What is mindfulness?

(A morning practice workshop talk from the ‘Practising Intimacy’ retreat – 16th-25th August 2024, Pallotti College, Victoria, with Patrick Kearney)

In the Satipatthana Sutta, instruction in meditation starts with: “....Here, gone to the forest, or to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut, the meditator sits down; having folded their legs crosswise, set their body erect, and established mindfulness in front of them, mindful they breathe in, mindful they breathe out.”

So, establishing mindfulness is the first thing we do after we choose somewhere to sit down and set up our physical posture. In terms of practice then, mindfulness is the cornerstone in the Buddha’s meditative ‘system’ of satipatthana practice; so getting to know it, how it feels, what it’s qualities are, is pretty crucial.

The Pali word ‘sati’ (Skt: ‘smrti’), is derived from the verb ‘sarati’, which literally means ‘memory’. It is usually translated in English as ‘mindfulness’, and it has two aspects which I think are important nuances of its relationship to memory: 1. To remember, to re-collect, to bear in mind – remembering to be aware; and 2. To keep remembering – staying aware over time.

MEMORY – REMEMBERING TO BE AWARE: I think of mindfulness as an aspect of awareness (or consciousness) that ‘makes the known known’ / ‘knowing what is (already) known’. We might say it’s ‘to be aware of awareness’ – ‘awareing awareness’. Or ‘not forgetting’. There’s an active or bright quality to mindfulness, whereas awareness is passive (we’ll look at this more in a minute). As soon as we ‘wake up’ from a bout of daydreaming for example, as we’re about to walk into something, we remember to ‘be here now’. We realise: ‘oh that’s right, if I forget to be here, I can easily bump into things (even though I’m awake/conscious)...’ This is the important ‘presencing’ quality of sati and its relationship with memory, and by extension, time. We remember to come back (from the past – reminiscing; or the future – planning) to the present moment and therefore, to ‘being aware’ – ‘Ah that’s right – THIS, HERE!’

I find it helpful to remember that being mindful is integrally related to both SPACE and TIME: remembering to be HERE, remembering to be NOW. We’re anchoring ourselves over and over in the present... here... now. In this sense, you can never have too much of it! So, mindfulness helps us to stay grounded in the present moment, which is probably its most fundamental aspect, and why it’s so important in any meditative undertaking.

We don’t have to try to be aware – if we’re awake and breathing, awareness is already present.

MEMORY - STAYING AWARE OVER TIME: Right now, just recognise that you’re aware. You probably know you’re conscious at the moment, right? This is being aware. Awareness is already present without you having to make any effort. And – if I suggest to you now to keep noting what I’m saying as I speak, because I’ll ask you in a minute to repeat back to me what I’ve said........Do you notice the difference in the nuance of awareness now? Bringing a ‘felt’ and sustained sense to what’s happening, over time, like this, this is the second aspect of mindfulness: ‘the felt continuity of awareness’, ‘knowing what is known’. So, don’t think about this too much. Simply see if you can settle into the body, and just feel what it’s like, to experience mindfulness.

Let’s try this out briefly: Be aware of where your hands are right now, how they’re positioned. You don’t need to do anything – just feel your hands, be aware your hands... Keep being aware of the hands... Notice the felt continuity of awareness in that part of the body we call ‘hands’. Do you notice that there was a) firstly remembering the hands, as I suggested you ‘aware’ them (assuming you had ‘forgotten’ them before that – i.e. they weren’t present to you)? And then, b) this felt continuity of awareness meant the hands kept being present to you as you kept ‘awareing’ them?

Just this is all the effort you need in order to be mindful of what is happening – and all the effort we ever have to make in meditation!

Mindfulness is not a thing, it’s a QUALITY of attention, a quality we bring to awareness that’s continually present (i.e. continuous awareness over time).

This quality has a brightness to it, it’s interested, curious, alert, I’d say soft, open, spacious, and receptive, without judgement (i.e. there’s no ethical dimension to the actual quality of mindfulness, it simply knows what is known).

So this second aspect of mindfulness comes to bear in our ability to stay present, to stay aware, to keep aware-ing awareness. It’s the presence of mind that clearly catches experience as it arises and passes. It’s the aspect of mindfulness that notes ‘this’, ‘this’, ‘this’, ‘this’ – a felt continuity of spacious presence. In this sense, if we’re staying aware of present-moment experience, we’re more likely to remember it and be able to recall it later on – which is especially useful when we’re investigating experience for the purposes of insight. Then we experience the profound depth that mindfulness offers, in seeing the fact of change, the impermanence of experience, and the patterns of relationships and cause-and-effect within arising experience.

But remember! Mindfulness doesn’t operate in a vacuum in our practice. For insight to arise, along with mindfulness, we need energy, effort, and clear comprehension (‘satisampajañña’), to name a few qualities. But, we might see mindfulness as being like the director, and these other qualities like crew members (all crucial, but without the oversight of mindfulness).

But, while awareness is present continually, mindfulness is a quality to be CULTIVATED. It’s not here all the time. It’s like driving and suddenly realising we’ve reached our destination and we don’t remember the drive!

We were obviously aware, otherwise we wouldn’t have arrived. But mindfulness wasn’t present, because we were on ‘autopilot’. So, mindfulness is that quality which brings us off autopilot, and into ‘awareing’ again, and into awareness of THIS..... In satipatthana practice, we’re training to strengthen and bring mindfulness to more moments of each day, for mindfulness to be more continuous. Because, when mindfulness becomes more continuous, then things really start to open up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, as we enter into practice on this first day of the retreat, we encourage you to settle into simply being aware that you’re aware, ‘awareing’ what’s already here. In terms of a core instruction – just relax, and be aware! As much as you can, maintain a broad, open receptivity to whatever you’re doing, and to whatever is arising in any moment – whether that’s sitting on your cushion and being mindful of the body sitting, walking on the grass or path, eating lunch, drinking a cup of tea, having a shower.

Tune into what it feels like to simply be aware – this orientation of attending to awareness. And that’s it! You don’t need to do anything – and especially, today, don’t meditate! The important thing is to let the body and the mind settle and soften in their own time. We’ve all arrived here from (probably) very busy daily lives, and there’ll be a lot of residue of that busyness here with us, in the body, in the mind.

I like to use the image of a stallion, let loose in a wide, open paddock. It runs freely in that wide spaciousness for some time, until the energy has dissipated, and it becomes relaxed, soft, settled. So, as much as you can, let your body and mind be like that here today – give your body and mind a wide, open paddock in which to settle down in its own time.

And importantly, notice any tendency to think that this ‘just being aware’ is ‘wasting time’. For example, for many years, I’d go on retreat and by the end of the first day, I’d always have a pounding headache. It took me a while to realise (quite a while!) that I was arriving on retreat with an agenda of ‘progress’, meaning I’d hit the ground/cushion running, with my body and mind still a bundle of tension. I’d sit with furrowed brow, so intent on becoming enlightened by the end of the week, that I inevitably over-efforted, and everything would boil over! As I became wiser – and actually listened to my teachers! – I took the foot off the pedal and practised being as relaxed and soft as possible. It’s a big ask for a high-achiever, but I see this receptive awareness now as turbo-boosting the practice later on, when we start directing awareness through breathing, or whatever it is.

So sleep today if you need to sleep, sit in the hall if you want to sit in the hall. Sit on the verandah and drink tea. Just ‘aware’ whatever it is you’re doing, notice what is happening – without trying to get anywhere, without focusing tightly on anything in particular. Remember – relax, and be aware. That’s it. Keep the mindfulness light, feather-like. Relax your grip on ‘being aware’ – and if you notice your body is tight and tense, see what’s happened to mindfulness as well. Is it present, or has an agenda crept in to try and run the show?  

A good clue to when mindfulness has disappeared – we lose touch with the present: if you’re caught up in habitual thinking, you’ll inevitably be lost in the past or the future, about something that has happened, or what you think should be happening, or what you want to happen – our experience of the body gets tight and contracted, or we become clumsy, or we’re not aware of our body at all. Use this as a clue to how aware you are moment to moment. And when you recognise mindfulness is here again, simply relax, notice that you’re already aware, and feel the body, notice the condition of the mind.  

Like this, we’re already cultivating steadiness of the body and mind, we’re already becoming more intimate with what is..... With patience and a sustained light ‘awareing’, we’re already building the capacity of the mind to quieten down, and settle right HERE, and NOW, with ‘just this...’

(Image: Robyn Gibson - ‘Translations of the sublime XXV’, 2020, multi-plate monoprint, 24x34cm)