What, really, is mindfulness? It is perhaps best understood by contrasting it with its opposite, which is forgetfulness. Most of us are robots, performing most of our daily activities while thinking about something else. We don’t need to pay attention to brushing our teeth, taking a shower, grocery shopping, because these chores are handled automatically. We can instead ponder what we will be doing later in the day after we arrive at the office, the store, the classroom or wherever we spend most of our time. And once we arrive at our daily destination, instinct again takes over and we do a lot of stuff on automatic pilot because we are good at it and we are actually thinking of what comes next instead of what we are actually doing.
Such is the life of forgetfulness, never experiencing the actual moment because we feel we don’t need to and we can use the present moment for contemplation of other moments.
We read of tragedies every day if we read newspapers. Man backs up riding lawnmower, runs over his child, severs both of her feet. Baby left in car during church service, dies. Child drowns in pool, was thought to be indoors. Motorcyclist killed, driver never saw him. These events were the result of forgetfulness, people going about their business like robots on automatic pilot, contemplating something other than what they were actually doing.
Those of us who have avoided such tragedies have done so primarily out of sheer luck. All of us have backed up a vehicle without knowing if any one was back there. We’ve all lost sight of a child for a few moments. We can’t criticize those whose forgetfulness brought them great anguish because we know that we have dodged similar bullets.
But those who never make an effort to cultivate mindfulness of the present moment are asking for trouble. A fellow I knew in college asked me one day to go with him to a convenience store. As we pulled into the store parking lot, a car began backing out of its spot and I assumed my friend would stop and then take the vacated spot. Instead, he plowed into the other car and said: I don’t understand why things like this keep happening to me! I have so many wrecks! I don’t understand why my luck is so bad!
Cultivating mindfulness has far-reaching benefits. As we learn to pay attention to the present moment, we create a safer world for ourselves and every one around us. As a side benefit, the earth appears to be more and more beautiful. I know a guy who can’t tell a pine tree from an oak tree. All trees to him are just big green things and he acknowledges that he has never given any tree a second glance. He has the same attitude towards people. He even says he never pays attention to the present moment except to watch his step when obvious hazards appear or when driving a car because his only interest is mathematics and that’s what he thinks about almost all the time.
Mindfulness and how to cultivate it are explained in detail at howtopracticezen.com. The explanation is crafted to follow the Buddha’s comments on the subject and I have tried not to be a teacher but a repeater of what the Buddha said. I know most people will never read the Majjhima Nikaya, the Digha Nikaya, or any of the other discourses of the Buddha so I have tried to introduce the Buddha’s teachings to a wide audience, using currently available technology. So I refer the reader to the website to learn more about how to cultivate mindfulness on a daily basis.
I may be wrong (duh!), but I have concluded that the daily cultivation of mindfulness has benefits that go far beyond what might seem apparent to a rational mind.
We can all agree that it is entirely rational that a mindful person will have less accidents and is more likely to avoid a tragedy than a forgetful person who does not pay attention to the present moment because he or she has better things to think about. (My mathematician friend told me that he had torn down a fence recently while pulling into a retail store parking space and received a $3,000.00 bill for damage from the owner of the store. I don’t think fences cost that much and I suspect he whacked the store as well.)
I believe that the daily cultivation of mindfulness as taught by the Buddha can raise one’s consciousness to a level that we rarely experience, a level that many people would call ESP (extra sensory perception).
A few months ago, following Thich Naht Hahn’s advice in Present Moment, Wonderful Moment to contemplate the present moment whenever sitting at a traffic light (and thereby withdrawing from the daydream of the moment), I saw the light turn green and the car in front of me pulled away. But instead of following that car, my foot froze and I could not apply any pressure to the accelerator. I thought “Go!” but the car would not respond and the car would not respond because my body refused to apply the gas. Two questions flashed through my mind: What is happening? Why can’t I go?
A car traveling at a very high rate of speed, at least 60 to 70 miles per hour, then shot behind the car in front of me, passing through the space I would normally have been in. That would have been an unsurvivable “accident” and I realized instantly what had almost happened. I was less than a mile from my office and I pass through that intersection frequently.
At the moment I needed to stay put, I stayed put and my conscious mind had nothing to do with it; it was telling me “Let’s roll!” I think that the mindfulness of the moment, thanks to Thich Naht Hahn’s advice, saved the day. Out of the corner of my eye, the driver who had no intention of stopping was spotted by my subconscious mind and the subconscious order to freeze over-rode the conscious order to hit the gas. If I had been listening to talk radio, or a music station, instead of mindfully contemplating the present moment…
I went from being a practitioner of mindfulness because it is the foundation of meditation to being a practitioner of mindfulness because it is the foundation of meditation and because it has benefits far beyond that. Every day of mindfulness practice since that day has been a bonus day. I have resolved to deepen the cultivation of mindfulness and to urge other practitioners to do the same.
There is no downside to the cultivation of mindfulness and its upside is unlimited.
What does cultivation of mindfulness lead to? It leads to more and more cultivation of mindfulness and hence increasing mindfulness. Mindfulness is pure awareness, awareness uncluttered by forgetfulness. A mindful mind is a mind that is still. As a Taoist sage once uttered: The universe surrenders to the mind that is still.
And when the universe surrenders, we have attained our goal of World Domination. (That’s a joke). Mindfulness leads to pure awareness, and that is Nirvana.
