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Reading fiction
Do you consider reading fiction to run counter to mindfulness?
When reading a good book, one is transported completely away from the here & now. For this reason, it seems to me that it would not be conducive to the goal of complete awareness. I do not believe it possible to be fully engaged with a story AND simultaneously remain fully aware of physical reality.
Yet, if you engage in it completely does it not become something like meditation, as when you engage in other, more mundane activities completely? Meditation is, in essence (and to my newbie understanding), fully experiencing the here & now - but if, in the here & now you are reading a story...?
It seems to me that this sort of question (one might also ask it of listening to music or watching a movie) is one that might not have been raised to the Buddha. I assume that most people could not read in his day, and mass-produced, printed fiction certainly didn't exist. Although, perhaps the issue of listening to a story might have been addressed somewhere in his teaching?
(As something of a side note, as I consider this it makes me think about how much more distraction there is all around us today than there would have been in the Buddha's time; it seems to me that the pursuit of mindfulness today is more challenging than it has ever been.)
I'd love to hear your opinions and/or be directed to any discussion of the topic by the Buddha, if it exists.
When reading a good book, one is transported completely away from the here & now. For this reason, it seems to me that it would not be conducive to the goal of complete awareness. I do not believe it possible to be fully engaged with a story AND simultaneously remain fully aware of physical reality.
Yet, if you engage in it completely does it not become something like meditation, as when you engage in other, more mundane activities completely? Meditation is, in essence (and to my newbie understanding), fully experiencing the here & now - but if, in the here & now you are reading a story...?
It seems to me that this sort of question (one might also ask it of listening to music or watching a movie) is one that might not have been raised to the Buddha. I assume that most people could not read in his day, and mass-produced, printed fiction certainly didn't exist. Although, perhaps the issue of listening to a story might have been addressed somewhere in his teaching?
(As something of a side note, as I consider this it makes me think about how much more distraction there is all around us today than there would have been in the Buddha's time; it seems to me that the pursuit of mindfulness today is more challenging than it has ever been.)
I'd love to hear your opinions and/or be directed to any discussion of the topic by the Buddha, if it exists.
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Comments
i think even though you leave the here of the place you are reading it, you don't totally leave it, it is only obfuscated. you cannot leave the now by entering into an imaginative realm , unless the activity of reading a book actually takes you away from affairs, in the mahayana sense, you have to attend to, like benefitting the other beings around you. but to read a book can be a very beneficial thing for you to do, because it can be very rejuvenating and good exercise for the spirit , like jumping on a trampoline for half an hour each day