Is mindfulness wholesome in and of itself?

An inspiring meeting convened by the Mind and Life Institute between the Dalai Lama and a group of distinguished scientists and scholars recently was held in Dharamsala, India.

Rupert Gethin, an eminent scholar of the Theravada and Pali tradition of Buddhism, expressed the opinion that mindfulness, as defined by the Pali scriptures, is wholesome in and of itself.

He gave the example of Philippe Petit, the famous French high wire artist who, in 1974, spent 45 minutes walking back and forth on a cable stretched between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, 380 meters above the ground.

He danced on it, bounced up and down (his feet leaving the wire), and even lay down on the cable - all this with a beatific smile on his face. He was obviously in a state of grace. Witnesses still speak of this astonishing feat with tears in their eyes.

Rupert Gethin felt that this incredible acrobat must have maintained a state of uninterrupted mindfulness that could be considered to be a fundamentally wholesome state, like the kind that leads to achieving enlightenment.

We argued that it all depended on the motivation of the acrobat. Even though he declared that his feat was a display of sheer beauty offered to the world, he could have also been motivated by less lofty purposed. He could have been seeking fame, and we might even conceive of a case where an acrobat would want to cross over on the tightrope to take revenge and kill someone on the other side. R. Gethin thought that if that were the case, the acrobat would not have been able to maintain pure mindfulness for so long and would have fallen down.

A clearer example might be that of a sniper waiting for his victim: he can be one-pointedly concentrated, abiding unwaveringly in the present moment, calm and poised. The sniper is able to maintain his attention over time and bring it back to his target as soon as it wanders. To succeed in his ominous goal, he has to ward off distraction and laxity, the two major obstacles to attention.

Bare attention, as consummate as it might be, is no more than a tool that can certainly be used to achieve enlightenment and is needed for this purpose, but which can also be use to cause immense suffering. Obviously what is entirely missing is the ethical dimension of a mindfulness that deserves the qualification of “wholesome” and can lead to enlightenment.

In addition to directing the attention (manasikara in Pali, manaskara in Sanskrit, and yid la byed pa in Tibetan) to a chosen object and maintaining the attention on this object (respectively sati, smriti, and dran pa), genuine mindfulness must include an understanding of the nature of one’s mental state (sampajanna, samprajnana and shes bzhin), free from distortions, as well as an embedded ethical component that enables one to clearly discern whether or not it is beneficial to maintain our present state of mind and behavior.

To these three, one also adds “concern” (Pali, appamadena, Skt. apramada, Tib. bag yod) which is to constantly maintain the ethical dimension of mindfulness and vigilantly guard the mind from falling into unwholesome thoughts that lead to unwholesome actions.

The practice of mindfulness thus needs to be guided by right view and insight (such as the understanding that all phenomena are empty of independent existence), and motivated by the right intention, such as the aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.

It is quite true that a meditator resting in pure awareness and perfect understanding of the fundamental nature of mind, unaltered by mental constructions, will be unable to pull the trigger and kill someone. This kind of luminous awareness is a state of wisdom and is the natural state of a mind that is entirely free from ignorance and mental toxins and spontaneously imbued with unconditional altruism and compassion. Such a state is the result of having achieved inner freedom and should not be confused with mere mindfulness and bare attention.

Attention is a quality that is indispensable to the attainment of our goals, whether they are oriented to the world and others, or focused inwardly to self- transformation. When attention is focused, directed, free from bias, and sharpened by penetrating insight and logical investigation, it will help to ascertain reality correctly.  When attention is permeated with wholesome mental states, such as altruism and compassion, it will strengthen these states and help them to fully develop.

However, when attention is colored by afflictive emotions, such as hatred, desire, arrogance and jealousy, it reinforces these afflictions and distorts our perception of reality. This will result in biases that cause us to perceive objects of our desire as 100% desirable and objects of our repulsion as 100% abhorrent.

Attention remains a tool that can be used both in constructive and destructive ways. Attention is colored by the motivation that underlies it, like a crystal what takes the color of the cloth upon which it is laid. To qualify as a wholesome quality, attention needs to be combined with an altruistic motivation and with insight.

(to be continued)

Spiritual practice can be enormously beneficial. The fact is, it is possible to undergo genuine spiritual training by devoting some time every day to meditation. More people than you might think do so, while leading regular family lives and doing absorbing work. The positive benefits of such a life far outweigh the few problems of schedule arrangement. In this way we can launch an inner transformation that is based in day-to-day reality.

Usually, we all experience thoughts of loving kindness, generosity, inner peace and freedom from conflicts. But these thoughts are fleeting and will soon be replaced by other thoughts, including afflictive ones such as anger and jealousy. To fully integrate altruism and compassion in our midstream, we need to do more than that. We need to cultivate them over longer periods of time. We need to bring them to our minds and then nurture them, repeat them, preserve them, enhance them, so that they gradually fill our mental landscape in a more durable way.

To arouse loving kindness, one might imagine, for instance, a young child, and feel nothing but benevolence toward that child. When that mental state has clearly arisen in one’s mind, one let it grow and sustain it until if fills one’s whole mental landscape. Then one will simply nurture this state, keeping it present, full and vast. If one does so regularly, the mind will become more easily and naturally filled with benevolence and loving kindness for all, and compassion for those who suffer.

Happiness is, to begin with, a love of life. To have lost all reason for living is to open up an abyss of suffering. As important as external conditions may be, suffering, like well-being, is essentially an state of mind. Understanding that is the key prerequisite to a life worth living. What mental conditions will sap our joie de vivre, and which will nourish it?
Changing the way we see the world does not imply naive optimism or some superficial euphoria. So long as we are prone to the dissatisfaction and frustration that arise from the confusion that rules our minds, it will be just as futile to tell ourselves “I’m happy! I’m happy!” over and over again as it would be to repaint a wall in ruins. The search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world. Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all costs: it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality. To that end we must acquire a better knowledge of how the mind works and a more accurate insight into the nature of things, for in its deepest sense, suffering is intimately linked to a misapprehension of the nature of reality.

True patience isn’t a sign of weakness, but of courage. It certainly doesn’t mean to let everything happen passively. Patience gives you the capacity to act correctly without being blinded by hatred and a thirst for revenge, which deprive you of any capacity for judgment. As the Dalai Lama often says, true tolerance isn’t a question of saying, “Come on, do me some harm!” It’s neither submission nor resignation—it’s accompanied by the strength of mind and intelligence.

Sweet words, if spoken with the intention to deceive, look like kindness but are actually violent. Conversely, for a mother to push her child strongly away from a fast approaching car may look like violence but is really saving the child’s life. What counts is the motivation behind our actions and the final result of those actions.

Violence fuels violence, and usually has disastrous effects that keep on repeating themselves. So it’s best to avoid it by all means and resolve conflict through skillful dialogue.

“When selfish happiness is the only goal in life, life soon becomes goalless,” wrote Romain Rolland. Even if we display every outward sign of happiness, we can never be truly happy if we dissociate ourselves from the happiness of others. A happiness painstakingly constructed in the kingdom of selfishness is as ephemeral and fragile as a castle built on a frozen lake, ready to sink at the first thaw.
Our own happiness is intimately linked to that of others: most of our difficulties actually arise because we lack concern for other’s well-being. As the Buddhist philosopher Shantideva wrote:

All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.

This in no way requires us to neglect our own happiness. Our desire for happiness is as legitimate as anyone else’s. We must realize that in the deepest part of ourselves, we fear suffering and aspire to happiness. We should then realize that all sentient beings want to avoid suffering just as much as we do. The right not to suffer, though often ignored, is without a doubt the most fundamental right that living beings possess. Finally, we should develop the strong aspiration and readiness to do whatever we can to ease other’s suffering and contribute to their lasting well-being.

For Buddhism, paradoxically, genuine self-confidence is a natural quality of egolessness. To dispel the illusion of the ego is to free oneself from a fundamental vulnerability. Genuine confidence comes from an awareness of a basic quality of our mind and of our potential for transformation and flourishing, what Buddhism calls “buddha nature”, which is present in all of us.

Paul Ekman, one of the world’s specialists in the science of emotion, has been inspired to study “people gifted with exceptionally human qualities.” Among the most remarkable traits shared by such people, he notes, are “an impression of kindness, a way of being that others can sense and appreciate, and, unlike so many charismatic charlatans, perfect harmony between their private and public lives.” They emanate goodness.

Above all, writes Ekman, they exhibit “an absence of ego. These people inspire others by how little they make of their status, their fame — in short, their self. They never give a second thought to whether their position or importance is recognized.” Such a lack of egocentricity, he adds, “is altogether perplexing from a psychological point of view.” Ekman also stresses how “people instinctively want to be in their company and how, even if they can’t always explain why, they find their presence enriching. In essence, they emanate goodness.”

If the ego were really our deepest essence, it would be easy to understand our apprehension about dropping it. But if it is merely an illusion, ridding ourselves of it is not ripping the heart out of our being, but simply opening our eyes.

Rather than weakening the individual, the understanding of the non-existence of an independent “self” leads to a deep rooted sense of inner freedom, strength and openness to others that allows the flourishing of altruistic love and compassion, rooted in wisdom.

At every moment between birth and death, the body undergoes ceaseless transformations and the mind becomes the theater of countless emotional and conceptual experiences. And yet we assign qualities of permanence, uniqueness, and autonomy to the self. Furthermore, as we begin to feel that this self is highly vulnerable and must be protected and satisfied, aversion and attraction come into play — aversion for anything that threatens the self, attraction to all that pleases it. These two basic feelings, attraction and repulsion, are the fonts of a whole sea of conflicting emotions.

Out of fear of the world and of others, out of dread of suffering, out of anxiety about living and dying, we imagine that by retreating inside the bubble of ego, we will be protected. We create the illusion of being separate from the world, hoping thereby to avert suffering. In fact, what happens is just the opposite, since ego-grasping is a powerful magnet to attract suffering.

Our grasping to the perception of a “self” as a separate entity leads to an increasing feeling of vulnerability and insecurity. It also reinforces self-centeredness, mental rumination, and thoughts of hope and fear, and distances ourselves from others. This imagined self becomes the constant victim hit by life’s events.

Where then is the self? It cannot be exclusively in my body, because when I say “I am proud,” it is my consciousness that is proud, not my body. So is it in my consciousness? When I say: “Someone pushed me,” was it my consciousness being pushed? Of course not. The self obviously cannot be outside the body and the consciousness. The only way out of this dilemma is to consider the self as a mental or verbal designation attached to the body and the consciousness. The self is merely an idea