Poetry in one form or another has been used within contemplative practice as a literary tool for spiritual inquiry, as a pathway for deeper understanding and insight into oneself and reality. Secular mindfulness, having its roots within Buddhist contemplative practice, has also made use of poetry since its inception as an intervention to promote psychological well-being.

However, the poems used are not usually written or inspired out of mindfulness meditation practice. Poems used are usually from established literary authors whose poems might touch on the theme of mindfulness, but not specifically written for it. One good example of this is the poem “Wild Geese”, which is widely used in mindfulness sessions.

As a mindfulness teacher, I have always struggled with this and many times refrained from using these poems in mindfulness sessions for the simple reason that, although they do help, I still feel they are lacking something and do not neatly fit the purpose simply because they were not written with this purpose in mind or inspired out of mindfulness practice.

I always get this sense that, however beautiful they might be, borrowed poems do not quite capture the specificity of mindfulness practice.

How could this be changed?

The idea is to create poems that are also experiential maps – one example of how this could be done is by offering specific phenomenological guidance with simple phrases like “feel the feet upon the ground” - rather than just simply being inspirational. For me, when it comes to using poetry for contemplative practice, the latter is much more important.

Because of this, starting about a year ago, I have been writing poems that emerged or were inspired by my mindfulness practice and teachings, as an experimental body of work. You could say that my intention is that of crafting what we might term “mindfulness poetry”, some of which I have posted on Substack.

By doing this, I hope to offer a tool to other mindfulness teachers and practitioners as a direct literary tool which’s aim is to aid in self-reflection through poems that directly mirror the processes and experiences, we might encounter in mindfulness practice and the broader implications for poetry in secular mindfulness as an intervention for psychological wellbeing.

To illustrate this approach, I will be sharing with you the latest poem I wrote, “It’s OK – It’s OK”, followed by the process I went through in writing this poem and how it emerged from my mindfulness practice. The poem “It’s OK – It’s OK” goes as follows:

As moments rush through me passing by,  
When thoughts cascade like torrential rain,  
When judgment clouds the mind's eye,  
And the breath feels like it's caught in chains—  
It's OK to pause amidst the noise.

It's OK to take a breath,  
To feel the feet upon the ground,  
To notice the breath as it still flows,  
Sometimes fast, sometimes slow—  
It's OK to take a pause.

Thoughts might tug away at you, as they do;  
The mind will wander, as minds do.  
Thinking tends to arise from thought.  
It's OK to notice this, just as it is,  
And guide attention back to what is.

Some days, this comes with ease,  
Senses open, mind at rest.  
Some days, the practice seems to tease,  
With restless thoughts that won't digress—  
Both paths remind us: it's OK.

As perfection is not the goal,  
In attending, moment by moment, to our soul.  
Open to all parts as things come and go,  
No need to comment on what's right or wrong—  
It's OK to let this go.

So as I sit within this space,  
Holding myself with a gentle grace,  
Noticing what arises without fear.  
Clouds of judgment seem to disappear—  
For in this moment, as I sit here, I might notice  
It's OK to let go of this judgmental fear.

Origins in Personal Practice

This poem was a direct reflection of challenges I periodically encounter in my mindfulness practice. This especially during periods in my life which might be more stressful or challenging and how they reflect in our mindfulness practice, where in these periods we might notice how the mind is more susceptible to mind wandering into worry, planning, self-criticism or just a sense of inner restlessness.

In moments like these, I find that journaling really helps me. Journaling is considered to be a fundamental practice that mindfulness practitioners are encouraged to engage in (Choden & Regan-Addis, 2018; Neff & Germer, 2018; Stahl & Goldstein, 2019). This poem was a result of this journaling.

So, this poem was not a literary exercise but had its beginnings in what scholars and contemplative practitioners might call contemplative writing. I would define contemplative writing within mindfulness as,

Taking the time to slow down, and bring mindful awareness, to thoughts, feelings, sensations, experiences, and their resulting patterns of behaviours and mind using writing as a tool for self-discovery and understanding. Where the act of writing itself becomes a way to observe and understand one’s inner world.

So, in this context contemplative writing is not about a process of producing a polished work but more about the process of exploring one’s inner landscape and gaining insights through reflecting on one’s inner world through writing (Bach & Alexander, 2015; Miller et al., 2019; Wenger, 2015)

Like formal mindfulness practice, contemplative writing is a practice that encourages us to be present in the moment, paying attention to our thoughts and feelings without judgment. While doing this, I discovered that the act of writing itself can become a form of meditation, where each written line arises from the same quality of attention I was cultivating in mindfulness practice.

The opening stanza might be a direct reflection of this, with lines like “moments rush through me passing by” and “thoughts cascade like torrential rain” portraying imagery of my raw internal environment emerging through direct observation of my own mental states during mindfulness practice.

The power of this imagery is that it is not there to give a theoretical understanding of why this might happen; they are metaphors that are meant to represent lived experience—the actual sensation of being overwhelmed by thoughts and how this might feel. The phrase “breath feels like it’s caught in chains” captures the latter how I feel physically in moments when I am gripped or overwhelmed by thoughts, maybe of worry: being reflected in that sense of tightness in the chest and accompanying anxiety, which sometimes literally restricts breathing or creates that sense of being trapped within one’s body.

In hindsight, what captured my attention was how the writing process and the structure of the poem mirrored the process I went through during the meditation practice. I did not plan to do this as a choice before I started writing. The journey in the poem from agitation to acceptance emerged on its own during the writing process. I did not even need to think about it.

This can be seen in the opening stanzas, which are dense and constrained, reflecting the constricting, sometimes even claustrophobic quality of anxious thinking. The stanzas becoming gradually more spacious in their wording as the poem progressed—mirroring the opening that can occur when we stop fighting against our experience.

“It’s OK”

As I sat down to write the poem, “It’s OK” jumped out immediately as a felt sense. It was as if I was saying to myself, “It’s OK” to have bad days in your practice. This became the central refrain.

There was this felt sense as if I was seeking permission — permission to allow myself to struggle, as the author of “The Gifts of Imperfection”, Brene Brown (2010) would say permission to be imperfect, to allow myself to have an imperfect practice and how embracing these imperfections, which are a reality of life can be liberating.

The repetition of “It’s OK” has this purpose at its core. However, within the phrase “It’s OK” lies also something that is a core foundation element of mindfulness practice - compassion. More specifically, compassion directed towards oneself, what Kristin Neff (2003) terms self-compassion, which has three components to it: 1) mindfulness, 2) common humanity and 3) self-kindness.

Within the poem, this phrase is imbued with these three components, especially the self-kindness one.

The courage to recognise and acknowledge that I was struggling (mindfulness), the recognition that we all struggle and would like to be free from struggles (common humanity), and, most importantly, approaching myself with gentleness, and a kind self-soothing understanding - “It’s OK” (self-kindness).

Research has shown that the sequential application of all these three elements of self-compassion is crucial, as one leads to increases in the other. Dreisoerner et al. (2012) found how mindfulness sets the stage for self-compassion and increased self-kindness, how practising common humanity can further improve self-compassion, reduce over-identification with difficulties and promote self-kindness. However, the researchers noted how training in self-kindness on its own did not.

This research shines a light on the importance of all three components of self-compassion, demonstrating how they mutually enhance each other, with mindfulness being the crucial first step.

I was unconsciously applying all these three principles when allowing myself the space to write the poem through its acknowledging, normalising, kind, and permissive tone.

This can all be seen in the stanza “Some days, this comes with ease / Senses open, mind at rest. / Some days, the practice seems to tease, / With restless thoughts that won’t digress”. Putting this into writing was crucial for me as an act of mindful awareness.

How I was struggling with a “perfectionist” notion that mindfulness meditation should be a particular way and that experiencing restlessness or struggling with restless thoughts indicated some form of failure. I found that in hindsight, through the act of writing these lines, I was able to give myself—and hopefully others—the permission to allow myself to experience the full spectrum of my experience in mindfulness practice without judgment.

As per one of the most popular definitions of mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994), how mindfulness is,

“The awareness that arises from paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” (p. 4)

Leading to the line “Thinking tends to arise from thought”, a line that emerged from a moment of clarity in my practice. The realisation of how I was not only observing thoughts but also noticing how one thought can lead to another, creating an endless cycle of ruminative thinking - a chain of endless mental activity.

It made me remember of something I had learnt in insight practice, how thoughts arise on their own, display themselves, and if you do not engage with the thought as it displays itself, it passes away, it self-liberates (Nairn et al., 2019).

This, I find, is a profound observation that I hope that others recognise through the poem—that thinking is simply what minds do, and that this recursive quality is not a problem to be solved but a process to be understood. As expressed within the Mindfulness-based Living Course, how it is within the nature of the mind to have thoughts and if it were not having thoughts, it would not be working well (Choden & Regan-Addis, 2018).

Writing poetry as a contemplative practice

Writing this poem made me reflect on the relationship between mindfulness practice and writing poetry. Hunt (2020) points out how,

“Poetry is synonymous with the art of mindfulness. It is a meditation in which one learns to accept things for both what they are and what they are not readily seen as. With each poem that is birthed, the author experiences a removal of self. This sort of transformation is highlighted through the examination of poetry in light of Buddhist and Daoist practice via the poems of T’ang poet Han Shan.” (p. 1)

I find that writing poetry requires a deep contact with a present-focused, open, caring attention to my inner landscape. It demands what in mindfulness we call shifting into “being mode.” Chavis (2013) writes how,

“With their alchemy of adjoining words, poems jolt us with illuminating surprises, and in doing so, increase our awareness of who we are and how we relate to others.” (p. 160)

And this jolt helped me step back to what in mindfulness we call “decentring” from our experience, the ability to see thoughts as just thoughts, as temporary events. Or, as we say in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, we come to the realisation that “thoughts are not facts.”

Overall, the writing process I went through in writing this poem became part and parcel of my sitting practice—an extension in which I could continue to explore my inner experience beyond the formal mindfulness meditation practice.

In hindsight, writing this poem as a process was important for me, as it helped me slow down, to take a pause—a kind of literary breathing space. As I read through the poem, I feel it time and again giving me this pause, which I hope the reader also experiences. A pause might help in moving from agitation to acceptance.

A pause in which we can let go of perfection and as the lines in the penultimate stanza portray how letting go of perfection in our practice can help us “In attending, moment by moment to our soul” and to “Open to all parts as things come and go” can be a movement in the act of what Tara Brach (2020) calls radical acceptance,

“Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart.” (p. 26)

The final stanza represents this movement with the progression from “sitting within this space” to “Holding myself with a gentle grace” to the phrase “Clouds of judgment seem to disappear” as the stanza ends, we might notice that “It’s OK to let go of this judgmental fear,” giving us as Tara Brach (2020) would say,

“The willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as they are.” (p. 4)

A Pause for You

If this exploration of mindfulness poetry resonated with you, I invite you to try contemplative writing for yourself. Set aside 10 minutes after your next meditation session. Without editing or judging, simply write what arises—perhaps starting with “It’s OK...” and seeing where it leads.

I’d love to hear about your experience. Leave a comment below sharing what emerged, or simply let me know if this approach speaks to you.

If you found this helpful, consider sharing this post with other mindfulness practitioners or teachers who might benefit from exploring poetry as contemplative practice.

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References

Bach, D. J., & Alexander, J. (2015). Contemplative approaches to reading and writing: Cultivating choice, connectedness, and wholeheartedness in the critical humanities. Journal of Contemplative Inquiry, 2(1), 1-21. Retrieved from https://digscholarship.unco.edu/joci/vol2/iss1/1/

Brach, T. (2020). Radical acceptance: Embracing your life with the heart of a Buddha (Reprint ed.). New York, NY: Random House USA Inc.

Brown, B. (2010). The gifts of imperfection: Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be and embrace who you are. Centre City, MN: Hazelden.

Chavis, G. G. (2013). Looking out and looking in: Journeys to self-awareness and empathy through creative juxtapositions. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 25(3), 159-167. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08893675.2013.823312

Choden, & Regan-Addis, H. (2018). Mindfulness-based living course. New Alresford: John Hunt Publishing.

Dreisoerner, A., Junker, N. M., & van Dick, R. (2021). The relationship among the components of self-compassion: A pilot study using a compassionate writing intervention to enhance self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. Journal of Happiness Studies, 22, 21-47. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-019-00217-4

Hunt, E. (2020). Poetry as meditation: Buddhism, Daoism, and Han Shan. An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy, 8(1), 1-9. Retrieved from ttps://commons.emich.edu/ac/vol8/iss1/3

Miller, M., Kinane, L., & Kinane, K. (2019). Contemplative writing across the disciplines. Across the Disciplines, 60(1), 1-5. doi:https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2019.16.1.01

Nairn, R., Choden, & Regan-Addis, H. (2019). From mindfulness to insight: Meditations to release your habitual thinking and activate your inherent wisdom. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications Inc.

Neff, K. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85-101. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860309032

Neff, K., & Germer, C. (2018). The self-compassion workbook: A proven way to accept yourself, build inner strength, and thrive. New York, NY: Guilford Publications.

Stahl, B., & Goldstein, E. (2019). A mindfulness-based stress reduction workbook (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Wenger, C. I. (2015). Yoga minds, writing bodies: Contemplative writing pedagogy. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.

One of the fundamental qualities of Mindfulness is that it emerges and operates through a direct contact with “emergent experience” within the present moment. Essentially, it is a quality of awareness that everyone has that can be accessed and only found in the immediate “now” of human experience. We could say that, “There is no yesterday’s, today’s, or tomorrow’s mindfulness.” What does this mean?

First, let us start by breaking down what is meant by the term "emergent experience."

What is “emergent experience”?

“Emergent experience" refers to the notion that consciousness is continually arising anew in response to each moment; how it is not static but continually changing in response to changing conditions (Thompson, 2010).

Emergent here is key. Why? It is pointing to us how our conscious experience is not pre-formed or pre-existing but rather comes into being through contact with “the world” through a dynamic process of sensory inputs, the mental activity this gives rise to, and awareness of this itself. As Kramer (2012) put it,

“Emergence refers to the process by which the complex things we experience arise spontaneously from underlying contributing factors.” (ch. 14, para. 2)

In their work on embodied cognition, Varela et al. (2017) articulate how experience is not a product but a process continuously arising through a direct embodied engagement with the world. They called this enacted cognition.

We might also argue how viewing experience as emergent might find parallels with the Buddhist concept of dependent arising or dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda). It talks about the interdependent nature of phenomena and how they co-arise. It describes how phenomena cannot have an independent existence but arise out of a multitude of causes and conditions that are linked to each other, and how one gives rise to another (Williams & Tribe, 2000).

Mindfulness practice aims to lay bare this emergent nature of experience, revealing the uniqueness of each moment and how it cannot be reproduced. This irreproducibility stems from the fact that each moment has countless contributing factors that shape and give rise to it. Because of this experience cannot be reduced to any one single factor.

Beyond time: The timeless nature of mindful awareness

In a commentary, Kabat-Zinn (2003) wrote on mindfulness-based interventions, he points out how mindfulness involves attending to the unfolding of experience moment by moment, recognising how each moment arises out of a complex interplay of causes and conditions that influence each other. He comments on how mindfulness is,

“The awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.” (ibid., p. 145)

This recognition of experience as constantly emerging rather than being fixed or stable is foundational for understanding why mindfulness as a quality of awareness can only be found in the immediate present through a direct contact with what we are experiencing right now in this moment.

This then takes us to our statement, "there is no yesterday’s, today’s, or tomorrow’s mindfulness." It is a contemplative statement on the nature of mindfulness as a quality of awareness and its relationship to time. It exists and emerges only through a direct, unimpeded contact with “emergent” present moment experience; it is not something static but ever-moving, dynamic, and changing.

It is not something that can be delayed till tomorrow or grasped out of yesterday’s experience, or dare I even say something that belongs to “today” as these are just labels that would act as concepts that would come in the way of its ever-moving, dynamic, and changing nature. If we break it down:

"There is no yesterday's mindfulness" – It is not something that you can experience or retrieve from the past or through revisiting past experiences or memories. That experience is gone, and the unaltered awareness of it is gone too; it only existed in that moment.

"There is no today's mindfulness" - Labelling “mindful awareness” as something belonging to "today" can create a conceptual framework that separates it from its dynamic nature; mindfulness transcends the notion of "today’ it is ever present and pervasive yet fluid and dynamic.

"There is no tomorrow's mindfulness" – In truth, mindfulness as a quality of awareness emergent from momentary experience cannot be done in advance or postponed to a future date. It cannot be scheduled or saved for later.

This three-point breakdown points to something fundamental when it comes to mindfulness as a quality of awareness; it is something that exists beyond and transcends the very concept of time as we conventionally understand it.

As western “secular mindfulness” historically emerged from Buddhism, when we begin to see this, it points to one of the core contemplative Buddhist teachings on the three marks of existence, that of impermanence (anicca), and how the present moment is constantly unfolding (Gethin, 1998; Kabat-Zinn, 2011).

The present moment is never static—it is an unfolding and transforming process of emergent “moments”, one moment leading to the next. So, attempting to capture mindfulness within temporal boundaries is a reflection of a habitual tendency to conceptualise experience rather than directly engage with it, which in the end merely obstructs contact with reality as it is.

So, when we try to place mindfulness within the construct of time (yesterday, today, tomorrow), there is a shift into thinking about it conceptually rather than experiencing it directly. This conceptual shift, while useful for discussing mindfulness as I am also doing right now while writing about it, can also become an obstacle to embodying mindfulness, the very awareness we seek to cultivate.

So, although we all have the capacity for mindfulness, it is not something we possess, “own”, store or archive. It is an ongoing process of present-moment awareness that exists outside the bounds of our normal time-bound thinking. The moment we label it or try to contain it within time boundaries, we've stepped away from true mindfulness. It is so subtle you might be using it right now and not even aware of it, as Gunaratana (2011) put it:

“Mindfulness is a subtle process that you are using at this very moment. The fact that this process lies above and beyond words does not make it unreal -- quite the reverse. Mindfulness is the reality which gives rise to words -- the words that follow are simply pale shadows of reality.” (p. 131)

The present moment paradox

This leads me to reflect on what authors and teachers of mindfulness like Gunaratana (2012) and Kabat-Zinn (2015) have written about, how the transformative qualities of mindfulness—compassion, joy, kindness, and equanimity—are not something that can be cultivated through thinking about them but are cultivated through a real-time active engagement with life. This is usually considered one of the main distinguishing features of mindfulness when compared with other psychological interventions or spiritual approaches.

This presents to us a problem because there is a tendency to engage with mindfulness practice with goals set with future oriented mindset like - reducing stress, improving concentration/focus – Yet the very practice of mindfulness asks us to abandon this future goal-oriented approach and just meet ourselves as we are right now whether we are stressed, restless, distracted or anxious.

This always reminds me of a research article on the theme of spiritual superiority and narcissism by Vong and Visser (2021) where they comment the following,

“The 'genuine' spiritual path is nothing more or less than becoming awake: directly in touch with reality as it is right here and now, including qualities we do not like. The very starting point that something must be fixed or changed, that one needs to get away from here to a better situation, merely obscures contact with this reality. And yet, spiritual trainings often carry the hedonistic promise of improving our impact, creativity, confidence, focus, listening skills, stress resistance, eating habits, or happiness altogether. Trainees may have the goal to alleviate suffering, become inspiring leaders, keep their heads cool amidst their busy day-to-day dynamics, cope with loss, ruminate less, sleep better—all motives that are materialistic… and stem from being displeased with present reality” (p. 153).

Having said that, it is because of this “immediate nature” that mindfulness as an approach offers a unique framework for approaching and holding in balanced awareness our inner landscape at any one moment while simultaneously engaging with the world around us through that balanced mindset.

Research has incrementally found how this balanced dual awareness—internal and external—helps activate and strengthen neural networks associated with improving self-regulation and social connection (Farb & Segal, 2024; Siegel, 2020). This strengthens the argument for how the experiential present-centred nature of mindfulness can act as a connecting bridge between our internal states, our environment and our relationships with others.

Still, I do not totally agree with Vong and Visser's (2020) statement as I believe we do need a “purpose” or, more appropriately, an intention for practising. But this intention is not a goal; it is a knowing of why we are practising and our motivation for practising. So, rather than a goal intention in mindfulness is more of a direction of travel rather than a destination.

On this, Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990) in his acclaimed book “Full Catastrophe Living” wrote when it comes to intentions for practising mindfulness,

“Your intentions set the stage for what is possible. They remind you from moment to moment of why you are practising in the first place” (p. 32).

And a few pages later, he continues,

“I used to think that meditation practice was so powerful... that as long as you did it at all, you would see growth and change. But time has taught me that some kind of personal vision is also necessary. Perhaps it could be a vision of what or who you might be if you were to let go of the fetters of your own mind and the limitations of your own body. This image or ideal will help carry you through the inevitable periods of low motivation and give continuity to your practice. Your vision should be what is most important to you, what you believe is most fundamental to your ability to be your best self, to be at peace with yourself, to be whole.” (p. 46)

The challenge of sustaining presence

However, taking such a path is neither easy nor a quick fix, and the path to maintaining mindfulness is fraught with challenges. Why?

Because, as humans, we have a natural tendency towards forming and defaulting towards automatic patterns of thinking and behaving that are often unhelpful (Kahneman, 2012).

Tara Brach (2020) also points this out in her book “Radical Acceptance,” how humans have this tendency to often fall into what she calls the "trance of unworthiness" - psychological states of struggle where we find ourselves caught in constant loops of self-judgment, anxious thought, restlessness and general dissatisfaction.

This can make sustained mindfulness seem elusive because this pattern of falling into patterns of seeing the negative is something deeply ingrained within us through evolution - a pattern that many times is further reinforced through our personal history and upbringing (Gilbert & Choden, 2014).

This is why, in those moments when we do achieve this state of present awareness, they can become powerful anchors in our experience from where the foundational “attitudinal” qualities of mindfulness, like kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, can start to take root.

Beyond attention: The attitudinal heart of mindfulness

As these “attitudinal” qualities take root, they can give rise to what we could call an "upward spiral" in our psychological well-being. What do I mean here?

Because as we cultivate the ability to approach our experience and others with kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, we are more likely to cultivate this sense of remaining present that we call mindfulness; in turn when we are present, our capacity to express kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity naturally expands, what we could call a positive feedback loop. Further, this challenges the common misconception that mindfulness is merely about attention or relaxation.

In truth, research has incrementally indicated that mindfulness training without the cultivation of the attitudinal qualities tied to mindfulness might fail to result in the expected range of benefits as an outcome from mindfulness practice (Dhal & Davidson, 2019).

In fact, studies indicate that those participants who received instruction in both the attention element of mindfulness and the attitudinal qualities of mindfulness seem to demonstrate significant improvements in emotional regulation, interpersonal functioning and managing stressful situations better with maintained longer-term outcomes, on the contrary to those who only received attention training (Lindsay & Creswell, 2017; Lindsay et al., 2018a; Lindsay et al., 2018b).

From cushion to community: Mindfulness in daily life

This moves us into a crucial aspect, how the transformative potential of mindfulness lies in the translation of our formal mindfulness practice into daily life.

Shapiro and Carlson (2017) argued that the real test of mindfulness does not only depend on what happens during meditation but in how our meditation practice in turn starts to influence our moment-to-moment experience in the world. Reflect on this: what benefit would it be to meditate for an hour every day if what we cultivate on the “meditation cushion” does not translate into our daily life?

This might be most pronounced in the way of how our mindfulness practice can start to effect the people around us.

This is something that Dhal and Davidson (2019) allude to in their article, how the attitudinal qualities we cultivate in mindfulness can have a knock-on effect onto the way we interact with each other. How mindful awareness can fundamentally alter the quality of our interactions with others, especially through qualities that have a prosocial element to them, like compassion, kindness and gratitude.

I like to use this simple example when students ask me, but how can mindfulness help with my relationships with others? I pose to them the following questions to reflect on:

• If mindfulness helps you with managing stress better, how will this effect your relationships with others?

• If, as a consequence of mindfulness, you become less reactive and better able to manage your emotions, how will this effect your relationships with others?

• If, because of mindfulness, you start to cultivate a gentler, kinder approach to life, will this effect your relationships with others?

Engaged mindfulness: Personal and social transformation

This is why an argument has been made that “mindfulness” has to extend beyond our immediate personal relationships to encompass a broader social engagement. This is something that has been advocated for and called “Engaged Buddhism”, founded on the belief that genuine spiritual practice requires an active involvement in society, directly addressing issues such as violence and peace, inequality, homelessness, prisons, and the environment (Hanh, 2020; Queen, 2000).

Purser (2019) strongly points this out in his controversial book, mcmindfulness, how “authentic” mindfulness practice consequently leads to increased awareness of social interconnection and collective responsibility. This can show itself in becoming more skilful in navigating difficult conversations, to enhanced sensitivity to social justice issues. Purser (2019) further points out how if mindfulness does not result in personal and social transformation, then it might be just attentional training or another form of “brainwashing”.

Having said that, research indicates that regular mindfulness practice, particularly when it includes the explicit cultivation of the qualities of compassion, kindness and equanimity, has been shown to increase prosocial behaviour and reduce implicit intergroup bias (Donald et al., 2019; Oyler et al., 2022).

I find this hopeful and encouraging as it suggests how the personal benefits I experience from mindfulness might naturally flow into the social sphere, creating the foundation of what Buddhist scholar Thich Nhat Hanh (2020) terms the realisation of "Interbeing" - our fundamental interconnectedness – where he also proposes the 14 mindfulness trainings of engaged Buddhism.

Swimming against the current: Challenges in a consumerist world

However, this is easier said than done, especially in a post-modern capitalist consumerist world which “idolises” productivity, individuality and constant engagement; the challenge of sustaining and cultivating mindfulness and its qualities should not be underestimated, as it requires us to go against the grain.

Not only but as we mentioned previously, and as Williams and Penman (2021) further pointed out, how the mind has a natural tendency to gravitate toward threat, criticism, and negativity—a tendency shaped by evolution.

However, they also point out how mindfulness can provide moments of clear seeing and open-heartedness, and although sometimes they might seem brief and fleeting, few and far apart moments, still these can serve as essential reminders of our innate capacity for presence, connection, compassion and kindness and the innate goodness that might lay dormant in each and everyone of us.

A way of being

So, ultimately, mindfulness requires effort, and although in all truth and genuineness, we might first start to practice mindfulness for example, to better manage stress - and there is no shame and nothing wrong with that. But after a while with consistent practice and the conscious cultivation of the attitudinal qualities of mindfulness, we might find that it becomes more than a technique for stress reduction.

It develops into what Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990) calls a "way of being" that fundamentally transforms the way we relate to ourselves and others, the situations we encounter and life in general. This change does not occur through brute force but through the gentle persistence of returning to present-moment awareness with kindness and curiosity.

Which leads us to our initial statement how - "There is no yesterday’s, today’s, or tomorrow’s mindfulness" - because in reality where do these benefits emerge and where do we practice and strengthen them by writing about them, by talking about them, by thinking about them or by actively living them in the ever unfolding cycle of being present with life as it unfolds moment by moment, step by step, breath by breath.

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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References

Brach, T. (2020). Radical acceptance: Embracing your life with the heart of a Buddha (Reprint ed.). New York, NY: Random House USA Inc.

Dhal, C., & Davidson, R. J. (2019). Mindfulness and the contemplative life: Pathways to connection, insight, and purpose. Current Opinion in Psychology, 28, 60-64. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.11.007

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In my daily life, I often overlook the wisdom held in meeting everyday experiences with clarity of awareness, and I will be sharing something that came out of a mindfulness meditation practice related to this. It is an analogy which I like to call – “The Two Farmers” – it is an analogy that can help make sense of what is meant by the cultivation of mindfulness as an open quality of awareness.

To explore this the analogy uses the contrasting approaches of two farmers to a rock they encounter in a field to point out some fundamental principles of mindfulness, how our habitual reactions to difficulties we encounter can often increase our suffering and how mindfulness can offer a new way of approaching these that might transform the way we view difficulties in life. The story goes as follows….

The Tale of Two Farmers

Two farmers set out ploughing their fields, and while working, right in the middle of the field, suddenly their plough gets stuck. Looking at the “share” of the plough—the metal part that goes into the soil to till it—they notice that it got stuck on a rock jutting out of the soil.

The First Farmer: The Path of Resistance

On seeing this, the first farmer abruptly stops, visibly annoyed by what happened and the presence of the rock in the middle of the field. Feeling annoyed, angry, irritated and frustrated by this, he thinks to himself, “How am I going to plough the field with such a huge rock set right in the middle?”

Thinking, he says to himself, “I know, I will remove it.” So, he firmly sets his feet into the ground and positions himself to grab the rock to dislodge it from the ground. He firmly grabs the rock with his bare hands, trying frantically to pull it out of the ground, to no avail.

Feeling further annoyed, angry, irritated and frustrated, he thinks to himself, “I know, I will get a spade, dig around it, and when I reach the bottom, I will lever it out.”

He sets himself up and starts digging around it, but to no avail. All the while, the rock seemed to be just getting bigger.

Feeling tired and even more frustrated by such an outcome, he says to himself, “I know what will do the trick. I will get a mechanical digger; surely that will do it.” So, he acquires a mechanical digger and starts excavating, removing the soil and chipping away at the rock.

Finally, he says with a smile on his face and a sense of satisfaction, “The rock is gone.” He gets out of the digger and dusts off his clothes. Then, looking around, he realises that by the time he had finished, there was no longer a field to plough.

The Second Farmer: The Path of Awareness

Likewise, the second farmer, while ploughing his field, also gets his plough stuck in the middle. He stops, looks at the share of the plough, and notices that it got stuck on a rock.

Noticing this, he stops, encounters the rock, looks at it, but never loses sight of the field. He gently dislodges the plough and continues ploughing the field.

At the end of a hard day’s work, he looks at the field and again sees the rock. He approaches it, sits on it, and comes to the realisation of what a vantage point the rock is, at giving him a view of the whole field.

And such is the cultivation of mindfulness, not only in our practice of meditation but also in our actions in everyday life.

What Mindfulness Reveals About Our Reactions

This analogy reflects mindfulness as an approach, and the farmer’s contrasting responses mirrors many times what inevitably goes on in our minds when we encounter difficulties in life.

So, in our mindfulness practice and everyday life, our actions can reflect one of the two farmers, and this analogy of the two farmers can offer some insight into how we approach difficulties in our lives and our mindfulness meditation practice.

We might see that the first farmer is a representation of how we might habitually react to difficulties - with aversion, fixation, or maybe like what the first farmer did, meeting these with escalating efforts of trying to eliminate what might be a “perceived problem”.

Similarly to what happened to the first farmer when we take this approach, we might lose perspective of the whole situation and become consumed by the difficulty itself.

As we saw by focusing exclusively on removing the rock (the perceived difficulty), the farmer gradually destroyed the very field he intended to cultivate. This can mirror how we sometimes can become so caught up fighting against our thoughts, emotions, or perceived circumstances and consequences that we lose sight of the broader picture and the awareness that contains it.

The Boulder We Choose to Carry

This pattern of reactivity that we saw in the first farmer is something that contemplative traditions have pointed to (Hadot, 2016; Williams & Tribe, 2000). We can see this in a similar story shared by Shapiro and Carlson (2017), which looks at this from a different perspective. They describe a teacher who directs his students towards a large boulder and asks them,

“Students, do you see that boulder?” The students respond, “Yes, teacher, we see the boulder.” The teacher asks, “And is the boulder heavy?” The students respond, “Oh, yes, very heavy.” And the teacher replies, “Not if you don’t pick it up.” (ibid., p. 11)

Where is this taking us? What Shapiro and Carlson (2017) are pointing to here is how, at times, we might be hard at work trying to move “boulders” in our lives to where we believe they should be. Similar to the first farmer.

So, what they are alluding to here is that how we react to the “boulders” in our life can increase or reduce “suffering.” We can also see this in the way the first farmer reacted to the rock in the field and the outcome of that.

So where does mindfulness come in, and how might it help? Mindfulness offers a new way of relating to things and situations we encounter in our lives.

To make sense of this, it might help to consider how overall researchers have tried to define mindfulness as a quality of awareness. Bishop et al. (2004) point out that mindfulness has been broadly conceptualised as a,

“Nonelaborative, non-judgmental, present-centred awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is.” (ibid., p.232)

So, with mindfulness, there is the recognition that in this very moment, there is a boulder/rock and that I might not like that it is here. It involves becoming aware and familiar with our reactions to this by tuning into how it feels, noticing sensations, thoughts, and feelings that might be arising, and acknowledging that this is what there is/how I feel right now and that it is okay.

So, with mindfulness, we not necessarily trying to change our experience or be in any other way than we are right now, but it brings a non-judgmental, accepting awareness to it so that we can come to know how we might be habitually reacting to it.

So, it brings this deep, intimate knowing of what is present right now in the field of awareness.

Acknowledge how a situation might be making us feel and how easy of a tendency it might be to get caught up in frustrations, anger or annoyance - gently acknowledging how we feel without getting carried away or lost in such feelings, without losing sight of the whole situation without losing sight of the whole field of our experience just as it is.

In turn, because of this, we may begin to see how the reactivity or resistance might be the cause of our suffering, and so this, with it, brings the opportunity to choose to respond in a new way rather than react.

This might help us channel what we might call “negative emotions” more wisely so as to diligently address the situation.

Finding Space Between Stimulus and Response

As we saw with the second farmer, how mindfulness can help with something that has been attributed to have been said by Victor Frankl, the author of the book “Man’s Search For Meaning”:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

However, ultimately, at the end of the day, mindfulness brings the clarity to see things as they are.

When Obstacles Become Vantage Points

This then brings us to the second farmer and how he embodied mindfulness in the way he approached the rock.

He acknowledged the rock - the obstacle/difficulty - but maintained awareness of the whole field - the broader situation. And within his response, we can see that rather than it being defined by resistance to what is, he works skilfully with the reality that has presented itself to him.

As a consequence of this, he eventually discovers a new reality that what initially seemed to be an obstacle/difficulty ended up not being as bad as it seemed to the extent that the rock became a vantage point from which he could see the whole field.

Some Principles for Practice and Reflection

What emerges from what I came to call the “Two Farmers Analogy” on mindfulness is a set of principles that can guide our practice. From the way the second farmer approached the situation, where in the end he ended up sitting atop what was perceived as an obstacle, we can point out the following principles related to mindfulness practice:

• The importance of maintaining a broader awareness of situations rather than that narrow fixation.

• The skilful approach of acknowledging difficulties without becoming consumed by them.

• How resistance and aversion often end up amplifying our difficulties – “what we resist persists”.

• The potential for difficulties to become teachers when approached with an open and curious awareness.

And some questions that I usually ask myself to reflect on this:

• What are those rocks that I keep getting stuck on in my life?

• Which are those rocks that block my awareness of the whole situation?

• What are the boulders in my life that I keep trying to move to where I think they should be?

• How can mindfulness help me with this? (Maybe a “breathing space” 😉)

Meeting the Rocks on Our Path

In the end, we are ultimately bound to encounter “rocks” in life - difficult emotions, physical sensations, challenging people, or circumstances. Mindfulness is not about eliminating any of these, but offers a new way of being with these by relating to them differently, with a more spacious awareness that does not lose sight of the broader context within the whole of our experience.

So, in moments like these, do not forget to stop and take a breath and tap into that space between stimulus and response, a pause that allows for choosing the way in which to respond to a situation, because in all truth, as is pointed out by the quote attributed to Viktor Frankl,

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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References

Bishop, S. R., Lau, M., Shapiro, S., Carlson, L., Anderson, N. D., Carmody, J., . . . Devins, G. (2004). Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11(3), 230-241. doi:10.1093/clipsy.bph077

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Hadot, P. (2016). Philosophy as a Way Of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. (A. Davidson, Ed., & M. Chase, Trans.) Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Shapiro, S. L., & Carlson, L. E. (2017). The art and science of mindfulness: Integrating mindfulness into psychology and helping professions (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Williams, P., & Tribe, A. (2000). Buddhist Thought: A complete introduction to the Indian tradition. London: Routledge.

This breath flowing in,
This breath flowing out.
Flowing on its own
Flowing in and out

As it flows in,
A momentary pause;
It takes a rest,
Then it flows out, 
As it rests once more.

It knows when to flow in 
And when to flow out,
When to stop, rest, and restart;
It flows on its own,
As it breathes once more. 

Moment by moment,
Breath by breath.
A cycle of change,
Each breath a teacher, 
Pointing the way.
 
It breathes on its own,
No need to direct, 
No need to control.
 
Here lives the deepest wisdom, 
That of letting go. 
For it is necessary
For the next breath to flow.

A learning witness to the effects 
Of one’s breath’s flow. 
As it comes, pauses, and goes,
It teaches impermanence, 
Acceptance, and letting go—
So, what about going with the breath’s flow?

                             - by Dr Clayton Micallef

I wrote this poem “This Breath A Teacher” as a contemplative exploration of mindful breathing through the personification of the breath in the poem. It is a reflection of the process of mindfulness of breathing and a reminder of the wisdom available to us in each moment through the act of pausing and observing a process that sustains our very existence.

Why such a reflection?

Because within the major contemplative traditions, the breath is one of the root vehicles of contemplative practice (Micallef, 2023). Yet this seems to have been lost.

The breath might be one of the most immediate yet accessible overlooked teachers. The breath is with us here now, every moment as a contemplative anchor to our attention. Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990) alludes in his book “Full Catastrophe Living” how the breath might be one of the most accessible anchors for mindfulness practice, yet it’s overlooked in everyday life.

“Slow or rapid, controlled or left to itself, the breath keeps\going, day and night, year in, year out, through all the experiences and stages of life we traverse. Usually we take it completely for granted. We don’t pay any attention to our breathing unless something happens to prevent us from breathing normally. That is, unless we start to meditate.” (ibid., p. 48)

I tried to capture this in the poem by directly bringing attention to the breath through its opening lines: “This breath flowing in, / This breath flowing out. / Flowing on its own / Flowing in and out.”

This might be one of the most fundamental instructions when it comes to mindfulness. Thich Nhat Hanh (1999) really emphasises this in his book “The Miracle of Mindfulness”, where he mentions how one of the keys to mindfulness is this intimate relationship with the breath, aware of its flow without controlling it in a non-directive manner, aware of the flow of the breath as the body breaths itself.

I reflect this in the poem in the verses: “It breathes on its own, / No need to direct, / No need to control.”

The personification of breath as a contemplative technique

Further, the personification of the breath in the poem was a deliberate choice that goes beyond the literary purpose of doing so. I did this to trigger a third-person perspective within the listener or reader, which might help the reader further reflect on the poem.

By attributing agency to the breath more explicitly through verses like — “It knows when to flow in/And when to flow out”— Here the breath is being portrayed as an entity with its own intelligence (“It knows”).

In doing so, the poem aims to create a stepping back - psychological distancing - between the reader and the act of breathing as a witness to it rather than its controller. This not to disconnect the person from the breath but to position the reader in what in mindfulness is known as a decentered observer.

This is what we do in mindfulness practice: we move away from identification with thoughts and sensations and approach them as events occurring in our experience. This is explicitly highlighted in approaches such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, which emphasises throughout its approach how thoughts are not facts (Segal et al., 2012).

This decentering holds profound implications for our psychological well-being as having the capacity to observe our internal processes without being completely absorbed by them is crucial for meta-awareness and effective emotional regulation, as psychologist Daniel Siegel (2010) describes in his Book “Mindsight.”

Further, the poem highlights the autonomic nature of breathing - there is no need to direct or control it or think about it. This grounds us and directs us into the natural intelligence of the body; it knows how to breathe, we do not need to control the process.

This mirrors one of the foundational attitudes of mindfulness, “non-striving” (Kabat-Zinn, 1990).

So, through this process, the poem is not only trying to describe mindfulness — it is also trying to induce it. Through the very process, mindfulness practice aims to cultivate that of a curious, non-judgmental witness to experience.

The pauses as teachers of patience

The poem also draws the reader’s attention to the natural cycle of breathing: “As it flows in, / A momentary pause; / It takes a rest, / Then it flows out, / As it rests once more.”

This was a deliberate choice, the intention behind it being that the cycle of the breath, especially the pauses between the in-breath and the out-breath, can offer us a lesson in patience. This mirrors one of the foundational attitudes of mindfulness that of patience (Kabat-Zinn, 1990).

It might be that during our mindfulness practice, we rush past these pauses. Yet these pauses contain wisdom, as within them, we can find a space of stillness that is always available to us.

These pauses in breath are a direct mirror of the pauses we sometimes need to take in life before jumping into the next activity or making our next decision. This is reflected in practices taught in mindfulness programs like “The Breathing Space” from Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, the “STOP Practice” from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and the emphasis that is placed in the Mindfulness-Based Living Course on resting in the pause offered on the out-breath (Choden & Regan-Addis, 2018; Segal et al., 2012; Stahl & Goldstein, 2019).

By deliberately drawing attention to these pauses, the poem is inviting the reader to stop for a moment to pause at the end of the in-breath and the out-breath to draw attention into the importance of learning the value of being in stillness.

Impermanence: The breath a teacher of change

In the poem, I also delve into the Buddhist concept of “anicca” impermanence – the understanding that phenomena that we experience in life are constantly changing – one of the three marks of existence, the others being “dukkha” and “anatta” (Gethin, 1998).

I identify this explicitly in the poem. One of the central things that the breath teaches us about is impermanence: “It teaches impermanence, / Acceptance, and letting go.” Impermanence is necessary for the next breath to flow. Why is this?

Because each breath is a miniature reflection of this, no breath is permanent and can be held indefinitely; there comes a moment where each breath must be released for the next to flow.

More profoundly, the breath as a cycle that is in constant flux from the moment it goes in, to the moment it goes out; it is constantly changing. As the breath arises and passes, it teaches us that everything arises and passes away and how nothing stays the same, not even for a moment.

In mindfulness practice, the breath, with its constant cycle of arising and passing away, can be a laboratory for investigating how we relate to change.

Do we hold/cling to the in-breath and try to prolong it? Do we rush through the out-breath into the next breath? Can we be this natural process with equanimity? And how this might reflect how we relate to things in life.

Acceptance and letting go: Necessary for life to continue

Leading on from impermanence, for me, one of the most significant parts of the poem comes in the lines: “Here lives the deepest wisdom, / That of letting go. / For it is necessary / For the next breath to flow.”

This points out a fundamental paradox of life: how many a time we must let go in order to receive. The breath is a great example of this, as the letting go of the in-breath to give way to the out-breath and so forth is not a loss but a necessary release that creates space for us to receive the next breath, to receive life.

We need to let go of each breath to breathe in the next one to continue receiving life.

And this extends far beyond breathing. I would say this because letting go is not about forcing ourselves to give up things. Rather, it is about recognising when holding on to something might be unhelpful or even harmful and a cause of suffering and cultivating the wisdom to let go of these and make way for new ways of being that are more beneficial.

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990) uses a particularly helpful to illustrate this:

“They say that in India there is a particularly clever way of catching monkeys. As the story goes, hunters will cut a hole in a coconut that is just big enough for a monkey to put its hand through. Then they will drill two smaller holes in the other end, pass a wire through, and secure the coconut to the base of a tree. Then they put a banana inside the coconut and hide. The monkey comes down, puts his hand in and takes hold of the banana. The hole is crafted so that the open hand can go in but the fist cannot get out. All the monkey has to do to be free is to let go of the banana. But it seems most monkeys don’t let go.” (ibid., p. 39)

Letting go is one of the fundamental attitudes of mindfulness, and the breath shows us that letting go is not optional but essential for life. Just as we must release each breath to make way for the next, we must also release unhelpful behaviour, habits and ways of being to allow space for new possibilities to emerge in life.

This goes hand in hand with another foundational attitude of mindfulness that of acceptance (Kabat-Zinn, 1990). As Jon Kabat-Zinn (1990) explains, acceptance and letting go, go hand in hand, and there is no greater reflection of this than the Serenity Prayer:

Going with the breath’s flow: From practice to living

I finally conclude the poem with a question: “So, what about going with the breath’s flow?”

I did this purposefully to invite the reader to consider how the lessons learned from observing the breath might extend beyond our “cushion” into daily life.

This points us to what in mindfulness we call “informal practice”— or the application/cultivation of mindfulness in everyday activities. The final line of the poem suggests this.

How are we going to carry the qualities we cultivate through breath awareness — presence, acceptance, non-striving, letting go — beyond our “cushion” so that they also start to infuse our approach to daily life.

I would argue what is the value of sitting in our mindfulness meditation practice for hours or days at a time if the qualities we cultivate while doing sitting meditation do not start to transfer into different aspects of our daily lives.

Although it does not directly mention this, the concluding question in the poem implicitly points us in this direction — how might I “go with the breath’s flow” in my daily life?

Bringing it all together: From observer to embodiment

Ultimately, “This Breath A Teacher” as a poem does not only try to capture and reflect in its structure the essence of the practice of mindful breathing but is also an invitation into a particular way of being

Particularly through the personification of the breath as having its own wisdom through the following verses - “It knows when to flow in / And when to flow out” - These also reflect some of the foundational attitudinal qualities central to mindfulness practice and teaching those of patience, non-striving, acceptance and letting go, but in particular the attitude of trust trusting the natural processes of breathing rather than forcing or controlling it.

It also tries to capture the experience of mindfulness of breathing practice through how the poem progresses in its structure, starting with the simple observation of the breath and how this can lead into deeper insights about impermanence and letting go.

This is especially reflected in the penultimate stanza - “Here lives the deepest wisdom, / That of letting go. / For it is necessary / For the next breath to flow” - Where I try to connect the physical act of breathing to the contemplative concept of letting go, which is further built onto in the closing stanza on how the breath can teach us about impermanence, acceptance and letting go “As it comes, pauses, and goes, / It teaches impermanence, / Acceptance, and letting go—.

With the closing question to the poem, “So, what about going with the breath’s flow?” - This as an invitation to the reader and a gentle reminder to the reader of this all.

While at the same time, reflecting to myself that I do not need to use complex language to explain this all, as reflected in the words used to write the poem; simple, accessible language which also allowed profound concepts such as impermanence to shine through without the unnecessary complexity - much like mindfulness practice itself.

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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If you enjoyed reading this and want to support my work, why not subscribe? 📚 Never miss a post – it's free! If you're feeling extra awesome, you can become a paid subscriber to the publication and benefit from paid subscriber content like “Subscriber-Only Posts and Posting Comments and other features”— no need for Substack, just your email address. Your support means a lot and keeps me going. 😊 Thank you! 😊

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References

Choden, & Regan-Addis, H. (2018). Mindfulness-based living course. New Alresford: John Hunt Publishing.

Gethin, R. (1998). The foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hanh, T. N. (1999). The miracle of mindfulness: An introduction to the practice of meditation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain and illness. New York, NY: Delacorte.

Micallef, C. (2023). The adverse effects of mindfulness: A narrative review, emergent findings, and a proposed definition [Doctoral dissertation, University of Aberdeen] Primo. Retrieved from https://abdn.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/delivery/44ABE_INST:44ABE_VU1/12213274180005941

Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M., & Teasdale, J. D. (2012). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guildford Publications.

Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Stahl, B., & Goldstein, E. (2019). A mindfulness-based stress reduction workbook (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Mindfulness and flow have become two synonymous states of awareness that have grabbed researchers' attention, especially since the 2000, due to the potential shown at enhancing psychological health performance and promoting personal development.

But are these two states linked to each other? Do enhancements in one promote the other? Or are they two totally distinct states with no relation to each other? This has been an ongoing debate within the field of mindfulness and flow research, where there have been research findings to support each of the above questions. So, the answer if mindfulness and flow are the same, related or have nothing to do with each other is not so clear cut.

I will here attempt to explore this with you by looking at the similarities and differences between mindfulness and flow, mechanisms that might be at work, how these might promote or inhibit each other and some potential beneficial impacts these might have on the human experience. So, let us start by defining the states.

Defining mindfulness: Purpose, presence and non-judgment

Western applications of mindfulness are mainly rooted in Buddhist traditions that have been secularised so as to be accessible to a wider range of individuals and be used in multiple contexts as an intervention to promote physical and psychological well-being.

I would also argue that mindfulness has two layers to it: Mindfulness as a practice and mindfulness as a quality of awareness.

Mindfulness as a practice is what we call "mindfulness meditation", the act where we sit in awareness, observing experience and returning our attention back to observing current experience whenever the mind wanders away, through which we cultivate mindfulness as an open, non-judgmental quality of awareness to things as they are.

This is reflected in how Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994) defined mindfulness as the awareness that arises through,

"Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally" (p. 4).

So, mindfulness involves agency and is an act of will as it requires that we make a deliberate decision to pay attention to what is arising in our experience, our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and the inner environment without attempting to manipulate change or evaluate them or why we are having these. On the contrary, the practitioner is encouraged to maintain an observer's stance, that of acknowledging experiences, noticing as they arise and pass.

The paradox of mindfulness is that it requires deliberate effort to cultivate "effortlessness" in the way that we approach and relate to our inner experience. Also, what needs to be mentioned is that nearly since their inception, all major contemplative traditions have had some form of contemplative practices to help cultivate mindfulness as a quality of awareness (Micallef, 2023).

Understanding flow: The state of optimal experience

On the other hand, flow as a state of awareness was formally identified in the 1970s (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Flow states typically happen when the task we are engaged in is not easy but one that is proportionally challenging in relation to our current skill level. Tasks that have clear goals provide immediate feedback, offer a balanced challenge, require deep focus and provide intrinsic motivation can help trigger a flow state (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1990).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1970, 1990) described flow as a state of consciousness that arises when a person becomes fully immersed, concentrated in an activity, experiencing an altered sense of time, a loss of self-awareness, a merging of awareness with the activity, resulting in effortless attention and a state of peak performance.

Overall, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1970) pointed out that flow states are mainly composed of the following elements:

1. A merging of action and awareness

2. A centring of attention on a particular task

3. What could be described as a loss of a sense of "ego" or "sense of self" or "self-consciousness."

4. Provides coherent, noncontradictory feedback in congruence to the person's actions

5. An altered sense of the passage of time

6. And "autoletic" in nature – devoid of external goals or rewards

In short,

"Flow is an absorbing mental state that arises spontaneously when one is engrossed within optimally challenging activity" (Sheldon et al., 2014).

With Peifer (2012) proposing the following as an exhaustive working definition for flow as follows:

"Flow is a positively valenced state (affective component), resulting from an activity that has been appraised as an optimal challenge (cognitive component), characterised by optimised physiological activation (physiological component) for full concentration on coping with environmental/task demands (behavioural component)." (p. 148)

A common ground: Shared elements and benefits

So, what we can notice here is that both focused attention and present-moment awareness are key foundational elements present in both mindfulness and flow as states of awareness.

Also, if we look at the above, we could deduce that both mindfulness and flow, as states of awareness, have elements within them that can potentially contribute to well-being.

I would say that the most prominent between these two is how both mindfulness and flow have the potential to improve and enhance performance. This is especially true for flow states, where it seems that most of the focus it gets is of a more pragmatic nature related to its performance-enhancing effects.

Meta-analysis, which are studies that examine the outcomes from different studies on a particular topic of interest to find common trends, indicate that overall research indicates that there is a relation between flow and mindfulness increasing performance in sports (Buhlmayer et al., 2017; Harris et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2023). What is interesting is that Harris et al. (2023) found indications that when it comes to flow increasing performance, this relationship might be bidirectional.

Further, when it comes to flow, this increase in performance is also seen in Esports and competitive gaming (Harris et al., 2023).

It has to be mentioned that it seems that most of the research on flow and performance mainly focuses on sports performance, while when it comes to mindfulness research is broader and includes job performance and school performance as examples. I would also point out that there is extensive research on the psychological benefits of mindfulness (Goldberg et al., 2022; Goldberg et al., 2018). When it comes to flow, this is less so.

This is not to say that flow does not have beneficial psychological effects; as an example, it has the potential to reduce performance anxiety in sports (Fullagar et al., 2013). Curiously enough, research indicates how the experience of anxiety and its negative effects seems to be absent and incompatible with experiencing flow as a state of optimal performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Eysenck & Wilson, 2016; Nieuwenhuys & Oudejans, 2012).

A potential connection: How mindfulness may promote flow

What might be significant is that these two states of awareness might in some way be connected together, where increases in one might promote the other. In fact, current research indicates that mindfulness training can facilitate and increase the likelihood of experiencing flow (Buhlmayer et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2023). However, it has to be mentioned that we do not clearly know the why and how of this relationship, why this might be happening, and what processes are involved.

Although I would argue that one of the possible reasons why this might be happening is that both mindfulness and flow have been found to reduce mind wandering, especially self-referential thinking, with observable changes in the brain pathways linked to these processes seen in a decreased activity and changes in connectivity in the default mode network of the brain (Brewer et al., 2011; Rahrig et al., 2022; Ulrich et al., 2016; Ulrich et al., 2014). So, considering that both have these effects we could see how improvements in one could contribute to improvements in the other.

However, as we mentioned at the start, despite the common features, effects, and outcomes these two states have between them, the answer of whether mindfulness and flow are the same, related, or have nothing to do with each other is not as clear-cut. In fact, the research community is split when it comes to this.

I personally belong to those who argue that while mindfulness and flow share some common characteristics, they represent two totally distinct psychological states of awareness, each with their own unique characteristics and applications, with instances where mindfulness and flow can either promote or inhibit the other.

So, despite the overlaps, I would definitely argue that mindfulness and flow represent two fundamentally distinct mental states of awareness.

Fundamental difference: Awareness vs absorption

So, at a second look, although they look "similar" and have similar feathers, these two states also have significant differences. I would argue that one of the crucial differences between these two states is how they relate to awareness and control. Sheldon et al. (2014) summed up this difference really well,

"Mindfulness involves cultivating an observer of consciousness, trying to maintain reflective awareness of each moment. In contrast, flow involves losing the inner observer within an altered state of consciousness in which the moment blurs into a continuous stream of activity." (p. 276)

So, mindfulness involves meta-awareness – consciously observing one's experience – while flow is characterised by the absorption of self-consciousness into the activity.

As Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1990) describes and as we saw previously, when in a flow state, the individual typically loses track of time, and self-awareness merges with the action being done. This is often described as being "in the zone."

Conversely, as we can deduce from how Sheldon et al. (2014) described mindfulness (see above), mindfulness practice maintains a clear separation between the observer and what is being observed, so a sense of maintaining awareness of the passage of time, bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts and emergent experience (Bishop et al., 2004). This as we also saw when we defined the states.

It has been pointed out how research indicates that to enter a flow state, there must be a temporal dissociation of meta-awareness and how introducing meta-awareness in a flow state actually interrupts the state of flow (Chin & Schooler, 2009; Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Csikszentmihalyi (1975) pointed this out in his seminal book "Beyond Boredom and Anxiety" where he said,

"A person in flow has no dualistic perspective: he is aware of his actions but not of the awareness itself. A tennis player pays undivided attention to the ball and the opponent, a chess master focuses on the strategy of the game, most states of religious ecstasy are reached through complex ritual steps; yet for flow to be maintained, one cannot reflect on the act of awareness itself. When awareness becomes split, so that one perceives the activity from "outside," flow is interrupted." (p. 38)

Contrasting approaches: Judgment and neural distinctions

Another difference between these two is related to the role of judgment and evaluation. Mindfulness explicitly cultivates a non-judgmental attitude toward experience, accepting whatever arises without preference. Flow, on the other hand, depends on clear goals and feedback, requiring ongoing evaluation of performance against specific criteria (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 2010).

Another way in which flow and mindfulness are different is in the brain processes activated during both states. When a flow state occurs, there seems to be a temporary suppression, a downregulation of activity in the prefrontal and medial temporal lobes (Dietrich, 2004; Peifer, 2012). This has been termed "transient hypo-frontality" and is hypothesised to allow processes that are well-learned to run without the need for one to deliberatively think about it (Dietrich, 2004).

It has to be mentioned that the theory of "transient hypo-frontality" has had its challengers, mainly as being too oversimplistic to explain why flow happens, and other theories have been proposed (Harris et al., 2017).

On the other hand, mindfulness seems to activate brain processes that are antagonistic to this. In fact, contrary to flow, current research indicates that mindfulness activates the frontal lobe with long-term practice, potentially resulting in increased grey matter density (Rathore et al., 2022; Wheeler et al., 2017). This further highlights how these two states of awareness are separate and contrary to each other as one reduces activity in the frontal lobe while the other activates the frontal lobe, resulting in antagonistic processes.

The paradox: How mindfulness both inhibits and promotes flow

However, having said that things are not so clear-cut when it comes to the relationship between mindfulness and flow. So, having said that, the question arises: Are they linked in any way? Are there instances where mindfulness might promote flow?

Although the potential antagonist elements we have mentioned, as pointed out earlier, there are aspects where these two states of awareness might be linked and where mindfulness can support or even promote flow.

For example, Sheldon et al. (2014) found that mindfulness might have a split effect on flow. What does this mean? We previously mentioned how mindfulness involves maintaining self-awareness and how this might preclude the experience of flow.

Across a series of three studies, Sheldon et al. (2014) found support for this - how state mindfulness inhibited state flow. They commented how it seemed that,

"The more mindful a participant was on average, the less likely they were to be absorbed or in flow at particular moments ……. state mindfulness at a particular point in time was negatively associated with state flow absorption at that point in time. This indicates that the more reflectively aware participants felt at the moment they were signalled, the less absorption they reported feeling in that moment." (ibid., p. 280)

So mindfulness seems to interfere with those aspects of flow related to being carried away in a task with a loss of a sense of self and an altered sense of time. Sheldon and colleagues put an interesting analogy to this,

"How one cannot both stand on the banks of a stream and be washed down that stream at the same time." (ibid., p. 280)

State vs. trait mindfulness: Different effects on flow

However, that is not the whole story, particularly when it comes to trait mindfulness. Curiously enough, although trait mindfulness inhibited flow absorption, Sheldon et al. (2014) also found a link between trait mindfulness and trait flow, specifically mindfulness being associated with increases in feeling in control in flow states. What does this mean? That this increase in felt control resulted, for example, in feeling an enhanced feeling of reaching the goal and completing it successfully, enhanced feelings of being in control and an increased sense of competence.

What is interesting is that in a study done by Aherne et al. (2011) on how mindfulness might effect aspects of athletes' flow states, where they found how mindfulness training enhanced those aspects of flow related to having clear goals and an increased sense of control.

So, although mindfulness and flow are two distinct states of awareness that have as their functional basis processes that are antagonistic to each other, the argued for element that mindfulness and flow are linked and increases in one might promote the other might have some foundation to it. A more recent meta-analysis found evidence of this.

A meta-analysis by Schutte and Malouff (2023) found that, overall, increased levels of mindfulness seemed to be linked with increases in experiencing flow. However, the analysis mirrored the findings of Sheldon et al. (2014). This means that trait mindfulness was found to be associated with increases in flow while, again, state mindfulness was not associated with increases in flow.

The effortless effort: From state to trait

I would speculate that this might be happening because it could be argued that state mindfulness is something that requires conscious effort, that of temporarily bringing mindfulness to current experience. As we saw before, this can preclude the experience of flow as it involves making a mental effort to temporarily bring awareness to consciously observe one’s experience and as Csikszentmihalyi (1975) said,

"A person in flow has no dualistic perspective: he is aware of his actions but not of the awareness itself. A tennis player pays undivided attention to the ball and the opponent, a chess master focuses on the strategy of the game, most states of religious ecstasy are reached through complex ritual steps; yet for flow to be maintained, one cannot reflect on the act of awareness itself. When awareness becomes split, so that one perceives the activity from "outside," flow is interrupted." (p. 38)

On the other hand, with time and regular practice, mindfulness can turn into a trait. It becomes an inner disposition inherent within the individual as part and parcel of their way of being. So, to a degree, mindfulness becomes effortless effort similar to flow, and I would speculate that this might be why flow seems to be linked to trait mindfulness but not state mindfulness.

But again, this is me talking out loud, so more research needs to be done to explore if this is the case, if this observed correlation is a causal one and the direction of this effect, as Schutte and Malouff (2023) point in their analysis that it might be,

"That the relationship between mindfulness and flow may be bi-directional and interactive in that absorption in flow experiences may help build mindfulness as well as mindfulness being a foundation for flow." (ibid., p. 2)

Practical applications: Different states for different needs

So, till now, we saw that mindfulness and flow are distinct yet connected in some way. I would argue that we should not be disappointed by this. Why? Because being distinct states, it makes them suitable for different applications, and this, in turn, gives us more approaches through which we can improve persons' well-being.

Further, the notion of them being distinct but linked in some way makes it possible that, for some situations, they might result in a multiplier effect at promoting well-being, especially if, as argued by Schutte and Malouff (2023), the relationship between mindfulness and flow is bidirectional where one increases the other and vice versa possibly conducive to a positive feedback loop.

However, having said that still, mindfulness has shown effectiveness in a variety of contexts in both clinical and non-clinical settings, at helping individuals from all walks of life manage different facets of well-being, including pain, stress, anxiety, and depression, etc. (Goldberg et al., 2022; Goldberg et al., 2018). Further, its emphasis on applying an acknowledging, accepting, non-judgmental awareness towards inner experience makes it especially valuable for developing emotional regulation and resilience.

Meanwhile, flow states, have proven to be particularly beneficial in performance-oriented contexts, as flow's combination of high focus, reduced self-reflective consciousness, and the merging of action and awareness can lead to peak performance and enhanced skill development (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Harris et al., 2023; Jackson & Marsh, 1996). One example of this is sports where the majority of flow research is focused on.

Conclusion: Complementary pathways to well-being

So, as we come to the end of this article, where does this leave us in relation to the questions we posed at the start: Are mindfulness and flow distinct states? Are they linked in any way? Do enhancements in one promote the other?

As we saw throughout this article, while mindfulness and flow share some common features and applications, they also represent two distinct psychological states of awareness, each with its own unique characteristics.

I would say that understanding the differences and similarities between these states is very important. Why? Because it can help us in making an informed choice when it comes to choosing which might be the most appropriate for our specific goals and needs, whether seeking to enhance performance or improve general physical and psychological well-being.

And although these two states are distinct and separate, we also saw how mindfulness and flow might be linked.

First, I would say that mindfulness practice actively improves attention control, curbs mind wandering, and reduces self-referential thinking, which may help create the foundational conditions that are conducive to experiencing flow.

Second to this, we saw how trait mindfulness might increase trait flow. So, with time, through regular mindfulness practice, mindfulness as a state of awareness becomes more of a disposition, a trait, so more innate. So, we could say that those foundational conditions from mindfulness that might be conducive to flow might become more of a second nature, so improving our chances of experiencing flow. This is something that Moore (2013) found evidence for.

Additionally, it might be that alternating between these states might offer optimal benefits – how one can be used to set the stage for the other. What do I mean? As an example, a flow state can offer periods of deep engagement conducive to skill development; mindfulness, in turn, can provide the self-awareness necessary to process and learn from flow experiences. Sheldon et al. (2014) proposed that,

"From a self-regulatory perspective, an optimal sequence might entail first mindfully surveying the situation and one's reactions to it in order to decide what to do, then going into a flow state in service of one's selected actions, then going into a mindful state in order to observe the results of those actions, then going into another flow state in order to best accomplish the next actions, and so on." (p. 281)

To sum it up, while mindfulness and flow share some common characteristics, they represent two totally distinct psychological states of awareness, each with their unique characteristics and applications, with instances where mindfulness and flow can either promote or inhibit the other.

Ultimately, I would argue that rather than viewing them as competing alternatives, we should see them as complementary pathways in our pursuit of improving well-being might be the way to go.

As taking this perspective might be most beneficial, especially as research is ongoing in these areas, so it might reveal new insights into how these two states interact and influence the human experience. So, with time, as our understanding of the states deepens, we may discover additional ways in which both mindfulness and flow can be used for the benefit of ourselves, others, and those around us. May you be well 😊

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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There is no right or wrong way,
No set goal to reach,
Nor score sheet to tick.

Time and again,
The mind will drift,
Thoughts will intrude,
Concentration flit.

To empty the mind,
Or not to empty the mind,
Or to become aware of things as they are—
Acknowledging whatever is:
“Thought” when a thought comes,
“Feeling” when a feeling floats by,
“Sensation” when a sensation arises.

So not to empty the mind,
But to become aware of what is,
Arising and passing as it is.

The mind will inevitably drift;
We acknowledge this,
As there is no perfect way to sit.
Just gently bringing attention back to the breath,
No matter if the mind drifts.

Rest assured, it will happen again—
That’s what the mind does:
It thinks, connects, and links the dots;
It is simply doing its job.
  
   - by Dr Clayton Micallef

Introduction: A universal challenge

From my own experience of practising and teaching mindfulness meditation, one of the greatest challenges I face and that students share is the struggle with the wandering mind. This is a universal challenge experienced by mindfulness practitioners and students, which often gives rise to the question of what constitutes “correct” practice.

Understanding the opening stanza: No right or wrong way

This is what inspired me to write this poem, “There is no perfect way,” as a tool for reflection that might offer insight into a universal struggle that both beginners and seasoned mindfulness practitioners experience during meditation.

This is why the poem starts with the statement: “There is no right or wrong way, / No set goal to reach, / Nor score sheet to tick.”

I also see this playing out in my own mindfulness meditation practice, how I might set specific goals that I have to reach in my mindfulness practice as a measure of how “mindful” I am, as the poem says in the first stanza - sitting there with a score sheet ticking off the goals as a metric of how successful I am in my practice.

This achievement-oriented mindset comes with the tendency to monitor how our practice is going in relation to our expectation of how it should go as a measure to quantify how successful I am - to reach and strive for a perfect practice. This can become a significant obstacle to cultivating mindfulness.

Why? Because rather than being with, present, and aware of our current experience without judgement, we would be actually striving to be other than where we are and, therefore, blind to our experience right now. This is if we tap directly into how mindfulness has been broadly defined as:

“Nonelaborative, non-judgmental, present-centred awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is.” (Bishop et al., 2004, p. 232)

So, the starting stanza of the poem directly addresses and dismantles any such expectations from the start. Where the poem invites us to take a gentler approach to mindfulness practice and how this striving for an ideal practice can get in the way. This is precisely why Jon Kabat-Zinn (2013) included non-striving as one of the seven foundational attitudes of mindfulness.

The wandering mind: A universal experience

The second stanza then moves into the common universal experience that both beginners and seasoned practitioners in meditation encounter: the wandering mind. “Time and again, / The mind will drift, / Thoughts will intrude, / Concentration flit.” These lines try to capture and acknowledge what every meditator discovers the moment they sit in practice – the natural tendency of the mind to move, shift, wander away and do its own thing.

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In 2012, journalist and author Oliver Burkeman wrote a book titled “The Antidote”, where he wrote about the popular emergent trend fixated on feeling happy or looking at the bright side of things all the time, “positive thinking.” Since then, this worldly trend of increasingly being fixated on the pursuit of “happiness” has just continued to grow - compulsively fixated on the lookout, scanning for the next thing that will make me happy.

But, might this be counterproductive, as we might end up in a chase looking for the next thing that will give us the next high never truly feeling content and satisfied. I learnt this the hard way and in relation to the meaning of life I had written,

“That there are times where we find ourselves caught in a hard-bound search for the “meaning of life”. What is the meaning of life? It’s a question with an unfathomable answer. So hard is the question to answer that it leads one into an exhausting, endless search while life passes by. Stop searching, start living, and meaning will start creeping into life.” (Micallef, 2024, para. 45)

Might this also apply to happiness? So, the provocative notion that comes into my mind is that true contentment may lie in abandoning that very chase, the pursuit of happiness. I will be exploring this very notion in this article — how the pursuit of happiness might make us miserable.

This is epitomised in a short story written by Edith Wharton, originally published in 1908, where one of the characters in her story states the following,

“Possibilities of what? Of being multifariously miserable? There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.” (Wharton, 1908, p. 40)

Leo Tolstoy, a prominent Russian novelist born in the 1800s, also points this out. In what might be one of his most famous novels, “Anna Karenina,” a novel on marriage, relationships, families and family life that talks about the human condition, living a better, fulfilling life and attaining happiness, Tolstoy writes how,

“Vronsky, meanwhile, despite the full realisation of what he had for so long desired, was not entirely happy. He soon felt that the realisation of his desire had afforded him only a grain of sand from the mountain of happiness he had anticipated. This realisation had shown him the eternal error men make in imagining happiness as the realisation of their desire.” (Tolstoy, 2014, p. 426)

This is a direct challenge to what we might call conventional “logical wisdom” (note the inverted commas) about happiness and well-being. So, let us take a moment to reflect on the above statements with an open mind, as they might be an invitation to reconsider an alternative approach to finding happiness and fulfilment in life.

However, let’s start by making it clear that at a glance, these statements may seem counterintuitive or even pessimistic, especially the one by Edith Wharton (1908) where she writes,

“If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time” (ibid. p. 40).

Why? Because it is natural to seek to be happy. It is something that is deeply ingrained in the way we approach living life, “we all try to avoid pain and seek pleasure,” and it is also rooted in our cultures. An example would be how it is even embedded in founding documents like the United States Declaration of Independence 1776, which actually opens with the statement,

“….to recommend to the respective assemblies and conventions of the United Colonies, where no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs had been established, to adopt such a government as should, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular.” (US Congress, 2008, p. XLV)

All this is not to be dismissed as if we reflect on it on closer examination; it might give a profound insight into the nature of the human psyche and the possible self-defeating nature of the quest for constantly feeling positive, happy emotions.

This is not to say that experiencing happiness and positive emotions does not result in beneficial outcomes. That is an established fact and considered to be a cornerstone of psychological health (Fredrickson, 1998). What we are eluding here is that being in a constant pursuit of maximising happiness or feeling positive emotions might result in the opposite.

As Gruber et al. (2011) pointed out, there are a multitude of studies that point out the importance of maximising happiness, yet,

“At the same time, psychological research has, to date, neglected another important possibility regarding happiness—that it may, under certain conditions, be maladaptive.” (ibid. p. 222)

And there is research that points to this. For example, in their review article, Gruber et al. (2011) pointed out that a number of studies on happiness indicate that benefits from happiness do not follow a linear outcome. This means that a high level of happiness does not always necessarily lead to higher levels of beneficial outcomes. That is, the more you try to increase it, the less beneficial the returns are, with indications that beyond a certain level, it can also have unintended consequences.

Why pursuing happiness might be counterproductive

This might happen because when we strive for a positive outcome, we implicitly set an expectation of how good this will make me feel. However, this might result in a paradoxical effect when the positive situation does not feel as good as the expectation I set, leading to disappointment that I don’t feel as happy as I expected. Gruber et al. (2011) argued how this,

“Leads to the prediction that the more people strive for happiness, the more likely it is that they will become disappointed about how they feel, paradoxically decreasing their happiness the more they want it.” (p. 226)

What does this mean here? That being in the constant pursuit of happiness can lead to frequent disappointment even if the outcome of a situation is positive because the outcome does not meet expectations.

This is precisely what Mauss et al. (2011) found in a study on the potential paradoxical effects of valuing happiness in a series of two experiments constructed to test how valuing happiness effects well-being. In study one, their results directly noted this paradoxical effect, how chasing after happiness does not make you happy, where participants who strongly valued happiness under conditions of minor daily stress tended to experience:

- Lower levels of pleasure and enjoyment.

- Lower overall well-being and life satisfaction and,

- A propensity to experience more symptoms of depression.

The finding that putting a high value on pursuing, attaining or feeling happy can be a risk factor for experiencing more symptoms of depression has been replicated in another study (Ford et al., 2014).

In other words, as we argued above, actively trying to be happy can potentially make you less happy, particularly when dealing with small stressors in life. However, the researchers noted that this effect did not appear in participants facing major stress.

These findings carried on into study two, where Mauss et al. (2011) performed an experimental manipulation that induced happiness or sadness after participants were primed to value happiness by reading an article that talked about the importance of valuing happiness. Results were compared to those of a control group who underwent the same procedure; the only difference was that they read the same article adapted in a way that it did not prime valuing happiness by replacing the word happiness with “making accurate judgments.”

What Mauss and colleagues observed [that compared to the control group] participants who were primed to value happiness reported feeling fewer positive feelings after watching a “happy video” compared to those who watched a “sad video” with participants in the happy condition expressing disappointment in how they felt after watching the “happy film.”

Mauss et al. (2011) argued that the results from the study indicated how,

“Valuing happiness can lead to less happiness, precisely in a situation that should give rise to it, namely a happy emotion induction.” (p. 812)

This finding was supported by both direct and indirect measures of emotional response. So, these findings suggest what we mentioned previously - that pursuing or placing a high value on achieving happiness creates unrealistic expectations, leading to disappointment when those expectations are not met.

In fact, this is exactly what Mauss et al. (2011) found: the relationship between valuing happiness and experiencing less happiness was explained by people feeling disappointed about their expected emotional state. As Gruber et al. (2011) had proposed,

“That the more people strive for happiness, the more likely it is that they will become disappointed about how they feel, paradoxically decreasing their happiness the more they want it.” (p. 226)

So, looking at all of this, it might be that in the search for happiness, we might need to flip things on their head.

This is also what Oliver Burkeman (2012) suggested in his book. What if we start our search for happiness by flipping things around. Rather than chasing after happiness to attempt to eliminate what makes us unhappy or feelings of unhappiness. What if we start by acknowledging that these are a fact of life and start by approaching them. He writes how, after several years of reporting on psychology, he started to realise,

“That the effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative – insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness – that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy.” (ch. 1, para. 16)

As Edith Wharton (1908) also eluded,

“Possibilities of what? Of being multifariously miserable? There are lots of ways of being miserable” (p. 40).

Discontentment is a fact of life

Indeed, suffering seems to be a fact of life. It comes in endless varieties and forms - from physical to emotional pain and distress, to existential despair, to the daily mundane frustrations we encounter in daily life. It seems as if we cannot avoid it as the Buddha famously observed, “Life is suffering” or more accurately “, dukkha”, an inherent dissatisfactory quality to life considered to be one of the three marks of existence in Buddhist philosophy and contemplative teachings (Gethin, 1998; Harvey, 2013).

This, the recognition of the factual universality of “suffering” of experiencing difficulties and discomforts in life and how this is inevitable, is at the foundation of many philosophical and spiritual traditions (Hadot, 2016).

So, is there a solution?

Read more

We spend so much of our energy focusing on what we want—the things we don’t have.

Finding gratitude shifts our perception towards the abundance of gifts and blessings present for us at any given moment. Especially during hard times, a moment of gratitude can remind us of what we’ve been given: love, support, simple pleasures, material resources, our health and safety, this breath, this moment, and this life.

To take it a step further, we can give thanks not only for the good things in our lives but for the challenges and difficulties that push us to grow and allow us to put our spiritual work into practice.

“We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations because, without them, we would have nothing to work with,” writes Acharya Judy Lief. “Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion?”

But this is not an easy thing to do. In a podcast and interview with Michael Bergeisen (2010) for “The Greater Good Podcast”, psychologist Rick Hanson explains why this might be and how, through an evolutionary process, we have developed a negativity bias because this might have aided our chances of survival in the past. He famously wrote the following, which he is quoted for many times how the,

“Brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.” (Hanson, 2009, ch. 2)

In the following video, Rick Hanson talks more about this.

So, leading on from what Rick Hanson proposes, we could say, as Nisker (2022) wrote in their book “Being Nature” that,

“Dissatisfaction appears to be built into the human condition, and although that may sound cruel, it is apparently in the best interest of our survival. The brain maintains a certain degree of unease running continually, keeping us monitoring the world for some advantage or danger, always a little on edge and ready for action.” (ch. 6, para. 25)

Within the sphere of evolutionary psychology, this has become known as the smoke detector principle (Nesse, 2005). Below is a video by Professor Randolph Nesse, the person who proposed the smoke detector principle, where he explains more about this, how they discovered it and why they named it so.

To reflect on all of this, we could use the following example - Let us say that during your day, you experience multiple positive things to be grateful for, but you go shopping and while checking out at the supermarket, the moment you lift your shopping bag the bottom breaks and all the shopping falls to the floor making a mess. Which one tends to stick with us till the end of the day, the positive experiences or that one negative one? As Hanson (2009) explains, most of the time, it is the negative one.

I see this in my life - how positive things seem to pass by while negative things seem to stick in my mind. This is why practising gratitude is one of my favourite practices, and I do it every day.

A simple way to practice this is a practice we introduce in the first session of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Life (MBCT-L) called the “Ten Finger Gratitude Practice,” which we invite participants to do at the end of the day. A practice where we ask participants to bring to mind, one after the other, ten things they are grateful for, counting them on their fingers while opening and savouring any pleasant sensations that arise in the body while doing this. Below is a video by Dr. Amber Lyda, where she gives some background and context to this practice.

And when I do this, I find I am able to see all the small ways in which I have been blessed during the day. It also makes me feel more grounded and less anxious in life. This expression of gratitude also helps me stay connected to myself and others; it reminds me that most of the time, everything I need is already inside and around me; I just need to open up to it.

Gratitude practice helps me do this, and I find this very helpful in moments of difficulty because it helps me see and be grateful for the resources at hand at that moment that can help with that difficulty, helping me to move forward with greater clarity and confidence in such situations.

However, some days are harder than others to find something we could express gratitude for. This is also true for myself. In moments like these, what I find helpful is starting with being grateful for small things.

Starting by being grateful for small things could be as simple as being grateful and giving thanks for your morning cup of coffee. This can be enough. As Hanson (2009) points out, by taking in the good, even if small things, with time, we might start to notice a shift in perspective that can have the potential to change our outlook on life. Why? Because as Hanson (2009) explains, we start training our mind to recognise and become more aware of the good things around us, so things to be grateful for no longer just pass us by, whereby we might begin to recognise that there is always something to be grateful for. This will help balance that automatic innate negativity bias present in the mind, which can bring with it a sense of well-being. In the following video, Dr Rick Hanson talks about a three-step gratitude exercise for taking in the good.

But the question you might be asking is, is this hogwash? Does practising this have benefits? Yes, current research seems to indicate so. Meta-analysis of research studies on gratitude indicate that practising gratitude can benefit our well-being, including improved mood, better sleep, increased optimism, decreased stress, reduced depression, stronger relationships, and lower blood pressure, while some also argue that the practice of gratitude has the potential to reduce inflammation, strengthen the immune system, improve digestion and increase energy levels (Cregg & Cheavens, 2021; Davis et al., 2006; Dickens, 2017; Ma, Tunney, & Ferguson, 2017).

And yet, although practising gratitude might benefit us, we might still struggle to cultivate gratitude or practice gratitude towards others as we might believe that this would not make any difference in the world. When thoughts like this cross my mind, I always remember the following phrase from an African proverb once quoted by the Dalai Lama which says,

“If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a closed room with a mosquito.”

Further gratitude is not about changing who we are; it’s about seeing ourselves and others with different eyes. Why? Because gratitude is about opening our eyes to what is already there to focus on what we have and learn how to savour and appreciate rather than gloss over it. This includes the people around us. It starts showing us that no one is an island and that we are all connected. How?

At the individual level, no one is an island. We all have a group of very close individuals whom we depend on in difficult and happy times or vice versa. At the community level, we all need each other, the bus driver, the shopkeeper etc. And at the global level we are linked and intertwined together in ways we can’t even imagine. For example, reflect on this analogy; probably in the making of our TV set, some contribution was made on the other side of the world from a particular person, and if that person did not wake up that day, our TV set would not be there.

Furthermore, reflect on the immensity of the universe where there is only one place we call home, EARTH. A one of a kind, majestic place which humbly provides us with all that we need for our survival. And yet, it seems that many times, all of this passes us by.

This is what contemplative traditions and practices teach us: the principle of interdependence (Armstrong, 2011). One contemplative tradition that puts a strong emphasis on this is Buddhism and considered to be one of the foundational doctrinal principles of mindfulness practice (Anālayo, 2021).

So, gratitude opens our eyes to this, to the light within ourselves and those around us and the potential impact that each and every one of us has through our daily actions on those around us and the world at large. If used wisely, this awareness can give each of us the power to change our lives and the world, helping to create a kinder, more compassionate world. As Albert Einstein once commented,

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the world of nature in its beauty.” (as cited in Struhl, 2018, p. 110)

I would say that we might adopt three steps to do this and to cultivate more gratitude in our lives and start to help create a kinder, compassionate world: 1) Become aware of the good things in our life; 2) See the goodness in others; 3) Taking kind, compassionate action.

Becoming Aware

As we already pointed out getting caught up in the daily hustle and bustle can be easy. Our minds tend to race, and we lose sight of the little things that bring us joy. So, it’s essential to take time each day to remember what matters most to us. I like to say to myself that one of the first steps to practising gratitude is mindfulness. That is becoming aware of the good things that happen to us in life, maybe by doing the ten-finger gratitude practice we mentioned before

Here are some questions we might ask ourselves to help us identify the good things in our lives which we might express gratitude for:

• What brings you happiness?

• Who makes you smile?

• What makes you laugh?

• What inspires you?

• What fills your heart with peace?

• What gives you hope?

• What excites you?

• What gives you purpose?

And when you look at your answers, ask yourself why they matter. Why are they so special? How do they impact your life?

Seeing the Good in Others

In order to truly appreciate the good things in our lives, we must also learn to see the good in others. To do this, we need to slow down and pay attention, to see the person. I like to use the following example to illustrate this.

When I was young, I used to play hide and seek with my friends. One day, I hid under a tree and waited patiently for someone to come and find me. After a long wait, I heard footsteps approaching. A few moments later, one of my friends emerged from behind the trunk, his face lit up with excitement.

“I found you!” he said.

“You did?” I replied.

He nodded. “Yes! Look, I’m right here.”

Then, he pointed to the ground next to him. There was no sign of me.

“Where am I?” I asked.

He looked puzzled. “Oh, you’re not there,” he said. “I saw where you were hiding, but you weren’t actually there. You were somewhere else entirely.”

That’s how we often view other people. We see the outside, but we miss the real person underneath. We assume we know what another person is thinking or feeling. Or worse, we judge them based on our assumptions.

But what if we stopped making snap judgments and started asking questions instead? What if we took the time to understand the perspectives of others before we made a judgment?

Instead of assuming that everyone thinks or feels the same way we do, we can open our hearts and minds to new possibilities. We can listen and empathise. When we do this, we might discover that the people around us are more complex than we thought. Maybe they, too, like us, are going through difficulties and wish to be free from them. We might discover that difficulties are part of life, our common humanity that unites us rather than separating us and being grateful for each other.

Taking Action

Once we’ve become aware of the good in our lives and others, we can take action.

One of the easiest ways to show gratitude is to say thank you, especially to those people we interact with regularly. It doesn’t take much effort, but a genuine, simple thank you sometimes can go a long way.

Another option is to express your gratitude through acts of service. For example, volunteer at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter if you are grateful for your family. If you’re grateful for nature, plant trees or clean up litter along the shoreline.

Finally, we can share our gratitude for others by acknowledging their presence in our lives and telling someone what they mean to us.

So, we can end by saying that gratitude is a powerful tool both for our own well-being and the well-being of others. It has the ability to transform our lives, as well as the lives of those around us. And it just takes a moment, and you can practice it right now, being grateful for this moment, this breath right now. As Wes Nisker (2022) put it,

“We may discover that ancient conditioning rather than present circumstances is causing our dissatisfaction, and that this moment is quite sufficient or even wonderful, and we simply hadn’t noticed.” (ch. 6, para. 30)

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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Disclaimer: This article is an updated and expanded version of an article I had previously written.

References

Anālayo, B. (2021). Defendant arising and interdependence. Mindfulness, 12, 1094-1102. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01544-x

Armstrong, K. (2011). Twelve steps to a compassionate life [epub]. New York, go to sleep: Three Rivers Press.

Bergeisen, M. (2010, September 22). The neuroscience of happiness. Retrieved from Greater Good magazine: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_neuroscience_of_happiness

Cregg, D. R., & Cheavens, J. S. (2021). Gratitude interventions: Effective self-help? A meta-analysis of the impact on symptomsx of depression and anxiety. Journal of Happiness Studies, 22, 413-445. doi:10.1007/s10902-020-00236-6

Davis, D. E., Choe, E., Meyers, J., Wade, N., Varjas, K., Gifford, A., . . . Worthington, E. L. (2006). Thankful for the little things: A meta-analysis of gratitude interventions. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 63(1), 20-31. doi:10.1037/cou0000107

Dickens, L. R. (2017). Using gratitude to promote positive change: A series of meta-analyses investigatiing the effectivnes of gratitude interventions. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 39(4), 193-208. doi:10.1080/01973533.2017.1323638

Hanson, R. (2009). Buddha’s brain: The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Ma, L., Tunney, R., & Ferguson, E. (2017). Does gratitude enhance prosociality: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 143(6), 601-635. doi:10.1037/bul0000103

Nesse, R. M. (2005). Natual selection and the regulation of defenses: A signal detection analysis of the smoke detector principle. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26(1), 88-105. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2004.08.002

Nisker, W. (2022). Being nature: A down-to-earth guide to the four foundations of mindfulness [epub]. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.

Struhl, K. J. (2018). Buddhism and the problem of universal compassion. In J. Caouette, & C. Price (Eds.), The moral psychology of compassion (pp. 95-111). London: Rowman & Littlefield International .

The mind a jigsaw puzzle,
Each piece representing a part of the puzzle:
Different sensation, passing emotions
Scattered thoughts that might be present.

So hard the task of connecting the pieces,
So the mind remains scattered.

Maybe there is time to focus,
Maybe connecting the pieces,
Commit to the task.
If not, they will stay scattered,
The full picture never to be seen.

A choice to pay attention,
A non-judgmental attention;
Then all the pieces can be seen,
One by one, be linked.

The relevance of one piece to another
Can slowly be uncovered,
To recognise and acknowledge
The pieces of the mind
That were previously scattered.

To connect and reconnect,
To step back and see the bigger picture
For what it really is.

Oh, how beautiful this mosaic
When seen for what it is,
When taken as a mindful puzzle!

- by Dr Clayton Micallef

Inspiration for “The Mind: What a Puzzle” and MBCT

I am currently doing my teacher training pathway in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and the inspiration to write this poem came from the experiences I had while doing the first part of the MBCT teacher training.  Although I am a long-time practitioner, I had moments during this training where my mind was all over the place, taken over by emotions, thoughts, sensations and impulses.

Attending the first part of the training as a trainee teacher but mostly as a participant helped in seeing all of this with a sense of clarity of perception that I have not previously experienced.  I think this came out of a foundational theme emphasised throughout the whole of the 8 weeks of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, what is called the 5-part model of experience, a model from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy sometimes called the “Hot Cross Bun Model” (McManus, 2022; Segal et al., 2012). 

The premise of this model is how the environment, thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and behaviour all influence each other.  They are so closely intertwined that changes in one of these usually leads to changes in the others.  This model also states that it is not the situation that causes us to feel in a particular way but our interpretation of it and how this, in turn, influences how we feel.  So, as Choden and Regan-Addis (2018) would say, it is driven by “preference” or, as Jon Kabat-Zinn (2013) would say, by “judgment”. 

And this is what struck me: when my mind was all over the place, it was like the pieces of a scattered puzzle, hence the poem’s title.  And similarly, to how when seeing for the first time the scattered pieces of a puzzle at first glance, this can feel overwhelming so to the scattered mind at a first glance can seem overwhelming.   As the poem says in the fifth verse, “So hard the task of connecting the pieces”.

And I have learnt through the first part of the teacher training in MBCT that MBCT invites us to stop and look at all of this without preference and judgment.  Or, as the poem says in verses 6 and 10, the mind will remain scattered. 

So, there is a choice, a choice to stop, take a breath and consciously acknowledge all of this and bring a non-judgmental awareness to it; if not, as the poem says in verse 11, the full picture will never be seen.  

And for me I saw this epitomised during my MBCT teacher training in “The Breathing Space Practice” and how it is weaved throughout the whole of the MBCT curriculum as this short foundational mindfulness practice that we can use at any time which invites us:

1. To acknowledge and bring a non-judgmental awareness to experience whatever the feeling tone might be - pleasant, unpleasant or neutral - to acknowledge this and notice thoughts, feelings, sensations and impulses that might be there as a matter of fact, that is what there is right not (verses 12, 13, 14, 18).

2. To gather attention - to focus, to pay attention in the present moment, as mentioned in verses 7, 12 and 13.  To gather the scattered mind by focusing on an anchor like the breath. 

3. Once gathered, there is this sense of stepping back, as in verse 22, to open up awareness to experience whatever it is.  Here, we can bring in the different faces of the breathing space according to what we notice present in awareness.  To meet and respond to whatever is in experience with kindness and compassion, with a choice to respond from a place of wisdom.  As Viktor Frankl is famously attributed to have said,

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”           

And this is what struck me from my MBCT teacher training: how such a short practice, like the breathing space which, invites us to stop and pay non-judgmental attention to experience.  Can help create that space from where we can step back and take a moment “to recognise and acknowledge” (verse 18) experience to see, “the pieces of the mind that were previously scattered” (verses 19, 20), “to step back and see the bigger picture for what it really is” (verse 22, 23).  This is what inspired me to write this poem.    

To sum it up, this poem emerged from my experiences during the first part of the MBCT teacher training.  I would say that the poem’s central metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle was inspired in part by MBCT’s emphasis on the 5-part model of experience (also known as the “Hot Cross Bun Model” in cognitive behavioural therapy) and how environment, thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and behaviour are interconnected, with changes in one area affecting the others.

With the key MBCT principles reflected in the poem being:

• Non-judgmental awareness of our experiences

• The choice to pay attention to the present moment

• The practice of “The Breathing Space,” which involves:

1.       Acknowledging current experiences

2.       Gathering attention (often using the breath as an anchor)

3.       Expanding awareness to respond wisely to our experiences

Where the poem’s progression aims to mirror these steps, moving from scattered pieces to a coherent whole by emphasising the importance of pausing, acknowledging our current state, and choosing to respond mindfully rather than react automatically.  As Viktor Frankl is attributed to have said,

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

This poem is an invitational exploration of that space and the beauty of what we can discover when we approach our minds with patience and mindful attention.  It also shows how mindfulness offers a path to seeing the mind with clarity.  By slowing down and acknowledging our thoughts as thoughts, as is said in MBCT, “thoughts are not facts; they’re mental events” (Segal et al., 2012) and by allowing them to exist without judgment and pass, we can connect the pieces of the mental puzzle that the mind is and gain greater insight into ourselves and our reactive patterns of behaviour.

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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If you enjoyed reading this and want to support my work, why not subscribe? 📚 Never miss a post – it's free! If you're feeling extra awesome, you can become a paid subscriber to the publication. No need for Substack, just your email address. Your support means a lot and keeps me going. 😊 Thank you! 😊

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Bibliography

Choden, & Regan-Addis, H. (2018). Mindfulness based living course. New Alresford: John Hunt Publishing.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2013). Full catastrophe living: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation (Revised and updated ed.). New York, NY: Random House USA Inc.

McManus, F. (2022). Cognitive tehavioural therapy: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M., & Teasdale, J. D. (2012). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guildford Publications.

Let us start by doing an experiment.  Sit down, close your eyes, and for the next two minutes, imagine a “white bear.”  Ready!  Now, for the next two minutes, you can think about anything except a “white bear”.  What happens when you do this?

And the next exercise.  Sit down, and for the next two minutes, just do not think, especially about a “white bear”.  Ready!  Again, what happens here when you try to do this? 

Usually, what happens is that in the second and third exercise, the thought of the “white bear” keeps coming up.  Unbecomingly it seems that the harder we try to suppress the thought of a “white bear” frustratingly, it just keeps coming up.

This was eloquently captured by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a prolific Russian novelist on the human condition most known for his novels such as Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), The Possessed (1872) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).  Below is a video outlining his life, what he wrote about and his philosophical and psychological outlook on the human condition. 

But for our purposes we will be looking at something he wrote in “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.” Similarly to what we tried in the beginning, he points out,

“Try and set yourself the problem of not thinking about a polar bear, and you will see that the damned animal will be constantly in your thoughts.” (Dostoyevsky, 1985, p. 62)

This is precisely how the mind works, and what prompted Daniel Wegner and colleagues in 1987 to directly study this phenomenon for the first time, the “Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression.”  They opened the study with the following paragraph,

“It is sometimes tempting to wish one’s thoughts away.  Unpleasant thoughts, ideas that are inappropriate to the moment, or images that may instigate unwanted behaviors each can become the focus of a desire for avoidance.  Whether one is trying not to think of a traumatic event, however, or is merely attempting to avoid the thought of food while on a diet, it seems that thought suppression is not easy.  It is said, for instance, that when the young Dostoyevsky challenged his brother not to think of a white bear, the child was perplexed for a long while.”  (Wegner et al., 1987, p. 5)

Taking Dostoyevsky’s challenge, Wegner et al. (1987) ran a series of experiments similar to what we did at the start of the article to see what happens when we try to suppress thoughts.

To do this, they set up two groups where one group was told to first “try to think of a white bear” (expression phase) for 5 minutes and subsequently to “try not to think of a white bear” (suppression phase) for the following 5 minutes.  The other group was given the opposite sequence to first “try not to think of a white bear” (suppression phase) and then to “think of a white bear” (expression phase) for 5-minute periods.  While doing this, participants were asked to verbalise their stream of consciousness and ring a bell whenever the white bear came to mind (Wegner et al., 1987).  

What Wegner et al. (1987) found was that even if instructed not to think of a white bear, participants struggled with this and still reported having thoughts of a white bear on average more than once per minute when asked not to think of it.  You might be saying to yourself that this was bound to happen.

However, what is interesting is what happened to those participants who, first, were instructed “not to think of a white bear” (suppression phase) for the first 5 minutes, and after instructed to “think of a white bear” (expression phase).  In this instance, Wegner and colleagues observed how, compared to the previous group, who started with “thinking of a white bear” (expression phase), the second group reported more instances of a white bear in the expression phase when this was superseded with a suppression stage.     

Wegner et al. (1987) argued that overall, this was indicative of an antagonistic or inverse relationship suggestive of a rebound effect. 

What does this mean?  That the effort to suppress a thought might actually lead to an increase in the frequency of that thought once suppression is no longer required.  In other words, trying not to think about something (even something trivial like a white bear) can make you more likely to think about it later on.  However, Wegner et al. (1987) did not stop there.

They did a second experiment in which they included a third group.  This group was told to start by “trying not to think of a white bear” (suppression phase).  However, they included an extra instruction asking participants to focus on “the thought of a red Volkswagen” in this phase and, whenever the thought of a “white bear” came up, to return to focusing on “the thought of a red Volkswagen.”   Wegner and colleagues called this the “focused distraction condition.”  If you think about this, we can also say that there are parallels here to what is done in meditation.

What Wegner et al. (1987) found was quite curious, that the “focused distraction” (focusing on a red Volkswagen) did not help in reducing the thoughts of a “white bear” in the suppression phase compared to other groups.  However, they noted that these participants did not show the rebound effect when it came to the expression phase (think of a white bear).

What does this mean?  That focusing on the red Volkswagen in the suppression helped with reducing the likelihood of thinking of a white bear once suppression was no longer required.  Here again, we can see parallels with meditation.  Why?  If you think about this, it also seems to be the case with meditation that the more we allow thoughts to be without engaging with them in the long term, this seems to help settle the mind.

The ironic process theory

So why does this happen?  Wegner et al. (1987) pointed out how,

“To suppress a thought requires that one (a) plan to suppress a thought and (b) carry out that plan by suppressing all manifestations of the thought, including the original plan.  Thought suppression thus seems to entail a state of knowing and not knowing at once.” (p. 5)

And this is a paradoxical state to know and not know something simultaneously.

So, the white bear keeps popping in mind because when we set ourselves up the task to try not to think of something, we also need to check if we are thinking about it.  So, a part of our mind is trying to avoid that thought, but at the same time, another part of our mind checks in periodically to see if we are thinking of a white bear and, in doing so, brings it to mind.  This process is automatic.  It is how the mind works, and over a number of years and multiple studies, it came to be known as, “The Ironic Process Theory” of thought control, that the more we try not to think about something, the more likely it is to come to mind (Wegner, 1994).  Following is a helpful video explaining the ironic process theory.

This is why it is called ironic process theory.  Because it is ironic that not to think about something, you actually need to think if you are not thinking about it, and when you do so, you are thinking about it.  In fact, Wegner (1994) opens the theory by saying,

“It sometimes seems that our desires to control our minds are met by an inordinate measure of failure.  Whether we want to stop a worry, concentrate on a task, go to sleep, escape a bad mood, distract ourselves from pain, be humble, relax, avoid prejudice, or serve yet other mental goals, we find ourselves faltering again and again.  Indeed, our attempts at mental control fall short so often that we may stop to wonder—along with Poe—whether there is some part of our minds, an imp of the perverse, that ironically strives to compel our errors.  The theory of ironic processes of mental control makes precisely this claim.” (p. 34)

Ironic process theory and mindfulness

So, what can these findings and theory tell us about mindfulness meditation?

Primarily, this highlights something, first, that thoughts are bound to come up in meditation and, second, that trying to block thoughts or setting ourselves the task of not thinking in meditation can actually make things worse.  As Wegner and colleagues found in their experiments and what the ironic process theory tells us, that the more we try to suppress thoughts, the more they are bound to arise.  This is because, through his theory, Wegner demonstrates that setting yourself the task of not thinking in meditation requires you also to think if you are not thinking.  

I have often experienced this first-hand in my practice, where the more I try not to think, the more the mind seems to wander away, which then leads me to become frustrated.  Consequently, I unknowingly start trying to block the frustration, which leads to more frustration and thoughts—a vicious cycle.

This is why in mindfulness meditation, the objective is not to make the mind go blank, or have no thoughts or stop thinking.  This is counterproductive as it just will fuel more thoughts.  The “objective” is to allow the thoughts to be, to just let them be, and whenever we notice getting lost in the thoughts getting carried away by them, to notice this as a matter of fact and return to watching the arising and passing of thoughts.

However, sometimes, there is the perception that meditation is about having no thoughts.  I encounter many individuals who come to meditation with this impression because they are seeking “mental peace”, and to achieve this, they believe one has to stop thoughts.  By doing this, we will just be entering into conflict with the mind.  As we saw from the ironic process theory, this will not work, and this ironic process is one of the processes that can make anxious or depressogenic thinking worse (Becker et al., 1998; Beevers et al., 1999; Koster et al., 2003; Szasz, 2009).    

So, counterintuitively, this is not what we do in mindfulness practice, and the ironic process theory seems to support this.  What we do in mindfulness practice is having a point of reference, which we call an anchor on which we rest attention, while at the same time not trying to stop thoughts or thinking, but to notice moments when an arising thought captures our attention and find ourselves thinking, noticing this without judgement and returning attention to our anchor.   This reminds me of the Tibetan word for meditation, “gom or ghom”, which broadly means “to become familiar with the mind and how the mind moves”.  While in Pali, the word used for meditation is “Bhavana”, which broadly means “to actively cultivate”.  Lama Surya Das (2011) writes:

“In Tibetan, the word for meditation is gom, which literally means “familiarisation” or “getting used to,” and, in this sense, meditation is a means by which we familiarise ourselves with our mind.  The common Pali term for meditation is bhavana, meaning “to cultivate, to develop, to bring into being.” So we might then think of meditation as the active cultivation of mind leading to clear awareness, tranquillity, and wisdom.  This requires conscious effort.”  (para. 4)

So, to become familiar friends with the mind and how it moves, not to “control” it, as trying to suppress or control thought can backfire.    

And the ironic process theory and Wegner et al. (1987) experiments seem to lend support to this as what was helpful in avoiding this rebound effect was not trying to stop thoughts of a white bear but noticing those moments and returning to the red Volkswagen.  Precisely the process that we are engaging in in meditation practice, which, in time and with diligent practice, leads to a sense of calm because we are no longer struggling with our thoughts.  The following video by Professor Russ Curtis might help visualise this.

In fact, Micallef (2023) argues that ultimately, mindfulness meditation and mindfulness-based interventions,

“All emphasise either directly or indirectly a systematic, sustained training of the faculty of attention (for both teacher and participant) primarily directed towards the cultivation of mindfulness as a quality of awareness as a central pedagogical component.” (ibid. p. 87)

Further arguing that this seems to be the case across contemplative traditions writing,

“Such emphasis on the systemic, sustained training of one’s faculty of attention directly or indirectly towards the cultivation of mindfulness as a quality of awareness also seems to be a common pedagogical component linking the different contemplative practices across traditions.” (ibid. p. 87)

Further, this paradoxical effect is not only limited to thoughts but also to other domains like relaxation and mood (Wegner, 1994).  So again, as per the purpose of meditation practice, this shows that trying to relax or control our mood during mindfulness practice will technically backfire.

Mindfulness is not about trying to relax or controlling mood, but about bringing about a balanced acknowledging awareness towards our present experience, whatever it is, without grasping onto something, wanting to make it last or suppressing the unpleasant because we do not like it.  As Bishop et al. (2004) pointed out, mindfulness has been broadly conceptualised,

“As a kind of nonelaborative, non-judgmental, present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is.” (ibid. p.232)

And beyond all the pleasantries theories and chatter about mindfulness, cultivating mindfulness as a quality of awareness is not an easy thing to do because probably, we all would like enjoyable, pleasant things and moments to last and to avoid unpleasant things and moments and for them to go away.  This including myself, and from personal experience, although I have found mindfulness practice helpful, it is one of the most difficult things to practice in this capitalist consumerist post-modern world we live in. Would like to hear your comments about this.

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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References

Becker, E. S., Rinnck, M., Roth, W. T., & Margraf, J. (1998). Don’t worry and beware of white bears: Thought suppression in anxiety patients.  Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 12(1), 39-55.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0887-6185(97)00048-0

Beevers, C. G., Wenzlaff, R. M., Hayes, A. M., & Scott, W. D. (1999). Depression and the ironic effects of thought suppression: Therapeutic strategies for improving mental control.  Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 6(2), 133-148.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.6.2.133

Bishop, S. R., Lau, M., Shapiro, S., Carlson, L., Anderson, N. D., Carmody, J., . . . Devins, G. (2004).  Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition.  Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11(3), 230-241.  doi:10.1093/clipsy.bph077

Das Surya, L. (2016). The heart of meditation [epub].  In J. D. Oliver (Ed.), Commit to sit: Tools for cultivating a meditation practice from the pages of Tricycle (p. 10%).  Carlsbad: Hay House Inc.

Dostoyevsky, F. (1985). Winter notes on summer impressions. (K. FitzLyon, Trans.) London: Quartet Books.

Koster, E. H., Rassin, E., Crombez, G., & Naring, G. W. (2003).  The paradoxical effects of suppressing anxious thoughts during imminent threat.  Behaviour Research and Therapy, 41(9), 1113-1120.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(03)00144-Xv

Micallef, C. (2023).  The adverse effects of mindfulness: A narrative review, emergent findings, and a proposed definition [Doctoral dissertation, University of Aberdeen] Primo.  Retrieved from https://abdn.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/delivery/44ABE_INST:44ABE_VU1/12213274180005941

Szasz, P. L. (2009).  Thoughts suppression depressive rumination and depression: A mediation analysis.  Journal of Cognitive and Behavioural Psychotherapies, 9(2), 199-209.

Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic process of mental control.  Psychological Review, 101(1), 34-52.

Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R., & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5-13.

“Vipassana Vendetta” sounds like the name of an action-packed movie.  However, it is actually an obscure term that is used to describe an experience that happens quite frequently in silent meditation retreats, especially if it is your first time attending one (Goldstein, 2002).

So, what is a “Vipassana Vendetta” and to answer this question, let us take an unconventional path and start by breaking it down into its separate words, “vipassana” and “vendetta,” defining the meaning of each word.

Vipassana: Vipassana is one of the two foundational meditation practices in Buddhism (Harvey, 2013).  It is usually translated into “insight” or “clear seeing.” Vipassana is most commonly associated with the Theravada School of Buddhism and was initially popularised by Buddhist Monk Ledi Sayadaw (Braun, 2013).  This was then further fuelled by S. N. Goenka, who was probably one of the main drivers for its popularity in the West (Hart & Goenka, 2011).  It is a practice that aims to cultivate mindfulness to develop insight into the nature of reality and things from three aspects, “that they are impermanent and unstable (anitya/anicca), that they are unsatisfactory and imperfect (duhkha/dukkha), and that they are not self (anatman/anatta)” (Gethin, 1998, p. 187).  Ultimately, the practice is directed towards “freedom from suffering,” so at cultivating inner peace, wisdom, and compassion for self and others.    

Vendetta: This term has been borrowed from Italian.  It was originally used in English to refer to heated retaliatory conflict or feuding between different families or clans.  Generally, it is used to describe engaging in an often-prolonged bitter campaign of retaliatory violence and retribution against someone or a group of people (Merriam-Webster, n.d.).  We could say that this would be the antithesis of vipassana and would go totally against the principles of Buddhist and contemplative traditions. 

So, at first glance, these terms are opposites to each other, so why are they joint? 

First, it is important to note that although this term is referring to a phenomenon that happens in silent retreats, it is not a recognised “concept/term” that is made mention of in traditional meditation manuals or Buddhist texts.  This is not to say that traditional texts do not mention the phenomenological experience or something similar to the experience of “vipassana vendetta”.  However, this term emerged more recently as Buddhism and silent retreats became more popular in the West. 

I tried to look into when the term actually emerged, and after doing some research and scoring through multiple articles, I could find nothing concrete. 

However, a curious fact is that I found about four published books that mention this term: 2 mention it in relation to meditation and another 2, by the same authors, who mention it in the context of self-help (books are below in bibliography).  So, I would be inclined to hypothesise that this term probably emerged after the 1980s, as the earliest mention I could find was in the book by Joseph Goldstein, published in 2002.  Why do I say this?

Joseph Goldstein was one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society, which was established on February 14, 1976 (IMS history, n.d.)  I would say that it probably emerged after the establishment of this society and them conducting silent retreats.  But again, this is what I think, and if you happen to know of the term’s mention in any literature, I would love to know in the comments.         

So, departing from all of this and considering that vipassana and vendetta are polar opposite concepts at odds with each other, their combination likely points us to something curious.  That they probably were combined to describe or put a label on a humorous or ironic paradoxical phenomenon being experienced in silent retreats, and this actually seems to be the case.

So what is vipassana vendetta

“Vipassana vendetta” is usually a phenomenon that happens in silent retreats where “minor irritations” turn into “major irritations”, all amplified by thoughts in the mind.  A great practical example of this happening is the one described by Oliver Burkeman (2012) in their book “The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking.”  They write:

Gradually, I started to become aware of a young man sitting just behind me and to the left.  I had noticed him when he first entered the meditation hall, and had felt a flash of annoyance at the time: something about him, especially his beard, had struck me as too calculatedly dishevelled, as if he were trying to make a statement.  Now his audible breathing was starting to irritate me, too.  It seemed studied, unnatural, somehow theatrical.  My irritation slowly intensified – a reaction that struck me as entirely reasonable and proportionate at the time.  It was all beginning to feel like a personal attack.  How much contempt must the bearded meditator have for me, I seethed silently, deliberately to decide to ruin the serenity of my meditation by behaving so obnoxiously?  (ibid. chap. 3, para. 28)

How sitting with yourself in stillness, especially if this stillness is accompanied by an environment of silence such as in a meditation retreat, how small irritations or discomforts can easily become magnified beyond their true effect as in the example shared by Oliver Burkeman.  How something so mundane, such as the sound of someone’s breath, turned into this whole story that the person was doing it intentionally to irritate them. 

This might seem irrational, but in such situations where the mind is deprived of everyday stimulation, it reveals an underlying conditioned nature that of how easily we can get caught into storylines, especially negative ones and run with them in our thoughts, creating a whole scenario.  This phenomenon is what is meant by the term “vipassana vendetta” (Burkeman, 2012; Goldstein, 2002).

Oliver Burkeman (2012) writes “vipassana vendetta” is how, in the stillness of a retreat,

Tiny irritations become magnified into full-blown hate campaigns; the mind is so conditioned to attaching to storylines that it seizes upon whatever’s available.  (ibid. chap. 3, para. 29)

This has happened to me multiple times, sometimes in the context of a silent retreat and other times in my daily practice. 

Over the years, from my own experience with meditation, I find that the main four elements or challenges that tend to trigger it fall under the following:      

1.  Mental challenges: “Vipassana vendetta” can also happen in instances where, during long periods of silence in meditation, practitioners might be more prone to the amplification of difficult emotions or thoughts due to the same process that we described above.  So “vipassana vendetta” does not only “humorously” refer to the mind’s tendency to fixate on perceived annoyances from others in the retreat around us but also to internal challenges due to the mind’s tendency to fixate mentally on these challenges, getting lost in a spiral of thinking amplifying them.  

2.  Competitive mindset: Social comparison is something that is ingrained in our psychology (Hogg & Vaughan, 2017).  So, a “vipassana vendetta” might show itself in the arising of a sense of competitiveness with others in the retreat.  This might show itself in a subtle way, like just getting lost in a sense of comparison in how you are doing compared to others, or not-so-subtle where we might end up harbouring a sense of inner resentment towards someone or a group that we perceive as “doing better.” An example of this could be getting lost in an inner monologue like, “How they always look calm and steady in the practice, they are surely faking it, wish a fly sits squarely on their nose and just stays there, I too can sit like them in meditation, I will sit next to them hope this throws them off.”

3.  Restlessness and frustration: In the context of a retreat, this can happen due to needing or being expected to adhere to a strict schedule tempered by prolonged moments of silence.  These can be frustrating or give rise to restlessness, for example, due to the long time spent still in sitting meditation.  This might give rise to what I would call getting caught in an internal “vendetta” against the retreat conditions or teachers.  For example, “They could have planned the retreat better, the teachers could have done a better job at organising this,” or even oneself, for example, “Why cannot I sit still?  I am not good at this.  You are making a fool of yourself.  Everybody can see how restless you are.”

4.  Physical discomfort or irritations:  Further, a “vipassana vendetta” might also be triggered by physical discomforts or irritations in the body.  In the context of practicing alone at home, this might pass through as you are less restricted and can move freely and shift your posture or scratch an itch or, stand up and sit again if your feet are getting numb or adjust the cushion mid-way in your practice.  However, this might not be the case when on retreat, where you are practising in a group in an environment that is to observe silence.  For example, you might be practicing in the main hall, there is dead silence, and you start feeling an itch in your throat and a need to cough.  Here, a “vipassana vendetta” can easily strike in spiralling thoughts similar to the following, “please stop, go away, why is this happening now, I cannot resist, but you have to keep it in, I wish I was at home I could just cough there”; or maybe you cannot hold it and cough and start feeling as if you want to be swallowed by the earth compounded by a downward spiral of thoughts of how you disturbed the others and what they might be thinking about you now.          

Being paralysed from the neck down (you can read more here “About Me – Clayton Micallef”), the last one, “physical discomfort or irritations,” is the one I tend to struggle with.  I can recall a clear example of a “vipassana vendetta” that happened to me during an online silent retreat, which would not have been the case if I would have been practising alone.   

I remember getting a really bad spasm that shifted my posture and, in an instant, getting flooded by thoughts, “Why did this happen now, I am going to disturb the others.  Is my microphone on, should I turn the camera off, hope nobody notices,” etc.  As mentioned, if something like this had happened while practicing alone, I would just stop and adjust my posture and then continued with the practice.  This again highlighting how, in the context and environment of a retreat, irritations that might not usually disturb our practice can end up being amplified.

However, from experience to a lesser extent, I would say that this phenomenon does not only occur during retreats, but it can also happen as we go about our personal daily meditation practice and sometimes even while going about our daily lives and how we can get caught up in minor irritations and run with them in the mind ending up unnecessarily distressed.  This happens universally.  It is just that during meditation retreats, there is a greater chance that this phenomenon gets amplified and makes itself really apparent.

Ultimately, the phenomenon of “vipassana vendetta” highlights what is said in the Sallatha Sutta with the example of the two arrows.  How we are bound to be hit or experience discomfort in life, the first arrow, which we cannot avoid and how the discomfort can be compounded or increased, ending up further distressed through the interpretation we put on it, the second arrow, and how this can be avoided (Feldman & Kuyken, 2019; Thanissaro Bhikkhu, 1997).

And you, have you ever experienced a “vipassana vendetta” or something similar in your meditation practice? Leave a comment below.

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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If you enjoyed reading this and want to support my work, why not subscribe? 📚 Never miss a post – it's free! If you're feeling extra awesome, you can become a paid subscriber to the publication. No need for Substack, just your email address. Your support means a lot and keeps me going. 😊 Thank you! 😊

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Bibliography

Braun, E. (2013).  The birth of insight: Meditation, modern Buddhism & the Burmese monk Ledi Sayadaw.  Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Burkeman, O. (2012).  The antidote: Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking.  Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company.

Cope, A., & Whittaker, A. (2014).  Be brilliant everyday [epub].  West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.

Cope, A., & Whittaker, A. (2024).  The art of being brilliant [epub].  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Feldman, C., & Kuyken, W. (2019). Mindfulness ancient wisdom meets modern psychology.  New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Gethin, R. (1998).  The foundations of Buddhism.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goldstein, J. (2002). One dharma: The emerging Western Buddhism [epub].  San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins.

Hart, W., & Goenka, S. N. (2011). The art of living: Vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka.  London: HarperCollins Publishers.

Harvey, P. (2013).  An introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, history and practices (2nd ed.).  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hogg, M., & Vaughan, G. M. (2017).  Social psychology (8th ed.).  Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

IMS history.  (n.d.).  Retrieved August 4, 2024, from Insight Meditation Society: https://www.dharma.org/about-us/ims-turns-40/

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.).  Vendetta.  Retrieved August 12, 2024, from Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vendetta

Thanissaro Bhikkhu.  (1997).  Sallatha sutta: The arrow.  Retrieved August 18, 2024, from https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn36/sn36.006.than.html

In Contemporary literature, mindfulness meditation is usually described as a practice centred around cultivating awareness of the present moment without judgment.  

Related to this, I was recently reading an article by Herman Schreuder (2024) where he argues,

“If you want to free yourself, you have to put all your heart into your practice, patiently developing your mind every day—day in, day out—without desiring results or wisdom.” (para. 11)

This statement stopped me in my tracks and made me reflect on some of the key aspects of mindfulness meditation.  Elements which I find are especially important to reflect on, whether we are seeking to practice with the motive of liberation from suffering (“dukkha”) or if we are practising to improve physical and psychological well-being.

But what really stuck in my head was the part of Schreuder’s statement, which says, “You have to put all your heart into your practice.”

‘’You have to put all your heart into your practice’’

Schreuder immediately starts by putting forth this notion of placing “all your heart into your practice.” This speaks volumes about the importance of having a genuine intention, the right motivations and sincere commitment when it comes to practising meditation.   From my own experience, I would also say that these are key.  Why?

Because before we do anything we need to form an intention to do it.  So likewise, when it comes to mindfulness meditation, first and foremost, there needs to be set a clear and genuine intention to start practising.  However, this alone is not enough, as it needs to be coupled with the right motivations.  What do I mean here?

In a previous article, I had written, “Is There a Place for “God” in Secular Mindfulness Meditation?” and was also published for Medium members a reader pointed out and replied with a comment that points to something very important: how “mindfulness” (note here the inverted commas) without the right motivations takes us nowhere as it can be used as an attentional practice to make you a more efficient killer or soldier.  I agree with this, and it is a criticism that is really warranted, that of “the mindful sniper.” 

This point was initially made by Matthieu Ricard (2009/2013).  In his own words, he wrote,

“Consider a sniper lying in wait for the victim he intends to kill: he certainly maintains a concentration centred on a defined object, remains unfailingly, calm and composed, in the present moment; he is capable of maintaining his attention for a long time and of bringing it back to his target as soon as it strays from it.  If he wants to achieve his sinister goal, he must eliminate all distraction and all relaxation, mental attitudes which are the two major obstacles to maintaining attention.” (Ricard, 2013, para. 6)

And in a more recent interview with Time, Matthieu Ricard commented,

“There are a lot of people speaking about mindfulness,” ........ “but the risk is that it’s taken too literally — to just ‘be mindful.’ Well, you could have a very mindful sniper and a mindful psychopath.  It’s true!  A sniper needs to be so focused, never distracted, very calm, always bringing back his attention to the present moment.  And non-judgmental — just kill people and no judgment.  That could happen!” (as cited in Krznaric, 2017, para. 4)

If used in that way, this is not mindfulness but attentional training.  This has been something that has been hotly debated and something that contemporary mindfulness interventions have been criticised for, that they neglect the ethical aspect of mindfulness, especially when used, for example, in the workplace to increase productivity or for military purposes (Davis, 2015; Greenberg & Mitra, 2015; Monteiro et al., 2015). 

Why?  Because inherently, mindfulness meditation has tied to it an ethical dimension. This is not only emphasised in Buddhism but also in other contemplative traditions that, of doing no harm (Gentry, 2016; Neusher & Chilton, 2009).  Usually, this is referred to as the golden rule of contemplative traditions, the ethic of compassion (Armstrong, 2011; Neusher & Chilton, 2009).  One very popular definition of compassion is the following:

“Being sensitive to the suffering of self and others with a deep commitment to try to prevent and relieve it.” (Gilbert & Choden, 2014, p. 1)

So, the first part of Schreuder’s statement that, ‘’you have to put all your heart into your practice,’’ made me reflect immediately on this sense of the importance of a genuine commitment to practice regularly to reap its benefits. 

Indeed, when looking at mindfulness meditation as applied towards psychological well-being, it is regular, sustained practice over time that leads to changes in brain structure and function, especially in areas associated with attention and emotion regulation, and self-awareness (Wielgosz et al., 2019).  But here the question arises: Is commitment to practice, to reap its benefits enough?  Does this lead to “genuine mindfulness”?

Is commitment to practice to reap benefits enough?

Considering what we mentioned before related to its ethical dimension, it made me further reflect on whether practising “mindfulness’’ purely for its psychological and physical benefits is “mindfulness” or just something that stems from a materialistic motive.

This brought me to the next thing how, “my heart has to be in the right place” when it comes to practising mindfulness – so the ethical dimension or right motivations.  This is not to say that benefiting in areas such as emotional and attentional regulation and self-awareness is bad. 

But, on a personal level, it made me reflect on the importance of Buddhist philosophical principles such as right view, right action, right speech, right livelihood and right effort, and how they are tied to practising “mindfulness” or “right mindfulness”.   

What do I mean?  For example, if I am practising mindfulness to improve my ability to  concentrate and regulate my emotions as per the previous example to become a better, more efficient soldier or sniper, is that “right mindfulness.”   

This further led me to reflect on what I need to keep in mind and ask myself when practising mindfulness meditation, are the benefits from practising mindfulness for myself resulting in harm to others because if so as Greenberg and Mitra (2015) put it,

“Whether or not as a result of conscious intention, then such practice cannot be considered as right mindfulness.  Without this extension into ethical actions, our good intentions and focused energies may result in cultivating miccha sati (wrong mindfulness).” (p. 77)

This underscores the importance of a balanced approach when it comes to mindfulness.  What do I mean?

So, if I am practising mindfulness just to improve my emotional and attentional regulation and self-awareness, there is nothing wrong with that.  But at the same time, I would question myself if that is “mindfulness.” 

On the other hand, if I am practising mindfulness to improve my emotional and attentional regulation and self-awareness, not only to benefit myself but also with the genuine heart-felt motivation of doing it because this, in turn, will also benefit others.  An example could be, maybe, as a person, I am very emotional, and because of this, sometimes I automatically say things without “thinking”, which after I genuinely regret because I unwillingly end up hurting people.  So, I want to practice mindfulness, with one of the aims being to improve my emotional regulation so that, in turn, I will become less reactive and so less likely to hurt others.   

There, there is another dimension to that, not only how my mindfulness practice will benefit me but also how this will be of benefit to others.  So, an ethical dimension to it, how my mindfulness practice will also benefit others.  Because as Buddhist Monk, humanitarian, and author Matthieu Ricard (2013) argued,

“Pure attention, however refined it may be, is never anything more than an instrument that can be used to achieve Awakening, but it can just as easily be the cause of immense suffering.” (para. 6)

As Feldman and Kuyken (2019) clearly state out in their book, when discussing ethics and secular mindfulness-based programs how,

This is a key point: Mindfulness is inherently ethical. It is a path of understanding and a way of being and acting rooted in non-harming and beneficence. If it is not rooted in this intentionality, it is not mindfulness. (p. 209)

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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References

Armstrong, K. (2011). Twelve steps to a compassionate life [epub]. New York, go to sleep: Three Rivers Press.

Davis, J. (2015). Facing up to the question of ethics in mindfulness-based interventions. Mindfulness, 6(1), 46-48. doi:10.1007/s12671-014-0374-3

Feldman, C., & Kuyken, W. (2019). Mindfulness ancient wisdom meets modern psychology. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Gentry, C. E. (2016). Religion: Peace through non-violence in four religious traditions. In O. P. Richmond, S. Pogodda, Ramavic, & Jasmin (Eds.), The palgrave handbook of disciplinary and regional approaches to peace (pp. 168-180). London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_13

Gilbert, P., & Choden. (2014). Mindful compassion. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Greenberg, M. T., & Mitra, J. L. (2015). From mindfulness to right mindfulness: The intersection of awareness and ethics. Mindfulness, 6(1), 74- 78. doi:10.1007/s12671-014-0384-1

Krznaric, R. (2017, May 26). How we ruined mindfulness. Retrieved July 23, 23 from Time: https://time.com/4792596/mindfulness-exercises-morality-carpe-diem/

Monteiro, L. M., Musten, R. F., & Compson, J. (2015). Traditional and contemporary mindfulness: Finding the middle part in a tangle of concerns. Mindfulness, 6(1), 1-13. doi:10.1007/s12671-014-0301-7

Neusher, J., & Chilton, B. (Eds.). (2009). Golden rule: The ethics of reciprocity in world religions. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

Purser, R. (2019). Mcmindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality. United Kingdom: Watkins media.

Ricard, M. (2009, April 28). The sniper's "vigilance". Retrieved July 23, 2024 from Matthew Ricard - Buddhist Monk, humanitarian, author and photographer: https://web.archive.org/web/20150504114621/https://www.matthieuricard.org/blog/posts/a-sniper-s-mindfulness

Ricard, M. (2013, April 5). The sniper's "vigilance". Retrieved July 23, 23 from Matthew Ricard - Buddhist Monk, humanitarian, author and photographer: https://www.matthieuricard.org/la-vigilance-du-tireur-d-elite/

Schreuder, H. (2024, Jan 15). Don't read, meditate! Retrieved July 26, 2024 from TrIcycle: https://tricycle.org/article/ahba-abhidhamma/

Wielgosz, J., Goldberg, S. B., Karl, T. R., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2019). Mindfulness meditation and psychopathology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychopathology, 15, 285-316. doi:https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-021815-093423

Usually, mindfulness programs ask participants to meditate for between 20 to 45 minutes a day.  However, asking someone to meditate for 20 to 45 minutes a day can seem like a daunting and overwhelming task.  Having a busy schedule where fitting 20 minutes to seemingly sit “doing nothing” might seem a waste of time, especially if the moment we sit to “meditate and relax,” the mind seems to go wild with all kinds of thoughts and things you need to do.  Sitting with an agitated mind for any amount of time is not an easy thing to do. 

The key to all this is setting realistic expectations and starting small.

For a beginner, going forward, it might be crucial to make the decision to start with brief, short sessions, even just five minutes a day, as a start.   

An old Chinese proverb says,

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backwards.”  

As a beginner with meditation, heeding the advice of this proverb might be very helpful.  Why?  Although five minutes a day might not seem much, taking such an approach can have benefits and significantly improve the long-term chance of succeeding in setting a regular meditation practice.

So in this article, I will be sharing some tips on the topic of starting small with our meditation practice. I will also be referring to research that supports the notion of starting small and that to benefit from mindfulness practice, there is no need to spend 45 minutes a day sitting on a cushion meditating, but that 5 minutes can be enough as long as it is done with a level of consistency and dedication. So let us go.

So why start small?

As pointed out at the start, the primary reason is that starting with a long session can seem daunting and intimidating at first, especially if there is an expectation that I should feel better by meditating.  This is especially true if we have a busy schedule; fitting a 20-to-45-minute meditation might seem an impossible thing to do.  Fitting 5 minutes might seem the more realistic, easier thing to do.

So, because of this, starting with just a few minutes is more doable and less daunting, making it easier to begin and maintain your practice.

Further, as mentioned, shorter sessions will be easier to fit in as daily routine.  This increases the chances of meditating with a level of consistency, which, as mentioned in the previous article, is one of the keys to forming a lasting habit. 

In the previous article on “Beginner Tips for Creating a Consistent Meditation Routine,” we looked into researcher which found that it takes an average of 66 days for a new behaviour to become automatic (Lally et al., 2010).  This underscores the importance of starting with manageable, short sessions to establish a consistent habit.

Further, it is important to note that meditation is a skill, and all skills improve with practice.  So short sessions might help with this and might even give a sense of “mastery” with the practice as this allows us to build this skill gradually.    A parallel that is frequently made is that meditation is similar to physical exercise.  If you decide to start running by setting a goal of starting with 45 minutes a day, how likely are you to succeed?  But if you set your goal of starting with 5 to 10 minutes a day and increasing gradually after a couple of weeks, we are more likely to succeed.  This is much like starting strength training and how you would start with light weights at the beginning.

Further, as pointed out earlier, we need to be realistic and acknowledge the bare fact that sitting with the mind for any period of time is not an easy thing to do.  Starting with long sessions for some can lead to mental fatigue, frustration, and getting lost in excessive rumination, where rather than helping, this might make things worse, causing you to give up.  This is especially if you have a tendency for ruminative thinking, as research indicates that those more likely to drop from a mindfulness course in the first sessions are people who exhibit this pattern (Crane & Williams, 2010).   Short sessions can help counter this.

But the million-dollar question is, do short meditation sessions result in benefits? And is 5-minutes of practice a day enough? Below, we are going to look at research that might answer these questions.

Does short consistent meditation practice result in benefits?  

A systematic review and meta-analysis by Blanck et al. (2018) looking at how stand-alone mindfulness practice might influence levels of anxiety and depression found potential evidence for the benefits of short, consistent mindfulness practice in reducing levels of stress and depression.  Further, what was curious is that the study found indications that the effects on levels of anxiety were moderated by the amount of practice (consistency) rather than the length of practice.  So, this points out that what was important was consistency and regular practice rather than how long you practised each session.

In another study, Moore et al. (2012) observed how a brief regular meditation practice positively impacted correlates of attention.  They noted how participants who practised meditation for an average of 10 minutes a day for 16 weeks showed improvements in executive functioning related to processing of conflicting information and maintaining attentional control.  These increases also correlated with increased mindfulness scores on the “Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire” (FFMQ) post-test, with increases particularly predominant in the “observing” and “non-reacting” subscale, which could be argued are both needed to better process conflicting information.

Lacaille et al. (2018) also found potential evidence that daily practice, even if short, can positively affect how we respond to stress.  They argued how,

“Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that on days when participants meditated, they reported increased mindful responding: Increases in their mindful responding was associated with reports of decreases in perceived stress and negative affect and increases in positive affect.” (Lacaille, et al., 2018, p. 118)

However, it has to be said that they also found that this effect was modulated by the amount of practice the participant did.  So those that practised more than let us say, 5 minutes showed more benefit this increasing with the amount of time spent practice.  This is sometimes referred to as “the daily dose-response hypothesis of mindfulness.”  

However, they also found that this was also effected by “quality of practice.”  This means that those who forced themselves to do a long practice and maybe ended up struggling this effected the benefits one had from mindfulness practice.

Again, what this points out to us is that if you can just manage 5 minutes of mindfulness practice a day, it might be enough - do not force yourself to practice longer if you cannot manage, as this can backfire.   That said, there are studies that point out the opposite, that they did not find a significant change in benefiting from mindfulness between those who practised for a short versus those who practised for a longer time (Ribeiro et al., 2018; Schumer et al., 2018).    

Another interesting study is one that compared results from two groups of college students where one group meditated for 10 minutes everyday for two weeks while the other group meditated for 20 minutes a day over two weeks.  On comparing results, post-intervention Berghoff et al. (2017) observed how, independent of the amount of practice, both groups showed improvements in stress, mindfulness and self-compassion.  However, they also noted how those that practised for 20 minutes a day showed far larger improvements in self-compassion compared to those that meditated for 10 minutes.  Berghoff et al. (2017) concluded how the,

“Significant pre-post increase in mindfulness and reduction in stress was found for both experimental groups, suggesting that sustaining practice of brief mindfulness exercises over time confers positive benefits.” (ibid. p. 1518)

That said, we cannot dismiss that they found a significant difference, which is related to what we mentioned earlier, “the daily dose-response hypothesis of mindfulness,” where as daily time spent in mindfulness meditation practice increased improvements in self-compassion increased.  So Berghoff et al. (2017) also observed “a significant time by-condition interaction for self-compassion” (p. 1518) when practising mindfulness.

More recently, in 2021, Strohmaler and colleagues conducted a study to see how length of mindfulness practice might effect levels of mindfulness, depression, anxiety and stress.  To do this, they devised a three-arm trial with novice meditators, where one group practised 5 minutes of mindfulness meditation, a second group practised 20 minutes of mindfulness meditation and the third group acted as a control group where they listened to an audiobook.   Similarly to findings from previously mentioned studies, Strohmaier et al. (2021) observed how, post-study, both those who practised 5 minutes and 20 minutes showed increased trait mindfulness and also reported a reduction in stress, depression and anxiety compared to the control group.  However, they also observed an interesting between-group difference in effects between those who practised for 5 minutes and 20 minutes.  Rather than those that practised for longer (20 minutes), those that practised for the shorter 5 minutes showed a larger increase in trait mindfulness and a larger reduction in stress compared to those that practised 20 minutes.  Strohmaier et al. (2021) comment on how this was counter to what was expected.

Further comments by participants in Strohmaier et al. (2021) support the notion that for beginners starting with shorter practices might be recommended.  In fact, Strohmaler and colleagues mention how, through the study, only those in the longer 20 minutes practice mentioned how,

“At times, they experienced some difficulties in holding concentration and avoiding mind-wandering during practice and how a number of participants in the longer practice group asked whether there was a shorter alternative to mindfulness practice.” (ibid.  p. 581)

Further to this, Strohmaler and colleagues comment how only,

“People from the shorter practice group and none from the longer practice group requested the practice recording to continue their practice after the end of this study, and the facilitator observed more fidgeting and eyes opening in the longer practice group.”  (ibid.  p. 582)

As participants within this study were novice meditators, hypothetically, this indicates that for beginners with no prior experience starting with a short mindfulness practice might feel, as Strohmaier et al. (2021) put it,

“Attainable and sustainable ……… especially when there is minimal ongoing teacher input and prior practice experience” (p. 582).

That said, what can we take from these research findings, and what might be some tips to start and implement short sessions.

Tips to Implement Short Sessions:

1.  Start with short 5-minute sessions: Begin with sessions as short as 5 minutes.  5 minutes might seem like a short time, so the perception might be that it might not be a long enough time to benefit from meditation.  Still, as we saw from research it is actually enough as a starting dose to experience benefiting from mindfulness meditation.

2.  Set a timer: Before you start, set a timer for your chosen duration of practice.  You can use your mobile or a meditation timer app.  This can help you focus more on your practice as it takes away the element of worrying or tracking the amount of time passed while practising.

3.  Use a guided meditation: As we saw from research, as a total beginner, it might be helpful to use a guided meditation as this will offer instructions to keep you on track for your chosen time of practice and also offer you prompts to notice if your mind has wandered into thinking. If you are a paid subscriber, below are a 5-minute, 8-minute and 10-minute guided mindfulness of breath practice.

4.  Quality over quantity: As we saw from research, it is not the amount of practice in minutes that is important; it is the “quality of practice.”  So remember that if it is only a 5-minute meditation practice that you can manage, do not force yourself.  As we saw, a 5-minute practice where you are able to follow instructions appropriately is more beneficial than trying to force yourself to do a 20-minute practice where you end up feeling frustrated for any number of reasons, this could be not managing to sit still not more than 5-minutes, starting to doze after 5-minutes, or just struggling or not managing to maintain engagement or focus on the practice for more than 5-minutes.  As we saw from research, forcing yourself can backfire, so prioritize quality over length of practice.

3.  Gradually increase duration: As we saw from the above research, certain characteristics like self-compassion and mindful responding might be linked to what is called the “daily dose hypothesis of mindfulness meditation.”  So, as you become more comfortable with mindfulness meditation practice and feel grounded and apt with the current length of time you are practising, you might consider slowly increasing the length of your practice.  Again, the trick is to do this slowly, so even adding 2 minutes is enough.  (We mention some tips for doing this below)

6.  Multiple short sessions: If you wish to increase your time but still struggle, instead of doing one longer session, you might consider doing multiple 5-minute short sessions, like two or three times throughout the day.  For example, you could do 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the afternoon or any schedule that fits you.  You could also practice, for example, after finishing something like after finishing work before you go home and then maybe after washing the dishes.  The invitation here is to be creative in how to fit multiple short sessions throughout your day.

4.  Listen to your body and mind: That said, one other important point is to listen to yourself and what your body and mind are telling you.  What is meant by this?  There might be days when you feel really good, capable and raring to go to do a longer meditation practice.  At the same time, there will be days where you might feel you are struggling even with short sessions.  The key here is to be kind, flexible and understanding with yourself and adjust/modulate the length of practice accordingly.  As we saw, the key to benefiting from mindfulness is not the length of practice but being consistent with your practice.

Further, as we already mentioned, as you become more comfortable and settled within the short sessions, you may find yourself wanting to increase the time you spend in meditation.  So, how might you go about this?  What might be some tips for increasing the length of your meditation practice!

Tips for progressing from short sessions:

This is a great sign, but it’s important to progress slowly:

1.  Small incremental increases: When you feel you are at a place to progress beyond or increase the length you spent practising meditation again the fundamental tip is to go at it slowly, be gentle with yourself and do not force yourself.  So again, increase the length gradually in small bouts.  These can be a gradual increase, as small as two minutes at a time.

2.  Be consistent: What is meant in this context by being consistent?  Again, increasing the length of your practice involves a change that needs to set in.  So the key is to increase the time and then maintain your new duration for at least a week or until you feel comfortable and settled in with the new length before considering another increase.  Again, no rush; the practice of meditation is not a sprint but a marathon.

3.  Listen to your mind and body: This is similar to what we said previously.  If, at any time or at any point, the longer duration feels challenging or difficult, it is okay to scale back the time you spend practising.  Remember that from what we saw from research studies, the key to benefiting from mindfulness meditation is not dependent on the length of practice but consistency (regular practice) and the quality of practice.  So, our goal should be one where we aim to make our mindfulness meditation practice sustainable in the long run (as we mentioned, meditation is a marathon and not a sprint).

Ultimately, from what we saw and even from personal experience with practicing and teaching mindfulness , the key is to remember that there is no “right” or “optimal” duration for mindfulness meditation practice.  

As we saw from research and the main points that we discussed in this article, consistency and the quality of your practice are what matter the most.  Even if you meditate for no more than 5 minutes a day for the rest of your life, as we saw, you can still benefit from mindfulness meditation practice.  The key is to find a duration that works for you and fits within your lifestyle, one that allows you to maintain a regular meditation practice over the long term.  Keeping in mind that,

Mindfulness is not a “sprint” but a “marathon,” the marathon of our lives and an opportunity to live in a more grounded and wholesome manner with ourselves, others and the situations we encounter in life.

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

Share

If you enjoyed reading this and want to support my work, why not subscribe? 📚 Never miss a post – it's free! If you're feeling extra awesome, you can become a paid subscriber to the publication. No need for Substack, just your email address. Your support means a lot and keeps me going. 😊 Thank you! 😊

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References

Berghoff, C. R., Wheeless, L. E., Ritzert, T. R., Wooley, C. M., & Forsyth, J. P. (2017).  Mindfulness meditation adherence in a college sample: Comparison of a 10-min versus 20-min 2-week daily practice.  Mindfulness, 8, 1513-1521.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0717-y

Blanck, P., Perleth, S., Heidenreich, T., Kroger, P., Ditzen, B., Bents, H., & M. (2018). Effects of mindfulness exercises as stand-alone intervention on symptoms of anxiety and depression: Systematic review and meta-analysis.  Behaviour Research and Therapy, 102, 25-35.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2017.12.002

Crane, C., & Williams, J. M. (2010).  Factors associated with attrition from mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in patients with a history of suicidal depression.  Mindfulness, 1, 10-20.  doi:10.1007/s12671-010-0003-8

Lacaille, J., Sadikaj, G., Nishioka, M., Carriere, K., Flanders, J., & Knauper, B. (2018). Daily mindfulness responding mediates the effect of meditation practise on stress and mood: The role of practise duration and adherence.  Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(1), 109-122.  doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22489

Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C. H., Potts, H. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world.  European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674

Moore, A., Gruber, T., Derose, J., & Malinowski, P. (2012). Regular, brief mindfulness meditation practice improves electrophysiological markers of attentional control.  Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 18.  doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00018

Ribeiro, L., Atchley, R. M., & Oken, B. S. (2018).  Adherence to practise of mindfulness in novice meditators: Practises chosen, amount of time practised, and long term effects following a mindfulness-based intervention.  Mindfulness, 9(2), 401-411.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0781-3

Schumer, M. C., Lindsay, E. K., & Creswell, J. D. (2018).  Brief mindfulness training for negative affectivity: A systematic review and meta analysis.  Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 86(7), 569-583.  doi:10.1037/ccp0000324

Strohmaier, S., Jones, F., & Cane, J. E. (2021). Effects of length of mindfulness practice on mindfulness, depression, anxiety, and stress: A randomised control experiment.  Mindfulness, 12, 198-214.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01512-5

Contemplative practices are present in all contemplative traditions, and although there are differences when it comes to meditation, contemplative teachers within the varied traditions all point to the same thing.   Within the Catholic tradition, one of these teachers is Saint Francis de Sales, a Doctor of the Universal Church who lived between 1567 and 1622.

When asked how to meditate, Saint Francis de Sales is quoted to have said the following statement that speaks to the heart of mindfulness:

"Bring yourself back to the point quite gently. And even if you do nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back a thousand times, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed." (as cited in Dowrick, 2013)

This can be very difficult to do, and Francis de Sales is quoted to have further said that, “what we need is a cup of understanding, a barrel of love, and an ocean of patience” (as cited Kornfield, 1993, p. 58), to do this.

This speaks also to what Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote in his book Full Catastrophe Living, that,

“Mindfulness does not bulldoze through resistance. You have to work gently at the edges, a little here and a little there, keeping your vision alive in your heart, particularly during the times of greatest pain and difficulty.” (Kabat-Zinn, 1990, p. 299)

Starting with Francis de Sales' statements and continuing on to Kabat-Zinn, what is being said here captures the essence of meditative discipline.  They are pointing us to two elements: the persistent redirection of the wandering mind, as de Sales points out, but this has to be tempered with patience.  The mind will wander away, and as Kabat-Zinn says, we cannot bulldoze our way through the mind.

This makes me remember of times within my practice when I actually tried to bulldoze through the mind.  Times where I fought through distraction, trying to make it go away, trying to achieve the perfect practice to no avail.

But going to what de Sales and Kabat-Zinn say it makes me remember that mindfulness is not about achieving perfection or having no distractions but rather inviting a compassionate awareness of our thoughts and emotions.

The nature of contemplative practice is not defined by reaching some grand achievement, but a path defined by the cumulative impact of small, deliberate actions performed with genuine dedication tempered with patience.  Each moment, our mind wanders away in our practice and patiently diligently returning our focus with kindness and compassion to the present moment; that is a statement within our practice—a statement of commitment to our inner growth moment by moment, step by step.

A statement that defines contemplative practice.  Why?  Because our mind is bound to get distracted wander away one moment or another.  It is part of the practice, and that moment when we become aware of distraction is a moment when we can cultivate mindfulness, an opportunity to change the way we are relating to experience.

I often say to students there is no mindfulness practice without a wandering mind. Mindfulness practice and contemplative practice, in general, are possible because the mind wanders away into distraction.    

And as Saint Francis de Sales and Jon Kabat-Zinn elude the first step might be to embrace the inherent messiness of our human experience, acknowledging that our minds are prone to wander as our hearts are prone to stray. Yet, within the midst of distraction, there is value in the simple act of bringing ourselves back to awareness, time and time again, with patience and persistence.

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

Share

If you enjoyed reading this and want to support my work, why not subscribe? 📚 Never miss a post – it's free! If you're feeling extra awesome, you can become a paid subscriber to the publication. No need for Substack, just your email address. Your support means a lot and keeps me going. 😊 Thank you! 😊

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References

Dowrick, S. (2013). Heaven on earth: Timeless prayers of wisdom and love. New York, NY: Penguin Group.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain and illness. New York, NY: Delacorte.

Kornfield, J. (1993). A path with heart: A guide through the perils and promises of spiritual life. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

When teaching mindfulness meditation in a secular context, I often encounter situations where people struggle with the nuanced understanding of secularism.  Frequently, I am asked whether individuals who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish or hold other beliefs can attend the sessions, as there is sometimes a misconception that these practices are exclusively Buddhist.  Additionally, some participants come to the sessions with a preconception and intention that they will be learning Buddhism or engaging in Buddhist practice when attending secular mindfulness practice. 

These are common misconceptions when it comes to secular mindfulness as an intervention and practice to promote physical, psychological, and I would also include spiritual well-being. 

In fact, historically, when Jon Kabat-Zinn identified the potential that the Buddhist contemplative practice of mindfulness had at improving well-being, one of his original intentions was to create a mindfulness program that could be attended by persons from diverse backgrounds regardless of their religious beliefs or histories ( (Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Kabat-Zinn, 2011). 

Kabat-Zinn (2011) points this out explicitly how, although the practices were taken from Buddhism, his aim was to separate and make a distinction between mindfulness practice and Buddhist beliefs.  

Although not without its criticism, this was a significant step to re-contextualize mindfulness practices within mindfulness programs like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to be “secular,” devoid of religious beliefs or connotations, making them applicable in different contexts beyond their original religious affiliation. Understanding this intention can help clarify the place of God in secular mindfulness meditation.  

Crane and colleagues (2017), in an article on what defines mindfulness-based programs, commented on how these are structured to be:

Based in science and contemporary approaches to managing mental and physical health and supporting well-being; that they are suitable for delivery in mainstream public institutions across a range of settings and cultures; and that they are maximally accessible to people with diverse values and religious affiliations. (p. 991)

But what does “secular” mean and imply? 

Contrary to common misconception, secular or secularism does not mean a rejection or exclusion of religion.  It actually embodies inclusivity, allowing space for all faiths to exist in a space of mutual respect where one does not impose itself on another or force an individual to practice it (Hagglund, 2019).

This means that there is indeed a place for "God" in secular mindfulness meditation, but it also acknowledges that interpretations of "God" can vary widely among individuals. This diversity of belief underscores the importance of interfaith dialogue, where different perspectives can be shared and understood, fostering a more harmonious coexistence.

This considering that similar to Buddhism, all major contemplative traditions had practices that were aimed at centring oneself and cultivating mindfulness as a quality of awareness.  This even within theistic traditions.   

To name a few within Christianity, the practice of attention, “prosoche,” as the continuous remembrance of “God”, was highly emphasised by early Christian mystics (Christie, 2012; Hadot, 2016).  One such practice was “melete” or “meditation”, consisting of choosing a word or short phrase from scripture as a point of focus and reciting it continually, similar to a mantra and returning to reciting the phrase whenever the mind wanders away (Johnson, 2013; Wortley, 2006).  Contemporary, this is more known as centring prayer. In the video below, Father Thomas Keating talks about this.

Islamic contemplative tradition has a similar practice, “muraqaba”, aimed at developing concentration. One technique is through “dhikr,” repeating the name of “God”, and whenever the mind wanders away, returning to repeating the “dhikr” (Ernst, 2011; Rice, 1964; Stoddart, 2012).  Below are two videos talking about this: one by Shankar Nair, Assistant Professor in Religious Studies and the other by Dr. Mufti Abdur-Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera, a Muslim scholar.    

While in Jewish contemplative tradition, letters within the Jewish alphabet hold a spiritual significance, and they have practices using the breath and visualisation related to the spiritual meaning of the letters within the words (Halevi, 1991; Kaplan, 1985).  For example, one practice uses the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, “alef”, visualising it, keeping your focus on it and again when the mind wanders away, bringing your focus back to visualising the “alef” (Kaplan, 1985).  Below are two videos where Rabbi Yitzchak talks about Jewish meditation using breath and the other where Rabbi David Bassous talks about meditation on the letter “aleph” and its meaning.

So broadly speaking, meditative, contemplative practices from different traditions could be considered as various self-administered techniques used to train attention by returning our attention to a particular object of focus when our mind wanders as a method for seeking inner transformation (Eifring, 2014; Eifring, 2013a; Plante, 2010).  

So, the central pedagogical component within meditative, contemplative practices, both secular and non-secular, is that directly or indirectly, they all emphasise the sustained systemic training of attention primarily directed towards the cultivation of mindfulness as a quality of awareness as a central pedagogical component both for the teacher, student or lay practitioner (Micallef, 2023).  This is the underlying theoretical model common to all mindfulness-based programs.

Keeping all this in mind, secularism, in its truest sense, is about creating a neutral space where various religious beliefs can coexist without one dominating the other.  It ensures that public institutions and discourse remain open to everyone, regardless of their religious background as a principle.    Therefore, this principle also applies to secular mindfulness-based programs, the clue to this being the label secular.

Read more

In the face of provocation, staying silent might be the most immediate appropriate thing to do, not to escalate a situation.  Sometimes, maintaining composure and refraining from reacting impulsively to a provocation can be enough to momentarily de-escalate a situation.

A moment of silence can be helpful in recollecting ourselves and bringing awareness to emotional states before responding to a situation.  Using a mindful pause as an emotional regulation strategy can potentially help down-regulate emotional conversations, potentially defusing an argumentative trigger that could escalate a situation (Koster et al., 2023).

From this point of view, taking a silent pause before responding might reflect a level of maturity tempered by restraint to the other person.  As pointed out, this can help defuse a moment of tension by passing on the message to the opposing party that you will not entertain their provocation.

Yet, let us not underestimate the difficulty of maintaining composure and refraining from reacting impulsively when faced with provocation. It is a test of our self-control and ability to be aware and regulate our emotional responses before responding—an internal struggle that often goes unnoticed but is no less significant. 

The practice of mindfulness can help in such moments.  Mindfulness can help with monitoring our present-moment experience in a non-reactive, accepting way (Lindsay & Creswell, 2017).  This has been found to increase meta-awareness and help with emotional regulation and response inhibition in stressful situations (Creswell et al., 2014; Lindsay et al., 2018)  

Incorporating certain mindfulness practices in daily life, like taking a mindful pause before responding, can help down-regulate emotional responses, reducing overinflated reactionary responses (Koster et al., 2023).  Examples of two short mindfulness practices that can help with this are the STOP practice from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and the 3-Step Breathing Space from Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.  

However, silence as a response is not without its limitations.  Taking a silent pause alone may not always be sufficient in addressing conflict or provocation, especially if these stem from deep-rooted issues like continued unresolved disagreements.  Further, in certain situations, silence can be taken as acquiescence “to accept something without protest,” which surely will not address the situation or underlying concerns.    

Actually, it can be taken as a show of passivity, which can be quite harmful as it implicitly passes on the message that behaviours or actions that might be deemed as inappropriate or unacceptable are ok.

This is where the power of wisdom comes into play. Silence needs to be tempered with wisdom—the wisdom to respond to situations with careful consideration of the circumstances and the broader context and a considerate approach to responding or acting.

This wisdom involves the ability to discern when silence is truly the most appropriate response and when it may be necessary to break that silence in a thoughtful and constructive manner.  It reminds me of the quote attributed to Victor Frankl:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

So, that pause and silence need to be infused with discernment and wisdom, allowing for a nuanced approach.

It’s a recognition that there may be instances when speaking up, expressing one’s viewpoint, setting boundaries, or engaging in respectful dialogue is crucial for addressing injustice, fostering understanding, or enacting positive change.  It Is about our ability to communicate these effectively, by choosing the right words and tone of voice, so as to navigate complex situations with sensitivity and foresight.  Anand (2024) commented,

“Although staying silent in the face of provocation is certainly commendable, it may not be sufficient; silence needs to be tempered with wisdom,”

The key message is that while silence in the face of provocation can be admirable, it should be accompanied by wisdom – tempered by prudence, discernment, and the conviction to act or speak when necessary, upholding our principles, asserting boundaries so as to work towards constructive resolutions that promote a compassionate understanding towards ourselves and others.

Following is a link to a pdf which you can work through on Mindfulness Skills and how to cultivate wise responding by the University of California San Francisco -https://psychiatry.ucsf.edu/sites/psych.ucsf.edu/files/MINDFULNESS%20SKILLS%20MANUAL.pdf

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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References

Anand, T. (2024, May 13).  On differentiating ‘Noble Silence’ from ‘The Silent Treatment’.  Retrieved from Tricycle: https://tricycle.org/article/noble-silence-reflection/

Creswell, J. D., Pacilio, L. E., Lindsay, E. K., & Brown, K. W. (2014).  Brief mindfulness meditation training alters psychological and neuroendocrine responses to social evaluative stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 44, 1-12. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2014.02.007

Koster, F., Heynekamp, J., & Victoria, N. (Eds.). (2023).  Mindful communication: Speaking and listening with wisdom and compassion.  London: Routledge.

Lindsay, E. K., & Creswell, J. D. (2017).  Mechanisms of mindfulness training: Monitor and acceptance theory (MAT).  Clinical Psychology Review, 51, 48-49.  doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2016.10.011

Lindsay, E. K., Young, S., Smyth, J. M., Brown, K. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Acceptance lowers stress reactivity: Dismantling mindfulness training in a randomized controlled trial. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 87, 63-73. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.09.015

Reconciling with the past might be one of the most challenging things to do.  Because of this, we might bring unresolved and unprocessed emotions and situations from the past into the present, whether it be from a traumatic upbringing, an unresolved relationship, an argument or the persistent recollection of previous mishaps.

We might develop a habit of mulling over past memories, not only events that might have upset us but also events we enjoyed, maybe in an attempt to recreate the same pleasant outcomes. 

Ultimately, when we do this, we can find ourselves bodily re-feeling and re-experiencing the emotions that past situation evoked.  The issue is that often, the tendency is to go to painful, unresolved events with the habit of trying to justify and understand why it happened over and over again.  It’s as if there is this illusion that the situation will fix itself if we think about it one more time.

This can end up making us feeling dissatisfied, unhappy, and miserable.  Unbecomingly, this is a common human tendency, that of revisiting painful memories with a habit of trying to fix them.  We all do this to one degree, but unwittingly, this just reinforces negative emotions and self-pity.  In the long run, this just hurts us; it doesn’t resolve anything.

As Albert Einstein said,

“Insanity is doing or thinking the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome/answer.”

Ultimately, no one passes through life unscathed.  We all have past baggage that drags us down and keeps us stuck in old habits, self-concepts, and habitual reflexive behaviours.

The concept of karma in Buddhism refers to how our present behaviour will affect our future behaviour and how our past behaviour will affect us in the present.  Although we will never be able to totally undo our past actions, we can discover the freedom to choose a different course of action by altering how we interact with our emerging karmic patterns.

In other words, even while we cannot change the past, we can alter how we view and relate to it in the present.  We always have a choice due to the nature of experience and it being impermanent and it is impermanence that makes change possible.

Soto Zen priest Kyogen Carlson points out that:

“When we talk about ‘cleansing karma,’ we sometimes have this illusion that we’re going to wash it all off and it’s going to go away.  But what we really do is cleanse our relationship with it”.

He further explains that this entails that:

“We drop our old ways of responding and our old traps of habit energy.  All these things that happened in the past are still with us in some respects.  We acknowledge that; we call to them and find a way to respond to them.”

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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Distorting Reality: The Power of Truth

"The more we’re living at odds with the truth, the more we suffer. The more we live along with it, the happier we are." - by Lama Tsomo

In the words of Lama Tsomo, when we deny or distort reality, we create inner discord that inevitably leads to suffering. This discord arises from the dissonance between what we deep down know to be true and the façade we present to the world. It erodes our sense of authenticity and inner peace, leaving us feeling fragmented and discontented. Conversely, embracing truth in all its forms — both pleasant and challenging — can potentially foster a sense of harmony within ourselves. Living in alignment with truth means accepting reality as it is, without judgment or resistance. It allows us to cultivate genuine connections with others and allows for a deeper understanding of ourselves. In this state of alignment, we experience greater clarity, purpose, and fulfilment in our lives. Truth becomes not only a guiding principle but also a source of liberation and joy. Ultimately, Lama Tsomo's words remind me of the transformative power of truth in shaping our happiness and well-being.

Krishnamurti's Secret: Not Minding

Once, when asked about his secret to peace and contentment, meditation teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti famously replied: ‘I don’t mind what happens.’

Upon initial reflection, Krishnamurti's answer about his secret to peace and contentment seems almost flippant - "I don't mind what happens." How could not minding what occurs in life possibly lead to inner tranquillity? Such a response runs counter to the societal messages we receive about needing to control situations, accumulate accomplishments, and contort ourselves to meet certain expectations in order to find fulfilment.

However, Krishnamurti is pointing towards profound wisdom. By not minding, or refraining from reacting with excessive attachment or aversion to the constant stream of experiences and circumstances life presents, one can avoid becoming entangled in mental agitation. Peace and contentment arise from inside, through refusing to indulge in the perpetual desires for pleasant experiences and avoidance of unpleasant ones that form the root of human suffering.

This act of letting go, this understanding that all phenomena are transient, and the acceptance of what arises in the present moment liberates one from the endless cycle of clinging and aversion that ensnares the mind. Living life to the best of our ability, letting go of judgments or resistances that cloud the clarity of perception, and not minding what happens is the essence of equanimity—the bedrock of lasting peace.

Uniting Body and Mind: The True Declaration of Love

Thich Nhat Hanh comments:

"The true declaration of love is, 'Dear one, I am here for you,' because the most precious gift you can give to your loved one is your true presence, with body and mind united in solidity and freedom."

Thich Nhat Hanh's statement draws attention to the significance of being truly present body and mind for the ones we love. This is not easy, especially in a world filled with distractions and constant demands on our attention. It can be challenging to fully immerse ourselves in the moment and connect with those closest to us.

The Vietnamese Buddhist monk's words emphasise that genuine love is expressed not merely through words or gestures but through our unwavering presence. When we say, "I am here for you," it signifies a deep commitment to being emotionally and mentally available, offering our undivided attention to our loved ones.

By being present with unity of body and mind, we create a sacred space where our loved ones can feel heard, understood, and cherished. Offering a grounded and steadfast presence to them, free from the chaos of daily life, through letting go of preoccupations and fully embracing the present moment.

This fosters a sense of security and intimacy in our relationships, allowing us to truly see and appreciate our loved ones for who they are. It creates a safe haven where emotions can be expressed, vulnerabilities shared, and connections deepened. Ultimately, Thich Nhat Hanh's words remind us that love is not merely a sentiment but a conscious choice to show up wholeheartedly for those who matter most.

Does Love Require Agency?

Peter Doobinin argues that love needs agency, commenting,

"Our ability to love is determined by the decisions we make to act in a certain way. When we surrender our decision-making, we deny our greatest strength: our capacity for love."

Peter Doobinin argues that yes, indeed, love requires agency and conscious decision-making. Might this be a thought-provoking, an idea that, at its core, is suggesting that love is not merely a passive emotion or chemical reaction but rather an active choice and ongoing commitment.

This perspective challenges the notion of love as something that simply "happens" to us and instead places the responsibility squarely on the individual. By framing love as a product of our choices and actions, Doobinin invites us to approach it with intention and mindfulness.

Moreover, his assertion that surrendering our decision-making capacity denies our "greatest strength" and our "capacity for love" is a powerful statement. It implies that love is inextricably linked to our autonomy and our ability to exercise free will. Without the agency to make conscious choices, we risk diminishing our ability to truly love.

This view links up with the idea that love is not just a feeling but a verb – an active expression of care, commitment, and selflessness. Love is a conscious practice, one that requires ongoing effort, reflection, and intentionality. In this way, love becomes not just a state of being but a way of living and a manifestation of our highest human potential.

During meditation, practitioners are usually instructed to either sit with a lowered soft gaze or close their eyes.  We discussed this in a previous article on "Meditation: Eyes Open or Eyes Closed" and how practising with eyes open might be difficult initially because of the tendency to get lost in visual distractors.  Sprawson et al. (2020) wrote how,

"Indeed, one particularly relevant factor that may influence the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions includes the surrounding visual environment, and the ability to sustain focused attention on the present moment." (p. 370)

Considering this, it is sometimes suggested that beginners start practising with closed eyes.  Why?   It might sound like a simple thing to do to sit with eyes open in meditation and be aware and accepting of whatever is happening including any visual distractors in our environment and not engaging with them.  However, this might hinder meditation practice.   Sprawson et al. (2020) argued that,

"Instructing individuals to become aware of and accept task irrelevant stimuli may not be sufficient to prevent visual distractors to attentional processes, resulting in poorer meditation experiences."  (p. 370)

So, asking beginners to practice with eyes open might at first not be helpful.  That said, this might not be the case for everyone, as there are some who might prefer to practice with eyes open. 

Considering all of this in Buddhist contemplative tradition from where contemporary secular mindfulness has emerged, it is usually suggested to practice with eyes open (Dogen, 2004; Rinpoche, 2002; Wallace, 2022).  The reason being that as we go through our day, we are with our eyes open, so practising with eyes open is a more realistic reflection of daily life and how, because of this, practising with eyes open helps "better" bridge the mindfulness cultivated on the "cushion" into daily life. 

Despite these arguments, nearly no studies have been conducted to see which might be most beneficial, especially for beginners and identifying this gap in 2020, Sprawson and colleagues conducted the first-ever study to investigate how practising with eyes open or eyes closed during mindfulness meditation might effect practice considering that with eyes closed there are less "visual distractors" and if this might be helpful. 

To date, I believe this is still the only study done on this subject, as a research journal search did not return other relevant studies on the topic.  In this article, we will be looking at Sprawson and colleagues (2020) study, exploring their findings and what these might tell us.

To assess this, Sprawson et al. (2020) used eye movements during mindfulness practice to determine if the participant was distracted.  This is because eye movement, especially increases in the frequency of eye blinks and erratic or random eye movements, have been associated with being distracted (Grandchamp et al., 2014; Smilek et al., 2010).  Further, a study by Matiz et al. (2019) also identified that this might be the case during mindfulness meditation, arguing how eye movements could be used as an indicator of mind wandering during mindfulness meditation.

To investigate this Sprawson et al. (2020) recruited 48 participants, which were randomly allocated (16 participants in each condition) either to, "a black screen, patterned screen or an image depicting a lowered gaze" (p. 373).  The black screen was meant to represent meditating with eyes closed, with the other two images representing meditating with eyes open lowered gaze, one being a patterned image, the other also being a patterned image but included other "distractors" like legs and chair.   On each of these images, the researchers put a white spot on which participants were asked to rest their focus during the practice.   The researchers then monitored the number of times participants' gazes moved away from the white spot and fixated on "distractors" in other parts of the image.  The pictures below are the original used by the researchers to represent the different conditions in the study.

Overall, Sprawson and colleagues observed how, from the three conditions, those participants that were in the eyes closed condition (black screen) were less likely to fixate their gaze away from the white spot.  One could argue that considering the setup of the experiment, what the participants were asked to do was more similar to doing an attentional exercise, keeping your attention on a white spot in front of you and not losing focus.  This would be a valid argument; however, participants were asked to follow a guided mindfulness breathing meditation.  Further, all participants were asked to fill out a state mindfulness questionnaire before and after the experiment where Sprawson et al. (2020) found how:

"State mindfulness scores increased within the eyes-closed perspective condition, and

these findings were statistically significant when compared with the two other conditions." (p. 375)

So, countering such argument.

What is curious is that the researchers hypothesised that the participants in the lowered gaze condition would be the most likely to get distracted, their gaze moving away from the white spot, as this scene was considered to have the most visual distractors (image c above).  Counterintuitively, it was in the patterned screen condition that the participants' gaze moved away mostly and the longest from the white spot.  

Ultimately, Sprawson et al. (2020) conclude the study by saying,

"The present study offers a step towards understanding whether mindfulness instructors should direct their clients to close their eyes entirely or simply lower their gaze." (p. 376)

And how,

"The results of the present study offer a significant step forward towards understanding why meditation may be most effective with the eyes closed rather than a lowered gaze, and how the visual environment can influence novice meditators." (ibid. p. 376)

Although I agree with the second statement that there is value in knowing how the visual environment can influence novice meditators so as to better support those starting with mindfulness meditation practice.  However, as a mindfulness teacher and facilitator, I do not totally agree with their first statement as I think that practising with eyes closed or open is something that should be down to the client and as mindfulness teachers, what we are in a responsibility to do is offer and leave both options open.  This is especially true if we are practising in a trauma-sensitive context (Treleaven, 2018).

That said, I found this study very insightful and needed as it gives some insight into the burning question of whether one should practice meditation with eyes closed or open.

Some Final Thoughts

First, we have to say kudos to Sprawson et al. (2020) for coming up with this novel approach at representing eyes closed meditation and how they used an objective measure to identify distraction and not a subjective one that is relying on participants reporting if they were distracted or not which would be highly susceptible to social desirability effects.

That said, considering the challenge of creating a condition that represents eyes closed meditation, although their findings potentially reflect that eyes closed meditation might potentially be less susceptible to visual distractors.  I think what this study mostly demonstrates is that for beginners with meditation, visual distractors can be quite challenging because they can easily highjack one's attention and practising with eyes closed might help with this.  Not that eyes closed is in any way marginally better than eyes open, as within all conditions, participants were practising mindfulness meditation with eyes open.  Participants needed and were instructed to keep the eyes open to focus on the white spot.  The major difference was that in the black screen condition (eyes closed), there were fewer visual distractors.

Further, I think one of the reasons for the lack of studies on the topic on meditation with eyes closed or open is the difficulty of creating an experimental condition that is an ecologically valid one that accurately reflects or represents practising meditation with eyes closed that is "scientific" and stands to scrutiny.     

That said, on the other hand, a question that continues to ponder in my mind is why the study did not use EEG recordings to monitor eye movements, similar to the study done by Matiz et al. (2019), considering that this can effectively identify eye movements even when practitioners are with eyes closed.  On the other hand, I see value in the approach taken by Sprawson et al. (2020) one because the study done by Matiz et al. (2019) used "expert meditators" while Sprawson and Colleagues used novice practitioners - having EEG electrodes stuck to your face as a novice might have acted as a source of distraction.  While at the same time, asking participants to keep their eyes open, with the variation being the amount of stimulus in the picture they were focusing on, might potentially have reduced the possibility of intervening variables and have helped the researchers in monitoring what the practitioners were doing as it offered more direct instructions to practitioners (focus on a point in the picture and follow the breath) considering they were novices.  An idea to balance this out could be to perform the same study using "expert meditators."

So, ultimately, what does this research study, in my opinion, indicate.  It does not give us a direct answer which one is best, and I think that is something that is illusionary and is difficult to establish if practising with eyes closed is better than eyes open or vice versa. 

As I said in previous articles, I would argue that both have their place.  It all ultimately boils down to what works for the practitioner to help them not be carried away by distractors but to see them as distractions.  How these arise and how easily it sometimes is to get lost in distraction and for the mind to wander away.  It just happens.  So, to better see and familiarise themselves with the movements of the mind and how the mind moves, which is the purpose of meditation. 

So, ultimately if we lose ourselves in the debate of trying to prove which one is better – if practicing with eyes closed is better than eyes open - we will ultimately be missing the point of the real purpose of meditation practice.    

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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If you enjoyed reading this and want to support my work, why not subscribe? 📚 Never miss a post – it's free! If you're feeling extra awesome, you can become a paid subscriber to the publication. No need for Substack, just your email address. Your support means a lot and keeps me going. 😊 Thank you! 😊

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References

Dogen, Z. M. (2004). Beyond thinking: A guide to Zen zeditation [epub]. (K. Tanahashi, Ed.) Boston, MA: Sambhala Publications Inc.

Grandchamp, R., Braboszcz, C., & Delorme. (2014). Oculometric variations during mind wandering. Frontiers in Psychology, 5(31), 1-10. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00031

Matiz, A., Crescentini, C., Fabbro, A., Budai, R., Bergamasco, M., & Fabbro, F. (2019). Spontaneous eye movements during focused attention mindfulness meditation. PLoS ONE, 14(1), e0210862. doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210862

Rinpoche, S. (2002). The Tibetan book of living and dying (2nd revised edition ed.). London: Rider & Co.

Smilek, D., Carriere, J. S., & Cheyne, J. A. (2010). Out of mind, out of sight: Eye blinking as indicator and embodiment of mind wandering. Psychological Science, 21(6), 786-789. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610368063

Sprawson, I., Wood, J., & Mantzio, M. (2020). "And now close your eyes or lower your gaze": Exploring novice meditators and their attentional processes during meditation. Journal of Cognitive Enhancement, 4, 369-378. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-020-00175-3

Treleaven, D. A. (2018). Trauma sensitive mindfulness: Practices for sale and transformative healing [epub]. New York, NY: WW Norton & Co.

Wallace, B. A. (2022). The art of transforming the mind: A meditators guide to the Tibetan practice of Lojong. (L. Quirolo, Ed.) Boulder, CO: Sambhala Publications.

I was recently reading an article on the topic of anger by Ken McLeod (2019).  In the article McLeod offered an approach towards anger that emerges out of an invitation to embark on a journey inward, a journey that takes us to the very core of our being, where the tumultuous waves of anger ebb and flow.  An approach that beckons us to confront the often-tumultuous realm of our emotions, particularly that fiery force known as anger.

What struck me in the article is where McLeod (2019) wrote,

“Turn to that place in you that knows you are angry.  What knows you are angry is itself not angry.”

On reading this I stopped as it points to a profound insight that goes beyond the superficial layers of emotional experience.

At its core, it invites a shift in perspective, a turning of the gaze from the external triggers of anger to the internal landscape where this emotion takes root.  It prompts us to become intimate with our emotional responses, to develop a keen awareness that extends beyond the immediate reaction to external stimuli that might be perceived as the root and cause of anger.  Because, in reality, the anger is not outside of us but inside of us an emotional experience that we are having.

It made me think and reflect on what McLeod was pointing to the possibility of “liberation” from the grasp of anger through a reflective inquiry into the nature of our emotional experiences.

This is something that we do in mindfulness practice.   As McLeod eludes, we start by turning our attention inward at the threshold of self-awareness with a conscious acknowledgement of the anger within, an acknowledgement that goes beyond mere recognition.  It is an act of embracing the emotion without being consumed by it, a recognition that the very awareness of anger is distinct from anger itself.

Awareness that now there arises the emotion of anger or that now there is anger is different and distinct from anger as if there is space.  It always makes me remember of the quote attributed to Viktor Frankl, which says,

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

And it also makes me remember of Anthony De Mello and how, in his book “Awareness”, where overall, he argues that the first step to becoming familiar with our conditioned reactions is awareness.  Sounds cliché, but it is true.  How can we know that we are having a conditioned reaction if there is no awareness of having a conditioned reaction?  Further, De Mello argues for the importance of self-observation, not controlling the anger or trying to stop the anger, but as McLeod eludes, the first step is to, “Turn to that place in you that knows you are angry.”

That space between stimulus and response, a space from where we can observe our reactions unfolding.  A space from where we have the potential to respond rather than react to situations in flexible and creative ways because we are no longer conditioned by the way we are feeling but rather have an understanding of the way we are feeling.  We could say that the observer that is aware of the anger is not touched by it.  This brings us to what McLeod says: that the place within you that knows you are angry is itself not angry. 

The recognition that the observer within us has the potential to be aware of anger but remain untouched by the emotional storms it may cause reveals a powerful truth about the nature of our consciousness.  It unveils the inherent capacity to witness our emotions without becoming entangled in their web.  This witnessing awareness becomes a vantage point from which we can navigate the often-turbulent seas of our emotional landscape.  It grants us the ability to respond rather than react, to engage with life’s challenges with a discerning mind and an open heart.

But we also come to understand that this witnessing awareness is not a passive spectator but an active force, a wellspring of resilience and equanimity.  It is the seat of our inner strength, a sanctuary we can come to rely on when the external world presses in with its demands and provocations.  But this sanctuary is not an escape from the world but a refuge that empowers us to meet the world with clarity and grace.

This separation between the awareness and the emotion it observes reveals the impermanence of our emotional states.  Anger, like all emotions, is a transient visitor in the vast landscape of our consciousness.   Like the poem The Guest House, attributed to Rumi, illustrates how emotions come and go.

However, as De Mello (1992) points out, there is something that never changes: “awareness.”  We might have a momentary lapse of awareness, but awareness is always there, and by turning towards that unchanging awareness within, we gain a perspective that transcends the fleeting nature of our emotional responses.  And as the poem by Rumi illustrates this realisation becomes a source of freedom, allowing us to ride the waves of emotion without being carried away by them.

Moreover, this inquiry can give us insight into the origins and roots of anger.  By turning to the place within that knows anger, we can invite a mindful awareness into the underlying causes and conditions that give rise to this emotion.

Again, this not to blame or judge but to understand.   To explore and unveil the layers of conditioning, past experiences, unmet needs, and expectations that might be contributing to the arising of anger.  That we all experience anger, and like me, other people also experience anger and the distress that comes from this when faced with a similar situation.  This is sometimes called our “common humanity” or “shared humanity”, which means that we all experience distress and would like to be free from the causes of distress (Armstrong, 2011; Monroe, 1998; Neff, 2011).

This, the understanding of our “common humanity” - that we all experience distress and would like to be free from the causes of distress, can give rise to a profound compassion towards oneself and others.

The recognition that anger might often stem from and be conditioned by past experiences, unmet needs, expectations, or unresolved pain allows for a more empathetic engagement with one’s own emotional landscape and that of others.  Instead of being trapped in the cycle of reactive behaviour, there arises an opportunity for conscious and skilful responses to the complexities of human experience.

Why?  Because we find that this inward journey is not a solitary endeavour.  It is a universal exploration that connects us to the shared human experience of joy, sorrow, love, and, yes, anger.

And recognising the commonality of our emotional tapestry, can give rise to a sense of interconnectedness that we are not alone in this struggle.  The understanding that we all grapple with the complexities of the human heart can foster empathy and compassion for ourselves and others, especially if we recognise compassion as,

“Being sensitive to the suffering of self and others with a deep commitment to try to prevent and relive it.” (Gilbert & Choden, 2014, p. 1)

Or, more deeply, as Rinpoche and Swanson (2007) put it that,

“Compassion is essentially the recognition that everyone and everything is a reflection of everyone and everything else.” (p.174)

Laying the foundation for authentic and meaningful connections with others.

Ultimately, the words, “turn to that place in you that knows you are angry.  What knows you are angry is itself not angry,” is an invitation.  An invitation to explore the inner dimensions of our consciousness, to recognise the awareness within that remains steadfast amidst the ever-changing currents of our emotions.  A place from which we can respond with wisdom, compassion, and resilience to the demands thrown at us by life.

Thank you for reading this article from Now About Meditation. If you enjoyed this or think it could be helpful to someone, please do share or forward it to a friend or two, or share it on social media. 😊 It is freely available for anyone to read. 😊

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References

Armstrong, K. (2011).  Twelve steps to a compassionate life [epub].  New York, go to sleep: Three Rivers Press.

De Mello, A. (1992). Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. (F. Stroud, Ed.) New York, NY: Doubleday.

Gilbert, P., & Choden. (2014).  Mindful compassion.  Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

McLeod, K. (2019).  Anger: How to recognise it, work with it, and even find wisdom in it.  Retrieved from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review: https://tricycle.org/magazine/anger-meditation/

Monroe, K. R. (1998).  The heart of altruism: Perceptions of common humanity.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Neff, K. (2011).  Self-compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself.  New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Rinpoche, Y. M., & Swanson, E. (2007).  The joy of living: Unlocking the secret and science of happiness.  New York, NY go to sleep: Random House Inc.