindfulness, it had an eleven-letter name beginning with ‘m’ and no-one had ever seen anything like it. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meprobamate" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Meprobamate</span></a> was billed as a cure for anxiety and an enhancer of happiness. It was endorsed by celebrities and became a household name as the first “tranquilliser” (under the brand name Miltown). Its apparently miraculous effects on the general population’s well-being didn’t last long. By 1970, it had been listed as a controlled substance due to its potential for abuse and dependency.
</div><div><br /></div><div>Meprobamate’s inventor had been talked into calling it a tranquilliser by renowned psychopharmacologist Nathan Kline because “the world needs tranquillity [and] you will sell ten times more.” Perhaps his words ring some bells in relation to the mindfulness zeitgeist. In its heyday, Meprobamate promised so much. It sold massively and fortunes were made from it. It proved to be destructive and left untold suffering in its wake. It continues to offer a pertinent lesson in never, ever, believing the hype. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>The Wisdom of No Escapes</b></div><div><br /></div><div>When it comes to mindfulness, how do you tell the real thing from the copy? Well, one is an open-hearted embrace of the world in all its depth and mystery, joys and hardships; its essential characteristic is <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/06/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">non-superficiality</span></a>. The other is about self-absorption and favours image over reality; its essential characteristic is shallowness. We need to discern for ourselves which is which but, suffice to say, a clue that we’re on the right track is when our practice inclines us towards participating considerately in life and relating to those around us as fellow beings, not as objects. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJ091-0aOm235My_CoOXOnV7kddZG214y_2CVL3rc54dP904qkrxIpJrLqbJnpN-I812pc8KZb9bsj9USw5vtUXJgC4Dt0uaigqgpq7BIQg6ETnNWfc8StCmxjLV_bR7LprUHwEn-tZs/s640/IMG_0539.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJ091-0aOm235My_CoOXOnV7kddZG214y_2CVL3rc54dP904qkrxIpJrLqbJnpN-I812pc8KZb9bsj9USw5vtUXJgC4Dt0uaigqgpq7BIQg6ETnNWfc8StCmxjLV_bR7LprUHwEn-tZs/s320/IMG_0539.JPG" /></a></div>And what might be the purpose of such a mindful life? A Zen master answered this a thousand years ago in three words: “an appropriate response”. Stripped down, mindfulness practice is always about wise engagement with the world, inner <i>and</i> outer. </div><div><br /></div><div>However, the human psyche is hardwired to disengage from that which is too difficult or disturbing to bear, so we have our work cut out. Faced with a pandemic and a global environmental crisis it is understandable that we may seek – as the makers of <i>Mindful Escapes</i> irresponsibly seem to advocate – to numb ourselves against painful realities and/or get lost in denial. But every time we wise up, open up and find a compassionate response, we make ourselves available to the world again. In so doing, our practice is enlivened. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is nothing enlivening about <i>Mindful Escapes</i>. On the contrary, it is stultifying. How senseless that, in the name of mindfulness, its BBC producers intentionally discarded their resident expert David Attenborough’s vital message about the climate crisis. How embarrassing that Andy Puddicombe, despite his perennial enthusiasm for <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/38RhbBzQSb1LK8phgnQx8lw/making-mindful-escapes" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">touting his ex-Buddhist monk credentials</span></a>, in the name of mindfulness blew a golden opportunity to back his ex-teacher HH Dalai Lama’s tireless <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/11/buddha-would-be-green-dalai-lama-calls-for-urgent-climate-action" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">appeal to confront ecological destruction</span></a>. How depressing that mindfulness, in the mainstream lexicon, can deputise so comfortably for dissociative behaviour.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Free-To-Air Mindfulness</b><br /><br />In the context of contemplative practices that conduce to empathy and understanding, <i>Mindful Escapes</i> is a kind of death. It belongs behind glass in the burgeoning museum of <span style="color: #674ea7;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">McMindfulness</span></a></span>. It should serve as a warning – not that we need any more of them – for what happens when, to use the old adage, you pick up a snake at the wrong end. </div><div><br /></div><div>If there ever is to be a bona fide mindfulness-based nature show on TV, it will extol the virtues of intimately knowing our locale as opposed to spacing out on images of exotic, far-flung places. It will teach us the names of the wildflowers that grow between the cracks in our pavements. It will encourage us to visit the same spots, close to home, over and over again; to become familiar with their delicate and changing details, and to discover the extraordinary within the ordinary. It will urge us to become conscientious protectors of green spaces and our fellow creatures. Most of all, it will encourage us to be sensitive actors, not dumb spectators.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/11/jumping-sharks.html"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Click here for Part 1.</span></a></div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-82170284069241398382020-11-11T07:10:00.040-08:002022-12-02T03:20:00.356-08:00 Jumping the Sharks (I)<p>Despite big media’s perennial tendency to set a low bar in its coverage of mindfulness (more on that <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/08/no-more-heroes.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">here</span></a>), observing how it treats the subject can be revelatory. A case in point is <i><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mf8k" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Mindful Escapes</span></a></i>, a four-part collaboration between the BBC and Headspace, which aired during the UK lockdown. What might this “bold new genre of programming” have to tell us about a developing role for mindfulness in the broadcast media?</p><p><b>Public Health Broadcast</b></p><p><i>Mindful Escapes</i> hit TV screens at the height of ‘coronanxiety’. The timing was deliberate, with Julian Hector, Head of BBC Studios Natural History Unit, explaining that the pandemic was “a time when the union of the natural world and our mental health could not be more important.” Commissioning editor Sreya Biswas hoped the series would “create conversations about mental health and support audience mental well-being.” BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2020/mindful-escapes" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">programme notes</span></a> proposed that the show would “relax and rejuvenate” viewers.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRK9JftXmjOxlmLcVczd-i7NOUISQQqBghg_EK1udufbcObGoIFBuxjyS-xxEDOJXULz_p9gu6aNxYdPm-sXsRfzQvSDBhw0EQN6M9gFI7qF7Mzl5yG90d_SRuuwmEtBOVt8zJMrdAJg4/s640/IMG_4720.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="478" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRK9JftXmjOxlmLcVczd-i7NOUISQQqBghg_EK1udufbcObGoIFBuxjyS-xxEDOJXULz_p9gu6aNxYdPm-sXsRfzQvSDBhw0EQN6M9gFI7qF7Mzl5yG90d_SRuuwmEtBOVt8zJMrdAJg4/w239-h320/IMG_4720.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>In seeking to unite viewer with nature in the service of enhancing well-being, the programmers intended for <i>Mindful Escapes</i> to be therapeutic. Perhaps a more accurate word would be tranquillising. The programme is a slow glide through collections of superbly filmed images of the natural world, each accompanied by sparse and soothing narration – essentially guided meditation instructions – from Headspace’s Andy Puddicombe. <p></p><p>At its most frenetic, you are watching dolphins at play. The median pace is probably the baby meerkats nodding off while standing up. The show demands so little of the viewer that it’s easy to go the same way as the meerkats. </p><p><b>Sins of Omission</b></p><p>Perhaps the programme-makers would consider viewers falling asleep to be ‘job done’. Aside from their trite conflations of mindfulness and relaxation, awareness and somnolence, meditating and screen-watching, what is most revealing about <i>Mindful Escapes</i> is what’s missing. </p><p>Scenes of animals hunting and killing have been edited out in favour of calming scenery. There are no sharks, no preying eagles, no mice on the run, not even an insect getting scoffed. Instead we are offered a carefully constructed illusion of the world and invited to lose ourselves in its imagery. This is mindfulness of the tune-in-zone-out variety.</p><p>The tacit encouragement to dissociate, to avoid any and all discomfort is even more telling in the absence of references to the environmental crisis. Basic facts about the species and habitats we are observing don’t get a look-in. It is beyond irony that the lemur scenes are accompanied by Puddicombe’s platitudes on the jungle being “alive with the sounds of life” at a time when 95% of lemur species are threatened with extinction. For Puddicombe, it seems, context is irrelevant to mindfulness; ergo, it doesn’t matter if polar bears might be starving when they look good on the telly.</p><p><b>Mindfulness in Crisis</b></p><p><i>Mindful Escapes</i> was a flawed mission from the off. In their misapprehension of what mindfulness actually is – a bright, curious, discerning awareness that provides a foundation for wise choice-making and compassionate responding – the programme-makers managed to edit out this quality rather than add it in. By trading reality for fantasy and awareness for sedation they made a spectacle out of a crisis. If they’d had any sense, they would have taken their cue from resident BBC expert David Attenborough, who has been offering masterclasses in how to be genuinely caring and curiously attentive for decades.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjctDTmCng7VeuwDPiCtRreSgPu5w-BvCKYCI-FbB6XJiv6nOqhKty6_fShzrDW41dXGfkirZPCJpLYyS2ABqte8L2b8JkRX3Hq-TI3Z9VzTv4b2DBUXf0dJfhQJqxhz4PtM5AqqzckzPI/s640/IMG_4638.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="558" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjctDTmCng7VeuwDPiCtRreSgPu5w-BvCKYCI-FbB6XJiv6nOqhKty6_fShzrDW41dXGfkirZPCJpLYyS2ABqte8L2b8JkRX3Hq-TI3Z9VzTv4b2DBUXf0dJfhQJqxhz4PtM5AqqzckzPI/s320/IMG_4638.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Attenborough’s work has also highlighted the need to understand interdependence and causality – two benchmark qualities of authentic mindfulness practice – if humans and our fellow creatures are to have a future on Earth. In his recent programme, <i><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mn4n" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Extinction: The Facts</span></a></i>, he warned: “We are facing a crisis. One that has consequences for us all. It threatens our ability to feed ourselves, to control our climate. It even puts us at greater risk of pandemic diseases such as Covid-19.” <p></p><p>Climate. Covid. Crisis. Attenborough’s message is all about context. The environment is not some exotic abstraction. It is a living, breathing, interpenetrating aspect of everything, including all that is not yet born. Deep down, most humans get this. TV viewing figures for <i>Extinction: The Facts</i> hit 4.5 million – proof if it were needed that people are smart enough and resilient enough to face up to the situation we find ourselves in.</p><p>This is a far cry from the world of <i>Mindful Escapes</i>, where Covid-19 is an impetus to forget, to do nothing other than immerse ourselves in pretty pictures and tranquillising words. Welcome to a world where existential facts are disallowed, where the image is preferred to the real thing, where nothing must be allowed to disturb our reverie. And here’s the twist: the dream being offered includes the illusion of being awake. </p><p>Which leaves a pressing question for the world of mindfulness: How on earth did it come to this?</p><p><a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/11/jumping-sharks-ii.html"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Click here for Part 2.</span></a></p>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-37355225926224225972020-10-06T02:53:00.003-07:002021-06-29T02:31:03.618-07:00Grand Narratives (III)<div>Where and how do you ‘situate’ mindfulness in your life? The previous two posts overview why this is a valuable question to consider. Wise reflection is an essential part of practice. Without it, we lose our bearings. Similarly, if we do not develop self-reflexivity, we become blind to how we are swayed by assumptions and narratives that may not be coherent, useful or true.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>Mining your beliefs about mindfulness is always illuminating. It reveals what you identify with and, by extension, something about the nature of identity. It deepens your practice by opening up new channels for it. Nothing is off limits on the path of awareness. Mindfulness meets its potential in its engagement with the fundamentals of existence – meaning, identity, freedom, death – without any compulsive fascination but with the greatest sensitivity.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b>What’s the Story?<br /></b><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_tV0UoWK7lp7aCXJmgjjHewBTF8jwuAOUW1sEjlgTSQhv6WYZuSWujx1jo-0TU5CI1A3HkfS_p5Js6YnrY2EQKWD60cw2frNp-8wJwXAVOi3rz-qir3DhWIi9u5BdUn91I4UA3pD8KTU/s640/IMG_0067.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_tV0UoWK7lp7aCXJmgjjHewBTF8jwuAOUW1sEjlgTSQhv6WYZuSWujx1jo-0TU5CI1A3HkfS_p5Js6YnrY2EQKWD60cw2frNp-8wJwXAVOi3rz-qir3DhWIi9u5BdUn91I4UA3pD8KTU/s320/IMG_0067.jpeg" /></a></div>Below are fifteen avenues for self-enquiry. You could parachute any one of them into your depths and see how it lands. You could do this in any way you choose, such as through contemplation, dialogue or artistic expression. The method is not the point. The point is to give time to exploring yourself deeply.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Why do I practise mindfulness? In what specific ways does my practice give me a sense that I am making the most out of life?<br /><br /></li><li>Do I deliberately cultivate or aspire to attain particular mental states through meditation? Why?<br /><br /></li><li>How is my practice informed by ideas about health and connection? What does health mean to me?<br />What about connection?<br /><br /></li><li>Do I believe that mindfulness practice is linked to wisdom, empathy or ethical engagement? Why? If I hold no such beliefs, what capacities do I believe my practice links to?<br /><br /></li><li>Who or what garners my interest, respect or adoration in the mindfulness world? Who or what does the opposite, perhaps even repels me? What do my preferences have to tell me?<br /><br /></li><li>If I achieved my goals in life, what would change about my practice? Would I approach it differently? Would I relate to others and the world differently? What role would mindfulness assume in how I conducted my life?<br /><br /></li><li>How do I view the current human era? Do I perceive a crisis or end-time? Do I believe there is a great turning, a new era beckoning? Do I believe neither? What ideas does my mind harbour about human existence over time? <br /><br /></li><li>Do I hold particular beliefs about the nature of reality? Who or what do I have abiding trust or confidence in? What do the paradigms of science, materialism, religion and spirituality mean to me? How do these relate to practising mindfulness? How are my beliefs in turn affected by my practice? If all such ideas are insignificant to me, do I think that I have no metaphysical beliefs, that I am free of all baggage? If so, what is <i>this</i> belief?<br /><br /></li><li>What do I consider mind to be? A non-physical, personal faculty? An impersonal process? A function of the brain in the skull? An emergent property of energy? Something else?<br /><br /></li><li>What do I understand to be the relationship(s) between body and mind? <br /><br /></li><li>When I am mindfully aware of thoughts, who or what do I think is doing the thinking?<br /><br /></li><li>How does my practice contribute to my self-image and/or inform my sense of being part of something bigger than me (e.g. a community of sentient beings, a transcendent value, a cosmological matrix)?<br /><br /></li><li>How are self-worth, personal popularity, status or material ambition bound up in my motivations to practise? If I think none of these are factors, what other anxieties or insecurities might compel me to keep practising?<br /><br /></li><li>If I knew I had one month to live, would mindfulness practice figure in my plans? If so, to what degree? What would be meaningful about spending time in this way? <br /><br /></li><li>Do I hold particular beliefs about what happens to consciousness upon physical death? How do these beliefs affect my practice?<br /><br /></li></ul><div><a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/07/grand-narratives-i.html"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Click here for Part 1.</span></a></div></div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-43117923297298177162020-08-21T07:08:00.014-07:002022-11-16T03:23:12.395-08:00Grand Narratives (II)<div>Since its emergence in mainstream culture, ‘mindfulness’ has come to denote many things: a mental quality, a meditative practice, a stress-relieving tool, a clinical intervention, an uplifting way of doing something, to name but a few. </div><div><br /></div><div>‘Being mindful’ is now a popular phrase that straddles a spectrum of meanings, from the frivolity of eating one piece of chocolate at a time to the potentially life-transforming experience of sitting an intensive meditation retreat. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>The Profound and the Profane</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The concept of mindfulness is flexible and adaptable. Hence, even at the clinical end of the spectrum, in programmes like <a href="https://mbct.co.uk" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">MBCT</font></a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness-based_stress_reduction" target="_blank"><font color="#800180">MBSR</font></a><font color="#7b1fa2">,</font> where mindfulness is sometimes called an ‘intervention’ (i.e. a way to prevent or alter something), you always find poetry recitation forming part of essential course content. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD1IxwgrhOdcMpTYcMig-6Zzk5SpsEZaPC7ProeyJ4I8ia-Z-jem5-uC3_kJ1ZIDm94sCrY3PUe6LEI5b5BG-Kp8viaLtoDiTnRGYSJIkAnzTQ_jTSwlS77CpIGbJ9ahullFa0B7zj7us/s640/IMG_3742.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="405" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD1IxwgrhOdcMpTYcMig-6Zzk5SpsEZaPC7ProeyJ4I8ia-Z-jem5-uC3_kJ1ZIDm94sCrY3PUe6LEI5b5BG-Kp8viaLtoDiTnRGYSJIkAnzTQ_jTSwlS77CpIGbJ9ahullFa0B7zj7us/w202-h320/IMG_3742.jpg" width="202" /></a></div>Poetry is a medium that lends itself to the provocation of perplexity and wonder. It seeks, even demands, no end meaning. Yet here you find it rubbing shoulders with the sterile language of ‘symptom management’ that characterises evidence-based mental health protocols. </div><div><br /></div><div>Mindfulness seems to have developed an ingenious ability for bridging the divide between the soulful and the scientific while still leaving room for nibbling that singular chocolate. Cap doffed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Part of this versatility can be explained by the fact that mindfulness is still establishing itself in western culture. Like many fancy foreign imports, it will need time to move through its fad/fashion/fetishised stages before discovering where it truly fits. This is a process, one that every practitioner contributes to. A decade from now, mindfulness will be closer to finding its place as much through your efforts as anyone else’s. </div><div><br /></div><div>Reflecting upon how you ‘situate’ mindfulness in your life is a worthwhile exercise. If this is a new idea and you don’t know where to start, below are two different analogies, both from the western tradition, that might serve as useful reference points. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Ornamental Health</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The first is from the late 18th Century when, inspired by the ideals of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism" target="_blank"><font color="#800180">Romanticism</font></a>, grottos were popular places for affluent members of society to spend time in for the purposes of contemplation. This fashion for meditating in natural surroundings subsequently gave rise to the phenomenon of the ornamental hermit, also known as a garden hermit.</div><div><br /></div><div>A garden hermit was a man hired by a landowner to inhabit a purpose-built grotto or folly and play the part of a resident contemplative. The deal was that the man had to live permanently on-site while dressing and acting the part. Often this entailed growing a beard, not cutting fingernails and toenails, and speaking to no-one. Occasionally, the hermit might be obligated to break his silence and entertain dinner guests, for example, to offer them the best sagely counsel he could muster. In return for his labour, the hermit received a stipend, free room and board, generous amounts of downtime and an excuse not to wash. </div><div><br /></div><div>The hermit was a kind of live-action, one-man theatre which everyone – dinner guests included – knew wasn’t fully real. They went along with the show because it was a respectable way for a wealthy person to outsource their spirituality. Here lay the value of the pretence: it gave the landowner a license to flaunt their romantic sentiment and appear to be more ‘contemplative’ than they were. The fashion for garden hermits died out. Their lasting legacy is they are the forerunner for garden gnomes.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Gnome Truths</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjQxp8CJkhHdh9AhSkaLG7sW1Ss0pvgcqmRbN1lR34cU86ixbHa4IUxt2TZAmIBC2rTt8SV2J5UitdyxaV1vj0y33tH-mZX7mSWvIYb2k0PB_oGuMk4h9VK8iyA2LJJ3V9tONFk9_3ZIg/s640/IMG_4060.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="459" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjQxp8CJkhHdh9AhSkaLG7sW1Ss0pvgcqmRbN1lR34cU86ixbHa4IUxt2TZAmIBC2rTt8SV2J5UitdyxaV1vj0y33tH-mZX7mSWvIYb2k0PB_oGuMk4h9VK8iyA2LJJ3V9tONFk9_3ZIg/s320/IMG_4060.jpg" /></a></div>Garden hermits might seem silly now, a cheesy combo of fashion and façade, but they were an attempt to connect with the majesty and wisdom of nature. At the time, everybody involved followed the charade and imbued it with meaning. They were not unique in this regard. Humans of every era are prone to naïve and superficial interest in life’s profundities, never mind our perennial tendency to privatise and fetishise the spiritual. <br /><br /></div><div>I appreciate the honest insincerity, as it were, of garden hermits. They are a reminder of how easy it is to reduce interfacing with the sublime to something materialistic and literal. When an existential enquiry becomes a ‘thing’, the arcane appears as a sketch. Any authentic encounter with the mysteries of life stands little chance if it is laced with a homogenized formula concocted from other people’s views and opinions.</div><div><br /></div><div>I find it useful, if uncomfortable, to consider how my mindfulness practice might, at times, resemble a garden hermitage – something I separate off from the rest of my life, mix up with ideas I don’t truly understand, make into a ‘thing’ and project romantic ideals onto. At some point, I will get wise to what is going on. I will uncover my own insincerity and reconnect with something deeper and richer than ‘mindful me’. Then, the show is over and the real practice can resume.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Rock and Roll</b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>A second analogy for situating mindfulness in one’s life comes courtesy of philosopher and writer Albert Camus’ famous essay, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">The Myth of Sisyphus</font></a></i> (1942). Camus compares the absurdity of human existence to the situation of Sisyphus, a figure from Greek mythology who is condemned for eternity to pushing a large boulder up a mountain, only for the boulder to roll down every time he gets to the top. </div><div><br /></div><div>Just as Sisyphus is obliged to repeat his meaningless task over and over again, so we humans search relentlessly for meaning where there is none, says Camus, thus rendering our lives absurd. Yet his conclusion is oddly life-affirming and far from nihilistic. Regardless of your own philosophical viewpoint, there are layers within this text that are hugely relevant to mindfulness practice.</div><div><br /></div><div>Camus’ Sisyphus accepts his fate and embraces the challenge of ascending the mountain. His task offers no reward but he commits to it nonetheless. He is present to his circumstances and regards the past and future for what they are: mental projections. He is fully <i>in</i> his existence, conscious of his condition, all the while refusing to surrender to its apparent futility. Each time he picks up his burden, he utters a silent “yes”. It is this attitude, says Camus, that allows Sisyphus to silence the gods, touch the deathless and conclude that all is well.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Breathing Space</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjR1JQWH7W1aWHoJFf3l-Ff4a245AvdHN6jN3AOLLnu83IngDdHCNp06U7vDOEUzvqeXEF36BftaCnD10jcF3CscZJ8EN-lp3y-zS6fB8Rciln6hOaezkRpiEMemRDocGiMyp1ewBwpBE/s640/IMG_4356.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="433" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjR1JQWH7W1aWHoJFf3l-Ff4a245AvdHN6jN3AOLLnu83IngDdHCNp06U7vDOEUzvqeXEF36BftaCnD10jcF3CscZJ8EN-lp3y-zS6fB8Rciln6hOaezkRpiEMemRDocGiMyp1ewBwpBE/s320/IMG_4356.jpg" /></a></div>In stark contrast to the garden hermit, Sisyphus offers clues on how to situate mindfulness practice at the <i>centre</i> of one’s life. His story is one of commitment, willingness, effort, presence and, through these, contentment. There is not even a hint of experiential avoidance or disengagement on his part. There is no artifice or wishful thinking. Sisyphus dwells in the midst of it all, unblinkered, bullshit-free. He teaches, as Camus puts it, “the higher fidelity”.</div><div><br /></div><div>For me, Sisyphus offers essential lessons in re-homing practice when it has gone the way of the garden hermitage. He smashes down my grotto walls and urges me to wake up. When I sense the imposed limits of my situation and sit with the disquiet, nothing is off limits. Only when my cage has been firmly rattled in this way do I discern real possibilities for freedom. Then life becomes poetic again, even beautiful.</div><div><br /></div><div>Regardless of your beliefs about life or mindfulness, Camus notes something pertinent to all practitioners. Sisyphus, on his downward journey from the summit of the mountain, is relieved of his burden <i>and</i> conscious of his situation. He is in motion, in his flow, fully aware of each footstep. He leans into life and is open to the task at hand. He clings to neither hope nor despair. This way of being echoes the old stories about mindfulness. Camus summarises them nicely: “That hour like a breathing space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/10/grand-narratives-iii.html"><span style="color: #351c75;">next (and last) piece in this series</span></a> will offer some reflections for your own practice.</div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-5626069023920212572020-07-03T08:27:00.004-07:002020-11-25T10:21:43.665-08:00Grand Narratives (I)<div>If you were to consider what ‘mindfulness’ means to you, what would show up in your mind? If you were to reflect deeply on the nature and purpose of ‘practice’, what might you see? What informs your identity (assuming that you identify) as a meditator or practitioner? What are the ideas, imaginings or mythologies you have internalised about mindfulness? Such enquiries disclose crucial information about how your practice will unfold.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigWXKhVyTx2VB9V8cR-62bM6cjXIBOdLDGwoKHy20YO2SSKYbZS6hEPkJCwwkmERtUPPg_gHQju9pRyuOsRJUN8Yog-7DWbE0WoVxd8lFj-_Evznya5pva-Hwdzv2CgE3jCS3LjXy6XKc/s640/Books.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="640" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigWXKhVyTx2VB9V8cR-62bM6cjXIBOdLDGwoKHy20YO2SSKYbZS6hEPkJCwwkmERtUPPg_gHQju9pRyuOsRJUN8Yog-7DWbE0WoVxd8lFj-_Evznya5pva-Hwdzv2CgE3jCS3LjXy6XKc/w200-h151/Books.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Modern formulations of mindfulness tend to revolve around the deliberate cultivation of open-hearted awareness in order to facilitate less reactivity to what is happening in the moment. Traditional formulations are more nuanced (read more on that <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2018/01/past-connections.html" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">here</font></a> and <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/11/vintage-roots.html" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">here</font></a>). What all formulations have in common is they are embedded in assumptions and narratives about the nature of reality and identity and, by association, ideas about how to live well. </div><div><br /></div><div>Mindfulness practice, in this regard, is a starting point from which you make a journey into existential territory. Where you go, with what aim in mind, is largely down to you. Somewhere in the mix will be ideas, views and perspectives you have internalised. A key task of practice is to become more acutely aware of how you are being guided, consciously and unconsciously, by these. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Raw Materials</b></div><div><br /></div><div>To do this work, you need to take into account the era in which you live. Bear in mind that mindfulness in the West is still in its infanthood, unsure of its place in the larger scheme of things and not yet fully known to itself. How it develops and what it grows into remain to be seen. This is exciting and offers great potential. But it can also impart a kind of youthful confusion to practitioners seeking clear waymarks for their journey.</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIjDFxtUN8dgDLreXEvRIFCBnNsmy-CSrrmYbYbtpK55eGJjBVWSfL2nXwok8MY4BTbQvRm9PloiBE7QrsPVz_JF2hs8g26_a6BDiKv8PjQ_5lDnn_EtCAIWk9j2mHqt5vLWVS_kC6By0/s640/Wood.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="439" data-original-width="640" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIjDFxtUN8dgDLreXEvRIFCBnNsmy-CSrrmYbYbtpK55eGJjBVWSfL2nXwok8MY4BTbQvRm9PloiBE7QrsPVz_JF2hs8g26_a6BDiKv8PjQ_5lDnn_EtCAIWk9j2mHqt5vLWVS_kC6By0/w200-h138/Wood.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>In the meantime, what elements from the primal matter of modern mindfulness might we isolate and inspect to assist us with our enquiries? Obviously, there is the Buddhist influence. Buddhism, however, is notoriously hard to pin down. It encompasses a vast swathe of traditions, beliefs and practices. On top of that, not unlike mindfulness, it is still in the early stages of rooting itself – in this case, in a strangely individualized, materialist culture it had little knowledge of only a handful of decades ago. For these reasons, Buddhism can be difficult to make sense of.</div><div><br /></div><div>What we could usefully identify, however, are the main ways in which Buddhism and, through it, mindfulness have melded with pre-existing ideas and tendencies in western culture. Four stand out: science, psychotherapy, romanticism and religion (particularly the theistic, Judeo-Christian variety). If you were to look deeply into your own psychology, might you find traces of one or more of these quietly shaping and steering beliefs about your practice?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Hidden in Plain Sight</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I would suggest that certain western assumptions and cultural biases can also be gleaned from the nature and content of contemporary mindfulness training programmes. While courses vary, as do different teachers’ ‘takes’ on practice, patterns are evident (partly thanks to the western scientific tendency to publish copious amounts of research-generated data in the search for measurable truths). Examples include:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>An implicit belief in the individualistic nature of practice (i.e. each of us are separate, self-directing psycho-physical ‘units’).</li><li>Framing human suffering as a problem that can be fixed or eradicated. </li><li>Elevating the importance of disengaging and stepping back from thoughts in order to better regulate emotions. </li><li>Emphasising formal meditation as a means to cultivating tranquil states over other possibilities (e.g. insight or ethical sensibility). </li><li>Viewing the shift from the conceptual to the perceptual as an end in itself (i.e. mindfulness practice leads to no specified knowledge or discoveries).</li><li>A tendency to reify the ‘present moment’ and an enchantment with experiences of ‘being’.<br /><br /></li></ul></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBRurrEhPNa_NQfKYW27VMvhpHUUG2qjipjN66ZUbOrx1NKpr5HO71IZvV7iWNhYQmH5CQ1Z6S8eeeXSCzie7tVvoEbx3m6zQ8UiQALGu1y4F0FFuZc3HZEo0ISYUkhzjnmFesa82dDps/s640/Trunk.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBRurrEhPNa_NQfKYW27VMvhpHUUG2qjipjN66ZUbOrx1NKpr5HO71IZvV7iWNhYQmH5CQ1Z6S8eeeXSCzie7tVvoEbx3m6zQ8UiQALGu1y4F0FFuZc3HZEo0ISYUkhzjnmFesa82dDps/w150-h200/Trunk.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>This is a partial list – one, no doubt, informed by some of my own biases and assumptions. I am not suggesting any of the above are right or wrong, good or bad. What they point to, however, are some of the ways in which western scientific, materialist, allopathic-medical, psychological and romanticist beliefs have merged with much older ideas about mindfulness. </div><div><br /></div><div>Might reflecting on these allow us humble practitioners, finding our own way, greater glimpses of how such assumptions harmonise or collide with our own preconceived views and opinions and, in so doing, shape our experience? Better to be aware than not, right?</div><div><br /></div><div>In the <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/08/grand-narratives-ii.html"><span style="color: #674ea7;">next post</span></a>, I will suggest two very different analogies for how we might situate mindfulness practice in our lives. </div><div><br /></div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-20714649124212726492020-05-27T09:59:00.002-07:002020-10-31T08:28:34.077-07:00Noble ActionLiving in awareness cuts through erroneous divisions the human mind makes between ‘me’ and ‘other’, ‘us’ and ‘them’. Anxiety loses its primary foothold when we learn to trust and be trustworthy. We can relax. As we come to know more of our innate connectedness to other beings, we are more considerate in how we treat them.<br />
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We incline to activities that align with our values, rather than being swayed by fads and fashions. We reflect on how we make a livelihood and the impact it has on others. We see the sense in rejecting association or involvement with destructive behaviour. When we witness mistreatment, cruelty and injustice, we more readily take a stand against them.<br />
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<b>Taking Care of Life</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoPL64IVkVeTLL0AtH65EZnGZ2x5vWWD1ewzqtQc0toR-dhK5_76ZvezxUSczOVrYMGxqzrHJppin89tWpQH3NuszrUmhKlxAgweZuKjBXv0y2knMmd8rHlPyg1pLVnBeoUMXj1eUSnhg/s1600/IMG_3101.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoPL64IVkVeTLL0AtH65EZnGZ2x5vWWD1ewzqtQc0toR-dhK5_76ZvezxUSczOVrYMGxqzrHJppin89tWpQH3NuszrUmhKlxAgweZuKjBXv0y2knMmd8rHlPyg1pLVnBeoUMXj1eUSnhg/w320-h240/IMG_3101.JPG" width="320" /></a>Active engagement with this troublesome world is as much part of ‘practice’ as appreciating its joys and wonders. True mindful living is not reducible to watching the breath on a meditation cushion; it means being dynamically in the world, with eyes wide open.<br />
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Such a comprehensive ‘taking care’ of life is what links mindfulness organically to friendliness – the willingness to move close to, respect and connect with. To be discerning about what we consume, physically and mentally, and thoughtful about what we produce, in both word and deed, is to approach life with open hands and an open heart.<br />
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Becoming more discriminating in how we take in the world, and cognizant of what we put into it, leads to a more nourishing experience for everyone. Mindfulness takes the form of a rapport with other beings and greater tolerance of the vicissitudes of life. Whatever shows up, we breathe with it, respond intentionally, observe what happens and learn from experience.<br />
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<b>Good Practice Guidelines</b><br />
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Mindfulness is rooted in an ethical foundation for living. Cultivating awareness goes hand-in-hand with freeing oneself from destructive habits and careless acts. A traditional five-fold scheme to support one’s practice is:<br />
<ul>
<li>To avoid harming living beings</li>
<li>To avoid taking what is not freely given</li>
<li>To avoid causing suffering through sexual behaviour</li>
<li>To avoid speaking untruths</li>
<li>To avoid indulging unmindful states through alcohol or drugs.</li>
</ul>
These are not commandments. They are training guidelines. They underscore the aspiration to live harmoniously with oneself and with others. They encourage awareness of one’s actions and the effects of these actions. For example, the point concerning intoxicants that cloud the mind is not a moral judgement on intoxicants, but a caution about their potential impact on the other four guidelines.<br />
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These five guidelines, expressed above as abstentions, also have a flipside. When lived by, they express themselves in their positive aspect, which are, respectively:<br />
<ul>
<li>To act with kindness and compassion</li>
<li>To act generously</li>
<li>To practise contentment in one’s relationships</li>
<li>To communicate truthfully and recognise falsity</li>
<li>To act mindfully.</li>
</ul>
Designed to foster a particular attitude to life, such guidelines are the symptom and product of authentic mindfulness practice. Interestingly, practitioners often spontaneously develop such ethical sensibilities despite having no intellectual knowledge of these traditional guidelines.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">From: </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Mindfulness for Unravelling Anxiety</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms", trebuchet, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">, 2016.</span><br />
<br />Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-7152260296571721092020-04-24T02:10:00.005-07:002020-11-26T00:15:03.828-08:00Mindfulness Locked Down (III)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What kind of world do you want to live in? How does it compare to the one you are living in? How might you build bridges between the two? Are you doing so?<br />
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Such considerations do not lie beyond the scope of mindfulness. ‘Practice’ is, essentially, an education in sensitivity. We learn through experience how the ways in which we act affect our minds and vice versa. Gradually we incline towards what is healthy or, at least, harmless. In this way, our practice extends from the solitude of formal meditation to being an active, benign presence in the world. This is the ethical dimension of mindfulness.<br />
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<b>Getting Grounded</b><br /><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgricVgL6wySog2woBQrThG0aTy8P2MYewfLnoBBWAVbR5fMBqK5zj1zPO_yUAdg0a6n69lIqNG3_V5dhVTFxk9dL7csln2uW5lMKY3ZyK4uYLNOWpv-ItkWFHxH8_zixSw5irF8LG1mnA/s640/IMG_3714.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgricVgL6wySog2woBQrThG0aTy8P2MYewfLnoBBWAVbR5fMBqK5zj1zPO_yUAdg0a6n69lIqNG3_V5dhVTFxk9dL7csln2uW5lMKY3ZyK4uYLNOWpv-ItkWFHxH8_zixSw5irF8LG1mnA/w240-h320/IMG_3714.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>One skilful way of relating to the coronavirus lockdown is to see it as a mandate to reflect deeply. You have been sent to your room and asked to consider your behaviour. So, how’s it been going? What steps have you taken to get to this point? Do you discern any patterns? Where are you taking your life next? What’s your contribution to the world-at-large going to look like?<br />
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Challenging questions, possibly. Rest assured clear answers are not necessary. What arises might be a felt sense, images, vague ideas. Allow these to clarify themselves rather than you having to work them out. Notice any resistance you may have to this enquiry. How much you might want your pre-pandemic life back is a measure of your grasping and your no-hope lawsuit with reality. The future is another matter: it is unformed and awaits your next move.<br />
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<b>Inside Out</b><br />
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From a mindfulness-based perspective, skilful action arises out of awareness of the inner process: What is showing up within me? How am I affected by my current situation? What does this experience have to tell me about what truly matters?<br />
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When we are able to touch the depths of our feelings, our places of vulnerability, we find our heartfulness and compassion. Engaging the heart gives us the courage and the clarity of perspective to really open up to what is happening in the world-at-large. This is the move from ‘inner’ to ‘outer’. We can be fully in the world <i>and</i> fully owning our experience. We can be sensitive and receptive without projecting our fears and aversions onto others. This is the backbone of mindfulness.<br />
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<b>Heart of the Practice</b><br />
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To paraphrase ancient wisdom, nothing lies outside the gaze of the compassionate mind. It is courageous to embrace the fullness of the world and screen out nothing. Sometimes all we can do is sit tenderly with the pain and sadness that arise when we behold the suffering of the world: plague, climate destabilisation, poverty, hunger, war, pollution, natural disasters, anxiety, addiction, despair. At other times, when our heartfulness is strong, we will find the commitment, even the imperative, to act. Either way, when we consciously decide not to turn away from suffering in any form, we are at our most deeply human.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh50CXCkeD7_Uz8WlrNZVd6wBj6qhU5QFHm8pjIlSLhyOp1zq8zxIc0cfMBD_w4W6sqsBjVuMfcSTnl190AD5BOiSuEbMsK6bHZZ2YjFeKE0um4pmL_43osNmTuwtSi3_ZZaUx3OEY6WPg/s1600/Loveoneanother+2.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="640" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh50CXCkeD7_Uz8WlrNZVd6wBj6qhU5QFHm8pjIlSLhyOp1zq8zxIc0cfMBD_w4W6sqsBjVuMfcSTnl190AD5BOiSuEbMsK6bHZZ2YjFeKE0um4pmL_43osNmTuwtSi3_ZZaUx3OEY6WPg/w320-h253/Loveoneanother+2.JPG" width="320" /></a>Every moment, life seeks a response. And, sure enough, in every moment you are doing something. What? How conscious is it? What shapes this action? What effects does it have? All that goes on inside you will find its way into the world-at-large, somehow or other. You are a mover and shaker whether you want to be or not. You matter. The imperative of mindfulness is to pause, open up, intend, act.<br />
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In this respect, pandemic or no pandemic, lockdown or no lockdown, upheaval or no upheaval, what matters has not changed, though it might feel all the more pressing: What kind of world do you want to live in? How does it compare to the one you are living in? How might you build bridges between the two? Are you doing so?</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/04/mindfulness-locked-down-ii.html"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Click here for Part 2.</span></a></div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-40602118536326888122020-04-21T02:32:00.006-07:002021-07-20T03:02:02.635-07:00Mindfulness Locked Down (II)When life has been thrown into flux and confusion by the coronavirus pandemic, mindfulness practice pares down to skilful interventions on yours or another’s behalf to meet basic needs. At such times, the fragility of life is starkly revealed while our animal instinct to run for the hills is thwarted by a lockdown. It can feel overwhelming. Taking care of the seconds and minutes is enough. Otherwise, as Albert Camus notes in <i>The Plague </i>(1947), “stupidity has a knack of getting its way.”<br />
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In less critical moments, might we lift our heads to take a broader view of events, inner and outer, and consider how best to respond to the plight of the world? When things pause, as large parts of human society have, they are easier to focus on. This is the gateway to mindfulness writ large. Remember that ‘practice’ is not a purely personal endeavour nor mere strategic navigation of changing conditions for self-serving ends. It is about more than just you (if this is unclear, <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-social-value-of-mindfulness-1.html" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">start here</font></a>).<br />
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<b>Enlightening Times</b><br />
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Crises scratch the surface of human existence and reveal what otherwise might be difficult to see. <br />
This pandemic is no exception in affording a clearer-than-usual glimpse into the world we inhabit. It is interconnected in every which way we look at it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXsA5eZs7mwKmETKrgTaBcr_KN4ONOHEhxqDyT5_xX3Y3pWW1yVb3fK6H6HIc_7BBJ_4XLtu1fmigcoVQXv72YdseqxrGWnX1FoWCcujK9jmunEQkt8aWYCoMYQMeHeU6QZd6H6YDNAlU/s1600/IMG_3415.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="341" data-original-width="640" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXsA5eZs7mwKmETKrgTaBcr_KN4ONOHEhxqDyT5_xX3Y3pWW1yVb3fK6H6HIc_7BBJ_4XLtu1fmigcoVQXv72YdseqxrGWnX1FoWCcujK9jmunEQkt8aWYCoMYQMeHeU6QZd6H6YDNAlU/w400-h210/IMG_3415.jpg" width="400" /></a>These days we are obliged to confront our dependence on each other for survival, from the food we eat to the healthcare we need. We are less inclined to devalue the people who put their own safety on the line to provide life-sustaining services for others – not just frontline health workers but cleaners, care workers, shop workers and many others. Through acts of kindness and consideration, we discover a solidarity with our neighbours that turns out to have been there, untapped, the whole time. Priorities tend to shift when we discern who and what is essential.<br />
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<b>Joining the Dots</b><br />
<br />
Our non-separation from animals and nature is glaring. This coronavirus was likely transmitted from animals as a result of human encroachment into areas of the eco-system we used to leave be. Such invasions not only expose human vulnerabilities but can be catastrophic for other species. Now is a good time to remember that we too are animals.<br />
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Observe how this unprecedented human pause impacts our environment. The natural world – at the mercy of human exploitation and greed for so long – finds a rare chance to reclaim some territory. Meanwhile, pollution levels plummet and rivers teem with new life. What do fresher air, bluer skies, clearer waters and thriving fellow creatures have to tell us about how <i>our</i> species treats that which it depends on?<br />
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<b>Remember This Moment</b><br />
<br />
Mindfulness writ large is unflinching in its gaze and compassionate in impulse. Practice is inherently relational. Nothing need fall outside its remit. Now is the time, if you have the resources, to open up to the momentous change happening around you and to prepare to take your heartfulness into the world (once you’re allowed out again, that is).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidIfoSKiPvw9WpjP98YKsJ7KOuJqX8sMmurz25Ngg0jqfdHGLryMBVrmy5yQwDYULn7POww3DUYaUK7n-aqeAzgOrZaCSjnQGLj3hVCoXm2LzEAxlkEyrlvF18nk05QrOKQHuLr76-fsA/s1600/IMG_2571.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1354" data-original-width="1282" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidIfoSKiPvw9WpjP98YKsJ7KOuJqX8sMmurz25Ngg0jqfdHGLryMBVrmy5yQwDYULn7POww3DUYaUK7n-aqeAzgOrZaCSjnQGLj3hVCoXm2LzEAxlkEyrlvF18nk05QrOKQHuLr76-fsA/w301-h320/IMG_2571.jpg" width="301" /></a>This is an essential dimension of practice. To assist you, it might be useful to recollect that life is no more fragile or any less certain than it ever was. What’s changed is that our collective propensity for denial has been smashed by the wrecking ball of reality. We have always lived in a world interpenetrated by sickness and death. We never were in control. But the scale of suffering is eternally up for grabs and this is where your mindfulness and compassion are so needed.<br />
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There is nothing like a virus to remind us that we breathe the same air, that borders are insubstantial, and that something as simple as washing one’s hands can be an act of community service. There is nothing like a pandemic to illustrate how our lives are intertwined, not-so-solid and prone to extermination. On the planetary level, the worst that could happen now is we fail to read the signs or listen to the alarm bells and go back to sleep.<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/04/mindfulness-locked-down-iii.html"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Click here for Part 3</span></a>.<br />
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</div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-15489385031521053122020-04-17T03:23:00.006-07:002021-07-20T03:00:59.486-07:00Mindfulness Locked Down (I)The realisation may already have dawned on you: mindfulness prepares you for the times in which you live. Pandemic or no pandemic, lockdown or no lockdown, upheaval or no upheaval, ‘practice’ means embracing the conditions of the moment with a warm heart, looking them straight in the eye and responding with as much skill and care as you can muster.<br />
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For able-bodied practitioners, a lockdown offers a legion of opportunities. A rich and longstanding tradition of prison meditation programmes attests to it. Even in the midst of disagreeable change, disruption to habits, removal of presumed comforts, escalating social panic and the freshly exposed human proximity to death, we can draw upon our compassion and intelligence to be open and awake to it all.<br />
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<b>Start Here</b><br />
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This might not be easy, so where to begin? As always, start where you are. Remember, there are no hierarchies on the path of mindfulness. Prior attainments or perfect conditions are wholly unnecessary. A blissful moment in meditation has no more value than any other moment. A lockdown has no less going for it than what you might consider to be ‘normal life’. When awareness is well established, the mind’s tendency to inflate the significance of particular experiences is diminished. In its place, equanimity can flourish.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfSy6mvgXwtsQdcg2qd_9F1-BqBzUrq19NtVyjfJsGTOV3Lq5ti3xuBKPlVERC8Jvp2xLoKBWRSbaSlGyhIs5K4Th3AceOMH7gXaQ1lqM3ML1k8XUDTWwI7KkLLrOn8Pbz4qIu-3x9tzM/s1600/Amusements+4.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="640" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfSy6mvgXwtsQdcg2qd_9F1-BqBzUrq19NtVyjfJsGTOV3Lq5ti3xuBKPlVERC8Jvp2xLoKBWRSbaSlGyhIs5K4Th3AceOMH7gXaQ1lqM3ML1k8XUDTWwI7KkLLrOn8Pbz4qIu-3x9tzM/w320-h245/Amusements+4.JPG" width="320" /></a>In this way, mindfulness practice is grounding. It is a natural antidote to the mental wobbling, catastrophising and forgetfulness humans are prone to when anxious. We wise up more quickly to our tendency to fixate on bad news, defend against emotional upset and impulsively stockpile goods out of fear. We let go more readily of rigid views about the future and our primitive struggles with uncertainty.<br />
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The moment we catch ourselves sliding into despair or being afflicted with the contagious panic of others, we can gift ourselves the space to breathe, to feel, and to re-orientate ourselves in this moment. Life in its fullness become possible again. At other times, feeding a neighbour, caring for the sick or mourning the dead might be the focus of our practice.<br />
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<b>Start Now</b><br />
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Thanks to the concern and generosity of countless good-hearted people, there is a plethora of free online resources to guide you safely through a lockdown. Their contents vary but the underlying principles align neatly with the basics of everyday mindfulness:<br />
<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCX14jNXkrM503b3qA5HQojvebwlzCOVaQqxDORRvfCCg918qT7ybPDibiQqLSNDXInnZn8smK8MStNeA50Ssd3k_8oWszOvc5H-iYL1v5KqXp4o-anBI461A9DdKluXOOytxSA90Zy1Q/s1600/IMG_3704.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCX14jNXkrM503b3qA5HQojvebwlzCOVaQqxDORRvfCCg918qT7ybPDibiQqLSNDXInnZn8smK8MStNeA50Ssd3k_8oWszOvc5H-iYL1v5KqXp4o-anBI461A9DdKluXOOytxSA90Zy1Q/w240-h320/IMG_3704.jpg" width="240" /></a>
<li>maintain and develop routines that attend to basic human needs for care, exercise, social contact, creative engagement and contact with nature. Choose wisely what you feed your mind as well as your body.</li>
<li>maintain and develop a healthy balance between ‘being’ and ‘doing’. This necessitates limiting the number of activities you undertake, completing them fully, and remembering to pause before you commence new ones.</li>
<li>reduce or avoid poor coping strategies, i.e. the ones that provide only short-term relief from psychological discomfort and tend to inspire dependency or excessive use in the longer term. </li>
<li>spend time listening inwardly. Let your body and heart tell you what matters, what is of value and where meaning is to be found, especially in turbulent times.</li>
<li>pay attention to the ordinary and humble details of existence (or at least endeavour not to discount them). Washing your hands can be a meditation as well as physically life-preserving. Chewing a piece of food can be an act of kindness to one’s body rather than a mere stepping stone to the next morsel. Walking from one room to another can be a conscious act that enables you to arrive, inwardly and outwardly, into a totally fresh space.<br /></li></ul><b><br />Stay Safe</b><br />
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As the old saying goes: when we take care of the present, the future takes care of itself. The mental quality of mindfulness is, by nature, protective (more about this <a href="http://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-inner-gatekeeper.html" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">here</font></a>). Just as we might socially distance from others out of care, we can do something comparable with our minds when they get sucked into vortices of worry, catastrophising and doom-mongering.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUM0IznFETEV00ZP7Pg431gD8ddlqteBRD4CrihycTLV-6IkV51nK_zN_yTySNqdrwZNSNwlBwIVUTmiitV1pVqMdkjXT7LvgsA45Zwhf-C0W_9hl5crIHelkMH6hxtzkioQMsBPQcikg/s1600/Keep+Clear+1.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="264" data-original-width="640" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUM0IznFETEV00ZP7Pg431gD8ddlqteBRD4CrihycTLV-6IkV51nK_zN_yTySNqdrwZNSNwlBwIVUTmiitV1pVqMdkjXT7LvgsA45Zwhf-C0W_9hl5crIHelkMH6hxtzkioQMsBPQcikg/w400-h164/Keep+Clear+1.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
When we are able to hold in awareness, with intimacy and without aversion, the latest horror story our minds have concocted, all the while allowing the energy of associated feelings to express itself, we are doing something powerful and profoundly liberating: being with things as they are.<br />
<br />
Negative thoughts lose their toxic charge when we offer them friendly respect and give them space. Psychologically speaking, this is a kind of social distancing. It is a lot less painful than the attrition warfare we are prone to waging with our unruly minds. It also frees us up to act wisely and kindly.<br />
<br />
Wise action and creative engagement with all forms of life are necessary expressions of mindfulness practice. Even in a lockdown, might we consider that the most ordinary activities, carried out with attention and intention, have effects beyond their apparent significance? When we tap deeply into our presence in the world, might the world in turn become more present to us? Here lies the innate interconnection between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ that abides regardless of whether or not we venture beyond our front doors.<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2020/04/mindfulness-locked-down-ii.html"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Click here for Part 2</span></a><br />
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</div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-48351789545863425542020-01-31T04:31:00.000-08:002020-01-31T04:31:00.639-08:00How Does It Feel?<div class="MsoNormal">
What is your ‘felt sense’ in this moment? Yes, this moment.
If you are not sure, pause and allow awareness to open to your physical
experience. Deliberately inhabit the ever-present inner landscape of bodily
sensations. Let the prevailing mood or atmosphere of body and mind become known
to you. What do you notice about the overall <i>quality</i> of feeling you are experiencing now? Pause reading and just
feel.</div>
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What do you notice? Is the prevailing feeling tone of your
subjective experience pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? Is it in flux? Whatever
you notice, and no matter how rapidly it may be changing, feeling tone is always either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. </div>
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<b>Three Hedonic Tones<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA-miADVzgX4UaVXymZGLk-edDF5GdeFAtbgHewbSjI2EXd_DhYjEbedX2_PyxQCsQcA7s6UmETbl7r2XQaMi5NDzfm0ULmDZ_p4m3SwdkVMJEAlwO4EzxGjJdK8n-Hu6LSfh6hfENtkY/s1600/Nutella+Marmite.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="640" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA-miADVzgX4UaVXymZGLk-edDF5GdeFAtbgHewbSjI2EXd_DhYjEbedX2_PyxQCsQcA7s6UmETbl7r2XQaMi5NDzfm0ULmDZ_p4m3SwdkVMJEAlwO4EzxGjJdK8n-Hu6LSfh6hfENtkY/s320/Nutella+Marmite.JPG" width="320" /></a>Cultivating awareness of the hedonic tone of one’s experience
is a significant part of mindfulness practice. Particularly in meditation, we
can become keenly aware of how qualities of pleasantness, unpleasantness and
neither-pleasantness-nor-unpleasantness (i.e. neutrality) arise out of the
process of contact with bodily sensations, sounds and thoughts.</div>
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Sometimes the tone of the experience is clear, such as when
there is intense physical pain (unpleasant) or when we are lost in a dreamy
mental fantasy or a state of bliss (pleasant). Many times we simply fail to
recognise this aspect of our psycho-physical process. Feeling tones can be
subtle, habitual and easy to miss. Noticing them is a practice in sensitivity.</div>
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<b>Two Discoveries<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Mindfulness of feeling tone facilitates two important
discoveries. First, it allows us to catch what happens next, i.e. what occurs
conditional upon the arising of a feeling. If the feeling is pleasant, the mind
tends to cling to the experience. If it is unpleasant, the mind tends to resist
or avoid the experience. If it is neutral, the mind might overlook the
experience altogether, or get caught in boredom or numbness, which inevitably
gives rise to a renewed cycle of craving and aversion.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge9C1o_gmOeuY_mRu9DUxJvF2nX4nHbObJgjKNFLTfre-Z9Jk5ET417owbn5K4FvyJtajFPYDNGqIW88xPj22jZ8_yhBr8hz3c0wgFKk8ydHO2Y1xG0X2tVMWKgx1DoPT5dgWTwJTnfxI/s1600/Marmite.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge9C1o_gmOeuY_mRu9DUxJvF2nX4nHbObJgjKNFLTfre-Z9Jk5ET417owbn5K4FvyJtajFPYDNGqIW88xPj22jZ8_yhBr8hz3c0wgFKk8ydHO2Y1xG0X2tVMWKgx1DoPT5dgWTwJTnfxI/s320/Marmite.JPG" width="320" /></a>Second, we come to see how feeling tones are constructed by
the mind. They are not implicit in the object we are in contact with. Our minds
get this mixed up. If I like Marmite and you don’t, it says nothing about Marmite, right? We may experience different feeling tones when eating Marmite but this is due to our minds. Feeling tones also vary depending upon
circumstances. If you are feeling happy, people and things may look or sound more pleasant compared with, say, when you feel sad, angry or anxious.</div>
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<b>One Contented Person<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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Mindfulness facilitates a greater capacity to <i>be with</i> an experience without adding
anything to it. In becoming aware of the hedonic tone of the moment, we can
engage with it just as it is. We can appreciate pleasantness. We can develop an
accepting attitude to unpleasantness. We can acknowledge neutral feelings.
Greater sensitivity and flexibility of response help us step outside the
dissatisfying loop of attachment and aversion and allow spaciousness and ease to
find a foothold.</div>
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<br /></div>
One final thought: mindfulness meditation emphasises
embodied awareness and much of our bodily experience is hedonically neutral (an
obvious example being the breath, which neither excites nor repels the mind).
In deliberately cultivating awareness of neutral feeling tones, the meditator
can discover how these often have a quality of restfulness or easefulness, i.e.
how neutrality shades into pleasantness. In this way, through the simple
practice of meditation, one’s ‘bandwidth’ for pleasantness broadens and one
develops a subtle taste for quiet contentment.Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-70666077058001621302019-12-27T11:45:00.000-08:002020-03-15T09:08:44.789-07:00Soft PowerGentle, patient and persistent effort empowers one’s practice. On a micro level, it is no more and no less than the energy required to wake up to what is occurring in the here-and-now. On a macro level, it has four aspects:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>to sustain positive states that have already arisen</li>
<li>to arouse positive states that have not yet arisen</li>
<li>to abandon negative states once they have arisen</li>
<li>to guard against negative states so that they do not arise.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
These are traditionally known as the Four Great Efforts. Reflecting on these and honing actions accordingly is a means to clarity and composure in daily life. If this is a new idea, below is an example of how you might apply it.<br />
<br />
<b>New Year's Resolutions</b><br />
<br />
Take a few minutes to run through the past year in your mind. What do you recall? What stands out? Are there particular highlights? What about low points? Which experiences, activities and events seem to have been positive, useful or enjoyable? Which were more negative, unsettling or difficult? Which seem more neutral?<br />
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Now take a pen and paper and write some brief notes around these 10 questions:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>What is worthy of celebration from the past year? </li>
<li>At what times did you live in alignment with your values?</li>
<li>What would be good to do more of?</li>
<li>What would be good to invoke?</li>
<li>When did you not align with your values?</li>
<li>Have you done what you set out to accomplish in the<br />last year?</li>
<li>In terms of what you hoped to achieve, what got<br />missed out? </li>
<li>What valuable personal or professional lessons have<br />you learned?</li>
<li>What would be good to release from or let go of? </li>
<li>What in your life is not serving you?</li>
</ul>
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<br /></div>
Your notes should contain within them some clues as to what would be good for you to maintain, to develop, to change and to avoid. Now set some clear intentions for the year ahead by posing yourself these four questions:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>What aspects of my life are beneficial and are worth maintaining? </li>
<li>What aspects of my life are beneficial and are worth developing or strengthening? </li>
<li>What aspects of my life are not beneficial and need changing? </li>
<li>What aspects of my life are not beneficial and need avoiding? </li>
</ul>
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Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-89804013572650416252019-11-30T10:38:00.004-08:002020-10-31T10:23:47.188-07:00Vintage Roots<div class="MsoNormal">
As modern conceptualisations of mindfulness evolve and expand
and, occasionally, stretch to the point of near meaninglessness (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/nov/17/why-mushroom-picking-is-the-best-form-of-mindfulness?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">mindful mushroom-picking</font></a>, anyone?), revisiting first principles is a journey worth taking. </div>
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Early Buddhist psychology, from which major elements of contemporary
theory and practice derive, offers a range of concise definitions and colourful
similes to illuminate precisely what the mental quality of mindfulness is <i>and</i> what it does.
</div>
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Here is a short summary of just one of the numerous categorisations
of <i>sati</i> (the term for mindfulness in
the Pali Canon). This list relates to the key characteristics of <i>sati</i>’s activity:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4niT_7yxpnrYN3BwBJ-5n0U6amB6ZItzXbfRdp75fZz8H17Az-AxBWsyZt_uDnE2c8CNKbCF0YkPKCQ2Ru2stNlaypQOX6CI9xwWVDBu9MUcMPjygcNUKzMzmX7MEr59ZFBDr1OM9ops/s1600/chariot+wheel+1.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="374" data-original-width="364" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4niT_7yxpnrYN3BwBJ-5n0U6amB6ZItzXbfRdp75fZz8H17Az-AxBWsyZt_uDnE2c8CNKbCF0YkPKCQ2Ru2stNlaypQOX6CI9xwWVDBu9MUcMPjygcNUKzMzmX7MEr59ZFBDr1OM9ops/s200/chariot+wheel+1.JPG" width="194" /></a><b>Monitoring</b>: Mindfulness is understood to monitor, supervise
and steer other mental qualities. It is described as a ‘watchful charioteer’. This simile highlights <i>sati</i>’s qualities
of steering and supervision of other mental faculties together with its vigilant
nature, which can note specific objects on a journey (inner or outer) whilst simultaneously
maintaining a balanced and broad awareness that serves the smooth and
successful passage of the journey as a whole. </div>
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<b>Integrating</b>: Mindfulness is a regulative, organising
activity in meditation, which notes any lacks and deficiencies, brings in
appropriate qualities and suitably applies them.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Stabilising</b>: Mindfulness exerts a stabilising function in
regard to sensory distraction, as described in the ‘simile of the post’, which likens
six animals to the six sense organs of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.
These sense organs can be restrained by the ‘strong post’ of <i>sati</i>, which exerts a
stabilising function in regard to sensory distraction through its ability to
tether the senses and ‘keep them near’. In this way, mindfulness remains aloof
and impartial, but also connected to what is happening at the sense doors.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Protecting</b>: Mindfulness guards the mind by helping to
prevent the arising of unwholesome states through its clear view of a situation,
as highlighted in the <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-inner-gatekeeper.html"><font color="#7b1fa2">simile of the gatekeeper</font></a>. Such a
protective role comes about through <i>sati</i>’s
ability to exert a controlling influence on thoughts and intentions.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Applying ‘detached’ observation</b>: Mindfulness is a calm and
non-reactive type of attention, which ‘stands back’ to observe phenomena, rather than interfere with them. It helps
one experience all feelings with a detached
outlook. This offers a more objective stance towards one’s experience. It
is sometimes referred to as ‘bare attention’, a key aspect of <i>sati</i> in that it both encourages sense-restraint
and allows one to see things as they have come to be, unadulterated by habitual
reactions and projections.</div>
Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-62910534034943783972019-10-31T12:01:00.001-07:002021-07-30T02:21:51.734-07:00Minding My Own BusynessRecently, I found myself in a restaurant with three other mindfulness teachers, shovelling Pad Thai down my throat at great speed and with considerable mess. We were discussing meditation between partially digested mouthfuls while repeatedly checking the time.<br />
<br />
We were on a short lunch break during a mindfulness conference and, time- and food-wise, had bitten off more than we could chew. Rushing back to the conference, splattered in noodle sauce, still attempting to conclude discussions, I had the vaguest glimmer of knowledge that I wasn’t so much ‘walking my walk’ as stumbling around in a state of mindlessness.<br />
<br />
Sure enough, two hours later, during a talk on the importance of a teacher’s embodiment of mindfulness, I discovered myself – partially slouched in a plastic chair, partially propped up against the conference room wall to ease my indigestion – firing off non-urgent emails on my phone.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwZmxLEcDT_KXsfr5aUPeT1IA3Uk-n8YOelbyUWefP3AK3Gqk8ltBlxPV8aWSsOqxnULV3J9D6wN-2K6MB7-FYEaTZBfXTxkv5Jltb0qdkwz5U8xxx3fdu8bieLvifem7pzDvoc6IEmh4/s1600/slow+1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="103" data-original-width="163" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwZmxLEcDT_KXsfr5aUPeT1IA3Uk-n8YOelbyUWefP3AK3Gqk8ltBlxPV8aWSsOqxnULV3J9D6wN-2K6MB7-FYEaTZBfXTxkv5Jltb0qdkwz5U8xxx3fdu8bieLvifem7pzDvoc6IEmh4/w320-h202/slow+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This was a ‘good’ moment. It reminded me that mindfulness is not about where I go, what I do, who I hang out with, or what labels I attach to ‘me’. It is simpler than all of those. <br />
<br />
Simple as in: being sensitive to the cause and effect of actions. Simple as in: being aware of the relationship between stress and response. Simple as in: taking care of body and mind. Simple as in: getting clear about one’s priorities in the here-and-now.<br />
<br />
<b>Action Plans</b><br />
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<br />
I once received a useful teaching from a car mechanic on how to handle the human tendency for doing too much. He knew his propensity for taking on more jobs than he could handle and further overloading himself by not taking proper holidays. So he would staple together certain pages of his work diary to indicate when he would take breaks from work. Crucially, he would always stick to his plan. Skilful intention, resolution, kindness and care, all manifested with the click of a stapler. Nice work.<br />
<br />
Something I’ve been practising myself for a while is to pause when I find myself facing an unconsidered task or situation, and to inwardly pose three questions: Do I need to take this on? Do I want to take this on? What is my intention here? Momentarily stopping and checking in with myself often clarifies how best to proceed.<br />
<br />
Of course, I can just as easily forget to do this. These are the times when I find myself biting off more than I can chew, blundering about like a nitwit, and washing off noodle stains afterwards.<br />
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Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-70557450250636410712019-09-26T03:52:00.005-07:002021-07-30T02:20:28.707-07:00Taking the Mick Out of MindfulnessThe commodification of mindfulness as a ‘feel good’ therapy prescribed for personal gain now has a name: <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beyond-mcmindfulness_b_3519289?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvLnVrLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKrWrog2K4bxImLxnAA52z6vd4OOrPD58cjH1ddWPXI2BfE9aWlANl2hN3aBBJQrDD9L2dw8pwdV3Ws_1XqEZGVtSwjTA10zAbHV39hWPkH8qrScPXlOoCyCbGF-dtz_Eu284vhGJp1djytoQpSf6mAaWgrT43AuTGAORAj5KEf4" target="_blank"><span style="color: #674ea7;">McMindfulness</span></a>. Such a package assumes its rightful place in the burgeoning catalogue of problem-focused, goal-orientated therapies designed to soothe overloaded human minds.<br />
<br />
McMindfulness is a fitting product for an ethically unencumbered marketplace trading on human desire and aversion, but it lacks authenticity for this very reason. It also relegates mindfulness to a bland technique dedicated to attaining ‘presence’ and so neglects the practice’s broader purpose of ‘holding in mind’, seeing clearly and remembering what is of value.<br />
<br />
When a practice for cultivating awareness becomes blind to itself – and, by extension, its interdependent nature – the awareness that results is partial and sterile.<br />
<br />
<b>Dead Calm</b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEoUxocPrqmCnr_swliHD6qqj__ew8r8sW6ibi3_2FAh5ZtqrSBcMzdPxc4h7ZJu9qwp4IThEX3aWeZTXFTp68iZLiTI1Wv-44zHUEm0XfYacUxRf9c5y9I_NlFZ-pyVnOF9D2yNiCXXA/s1600/Better+Living.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="241" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEoUxocPrqmCnr_swliHD6qqj__ew8r8sW6ibi3_2FAh5ZtqrSBcMzdPxc4h7ZJu9qwp4IThEX3aWeZTXFTp68iZLiTI1Wv-44zHUEm0XfYacUxRf9c5y9I_NlFZ-pyVnOF9D2yNiCXXA/w320-h216/Better+Living.JPG" width="320" /></a>Elevating the ‘present moment’ into some kind of special state, or goal, is an easy trap to fall into. Mindfulness practice may be a worthy antidote to getting unhelpfully lost in the past and future, but it can just as easily lead to getting uselessly stuck in the here and now. Chasing the calmness of ‘being present’ is usually the cause of this.<br />
<br />
Conversely, skilful practice is about letting go of any insistence to be present and giving up on acquiring calmness. This is a delicate balance and easy to miss – all the more so if we forget to reflect on what we are doing, practice-wise, and why we are doing it. Wise reflection is essential to mindfulness. When we abandon this and lose our spirit of enquiry, something in our practice dies.<br />
<br />
<b>Walking the Tightrope</b><br />
<br />
The obstacles are many on the path of mindfulness, but they teach us so much. I have learned the hard way over the years that practice is like walking a tightrope – skill and effort are required and it is possible to lose balance at any moment. I go chasing contentment, only to wind up disappointed. I go chasing ‘enlightenment’, only to remain ignorant. Guess what happens when I try to be ‘a great meditator’!<br />
<br />
The good news is that when I give up on chasing, balance restores itself and the practice glides. Such moments bring a refreshing humility – I am engaging with something bigger than and beyond ‘me’. Practice ceases to be a private affair. Mainlined into the flux of existence, I may even, for a fleeting moment, glimpse my non-separation from this world of beings and the ever-changing mystery and wonder of it all.<br />
<br />
From: <i>Mindfulness for Unravelling Anxiety</i>, 2016.<br />
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Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-20140899958391268702019-08-22T03:46:00.004-07:002021-07-30T02:20:15.066-07:00No More HeroesAs I noted a few years ago, when assessing the growth of mindfulness in society at large, anything that becomes fashionable is susceptible to dilution and corruption. Uprooted from its ethical foundations, mindfulness can, in theory, be utilized for any number of human endeavours, from assassination and burglary to wine-tasting and golf. But when you divorce mindfulness from empathy, compassion and awareness of causality, what results is little more than a highly attentive, egocentric state of mind that is dissociated from the world around (<i>Mindfulness for Unravelling Anxiety</i>, pp109-110).<br />
<br />
The ignorance, spin and profiteering that occur in regard to mindfulness aren’t new. Nor is the rhetoric of ‘self-mastery’, ‘resilience’ and ‘personal happiness’. Perhaps what is becoming clearer as we approach the third decade of the 21st Century is the inability of the mainstream mindfulness movement to deliver on its promise of a paradigm shift in human society.<br />
<br />
<b>Super Size Me</b><br />
<br />
More striking again is the banality of the mainstream. Hollowed out of meaning, mindfulness in the marketplace regularly trades in its depth and mystery for a generous splash of self-promotion as the quickest fix in town.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRJjf_8ZOhyphenhyphen3FI0xt3dd79QZsXMJ-TxuKwhgkajArl5lQgJOdo8I9G1dXSO4V48Ljb87JirlfU7e5gavqFEjbj-PcTDezcehB-2A9eEU6UfPGLfaji0r4AC27-Gjgg9QMHC6mJgcTOSk8/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="364" data-original-width="268" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRJjf_8ZOhyphenhyphen3FI0xt3dd79QZsXMJ-TxuKwhgkajArl5lQgJOdo8I9G1dXSO4V48Ljb87JirlfU7e5gavqFEjbj-PcTDezcehB-2A9eEU6UfPGLfaji0r4AC27-Gjgg9QMHC6mJgcTOSk8/s200/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="146" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beyond-mcmindfulness_b_3519289?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvLnVrLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKrWrog2K4bxImLxnAA52z6vd4OOrPD58cjH1ddWPXI2BfE9aWlANl2hN3aBBJQrDD9L2dw8pwdV3Ws_1XqEZGVtSwjTA10zAbHV39hWPkH8qrScPXlOoCyCbGF-dtz_Eu284vhGJp1djytoQpSf6mAaWgrT43AuTGAORAj5KEf4" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">McMindfulness</font></a> is everywhere and aptly named. As Ronald Purser notes in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">recent article in <i>The Guardian</i></font></a>, just as burgers and fries at McDonald’s are the same wherever you go, there is a similar lack of variation in the content and structure of mindfulness courses around the world.<br />
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This is evidenced by the manifold programmes and curricula implemented by a self-appointed establishment of training organisations, which refuse to engage with issues of social and economic justice, environmental destruction, climate destabilisation and cultural toxicity. The movers and shakers of mainstream mindfulness have opted to play no part in the revolution they once proclaimed for our interrelated, interdependent world.<br />
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Purser outlines how these programmers have reduced themselves to promoting a product – a market-friendly palliative offering new and improved ways of handling life’s rat race whilst insisting that one remain a rat (– not a problem if you are a rat, but you’re not).<br />
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<b>Mindless Nation</b><br />
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We are trapped in a “neoliberal trance”, says Purser, quoting what the education scholar Henry Giroux has called a “disimagination machine”, a process that stifles critical and radical thinking. “We are admonished to look inward, and to manage ourselves. Disimagination impels us to abandon creative ideas about new possibilities.”<br />
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On this subject, the last time I took any notice of mindfulness in the Press was also in <i>The Guardian</i> (see <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/dec/29/fit-in-my-40s-i-thought-id-be-bored-but-meditating-brought-me-peace" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">here</font></a>). On this occasion, however, it was definitely business as usual: a puff piece about a meditation pod that is custom-made for office workers. The idea is that you “step in” then “float out” a few minutes later and get back to work. About as world changing as a cigarette break, then?<br />
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What grabbed my attention was not the underwhelming pod but the accidental precision with which the writer captured something of our brave new mindful world: “Meditation used to be about the quest for deep existential truths: the inner peace it fostered was a side-effect that took off, like the discovery of Post-it notes by scientists who were trying to create the world’s strongest glue.”<br />
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What a nifty way of inadvertently summarising the collision of ancient wisdom and modern world. Yes, I know, it is usually described as a ‘meeting’ or an ‘encounter’, but such words do no justice to the dismemberment and ruin that are becoming apparent.<br />
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The normal routine for rounding off articles on mindfulness is with a little flourish – something upbeat and positive that seeks to remove any need for the reader to sit with uncomfortable truths. Well, I’m not going to do that, not this time.<br />
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Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-67057761071669551532019-07-22T03:42:00.003-07:002021-07-10T03:54:54.809-07:00Hot Off The Press<div class="MsoNormal">
Once in a while, an article about mindfulness appears in the mainstream Press that is worth reading. The standard fare about calming down / spacing out / focussing in / floating off / etc. / etc. / etc. takes a break. The smooth flow of sound bites about inner peace and the scientifically proven health benefits of meditation drops to a hush. Into the space pops an insightful and refreshing critique of what’s really going on.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgChZ_q2ErZj3HS9V7f-2fe8IL2QZnMP-bG5lC09XWXomiEWkmj9RQ4XbwMkweryieG-1QDaJQKd3ROJ8PkUZNZXT0uo_b-0vOhhX6qNsNS5JqN0YiQ2W122X7qUYwXiXK_7627kfEvIuc/s1600/IMG_3204_sRGB.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="640" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgChZ_q2ErZj3HS9V7f-2fe8IL2QZnMP-bG5lC09XWXomiEWkmj9RQ4XbwMkweryieG-1QDaJQKd3ROJ8PkUZNZXT0uo_b-0vOhhX6qNsNS5JqN0YiQ2W122X7qUYwXiXK_7627kfEvIuc/s200/IMG_3204_sRGB.JPG" width="200" /></a>This year’s contribution came courtesy of <i>The Guardian</i>, along with the confusing title ‘The Mindfulness Conspiracy’ (read it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">here</font></a>). Fortunately, the spin stops at the title, most likely because the author, Ronald Purser, is no lifestyle journalist, but that rare combination of a recognised authority who is unafraid to ask searching and difficult questions of other authorities.</div>
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Even if you have only a cursory interest in mindfulness, Purser’s piece deserves a read. He documents how secular mindfulness, having found itself as a major player in the ‘mood economy’, is succumbing to a graceless slide into a swamp of greed and exploitation – the very swamp it was designed to steer practitioners away from in the first place.</div>
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<b>Selling the Family Silver</b></div>
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Here lies the perennial problem of all liberation movements, whether they be ‘inner’ or ‘outer’: what starts out as a revolution becomes a surrender. In this case, the quest for a better life, a fairer world, gets hijacked, privatised and co-opted for social, economic and political control. According to Purser, the commodification of mindfulness has left it “void of a moral compass or ethical commitments, unmoored from a vision of the social good.”</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmYurtJThmODjG5kPpXomNgYQ_cv21Ke9AB2az53-OVvTglYcTJQte0msm8p8m84u3zpLtnEibExvrp0BORwTk1xt3mClFD536-5vbO2WVaZpioFCk3_UXEIhSz0viL0Fp6ms7ZLcAyt4/s1600/FullSizeRender_1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="660" data-original-width="853" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmYurtJThmODjG5kPpXomNgYQ_cv21Ke9AB2az53-OVvTglYcTJQte0msm8p8m84u3zpLtnEibExvrp0BORwTk1xt3mClFD536-5vbO2WVaZpioFCk3_UXEIhSz0viL0Fp6ms7ZLcAyt4/s200/FullSizeRender_1.jpg" width="200" /></a>In recent years, a lucrative self-help industry has found ingenious ways of packaging mindfulness and selling it as a technique for stress-reduction and “personal life-hacking optimisation.” In so doing, its practice often degrades into a form of “auto-exploitation” whereby it merely aids one’s capacity to cope with the socio-economic toxicity that precipitated one’s stress in the first place.</div>
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Who could have predicted that, only a decade ago, the so-called mindfulness revolution would wind up as the touchy-feely arm of a profiteering medico-wellbeing industry that never wastes an opportunity to pathologise stress in order to generate rationales, remedies and treatments for it?</div>
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More on this subject in the <a href=" https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/08/no-more-heroes.html"><span style="color: #674ea7;">next post</span></a>.</div>
Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-81077544031137618602019-06-01T04:32:00.011-07:002021-09-03T08:23:22.994-07:00Life By AutocueAs outlined in the <a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/05/hows-it-going.html"><span style="color: #cc0000;">previous post</span></a>, it can be tricky to fully know what the mind is up to, moment to moment, as life unfolds in its typically novel, mundane, stimulating and ambiguous ways.<br />
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Investigating this process through mindfulness reveals intriguing truths about the behaviour of the mind. Many mental responses, such as reactivity to perceived threats, are hardwired. Learned habits and tendencies can seem equally fixed. Through practising awareness, we come to realise that we routinely operate in automatic ways.<br />
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Automaticity is not a bad thing. It confers advantages through allowing mental attention to dexterously flit to phenomena unrelated to the task-in-hand. Hence we can walk down a street <i>and</i> fiddle on our phones <i>and</i> make plans for next week because the act of walking down a street is not something we need to figure out or perfect anymore.<br />
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<b>Here We Are Now, Entertain Us</b><br />
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The downside to automaticity is that we fail to show up for the occasion of our own lives and so rob ourselves of its innate vividness and many of its joys. You probably know the experience (retrospectively at least) of becoming so distracted that you lose all sense of what happens next, only to ‘come to’ sometime later.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga7IeXW9ibOoT4QeVk-CAlG9XLMOarBa9WDoRcV09v8GolBuCn5T8psoIUSVy12YEGGamoToJoapjrgbDgBqKy6zdj0Y99JvDjfD8mlsyUOBfEY6ari3P5eWcpjOVRwV8f-FIA_rZZ9vU/s1600/Phone.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="312" data-original-width="320" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga7IeXW9ibOoT4QeVk-CAlG9XLMOarBa9WDoRcV09v8GolBuCn5T8psoIUSVy12YEGGamoToJoapjrgbDgBqKy6zdj0Y99JvDjfD8mlsyUOBfEY6ari3P5eWcpjOVRwV8f-FIA_rZZ9vU/s200/Phone.JPG" width="200" /></a>The potential for profound disconnection from present moment experience is all the greater in this age of the internet and social media. With powerful technologies at our fingertips, we are encouraged and seduced into consuming information speedily and superficially. How our minds love to skim vast directories of language and inexhaustible banks of imagery in their quest for instant gratification.<br />
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Even when we are relatively undistracted and alive to our sensory experience, it is easy for our minds to unconsciously react to a flutter of boredom, a pang of desire or an unpleasant sensation and, before we know it, our fingers are swiping screens and our eyes or ears are glued to some arbitrary object in a virtual world. Before smartphones came along, the possibilities for such mental hijacking weren’t quite so endless.<br />
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<b>Non-Superficiality</b><br />
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When we get distracted, we act without awareness of acting, that is, we do not see and comprehend what is happening as it is happening. Often it goes something like this: a subtle feeling arises, either pleasant or unpleasant (e.g. sensual desire, boredom, restlessness) => the mind reacts by seeking to either maintain or build up the feeling (if it’s pleasant) or to flee from or get rid of the feeling (if it’s unpleasant) => the reaction conditions a behaviour, such as the physical act of reaching for a phone or the mental act of going into thought and fantasy.<br />
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By contrast, when there is an awareness of the initial feeling, this chain reaction does not happen in the same way. The mind does not run off. It stays with the felt experience. Blind reactivity abates. Ensuing actions arise out of clear intentions. There is a sense of stability and agency.<br />
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This is mindfulness: the ability to stay with experience for a prolonged time, and to really investigate it in detail. It is the opposite of distractedness. In fact, one of the classical characterisations of mindfulness (from the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhidhamma_Piṭaka" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">Abhidhamma</span></a></i>, an early collection of teachings in the Buddhist tradition) is ‘non-superficiality’. This is the understanding of how mindfulness does not skim over the surface or ascertain in a shallow way. It sinks into an object and facilitates a deeper knowing of it.<br />
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When you are mindful, experience deepens. This is a natural capacity you have, which is cultivated through practice. It is a lot more likely to happen when your phone is switched off.Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-83856648317002470762019-05-01T04:24:00.001-07:002021-07-30T02:19:07.986-07:00How’s It Going?Can you recall, in precise detail, everything that happened for you in the moments just before you started reading this? The mental flowchart of choice-making and intention? The spontaneous co-ordination of your senses? The myriad micro-movements of your body’s muscles, tendons and ligaments?<br />
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Probably not. Even if you <i>think</i> you can, try extending the same question to the last five minutes of your life, which will appear as a blur of changing moments, some of which you may be able to account for, but many of which you won’t.<br />
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This is quite normal. Life flows. It's always changing. We have an experience. We remember bits of it. Mostly we don’t. Most of what happens vanishes like a dream. We like to think we are in charge of our experience when, in fact, minds are running on auto-pilot much of the time, rendering us oblivious to such facts of existence. Becoming clearer about this – getting real about it – is a central project of mindfulness practice.<br />
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<b>You Are Reading This</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkM4_d_VOOBlYEM46ds_dfZ_gHF_O0gAqD4FB5g-HOHVjtHOLR1by9VZS0BEBE5RIOhm_bYAmluR8ML635NQEwhPRNaUE2WY8V1KT69UVLwZCULwmltx5i86_MEqKCMZQVMVv67KtzN0Q/s1600/Image0340.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkM4_d_VOOBlYEM46ds_dfZ_gHF_O0gAqD4FB5g-HOHVjtHOLR1by9VZS0BEBE5RIOhm_bYAmluR8ML635NQEwhPRNaUE2WY8V1KT69UVLwZCULwmltx5i86_MEqKCMZQVMVv67KtzN0Q/w320-h240/Image0340.jpg" width="320" /></a>Consider, for example, your experience of reading this blog. Have there been occasions when you’ve noticed that, although you thought you were reading the words and taking them in, your attention had wandered to something else entirely? And then you realized that you couldn’t remember the last bit you read?<br />
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Perhaps you decided to retrace your steps. Maybe you went back a few words or lines and read them again, only to discover that they were vaguely familiar? If you did, well spotted for noticing that your mind had wandered in the first place.<br />
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Here’s what happened. You definitely <i>experienced</i> those words, otherwise they would not be familiar, right? But you weren’t aware of them. Experience and awareness are different. The word ‘experience’ comes from the Latin <i>experiri</i>, meaning ‘to try’. The word ‘awareness’ comes from the Greek <i>horan</i>, which means ‘to see’.<br />
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Experience implies participating in an event while awareness implies an observation, or overview, of that participation. So, on one level, you engaged with those ‘missing’ words but, on another level, you didn’t. During those moments, the aware part of you failed to show up. This is mindlessness in action.<br />
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By contrast, that moment you ‘woke up’ to the fact that you had drifted, you assumed a position of both participant and observer. This is mindfulness in action.<br />
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Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-57220958165447109992019-04-01T03:11:00.005-07:002021-07-30T02:18:36.760-07:00The Social Value of Mindfulness (II)There is something inherently conscientious about mindfulness. Practitioners often spontaneously clarify or develop ethical sensibilities despite having no prior intellectual knowledge of this side-effect of practice. Such experiences reflect pre-modern formulations of mindfulness.<br />
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The English word ‘mindfulness’ is a rendering of the ancient Indian term <i>sati</i> (more on that <a href="http://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2018/01/past-connections.html" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">here</font></a>), which means ‘recollection’. To recollect, expressed in the negative, is to be non-forgetful and non-distracted. The implication is that <i>sati</i> denotes the empowering of qualities of alertness and care.<br />
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This is neatly encapsulated in the Buddhist <a href="http://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-inner-gatekeeper.html" target="_blank"><font color="#7b1fa2">simile of the gatekeeper</font></a>. A gatekeeper needs to be watchful and diligent in order to do the job. The job here is understood to be ‘guarding’ the mind, that is, being circumspect with what is passing through the mind, what is being constructed in the mind and what the effects of this will be.<br />
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Such a gatekeeper is envisioned as a sort of naturally wise, ethically sensitive, health and safety officer, who helps to keep out the foolishness and carelessness we are prone to while granting ready access to all the beneficial and wholesome mental qualities at our disposal.<br />
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<b>Heedfulness</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7f28OTHFixffPhmmi-c53mpE7lpjBSHBtYsYeDULHQnosPl5A7twNskkoMQFgi4EMVjI5AkcaN5AYGSQw1ES-qYDahTKIOKmgJLUkem6YQLskjWPtz4qtf0djJ3ueQV8TssTWFjzaTzw/s1600/IMG_1269.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7f28OTHFixffPhmmi-c53mpE7lpjBSHBtYsYeDULHQnosPl5A7twNskkoMQFgi4EMVjI5AkcaN5AYGSQw1ES-qYDahTKIOKmgJLUkem6YQLskjWPtz4qtf0djJ3ueQV8TssTWFjzaTzw/w320-h240/IMG_1269.JPG" width="320" /></a>In Buddhist psychology, conducting one’s life in a resolutely mindful fashion is called <i>appamada</i>, which translates as ‘non-neglect or non-absence of <i>sati</i>’ or, expressed in its positive, ‘heedfulness’. <i>Sati</i>, established as <i>appamada</i>, is understood to have a social as well as an individual value – others necessarily benefit from one’s own practice of mindfulness.<br />
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How so? By being aware of one’s motives, thoughts, words and deeds, and their impact of oneself and others, one becomes clearer about what needs to be done, and what should be left undone. That is, one begins to relate to life appropriately by making clear ethical choices. One becomes more ‘response-able’.<br />
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Such a comprehensive taking care of life is what links mindfulness organically to friendliness – the willingness to move close to, respect and connect with. Whatever shows up, we breathe with it, respond intentionally, observe what happens, and learn from the experience.<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/03/"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Click here for Part 1.</span></a><br />
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</div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4482232850173191680.post-8821661646004271312019-03-01T03:06:00.003-08:002021-07-30T02:18:07.871-07:00The Social Value of Mindfulness (I)Sometimes touched upon in contemporary training courses, but more often ignored or overlooked, is the ethical dimension of mindfulness. What, you might ask, has individual mind-training and solitary meditation got to do with ethical action?<br />
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In its simplest sense, to meditate is to develop your capacity to be on better terms with yourself. The intention, therefore, is to empower a harmonious and authentic relationship with one’s psycho-physical organism. Meditation is a friendly activity directed towards oneself.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnh9XvorbYX2gSDBOHkqXS1SA6CBi0EatXmTUvWwuE157Co4a7puUMcLAnJ8gLcKNXc0d8-0Q7arrQEQUj1sRPm3ZRFqNPCXxyMzUpd-zhIpacbK0PdCa53hUhbZqOnbrrnqeBWyiqyj0/s1600/Social+value+1.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnh9XvorbYX2gSDBOHkqXS1SA6CBi0EatXmTUvWwuE157Co4a7puUMcLAnJ8gLcKNXc0d8-0Q7arrQEQUj1sRPm3ZRFqNPCXxyMzUpd-zhIpacbK0PdCa53hUhbZqOnbrrnqeBWyiqyj0/w240-h320/Social+value+1.JPG" width="240" /></a>Similarly, regardless of whatever you’re doing the rest of the time, while you are meditating you are neither engaging in nor intending to harm anyone or anything else. Meditation is, even by this minimal measure, a friendly activity towards other beings.<br />
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But the ethical dimension of practice goes much deeper. When we pay close attention to our experience, we invariably begin to discover more about the many shades of our mind, some of which are not so bright – the selfish impulses, the harsh judgements and distasteful prejudices that trickle through it and, indeed, cloud over it.<br />
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Guilt, shame, animosity, resentment, fear and hate… Oh yes, the whole toxic emotional cocktail resides within! Can we be honest, at least with ourselves, about that? Can we be on friendly terms with it all? Being honest and being friendly are what this practice patiently demands of us.<br />
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<b>Cause and Effect</b><br />
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The intimacy of meditation can bring into stark profile the confusion, not to mention moral ambivalence, of the average human mind – all those “should I or shouldn’t I?” questions that nibble at the conscience.<br />
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As we pay attention, we begin to see and feel how certain movements in the mind, or the recollection of past actions and styles of behaviour, create mental disturbance in the here-and-now. We can experience this presently and directly in meditation.<br />
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The paradox is that such an experience is liberating. We become more attuned to cause and effect – how the way we act affects our mind, and vice versa. This leads to making healthy, skilful choices or, at least, to minimizing the painful impact of selfish, ignorant ones. We might already know, in our heads, that it is difficult to have a peaceful meditation practice if we are heavily invested in lying, stealing and abusing others. But to know that in our hearts is revolutionary.<br />
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In this way, the influence of mindful awareness extends from the solitude of formal meditation to quietly effecting change in the world. Behaviours adjust naturally towards the benign. Minds gravitate naturally towards the skilful. We come to realise, beyond doubt, that acting in friendly, fair and compassionate ways is better for everyone, including ourselves.<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://sweepingthepath.blogspot.com/2019/04/"><span style="color: #674ea7;">Click here for Part 2.</span></a><br />
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</div>Richard Gilpinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03950131524398396091noreply@blogger.com