How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [1]
WHAT IS MINDFULNESS AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
In recent years, interest in mindfulness has grown enormously among researchers, psychologists, physicians, educators, and among the general public. There’s now a significant body of scientific research indicating the benefits of mindfulness for mental and physical health. But what exactly do we mean by “mindfulness”?
Here’s the definition I like to use:
Mindfulness is deliberately paying full attention to what is happening around you and within you—in your body, heart, and mind. Mindfulness is awareness without criticism or judgment.
Sometimes we are mindful, and sometimes we are not. A good example is paying attention to your hands on the steering wheel of a car. Remember when you were first learning to drive, and how the car wobbled and wove its way along the road as your hands clumsily jerked the wheel back and forth, correcting and overcorrecting? You were wide awake, completely focused on the mechanics of driving. After a while your hands learned to steer well, making subtle and automatic adjustments. You could keep the car moving smoothly ahead without paying any conscious attention to your hands. You could drive, talk, eat, and listen to the radio, all at the same time.
Thus arises the experience we have all had, of driving on automatic pilot. You open the car door, search for your keys, back carefully out of the driveway, and . . . you pull into the parking garage at work. Wait a minute! What happened to twenty miles and forty minutes between house and job? Were the lights red or green? Your mind took a vacation, in some pleasant or distressing realm, as your body deftly maneuvered your car through flowing traffic and stoplights, suddenly awakening as you arrived at your destination.
Is that bad? It’s not bad in the sense of something you should feel ashamed or guilty about. If you are able to drive to work on autopilot for years without having an accident, that’s pretty skillful! We could say that it’s sad, though, because when we spend a lot of time with our body doing one thing while our mind is on vacation somewhere else, it means that we aren’t really present for much of our life. When we aren’t present, it makes us feel vaguely but persistently dissatisfied. This sense of dissatisfaction, of a gap between us and everything and everyone else, is the essential problem of human life. It leads to those moments when we are pierced with a feeling of deep doubt and loneliness.
The Buddha called it the First Truth: the fact that every person will at some time experience this kind of distress. There are many happy moments in our lives, of course, but when our friends go home, when we are lonely or tired, when we feel disappointed or sad or betrayed, then dissatisfaction and unhappiness emerge once again.
We all try over-the-counter remedies—food, drugs, sex, overwork, alcohol, movies, shopping, gambling—to relieve the pain of ordinary life as a human being. All of these remedies work for a little while, but most of them have side effects—such as being in debt, blacking out, getting arrested, or losing someone we love—so they only increase our distress in the long run.
The labels on over-the-counter remedies say, “For temporary relief of symptoms only. If symptoms persist, see your doctor.” Over the course of many years I have found one reliable remedy for the relief of recurrent discomfort and unhappiness. I have prescribed it for myself and for many other people, with excellent results. It is regular mindfulness practice.
Much of our dissatisfaction with life will disappear, and many simple joys will emerge,