Chapter 17: What is Mindfulness Meditation?

Mindfulness (?????? ????-??????????? ????????? ?????) involves three basic areas focused attention, emotional regulation and appropriate responses, and enhancing self-awareness. Buddhist mindfulness meditation-based approaches are increasingly employed as interventions for treating a variety of psychological and psychiatric problems. However, to obtain sustained benefits from meditation, one needs to practice systematic regular mental training for years.

Practicing mindfulness meditation:

Practicing mindfulness is about controlling the way you think about the world and see things as they are.  One must learn to live in the present moment and focus the attention on the matters you choose to focus on. Mindfulness meditation (???????? ??????—???????? ????? ?????) involves observing the world around you without judgment, with open mindedness. Experiencing emotion is not counter to the effective practice of mindfulness; it is an important part of it.  However, learning to let go without dwelling on those emotions, is just as important.

Fundamentals of mindfulness practices:

Mindfulness is a personal endeavor. Over time, letting go of emotions and judgments will make your mind lighter, and you will feel happier. Mindfulness is a secular activity and a state of calmness in which one stays in the present moment. Paying attention to the present, facilitates awareness of what one is doing and one’s surroundings, which leads to the path of being free from distractions.

The fundamental principle in mindfulness training is to focus the mind using the natural breath as a tool. The initial goals are to keep the mind in the present moment (i.e., paying attention to the breath, on purpose) and make a conscious effort to focus and prevent the mind wandering—thoughts fluctuating from the past or the future.

This simple process will minimize the attention or feelings about activities of the day (or in the past) and relationships or stresses at work or school, and train the mind to focus only on the subjects you want to think about (for example, during initial practices of meditation, this is the breath). However, with practice, one will develop skills to be mindful throughout the day with all activities.

It is inevitable for the mind to wander. When it wanders, be mindful to bring it back to the subject of breath or whatever you were paying attention to.  Developing the ability to focus the mind with practice on things outside of us, will allow one to expand the capability to focus the mind on anything, at any given time.

Actions should be thoughtful and purposeful:

Being aware that you are speaking to someone is not the same as being mindful of how and what you are speaking to others. Thus, the awareness is only a part of mindfulness. In the absence of that, it is easy for anyone to revert to doing thing as they use to do—engaging in autopiloting.

Mindfulness practices will also allow you to be aware of who you are, your thought process, and taking facts based proactive actions—properly thought plan of actions without biases—purposefully execute the intended actions.  Keeping the mind in the present moment also allows to focus attention on what you are doing and what is going on in the present moment. These will also allow further refining present thoughts in applying to completion of task in hand. Paying attention to what one is doing and where the mind is focused, would allow to carry out tasks precisely, on purpose.  Although the purpose can be any, being in the present moment and the ability to focus on one thing, greatly facilitate the accomplishing the goals of the task at hand.  

When being mindful, distractions are minimized and the present experience becomes prominent, which further increases one’s ability to concentrate on the issue. Paying attention to be aware of what you are doing and where you are, and being free from distractions and not being reactive to what is going on around, open doors to understanding yourself and allows healing of the mind of cravings, grudges, and envy.

Avoid living mentally in the past or in the future:

Practicing mindfulness means keeping your attention squarely in the present moment. In addition to sharpening the mind, other benefits of being mindful are freshness of the mind (less cloudiness and clutter) and the abilities to focus on one thing, better listening and understanding, and improve conversation and relationships. 

Everyone needs to plan for the future, but one should not allow oneself to be caught up in a vicious cycle of worrying about what may or may not happen in the future or what happened in the past. For example, justifiably we plan for exams, jobs, purchasing a house, and saving funds for rainy days to come.  However, living in the past or in the future without focusing the present, is a pointless exercise.

Be non-judgmental and eliminate negative thoughts and emotions:

Clarity of the mind improves when we keep our mind in the present moment for a longer period. This will open our mind door to see things that we previously failed to observe.  It also allows us to explore the environment to observe what is going around us in the absence of judgment.  

By focusing on the present moment and not predicting what will happen in the future, our tendency of judging others will also gradually disappear.  When one is mindful, it will be easier to notice not only self but also others who have negative emotions. This will also allow one to keep distance from them.  This allows one to stay away from such people and not get involved with wrongdoing. However, one should treat others to the best of one’s ability.

Importance of open-mindedness:

It is natural that positive and negative emotions rise up and disappear. Let them come and go but do not hang on to them. Clinging to negative emotions can mentally and physically harm. They come back when we are unmindful and when least expect them.

Mindfulness will also allow us not only to be in the present, but also to let go of attachments, defilements, and the tendency to make judgments and analyze fears, regrets, and future expectations.  With the cultivation of spirituality and virtue (seela), mindful meditation practices will lead to the development of samadhi (ability to concentrate), which eventually advances to the stage of wisdom. 

Summary:

Meditation is a technique. To achieve benefits from meditation, one needs to practice it regularly. On superficial terms, it helps one to be relaxed, improves clarity of the mind, and builds mental energy.  In deeper term, it facilitates building up the spirituality, rationality and compassion. With continued practice, one develops compassion, love and kindness, patience and forgiveness, and other good qualities of humans.  Mindfulness meditation has also been used to rectify several health conditions and concerns, including hypertension, marginal depression, anxiety, and improving the balance of the mind.

Those with and without psychological disorders are immensely benefited by learning to keep the mind in the present moment. Whilst the mindful meditation can be practice by any person, the deeper Buddhist meditations practices may not compatible or suitable for everyone. With practice, doing so minimizes the occurrences of the mind jumping from place to place (fewer disturbances and hindrances) and harmful thoughts coming to the mind. Maintaining mindfulness improves the ability to concentrate and clarity of the mind, leading to inner peace and happiness.

Chapter 18 addresses the importance of developing the equanimity together with mindfulness practices.

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Professor Sunil J. Wimalawansa, MD, PhD, MBA, DSc, is a physician-scientist, educator, social entrepreneur, and process consultant. He is a philanthropist with experience in long-term strategic planning, and cost-effective investment and interventions globally for preventing non-communicable diseases [recent charitable work]. The author has no conflicts of interest and received no funding for this work.