Jumping 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 Mindful Escapes, the BBC’s “bold new genre” 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!

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. 

Reality Check

Image courtesy of Michael Leunig

Narrator Andy Puddicombe, who is an influential figure in the meditation business courtesy of Headspace, claims that Mindful Escapes 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 jhana experience? Or perhaps some kind of tech-induced altered state – like in the movie Videodrome but without the brain tumours? Well, it didn’t work for me (or anyone else I know). 

If Mindful Escapes ‘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. 

Tranquillity 2.0

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. Meprobamate 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. 

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. 

The Wisdom of No Escapes

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 non-superficiality. 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. 

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 and outer. 

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 Mindful Escapes 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. 

There is nothing enlivening about Mindful Escapes. 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 touting his ex-Buddhist monk credentials, in the name of mindfulness blew a golden opportunity to back his ex-teacher HH Dalai Lama’s tireless appeal to confront ecological destruction. How depressing that mindfulness, in the mainstream lexicon, can deputise so comfortably for dissociative behaviour.

Free-To-Air Mindfulness

In the context of contemplative practices that conduce to empathy and understanding, Mindful Escapes is a kind of death. It belongs behind glass in the burgeoning museum of McMindfulness. 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. 

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.

Click here for Part 1.

Noble Action

Living 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.

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.

Taking Care of Life

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.

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.

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.

Good Practice Guidelines

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:

• To avoid harming living beings
• To avoid taking what is not freely given
• To avoid causing suffering through sexual behaviour
• To avoid speaking untruths
• To avoid indulging unmindful states through alcohol or drugs.

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.

These five guidelines, expressed above as abstentions, also have a flipside. When lived by, they express themselves in their positive aspect, which are, respectively:

• To act with kindness and compassion
• To act generously
• To practise contentment in one’s relationships
• To communicate truthfully and recognise falsity
• To act mindfully.

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.

From: Mindfulness for Unravelling Anxiety, 2016.

Mindfulness Locked Down (III)

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?

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.

Getting Grounded

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?

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.

Inside Out

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?

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 and fully owning our experience. We can be sensitive and receptive without projecting our fears and aversions onto others. This is the backbone of mindfulness.

Heart of the Practice

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.

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.

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?

Click here for Part 2.

Mindfulness 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 The Plague (1947), “stupidity has a knack of getting its way.”

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, start here).

Enlightening Times

Crises scratch the surface of human existence and reveal what otherwise might be difficult to see.
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.

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.

Joining the Dots

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.

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 our species treats that which it depends on?

Remember This Moment

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).

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.

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.

Click here for Part 3.

The 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.

The English word ‘mindfulness’ is a rendering of the ancient Indian term sati (more on that here), which means ‘recollection’. To recollect, expressed in the negative, is to be non-forgetful and non-distracted. The implication is that sati denotes the empowering of qualities of alertness and care.

This is neatly encapsulated in the Buddhist simile of the gatekeeper. 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.

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.

Heedfulness

In Buddhist psychology, conducting one’s life in a resolutely mindful fashion is called appamada, which translates as ‘non-neglect or non-absence of sati’ or, expressed in its positive, ‘heedfulness’. Sati, established as appamada, is understood to have a social as well as an individual value – others necessarily benefit from one’s own practice of mindfulness.

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’.

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.

Click here for Part 1.

The 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cause and Effect

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.

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.

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.

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.

Click here for Part 2.