What's the point of mindfulness?

DairyLama

People often talk about the importance of mindfulness as an aspect of Buddhist pratice, but what's it for? What's the point of mindulness?

Wisdom23

it calms the mind.

federica

ever tripped up on a step because you weren't watching where you were going?

Mindlessness is brain tripping up.

taiyaki

To eventually set the ground for seeing the construction of self and things, which one will see how to unwind and one shall then know release.

The point of all these practices is freedom.

Though there is an element of allowing things to be as they are. For instance we can just be with tension or sadness. But that's elementary. We have to learn what conditions allow such tension and sadness. Even happiness and joy. What are the conditions? What happens when we play with conditions and finally when we gather insight from our exploration into constructions, what does that lead to in the mind, in the body, in the beingness?

Are we letting go or are we clinging harder. And over and over again we use mindfulness to see how stuff happens.

Zero

To be mindful is to be aware of reality.

It doesnt require a point.

Just as reality doesn't require anything but you to substantiate it.

Davetheseeker

To me it means just paying attention to my thoughts, words and actions.
So the things I do, say and think bring no harm to others or myself.

It's like using a saw and not paying attention to where your hand's at :hair:

zenff

I think that when we stop our mind from being all over the place – on top of practical advantages – we can get a glimpse of liberation.
Mindfulness and concentration are ways of stopping.

Ultimately the point of mindfulness and concentration is to make us see what the Buddha saw when his eyes fell on the Morningstar.

The Buddha cannot transmit what exactly happened at that moment.
In order to do that he would have to move away from it, look at it from a distance and fit it into some conceptual framework. Then the concept can be transmitted.
That’s great; but that concept can’t be turned back into the experience by us – his audience –when we don’t have a corresponding experience to relate it to.
So instead he showed us a path of getting at a similar point where we stop and experience what he experienced.

Mindfulness and concentration are at the core - I think – of that path.

seeker242

Good description I think. The point is ultimately to help you attain insight, as is the point of all other factors of the path.

One quality that's always appropriate in establishing mindfulness is being watchful or alert. The Pali word for alertness, sampajañña, is another term that's often misunderstood. It doesn't mean being choicelessly aware of the present, or comprehending the present. Examples in the Canon shows that sampajañña means being aware of what you're doing in the movements of the body, the movements in the mind. After all, if you're going to gain insight into how you're causing suffering, your primary focus always has to be on what you're actually doing. This is why mindfulness and alertness should always be paired as you meditate.

In the Satipatthana Sutta, they're combined with a third quality, ardency. Ardency means being intent on what you're doing, trying your best to do it skillfully. This doesn't mean that you have to keep straining and sweating all the time, just that you're continuous in developing skillful habits and abandoning unskillful ones. Remember, in the eight factors of the path to freedom, right mindfulness grows out of right effort. Right effort is the effort to be skillful. Mindfulness helps that effort along by reminding you to stick with it, so that you don't let it drop.http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/mindfulnessdefined.html

lobster

PedanticPorpoise said:

What's the point of mindulness?

I appreciate that is probably lack of mindfulness but it is also a better question . . . in some ways. Why would you wish to have a dull mind if a bright option was available?

music

I have wondered about the same thing. What's the point of mindfulness when it creates so much stress (being alert all the time puts us under stress, not being alert frustrates us, and so on)?

Zero

music said:

What's the point of mindfulness when it creates so much stress (being alert all the time puts us under stress

How does mindfulness 'create' stress?

Stress is your response to stimuli.

Mindfulness may allow you to modify your response along a gradient of automatic to conscious - it is not however the stimuli and not the response.

DairyLama

Davetheseeker said:

To me it means just paying attention to my thoughts, words and actions.
So the things I do, say and think bring no harm to others or myself.

Yes, I think that's an important point. An example from MN117:

"One tries to abandon wrong action and to enter into right action: This is one's right effort.
One is mindful to abandon wrong action & to enter & remain in right action: This is one's right mindfulness.
Thus these three qualities — right view, right effort, & right mindfulness — run & circle around right action."

music

Zero said:

music said:

What's the point of mindfulness when it creates so much stress (being alert all the time puts us under stress

How does mindfulness 'create' stress?

Stress is your response to stimuli.

Mindfulness may allow you to modify your response along a gradient of automatic to conscious - it is not however the stimuli and not the response.

Being mindful involves expending a lot of energy. It is tiring. Second, there is anxiety because one should always be on guard and even the slightest lack of attention could distract us. All this creates stress.

Gui

@music - Your last statement is also true for learning how to ride a bicycle. After a while, however...

Jason

Mindfulness (sati) itself is the ability to keep something in mind. For many of us, our faculties of mindfulness are relative weak, and it's easy for our minds to be distracted, which is why we use meditation to try and strengthen it. In our day to day lives, increased mindfulness can help us be more aware of our intentions before we act upon them. In our meditation, increased mindfulness can help subdue the five hindrances, allowing us to develop more insight by having a strong, calm, penetrating mind that's more aware of the subtle movements of the mind. From my recent retreat experience:

After breakfast, it was right back to mediation followed by a Dhamma talk. The theme centred on a comparison between the process of building a fire using the bow method and the process of developing mindfulness, and how consistency of effort and the right materials are the key. Essentially, our minds aren't really conditioned to focus on a single object for long periods of time and are easily distracted, especially by what are called the five hindrances in Buddhism, i.e., sensual desires (covetous or greed for pleasurable sense experiences), anger/ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and skeptical doubt/uncertainty. Ajahn Sudanto gave the image of them (taken from Ajahn Sona) as things pulling the mind, pushing the mind, the mind rising up, the mind sinking down, and the mind spinning around.

To counter these mental states, which are like trying to use wet, rotten logs and grasses to start a fire, the meditator seeks to develop the five factors of the first jhana, i.e., applied thought, sustained thought, happiness, joy, and one-pointedness of mind, which are like using nice, dry logs and grasses to start a fire when consistent effort and energy is put into vigorously sawing the drill until it starts to heat up and ignites the kindling, which here represents using applied and sustained thought with consistent effort and energy to keep the meditation object, the breath, in mind. And the smoke in the analogy is the beginning of mindfulness and the accompanying joy and happiness that arise when the mind starts to become one-pointed, a combination of mental and bodily pleasure that can eventually be used to develop even more refined states of concentration and enjoyment, free the mind of the hindrances, and open it up for arising of insight.

Zero

music said:

Being mindful involves expending a lot of energy. It is tiring.

Second, there is anxiety because one should always be on guard and even the slightest lack of attention could distract us. All this creates stress.

I'm not sure that is mindfulness...

'Energy' is a word that is banded about with little care... in this context, we're presumably not talking about the type of metabolised fuel/energy that allows organic functions... I suppose we are discussing 'opportunity in time'... as in, I am focusing when I could be doing something else...

Again, whichever way I look at this it doesnt seem to fit... if it is fuel from metabolism then the link to mindfulness is what? the solution is eat more, not be less mindful... or if it is opportunity in time then again, I dont see how one would expend energy when in fact the opportunity in time is not used to fabricate a reality but rather to let go of fabrications and accept/integrate reality as it naturally is... that would seem to take less energy (no energy) in the sense that one preserves the opportunity in time to expend on the natural experience of reality (rather than in obsessive fabrication) - or in any event it occurs simultaneously to the experience of natural reality.

What you describe sounds more like anxiety and lack of confidence than mindfulness.

fivebells

In addition to the above advantages, mindfulness acts as an important tell-tale for becoming and birth in the present moment, because they usually squeeze mindfulness out.

Jeffrey

Mindfulness is awareness. We don't invent something new we just stop avoiding.

Jeffrey

Too much concentration goes against the grain of the mind. The mind also needs to diffuse. If it could not do that a newness could never emerge and we would get stuck. The mind focuses on something and then that radiates out into the space and eventually diffuses out of focus.

fivebells

No, mindfulness is different from awareness. "Mindful" means being able to remember or recollect.

Jeffrey

@fivebells, not as my teacher teaches.

I think it can be as you say. But then isn't awareness having those qualities?

smirti is the word I believe.

My teacher likes for us to look at the associations we make with various words. And then find within our own tendancies some kind of insight we already have. She finds that 'awareness' points her students into some different insights than 'mindfulness'. And she wants her students to use both terms to investigate. For her own tendancies she likes awareness better than mindfulness.

Sorry this is edited a lot ^ I can't seem to ever get a post right the first time

Jeffrey

Looking at your article I would think in my sangha meditation is not a doing like the article says. I think my teacher's husband said it was an undoing, which is different again from a non-doing. It is an undoing because by just being very simple we let go of the habitual ignorance of our complacent minds.

The commonality of the meditation methods (your article and my teacher) is that they both develope equanimity.

But we are letting go of bad habits and returning to what we already have as the nature of our minds.

Jeffrey

So basicly in my teacher's method as different from your article we don't say "this is unskillful I must uproot it"..

Rather we just note "thinking" and return to the outbreath and note the way our mind opens to the space of the whole affair. The quality of our mind that we uncover is the opening and spaciousness in combination with the clarity to know what it was that we were thinking and the sensation we had during the whole affair.

fivebells

I'm very familiar with this way of meditating, did it for years. I still do it, but establishing a solid connection with the seven factors of awakening really helps with it.

Jeffrey

I've asked my teacher several items of the Pali Canon that don't seem to be covered in our sangha. The one I recollect the most is the eightfold path in which she pointed out that in the dharma talks they were covered in our teachings, but not named as such. It's possible that this is another where the dharma talks cover something in a different form. Her husbands book, Never Turn Away, is about the four noble truths but it is a totally different presentation from the sutras and if you read it you might not notice that it dealt with the four NTs. But for the actual booklet I received to give our meditation method I didn't see or sense any semblance of the seven factors. It may be something the mind does automatically, but it wasn't in the method in the booklet.

fivebells

No, the mind doesn't do them automatically. That's kind of the point of the "doing" form of meditation recommended in the suttas, to develop them.

SeaOfTranquility

As with all the spokes on the wheel of the 8 fold path the purpose of mindfulness is to end suffering.

Patient, open, non-judgmental awareness of what is present in the this current moment provides the room for insight and acceptance. The habitual reaction of holding on or pushing away what arises in the mind can only be let go of when awareness is present.

I think of mindfulness as meditation off the cushion.

Best Wishes

lobster

I think of mindfulness as meditation off the cushion.

One of my teachers said, 'Your greatest practice begins when leaving the practice hall'.
It is why I tend to just sit . . . 'finish' and just get up . . . a lot less effort . . . simples. :hiding:

mfranzdorf

SeaOfTranquility said:

As with all the spokes on the wheel of the 8 fold path the purpose of mindfulness is to end suffering.

Patient, open, non-judgmental awareness of what is present in the this current moment provides the room for insight and acceptance. The habitual reaction of holding on or pushing away what arises in the mind can only be let go of when awareness is present.

I think of mindfulness as meditation off the cushion.

Best Wishes

Well put. The idea that mindfulness is a waste or somehow negative seems to me like a way to make waves. Being mindful is a critical piece of the foundation of this whole deal, isn't it? Ponderous.....

David

Without it, I'd be too distracted to answer.

karasti

Being mindful keeps you in the present. I became acutely aware of it much prior to coming to Buddhism, due to driving. I'd find myself lost in thought, and driving on autopilot only to realize I'd missed my turn 5 miles prior, or that I drove home without even recalling I had been driving. I didn't like that at all, and set my mind to be only driving when I'm driving. Later on I realized there was a term for this and you could use it elsewhere, lol. It has saved me from many accidents, as I am aware of what is going on around me and can see an incident coming before it happens, rather than responding only reactively to an event. Instead of slamming on the brakes after someone pulls out in front of me on the highway, I can tell they are going to do so before hand, and can slow down ahead of time. It happens the same in all areas of life, and it serves me well. Multitasking isn't nearly the gift that westerners tend to be led to beleive it is.

DairyLama

fivebells said:

No, mindfulness is different from awareness. "Mindful" means being able to remember or recollect.

I think mindfulness has 2 main aspects: awareness ( paying attention ) and clear comprehension ( acting mindfully with right view and right effort ).

I know sati has the literal meaning of remembering, but I'm not sure what this means in practice - apart from remembering to be mindful - could you elaborate on this point?

DairyLama

Jason said:

Mindfulness (sati) itself is the ability to keep something in mind.

Could you say what the something is?

PeaceOfMe

I think it means to be aware of everything,to be mindful..to notice even the tiniest,smallest things/beings etc. that surround us & take whatever it may be into us. I think the point of it all is to appreciate things for what they are, or what they are not...

DairyLama

PeaceOfMe said:

I think the point of it all is to appreciate things for what they are, or what they are not...

I think mindfulness can be seen as a basis for insight, wisdom, seeing things as they really are.

footiam

What is the point of 'non-mindfulness'?

DairyLama

footiam said:

What is the point of 'non-mindfulness'?

Well they do say "ignorance is bliss".

footiam

Bliss is a trap.

Jason

PedanticPorpoise said:

Jason said:

Mindfulness (sati) itself is the ability to keep something in mind.

Could you say what the something is?

It can be anything, really. In the context of meditation, for example, it can be any number of things, from the object of meditation (e.g., the breath) to the five methods for dealing with unskillful thoughts in the course of meditation listed in MN 20. So as a factor of the path, it's the ability to recall and keep in mind anything that aids in calming and purifying the mind, giving rise to insight, and accomplishing the duties entailed by the four noble truths (i.e., comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation, and develop the path to that cessation). That's my understand, anyway.

Jeffrey

My teacher has a story of when she was invited to a couples home. The wife at one point dropped a coffee cup and it broke. Her husband said 'MINDFULNESS' very scoldingly. My teacher said she wanted to say 'mindfulness of cup breaking, chink'. Mindfulness according to my teacher is not always vigilant bare awareness. It is like you are in a car and you have a whole panorama but you are able to drive because mindfulness tells you where is important to look. Objects come to the front and then recede to the back as needed with this faculty.

I've probably got some of this garbled, but I am very impressed with my teachers presentation. It seems more realistic and 'relaxed lute string' not to try to have bare awareness always vigilant; the nature of mind is to relax sometimes too. Otherwise how do we as buddhists get to sit down and veg out? That would be no fair.

DairyLama

Jeffrey said:

Mindfulness according to my teacher is not always vigilant bare awareness. It is like you are in a car and you have a whole panorama but you are able to drive because mindfulness tells you where is important to look. Objects come to the front and then recede to the back as needed with this faculty.

So do you mean paying attention to what's important at the time?

DairyLama

Jason said:

PedanticPorpoise said:

Jason said:

Mindfulness (sati) itself is the ability to keep something in mind.

Could you say what the something is?

It can be anything, really. In the context of meditation, for example, it can be any number of things, from the object of meditation (e.g., the breath) to the five methods for dealing with unskillful thoughts in the course of meditation listed in MN 20. So as a factor of the path, it's the ability to recall and keep in mind anything that aids in calming and purifying the mind, giving rise to insight, and accomplishing the duties entailed by the four noble truths (i.e., comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize its cessation, and develop the path to that cessation). That's my understand, anyway.

I just had another look at the Satipatthana Sutta - it seems like an awful lot to keep in mind.

poptart

Mindfulness is simply being present in this moment. We spend so much of our lives lost in thoughts about the past or future, or thoughts about anything other than where we are right now. Absent-mindedness, illustrated perfectly by @karasti's post about driving past their destination, takes us out of the present moment.

Many people find it hard to practise mindfulness, not because it is unnatural but because the way we live in Western society encourages mindlessness. But with practice it is liberating and the source of all insight.

taiyaki

Mindfulness is always conditioned.

For instance we can bring metta with mindfulness and this brings a letting go and kindness to what arises.

But that is a very dualistic way of seeing.

Mindfullness is exactly the letting go, kindness, metta, and object. It isn't a solid entity, but a process of attention arisen due to conditions.

So bare attention or seeing what is has its merits and may lead towards the beautiful. It surely brings letting go.

But that isn't enough in Buddhism.

Buddhism requires us to see how with mindfulness we build the world and how we can deconstruct the world.

What can we bring with mindfulness that leads to letting go and peace and the highest happiness?

For instance with mindfulness I can bring impermanence. I can look at everything with the lens of impermanence and this brings a gentle letting go.

So there is more to mindfulness than say just being with our suffering. We must learn the conditions and learn to play with conditions so that we can end the process of construction. Then we may know liberation.

Jeffrey

PedanticPorpoise said:

Jeffrey said:

Mindfulness according to my teacher is not always vigilant bare awareness. It is like you are in a car and you have a whole panorama but you are able to drive because mindfulness tells you where is important to look. Objects come to the front and then recede to the back as needed with this faculty.

So do you mean paying attention to what's important at the time?

Basically, but I am saying it is intrinsic to awareness. You couldn't be a sentient being without this quality.

fivebells

Just started reading Right Mindfulness by Thanissaro, which seems highly relevant to this thread.

Chapter One starts with an analysis of the Buddha’s standard formula for the practice of right mindfulness, in which mindfulness is one of three qualities brought to the act of remaining focused on a frame of reference, the other two qualities being ardency and alertness. Ardency is of particular importance, for it constitutes the proactive element in mindfulness practice.

The chapter then shows how right mindfulness keeps in mind the three aspects of right view: the proper framework for regarding experience (the four noble truths); the motivation for adopting that framework; and the duties prescribed by the framework—duties that ardency is meant to follow. The discussion then focuses on the ways in which right mindfulness relates to two highly proactive factors of the path: right effort and right concentration. Its relationship to these factors is so close that all three interpenetrate one another in bringing about release.

Chapter Two deals with the ways in which right mindfulness is developed through a sensitivity to the workings of cause and effect—a sensitivity that can be gained only by consciously manipulating the intentional bodily, verbal, and mental fabrications that shape experience.

Chapter Three explains why conscious fabrication is a necessary part of the path, exploring the implications of the fact that, in dependent co-arising, fabrications conditioned by ignorance precede and shape not only the act of attention, but also contact at the senses. This means that these unskillful fabrications have to be replaced by skillful ones, conditioned by knowledge in terms of the four noble truths, if the path is to succeed in undercutting the causes of suffering. This fact determines the role of right mindfulness in turning attention into appropriate attention, and supervising the development of the skillful fabrications of the path.

driedleaf

Mindfulness helps us experience the "why". Because it is difficult to let go of something.

still_learning

For me mindfulness is useful because it helps bring me peace. Being mindful helps me prevent worries like "did I lock my car?" or "Did I turn off the stove?" or "Did I say the right thing so someone?"

Prevents a lot of weight of worry from being put on my shoulders. That brings me peace. Peace a form of happiness for me.

Peace is underrated nowadays.

Sile

One purpose is to take more control of your mind (and life).

If you're unmindful to the current moment, it means you're usually fretting about the past--which you can't change--or agonizing over the future, which hasn't happened yet so you don't know if/how you can affect it. Meanwhile, you miss out on the one moment you can shape best, which is right now. Since all past moments, present moments, and future moments were, are, or will be "right now," if we treat each moment as right now, we're giving our entire life the best attention possible.

Says the woman who's broken many a glass when washing dishes and fretting about past or future, often simultaneously.

DairyLama

still_learning said:

"Did I turn off the stove?"

I wish I could remember....