Mindfulness for Beginners

Reclaiming the Present Moment--and Your Life

An Invitation to the Practice of Mindfulness

We may long for wholeness, suggests Jon Kabat-Zinn, but the truth is that it is already here and already ours. The practice of mindfulness holds the possibility of not just a fleeting sense of contentment, but a true embracing of a deeper unity that envelops and permeates our lives. With Mindfulness for Beginners you are invited to learn how to transform your relationship to the way you think, feel, love, work, and play—and thereby awaken to and embody more completely who you really are.

Here, the teacher, scientist, and clinician who first demonstrated the benefits of mindfulness within mainstream Western medicine offers a book that you can use in three unique ways: as a collection of reflections and practices to be opened and explored at random; as an illuminating and engaging start-to-finish read; or as an unfolding “lesson- a-day” primer on mindfulness practice.

Beginning and advanced meditators alike will discover in these pages a valuable distillation of the key attitudes and essential practices that Jon Kabat-Zinn has found most useful with his students, including:

• Why heartfulness is synonymous with true mindfulness
• The value of coming back toour bodies and to our senses over and over again
• How our thoughts “self-liberate” whentouched by awareness
• Moving beyond our “story” into direct experience
• Stabilizing our attention and presence amidst daily activities
• The three poisons that causesuffering—and their antidotes
• How mindfulness heals, even after the fact
• Reclaiming our wholeness, and more.

The prescription for living a more mindful life seems simple enough: return your awareness again and again to whatever is going on. But if you’ve tried it, you know that here is where all the questions and challenges really begin. Mindfulness for Beginners provides welcome answers, insights, and instruction to help us make that shift, moment by moment, into a more spacious, clear, reliable, and loving connection with ourselves and the world.

Includes a complete CD with five guided mindfulness meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn, selected from the audio program that inspired this book.

What is mindfulness?

We especially like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness:

'Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way;
On purpose,
in the present moment,
and nonjudgmentally.'

Kabat-Zinn, if you haven’t heard of him, is a famous teacher of mindfulness meditation and the founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

First of all, mindfulness involves paying attention “on purpose”. Mindfulness involves a conscious direction of our awareness. We sometimes (me included) talk about “mindfulness” and “awareness” as if they were interchangeable terms, but that’s not a good habit to get into. I may be aware I’m irritable, but that wouldn’t mean I was being mindful of my irritability. In order to be mindful I have to be purposefully aware of myself, not just vaguely and habitually aware. Knowing that you are eating is not the same as eating mindfully.

Let’s take that example of eating and look at it a bit further. When we are purposefully aware of eating, we are consciously being aware of the process of eating. We’re deliberately noticing the sensations and our responses to those sensations. We’re noticing the mind wandering, and when it does wander we purposefully bring our attention back.

When we’re eating unmindfully we may in theory be aware of what we’re doing, but we’re probably thinking about a hundred and one other things at the same time, and we may also be watching TV, talking, or reading — or even all three! So a very small part of our awareness is absorbed with eating, and we may be only barely aware of the physical sensations and even less aware of our thoughts and emotions.

Because we’re only dimly aware of our thoughts, they wander in an unrestricted way. There’s no conscious attempt to bring our attention back to our eating. There’s no purposefulness.

This purposefulness is a very important part of mindfulness. Having the purpose of staying with our experience, whether that’s the breath, or a particular emotion, or something as simple as eating, means that we are actively shaping the mind.

Left to itself the mind wanders through all kinds of thoughts — including thoughts expressing anger, craving, depression, revenge, self-pity, etc. As we indulge in these kinds of thoughts we reinforce those emotions in our hearts and cause ourselves to suffer.

By purposefully directing our awareness away from such thoughts and towards some “anchor” we decrease their effect on our lives and we create instead a space of freedom where calmness and contentment can grow.

The Seven Pillars of Mindfulness

NON-JUDGING
consists in taking the position of an impartial witness to your own experience. It requires that you become aware of the stream of judging and reacting to inner and outer experiences and step back from it. This habit of categorizing into good and bad or positive and negative locks us into mechanical reactions that we are not even aware of and that often have no objective basis at all. Tip: observe over 10 minutes how much you are preoccupied with liking and disliking what you are experiencing.

PATIENCE
it demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things unfold in their own time. Practicing mindfulness give us the chance to give time and space to our own unfolding. Why rushing to the next “better” moment when after all each one is your life in that moment.

BEGINNER’s MIND
practicing mindfulness means to take the chance to see everything as if it was for the first time and not allow our illusion of knowing prevent us from being present to our experiences. Tip next time you meet someone you know well try and see something new in this person.

TRUST
developing a basic trust in yourself and your feelings is an integral part of meditation practice. Do not get caught up in the reputation and authority of your teachers. It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself.

NON-STRIVING
almost everything we do is for a purpose. Meditation not! Actually this attitude can be a real obstacle in meditation. Although meditation takes a lot of work and energy, ultimately it is about non-doing. It has no goal other than for you to be yourself. The irony is that you already are! Do not sit to get relaxed, enlighten or sleep better. Sit to learn to carefully see what is happening and accept it.

ACCEPTANCE
often acceptance comes after we have gone through intense period of emotion turmoil and anger. Doing that uses up our energy in the struggle instead of using it for healing and change. You are much more likely to know what to do and have the inner conviction to act when your vision is mot clouded by your mind’s self-serving judgments and desires or its fears and prejudices.

LETTING GO
when we pay attention to our inner experience, we discover that there are certain thoughts, feelings and situations that the mind seems to want to hold on to. If pleasant, we try and prolong our experience, if unpleasant, we try and get rid of them. In meditation, we try to intentionally put aside the tendency to elevate some aspects of our experience and reject others.


As presented by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 'Full Catastrophe Living'

The Upanishads

Among the oldest of India's spiritual texts, the Upanishads are records of intensive question-and-answer sessions given by illumined sages to their students.

Widely featured in philosophy courses, the Upanishads have puzzled and inspired wisdom seekers from Yeats to Schopenhauer.

Eknath Easwaran makes this challenging text more accessible by selecting the passages most relevant to readers seeking timeless truths today.

Zen Buddhism

Zen in its own words:
A special transmission outside the scriptures
Without reliance on words or letters
Directly pointing to the heart of humanity
Seeing into one's own nature.

Zen Buddhism
Zen Buddhism is a mixture of Indian Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. It began in China, spread to Korea and Japan, and became very popular in the West from the mid 20th century.

The essence of Zen is attempting to understand the meaning of life directly, without being misled by logical thought or language.

Zen techniques are compatible with other faiths and are often used, for example, by Christians seeking a mystical understanding of their faith.

Zen often seems paradoxical - it requires an intense discipline which, when practised properly, results in total spontaneity and ultimate freedom. This natural spontaneity should not be confused with impulsiveness.

Zen - the word
'Zen' is the way the Chinese word Ch'an is pronounced in Japan. 'Ch'an' is the Chinese pronunciation of the Sanskrit word Dhyana, which means (more or less) meditation.

Zen - the essence and the difficulty
Christmas Humphreys, one of the leading pioneers in the history of Buddhism in Britain, wrote that "Zen is a subject extremely easy to misunderstand." He was right.

Zen is something a person does. It's not a concept that can be described in words. Despite that, words on this site will help you get some idea of what Zen is about. But remember, Zen does not depend on words - it has to be experienced in order to 'understand'.

Enlightenment is inside
The essence of Zen Buddhism is that all human beings are Buddha, and that all they have to do is to discover that truth for themselves.

All beings by nature are Buddhas,
as ice by nature is water.
Apart from water there is no ice;
apart from beings, no Buddhas.
Hakuin Ekaku

Zen sends us looking inside us for enlightenment. There's no need to search outside ourselves for the answers; we can find the answers in the same place that we found the questions.

Human beings can't learn this truth by philosophising or rational thought, nor by studying scriptures, taking part in worship rites and rituals or many of the other things that people think religious people do.

The first step is to control our minds through meditation and other techniques that involve mind and body; to give up logical thinking and avoid getting trapped in a spider's web of words.

History
Zen Buddhism was brought to China by the Indian monk Bodhidharma in the 6th century CE. It was called Ch'an in China.

Zen's golden age began with the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng (638-713), and ended with the persecution of Buddhism in China in the middle of the 9th century CE. Most of those we think of today as the great Zen masters came from this period. Zen Buddhism survived the persecution though it was never the same again in China.

Zen spread to Korea in the 7th century CE and to Japan in the 12th century CE. It was popularised in the West by the Japanese scholar Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870 - 1966); although it was found in the West before that.

Zen in practice
If you're a westerner you may find it hard to shake off the intellectual and dualist ways of thinking that dominate western culture: these can make it difficult for westerners to come to Zen.

Zen Buddhists pay less attention to scripture as a means of learning than they do to various methods of practising Zen. The most common way of teaching is for enlightenment to be communicated direct from master to pupil.

Zen practices are aimed at taking the rational and intellectual mind out of the mental loop, so that the student can become more aware and realise their own Buddha-nature. Sometimes even (mild) physical violence is used to stop the student intellectualising or getting stuck in some other way.

Students of Zen aim to achieve enlightenment by the way they live, and by mental actions that approach the truth without philosophical thought or intellectual endeavour.

Some schools of Zen work to achieve sudden moments of enlightenment, while others prefer a gradual process.

Clues to the meaning of Zen
Because Zen is so hard to explain here are some quotations that may help you get an idea of it:

• The essence of Zen Buddhism is achieving enlightenment by seeing one's original mind (or original nature) directly; without the intervention of the intellect.
• Zen is big on intuitive understanding, on just 'getting it', and not so hot on philosophising.
• Zen is concerned with what actually is rather than what we think or feel about what is.
• Zen is concerned with things as they are, without trying to interpret them.
• Zen points to something before thinking, before all your ideas.
• The key to Buddhahood in Zen is simply self-knowledge.
• To be a human being is to be a Buddha. Buddha nature is just another name for human nature - true human nature.
• Zen is simply to be completely alive.
• Zen is short for Zen Buddhism. It is sometimes called a religion and sometimes called a philosophy. Choose whichever term you prefer; it simply doesn't matter.
• Zen is not a philosophy or a religion.
• Zen tries to free the mind from the slavery of words and the constriction of logic.
• Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom.
• Zen is meditation.

Back to the Truth: 5000 years of Advaita

Advaita is a spiritual philosophy based on the Upanishads, older than most other religious systems we know about but also the most logical and scientific in its approach.

This book is a systematic treatment of Advaita which demystifies it, differentiating between approaches and teachers, enabling you to decide which approach is most suitable for you. It compares the scriptures of traditional Advaita with the words of contemporary sages and neo-Advaita.

Should we ignore the mind? Is the world real? Is there anything we can do to become enlightened? These questions and many more are addressed, with explanations given in their own words from those who discovered the truth.

A massively comprehensive, definitive work.

Insight Meditation (Vipassana)

We live in times of great change and uncertainty. Be it events on a personal, cultural or global level, the ability to navigate these challenging times is becoming an increasingly critical skill of contemporary life. The practice of meditation develops this capacity in us by allowing us to become more intimate with the nature of our experience. Through the development of a meditative attitude and balanced awareness we have the ability to use the challenges we face as opportunities for transformation rather than isolation.

Insight Meditation is a practice which can deepen our potential for kindness and understanding. Through the development of our innate capacity to be present in each moment with an open-hearted attention to our experience, our heart and mind can awaken to a depth of peace and clarity that liberates us from the power of greed, hatred and confusion.

The practice tends to begin with a steadying of attention on the sensations of breathing and the body. From there, one can open to include more and more of one’s experience within the field of mindfulness or present-moment awareness. This enables insight into the true nature of what causes suffering and the path to its ending. Such clear-seeing fosters both wisdom and compassion.

Also known as vipassana, Insight Meditation derives from a 2500 year-old Buddhist tradition with deep and immediate relevance to life today. It is accessible and appropriate for people of any religious affiliation or none.

The purpose of Insight Meditation is not to create a system of beliefs, but rather to give guidance on how to see clearly into the nature of the mind. In this way one gains first-hand understanding of the way things are, without reliance on opinions or theories -- a direct experience, which has its own vitality. It also gives rise to the sense of deep calm that comes from knowing something for oneself, beyond any doubt.

Insight Meditation is a key factor in the path that the Buddha offered for the welfare of human beings; the only criterion is that one has to put it into practice! These pages, therefore, describe a series of meditation exercises, and practical advice on how to use them. It works best if the reader follows the guide progressively, giving each sequence of instructions a good work-out before proceeding further.

The term "Insight Meditation" (samatha-vipassana) refers to practices for the mind that develop calm (samatha) through sustained attention, and insight (vipassana) through reflection. A fundamental technique for sustaining attention is focusing awareness on the body; traditionally, this is practised while sitting or walking. The guide begins with some advice on this.

Reflection occurs quite naturally afterwards, when one is "comfortable" within the context of the meditation exercise. There will be a sense of ease and interest, and one begins to look around and become acquainted with the mind that is meditating. This "looking around" is called contemplation, a personal and direct seeing that can only be suggested by any technique. A few ideas and guidance on this come in a later section.