Part Two of a 4-part series on developing mindfulness and awareness through the practice of meditation. Start from Part One.
If we are to bring mindfulness and awareness into our life as a basis for a dynamic and self-sufficient healthy living, we need to first explore the meanings of mindfulness and awareness, and why meditation is an effective practice for cultivating them. Definitions are important. I do not have the only or best definitions, but I want you to know what I mean by mindfulness, awareness, and meditation.
Mindfulness
First up, mindfulness. In traditional buddhist meditation, mindful meditation is called shamatha (pronounced: sha-MA-ta) and is defined as calm, or peaceful, abiding. The goal is to cultivate peace, or cease internal struggle. Internal struggle includes our unflagging internal critic who won’t let up, a restlessness that prevents us from being content, or being overwhelmed and controlled by our emotions. Within the meditation tradition, these (and other) experiences are considered a sign that we aren’t able to rest internally.
In shamatha or mindfulness meditation, we cultivate peace primarily through non-engagement with thoughts and emotions. The point isn’t to forcefully stop thoughts, instead we just opt out, like letting the kids run around in the yard until they’re tired. We don’t have to get out there and run with them; they’ll end up breathless on their own. Instead of engaging with thoughts or emotions, we place our attention on the breath and engage with the experience and sensations of breathing. We allow our thoughts and emotions to subside on their own.
So let’s define mindfulness as “the capacity to remain still, non-reactive, and abide with our present experience”.
Awareness
Awareness is cultivated through vipashyana (vi-PA-sha-na) or vipassana meditation, which is defined as clear-seeing. The goal is accurate perception of the world. Perception does not mean arriving at the correct conceptual conclusion, it means literally engaging and waking up our senses. Interacting with the world through the heavy filter of concepts insulates us from perceiving clearly, appreciating fully, and reacting appropriately.
We cultivate clear perception in vipashyana meditation through contemplation and exploring our sensory experience with precision and curiosity. We attempt to get beneath our concepts and explore the direct sensory experience that underlies those concepts. For example, we may have a tight back. Instead of engaging at the level of ‘tight back’, we drop below that concept to the actual physical experience. Or, we unhurriedly observe the room and instead of seeing ‘book’, ‘table’, or ‘window’, we notice the color, shape, size, and brightness of what we see.
Let’s define awareness as “the capacity to experience ourselves and our world freshly, precisely, and unfiltered by concepts”.
Meditation
Mindfulness and awareness support one another. Mindfulness anchors awareness and awareness puts mindfulness into action. If we tried to explore our senses without the capacity to remain still, we might just further distract and confuse ourselves. If we tried to only be still and never raise our gaze, the bright, loud, and hot (or cold) world destabilizes us and we cannot connect the calm of our practice with the activity of living.
Sitting meditation practice acts as a training ground for strengthening mindfulness and awareness. It is exercise for our mind. We readily accept that in order to be in good physical shape, we need to exercise, and yet we often don’t take the same approach towards our minds. Much of the time we just hope to feel focused or happy, and if we don’t we wonder why. Meditation is a powerful way to build mindfulness and awareness; the basic ingredients for feeling healthy, happy, and energized in your life.
And yet, practice can easily become just another thing we have to do and when we don’t, another reason to beat up on ourselves. Or, we can encounter surprising or difficult experiences in our journey. We have to approach meditation as making friends with ourselves, the topic of Part 3 of our series.
Part 3: Making Friends with Yourself: How to Build an Enduring Meditation Practice