There is a story about Sylvia Boorstein, who once asked an Asian scholar-monk, who had been studying the dharma for many decades, if he could encompass the teachings in one sentence, what it would be. The bhikkhu promptly replied: "Know what you're doing."
Another story: Joseph Goldstein was teaching a retreat and a young man came to him and said something like, "My shoulders are so tight and I know it's because of my job and my relationship..." and on and on and on. Joseph said, "You mean your shoulders are tight." "Yes," replied the student, and then launched into a historical analysis of what in his childhood and young adulthood might have lead to such a state of being. Joseph replied, "You mean your shoulders are tight." Apparently this exchange went on for quite a while until the young man suddenly realized the truth in what Joseph was saying: what was really happening was that he was experiencing a tightness in his shoulders and that was all. The rest is what in Buddhist circles is known as "proliferation", an attempt to explain, analyze, justify and solve what is happening. It's not hard to see that awareness of the physical sensation is the work of consciousness and proliferation the work of the overactive mind.
Mindfulness is this simple knowing. What the mind doesn't understand is that all the explanations in the world are unlikely to be helpful in finding peace and deep awareness. On the contrary, when we are busy 'splainin' (as Ricky Ricardo would say), awareness has no chance to enter in. Much of modern psychology reinforces this misconception by promoting the idea that we must dig down deep and find the sources of our neuroses before they can be "cured". This is dubious advice, if only because the sources may well be buried so deep in our psyches that all the mining in the world would never bring that ore to the surface. It is also doubtful that this is a useful exercise in any case. To assign blame or responsibility, you have no doubt noticed, is no path to healing.
The Buddha's answer was bare attention, the cultivation of thoroughly knowing what is happening in this moment. "Bare Attention," writes Nyanaponika Thera in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, "...allows things to speak for themselves, without interruption by final verdicts pronounced too hastily. Bare Attention gives them a chance to finish their speaking, and one will thus get to learn that, in fact, they have much to say about themselves, which formerly was mostly ignored by rashness or was drowned in the inner and outer noise in which ordinary man normally lives."
Another story: Joseph Goldstein was teaching a retreat and a young man came to him and said something like, "My shoulders are so tight and I know it's because of my job and my relationship..." and on and on and on. Joseph said, "You mean your shoulders are tight." "Yes," replied the student, and then launched into a historical analysis of what in his childhood and young adulthood might have lead to such a state of being. Joseph replied, "You mean your shoulders are tight." Apparently this exchange went on for quite a while until the young man suddenly realized the truth in what Joseph was saying: what was really happening was that he was experiencing a tightness in his shoulders and that was all. The rest is what in Buddhist circles is known as "proliferation", an attempt to explain, analyze, justify and solve what is happening. It's not hard to see that awareness of the physical sensation is the work of consciousness and proliferation the work of the overactive mind.
Mindfulness is this simple knowing. What the mind doesn't understand is that all the explanations in the world are unlikely to be helpful in finding peace and deep awareness. On the contrary, when we are busy 'splainin' (as Ricky Ricardo would say), awareness has no chance to enter in. Much of modern psychology reinforces this misconception by promoting the idea that we must dig down deep and find the sources of our neuroses before they can be "cured". This is dubious advice, if only because the sources may well be buried so deep in our psyches that all the mining in the world would never bring that ore to the surface. It is also doubtful that this is a useful exercise in any case. To assign blame or responsibility, you have no doubt noticed, is no path to healing.
The Buddha's answer was bare attention, the cultivation of thoroughly knowing what is happening in this moment. "Bare Attention," writes Nyanaponika Thera in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, "...allows things to speak for themselves, without interruption by final verdicts pronounced too hastily. Bare Attention gives them a chance to finish their speaking, and one will thus get to learn that, in fact, they have much to say about themselves, which formerly was mostly ignored by rashness or was drowned in the inner and outer noise in which ordinary man normally lives."
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