Mindfulness Defined, or Not?
I like the concept of “mindfulness.” Equally, I get a bit of a headache when I try to sort out what people mean by it in concrete terms. While pondering I rounded up a few definitions both from widely available sources and some friends.
I will note that I am not the first to find many definitions of the term. An article on “What is Mindfulness” offers 20 definitions. Further a 2015 article from the NYTimes “The Muddied Meaning of ‘Mindfulness’” also grapples with this meaning of the term.
I welcome comments and feedback on your own definition/understanding.
Brene Brown — “Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not ‘over-identify’ with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn — “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally…”
Bhante Gunaratana — “There are three fundamental activities of mindfulness. We can use these activities as functional definitions of the term: (a) mindfulness reminds us of what we are supposed to be doing, (b) it sees things as they really are, and (c) it sees the true nature of all phenomena.” [I note I find it ironic that a book titled “Mindfulness in Plain English” is over 200 pages.]
Wikipedia — Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, which can be developed through the practice of meditation and other training.
A handful of definitions from friends when I asked them:
Friend 1 — Prefers the term “careful,” as in “Is this taking care of me?”
Friend 2 — A clinical concept with an awesome marketing strategy
Friend 3 — Not looking at your phone when I’m talking to you
Friend 4 — Consideration
My own attempt at a definition: Often our minds are like a garbage disposal with a fork in it; lots of noise, activity and commotion, but very little clarity. Mindfulness is removing the fork and turning off the disposal.
To be fair all of the definitions have a common thread to them, but they also seem to have a hazy, imprecise quality to them too. Sort of like Justice Potter Stewart’s “I know it when I see it” definition of obscenity in the US Supreme Court. (Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964))
Given the promised medical benefits (including psychological and neurological benefits) it seems to me that there would be a more scientific definition, e.g.: as measured in an fMRI, mindfulness is the state where section Y of the brain is less active while section Z remains highly active. Or somesuch. The editors at Science Based Medicine Blog hace remarked on this challenge in the article“Is Mindfulness Meditation Science Based?”
The absence of a precise definition does not prevent the concept from being useful but it can be unsatisfying when listening to discussions of the subject.
