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Different kinds of mindfulness practice
JaySon
Florida Veteran
in Philosophy
A subject I find interesting that I never see anyone discuss is the different types of mindfulness practice.
One way is being aware, just being aware without judging.
Another way is to be aware of phenomena not existing as it seems to, like a dream or illusion or like candleflames in the wind.
Another way is to be aware of your motivation and turn your everyday activities like eating and showering into merit by doing it for the good of all.
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Another is to watch phenomena, their causes and conditions, their coming and going.
I think the first (being aware without judgement) is mindfulness.
And I think that the other two ways are not mndfulness but are instead the imposition of cognitive processes and thinking substituting for mindfulness.
We Westerners are so enamored with our cognitive processes that we easily mistake thinking for awareness.
That is my opinion on this.
There are many forms of mindfulness mentioned in the suttas. Mindfulness of breathing. Mindfulness of death. The four foundations of mindfulness (or frames of reference). Etc. Each has its own object and provides its own insights and motivations along the path.
@FoibleFull, I have a different take on the meanings of the words.
In one sense “being aware without judgment” is a redundant way of saying “being aware”. Awareness doesn’t judge; it’s just aware.
Mindfulness enters into the equation with the qualifier, “without judgement”. To maintain a non-judgmental disposition towards what awareness knows is a mindfulness practice that cultivates a non-judgmental disposition.
I would rename non-judgmental to non-reactive for two reasons. First, maintaining a non-judgmental disposition is predicated on a judgment favoring non-judgment. It must be made repeatedly. Second, to discern skillful from unskillful, e.g., right speech from wrong speech or right mindfulness from wrong mindfulness, requires some level of sagacity, which differs from reactiveness.
Mindfulness is a cognitive process. If keeping in mind the illusory nature of experiential phenomena as awareness knows them is thinking instead of mindfulness, then so is maintaining a non-reactive disposition to those same phenomena. Either process can lapse into thinking.
Thinking, awareness and mindfulness are all cognitive processes. Differentiating them conceptually and experientially are also cognitive processes. All these cognitive processes can be discerned and developed wisely through right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.
Actually, mindfulness is not a cognitive process.
Cognitive processes occur in the left hemisphere of our brain.
Mindfulness occurs in the right hemisphere of our brain, and is beyond the scope of cognitive processes. Not to say that cognition stops when you are being mindful ... it doesn't. But the two processes are different from each other.
As I said, we Westerners want to subsume everything under the aegis of cognitive processes.
Actually, such processes are not so easily split, @Foiblefull; the brain's 2 hemispheres can function independently in some things, but are still dependent on the other hemisphere to be able to function independently.... bizarrely....
http://memorise.org/brain-articles/sides-brains-work-independently
I knew my brain was working independently of me ... explains a lot
It gets stranger ...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-shocks-doctors/
I needs toolz to discipline that dependent monkey mind ...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-s-mental-health-matters/201604/5-ways-stop-your-racing-thoughts