What Mindfulness is

Many people think of mindfulness simply as "being present" or "being aware of the present moment". There's nothing wrong with either of those suggestions, but on this page we look a little closer to discern three aspects of what we mean by mindfulness. We'll do so by thinking of how we experience a mindful awareness, and I'll also point to what two modern scholars of Buddhism have said about it. I've found what each of them has said to be very helpful to my own practice of Anapana.

Mindfulness is an awareness of the present moment

Mindfulness is a form of awareness which certainly involves being present. Actually though, we can only be aware of anything in the present moment, whether we're being mindfully aware or not. Even when we remember something long past, we remember it now, in the present. We may become completely absorbed in some past memory, and when we do that we become less aware of what's happening around us.

The same thing happens when we get absorbed in anything. Watching a film or a TV programme, reading a book, or even getting absorbed in our work, we may not notice the room getting cold, or the daylight fading. We may not even notice someone speaking to us. When they finally get our attention, we're shocked that we hadn't seen or heard them.

Mindfulness is about being fully present

Mindfulness is not like that. When we're mindfully aware we can maintain a broad awareness which embraces everything our senses are detecting in this moment. We hear with ears that hear. We see with eyes that see (but which don't become distracted). We feel warmth, touch sensations, and much else. All our senses are alive and open. We inhabit the whole of our bodies, knowing each breath, each step, each movement, each sensation. We inhabit the place we're in, aware of all that it holds. All of this is what feels different, and it's what makes us say we're now in the present moment. We're fully here, alive to everything.

Is awareness of the breath a form of mindfulness?

A number of meditation practices, including Anapana practice, ask us to notice the breath and become aware of each in-breath and each out-breath. Is this awareness of the breath a form of mindfulness? In itself this breath-awareness is too limited. We could become completely absorbed in knowing our breath, and miss a lot of other things happening around us. Indeed, many people try to block out certain sensations when they meditate in order to concentrate on the breath.

Knowing the breath is a good starting point

While that's a danger, knowing the breath can be a good starting point. It keeps us aware of something that keeps on happening in the present. If we can sustain this breath-awareness it can help us come out of our thoughts, which so easily take us away from the present moment. Memories, daydreams, hopes and fears, wants and don't-wants, problems and many other distractions can make it difficult for us to be fully aware of this moment. Awareness of the breath is one way of returning out of our thinking and into what we're experiencing now.

Mindfulness can build on this starting point

Mindfulness however needs to build on that awareness of breathing. This is one way in which Anapana practice can guide us. We may begin by knowing each in-breath and each out-breath in Steps 1 and 2, but then Step 3 asks us to broaden out our awareness to embrace the whole body also.

Anapana practice is often misunderstood as "mindfulness of breathing". It would be more accurate to describe it as "mindfulness of the body". That is the focus of its first six steps. But then Steps 7 to 12 take us further and ask us to "experience heart-and-mind" as well as the body.

Mindfulness is a broadly-focussed awareness

One thing I've found helpful in understanding (and practising) mindfulness comes from a scholar who has written much about mindfulness. He's a Buddhist monk called Anālayo, and he describes mindfulness as "an awareness of the present moment" that has "breadth rather than a narrow focus" and is "able to hold in mind various facets of the situation simultaneously."^Footnote 1

It's when we have a broad awareness that we're able to stay present. The more our minds are filled ("are mind-ful") with knowing direct sensory experiences, the less we become distracted by the thinking part of the mind. Not only the thinking part of the mind becomes quiet, so does the emotional part of the mind. The more present we are in a broad awareness of our sensory experiences, the less we react emotionally to what the present holds.

Mindfulness is a dispassionate awareness

Something I read by another scholar of early Buddhism has been very helpful to me. Alexander Wynne has written that 'sati' (the Pāli word usually translated as "mindfulness" or "mindful awareness") is "a particular way of perceiving" things, "one that is devoid of any emotional or intellectual content." ^Footnote 2

At first sight that might seem rather unpromising, but what it means is that whatever we're aware of, whatever we hear, see, feel, sense or know through any of our sense organs, doesn't bring up either emotional reactions or even thoughts about it. We just hear sounds, see sights, smell odours, feel touch sensations and so on, but without adding anything from our own responses or reflections to it. So it's about pure, simple awareness of whatever we're perceiving, without our own understandings, interpretations or responses to it. This is not our normal way of being aware.

We'll find this dispassionate awareness to be very helpful. This is what allows us to change our habits of reactivity. When we develop this aspect of mindfulness, we'll finally be able to break free from deeply ingrained habits of emotional reactions, as well as set ways of thinking that we've developed in life.

Conclusion

The last two aspects of mindfulness, its breadth of focus and its dispassionate nature, work together to ensure we can remain mindfully aware of the present moment, and whatever it may hold.

One practical issue here is whether we begin our practice by coming to it mindfully, or whether mindfulness is a quality we develop by means of our practice. The Sixteen Steps of the Anapana practice are always introduced by words which describe the meditator as going to a private place, sitting with the body straight, and bringing mindfulness to the fore so that one can breathe in mindfully and breathe out mindfully.^Footnote 3 Another text, the Four Stages of Jhāna practice, doesn't mention mindfulness until the meditator reaches its quite advanced third stage. In the first text we start by becoming mindful, and then begin our meditation. In the second text mindfulness is something we develop as we meditate.

The two introductory exercises I've given on this website, as well as those that accompany each of the Anapana steps, are designed to help develop a broad and dispassionate awareness, knowing that we won't be able to do so perfectly at first. We begin in a small way, sowing a seed which will then develop as we work through the Anapana steps, until it bears fruit in a fully developed mindfulness.

Footnotes

1. Anālayo 2003: Sati-paṭṭhāna, the Direct Path to Realization, p. 48-49, Cambridge: Windhorse Publications, 2003.
2. Alexander Wynne: The Origin of Buddhist Meditation, p. 72, 106, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2007. This book may be found in PDF format on the University of Hamburg website
3. See for example, SN 54.3

Other Notes

The Wikipedia article on mindfulness discusses mindfulness as a cognitive skill, its use in clinical studies and psychiatry, techniques for its practice, the meaning of the Pāli word sati, and a discussion of its historical development both within and outside Buddhism.