Sat, 28 Jun 2008
Mindfulness and Awareness
Brad kicked up a fuss on his blog by criticizing the misuse of the term mindfulness in Buddhist circles. That was a month ago, but the subject has stuck with me, so I'm going to say something about it. The Sanskrit word for mindfulness actually means remembering. The real meaning of mindfulness is reminding yourself of something. In the context of meditation practice, this mean reminding yourself of the object of meditation when your attention slips: "Oh, I'm supposed to be watching my breath. Let's do that again." Outside of meditation, it usually means reminding yourself of the precepts you've taken. When one of your actions goes against the precepts, you should notice that.
Somehow the notion of being mindful during meditation practice got confused and turned into the concept of being in the moment. This is closer to the Buddhist concept of awareness. Traditionally, awareness notices you have strayed from the object of meditation and mindfulness returns you to it. So if people confuse the two, it seems not much harm would be done, except for one point. And that is that awareness can't be forced. Trying to be aware is like trying not to be nervous. It's likely to turn out badly. Instead, one has to see what awareness is. This goes to the heart of what mahamudra and dzogchen are about. I'm not competent to speak about it much, so I'll just point out the problem. Trying to be mindful in the sense that most people mean it is just piling pretense on top of pretense.
