Why “Being Present” Is a Misnomer For Mindfulness
An unconventional guide for everyday mindfulness
“Life is available only in the present moment.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Even if you are not into meditation and have never heard of Thich Nhat Hanh the renowned teacher of mindfulness, you probably have come across expressions like “be present”, or “stay in the present” in your everyday life, which is commonly used as another term for mindfulness.
Once associated mostly with the spiritual pursuit of a tiny minority of people on the edge of society, mindfulness is for the first time in history entering the mainstream, and deservedly so.
Today, we live in an attention economy where everything competes for our limited attention. This further fuels the restlessness of the mind and leads to various mental health problems.
Mindfulness provides that important counterbalance so your mind can remain free, clear, and peaceful as much as possible in the midst of the ever-busier world.
Mindfulness or being present is most commonly defined as the mental state where you’re fully engaged in the here and now, not distracted or lost in thought.
While this definition might be clear to people with proper meditation training, it can be misleading to those absolute beginners who simply want to be a bit more mindful in their everyday life.
It’s not all about time
Words such as “present”, “here and now”, or “in the moment” create the impression that mindfulness is all about training the mind to stay at a particular point on the time scale: now versus the past and future.
Picture this in your mind: after a long day of work, you go for a walk barefooted on a lovely local beach.
The sun is setting, the wind is easing, and the sand is still warm. You close your eyes, and the sound of the waves mixed with the occasional calls of seagulls caresses your eardrum ever so softly and clearly. You take a deep breath, and the strong fishy smell of the ocean instantly reaches and energizes every cell of your body. (Scenario 1)
That’s a typical example of being fully present in the here and now, as most people understand it.
On the other hand, if you went for a walk on the same beach but your mind got caught up in a frustrating experience that occurred earlier in the day, you would not have had the same sensory experience as above and you would probably end up more depressed after the walk. Not only were you not present with the walk, but you helplessly let the frustrating experience hit you a couple of times more. (Scenario 2)
However, there’s a third scenario that tends to be either overlooked or misunderstood.
If you went for the walk with the clear intention to reflect on what happened earlier and learn from it, and you did it with focus, again you would not have had the same vivid sensory experience as in scenario 1, but you should still finish your walk feeling refreshed and energized. (Scenario 3)
While you were clearly not present with your walk like in scenario 2, you were indeed present with your thought process, unlike in scenario 2 where you were lost in thought without knowing it.
So both scenarios 1 & 3 are mindful experiences.
The difference is that the object of mindfulness in scenario 3 is your thoughts as opposed to bodily sensations such as sight, sound, touch, smell, etc in scenario 1.
So contrary to what many believe, you can certainly be present while thinking about the past or the future, provided you are mindful of what you are thinking.
Being present ≠ being mindful
Have you ever had any experiences of extreme anger where you, faced with the absolutely unacceptable behaviors of someone else, could no longer contain yourself, and started screaming or even becoming physically violent?
In moments of high-intensity emotional meltdowns, it’s hard to argue you are not present or not present enough in the here and now. In fact, you are probably as present as you can be given that your body is essentially in fight or flight mode with adrenaline running high.
But it’s also true that those explosive outbursts of anger reflect a complete lack of mindfulness in the moment: you are effectively captured by the emotion of anger and simply acting out whatever it wishes.
In other words, you become completely identified with anger with zero awareness of it.
The point here is being present does not equate to being mindful. Presence is a common manifestation of mindfulness, but they are not the same.
So what is mindfulness?
At its core, mindfulness refers to the state of mind where you do not identify with what you experience, meaning not taking the experience as you or yours.
The moment you identify with an experience as shown in the above case of anger, you lose consciousness of it. You cannot identify with an experience and be conscious of it at the same time.
There’s no half-pregnancy either. At any given time, you either identify with an experience or you don’t, though the duration of identification can vary from a very brief moment to days or even years.
For most people, it’s the case of alternating between the identification phase (unconsciousness) and the non-identification phase (consciousness).
The purpose of mindfulness practice is precisely to reduce both the frequency and duration of those phases of identification, as a result raising our level of consciousness and in turn the quality of life.
The pervasive “I”
The challenge is we humans have a deeply entrenched tendency to identify with what we experience particularly feelings and thoughts.
This tendency, which for most adults is the product of decades of conditioning, is so strong and runs so deep that even some of the most brilliant minds in history can’t escape it.
I think, therefore I am.
— Descartes
What’s interesting here is that in trying to prove the existence of “I”, Descartes unconsciously presupposed there exists an “I” and it is the “I” that is doing the “thinking”.
Right there is the sense of “I” identifying with “the experience of thinking”. The thinking becomes the thinker.
The only way to break this deep identification or attachment to the sense of self (I, me, mine) is to go back to the first principles.
German physicist and philosopher Georg Lichtenberg did exactly that. He observed that rather than supposing an entity that is thinking, Descartes should have said: “thinking is occurring.”
This is strikingly similar to how leading mindfulness teachers today characterize the nature of thinking or for that matter all experiences of the mind and body.
Everything is simply happening all by itself.
When you look for what is behind all that, there’s nothing to find. There’s simply the totality of everything that’s appearing in the open space of consciousness.
— Sam Harris
For me, the first part of the statement can be easily validated through direct experience. All you need to do is to sit back, close your eyes, and watch your mind where all sorts of imagery, thoughts, and emotions spring into view and then pass away all on their own.
In fact, mind-watching has been the cornerstone of my mindfulness practice and has proven very effective in countering the tendency to identify.
The very act of watching necessitates a degree of separation between the watcher (subject) and the watched (object), and this separation of the subject from the object, basically the identification process in reverse, definitely makes it a lot harder for identification to occur.
The result is less identification and more mindfulness.
This level of mindfulness is known as ordinary mindfulness or dualistic awareness where there is non-identification along with the subject-object divide that is rooted in the clear sense of self.
The second part of Harris' statement deals with the illusory nature of the egoic self which points to the selfless realm of nondual awareness where the sense of self eventually dissolves.
So in that sense, you can say mindfulness is ultimately about the absence rather than the presence of self.
Everyday mindfulness
While nondual awareness might represent the highest level of mindfulness, what really matters to most of us in everyday life is simply more mindfulness, dualistic or nondual.
Any fixation on a particular form of mindfulness is in itself a distraction, a lack of mindfulness.
As long as there is non-identification, there is mindfulness. As long as there is mindfulness, there is freedom.
I have been practicing daily mindfulness for over a year now and am a changed person.
Besides more calmness and clarity to the mind in general, I find myself a lot less reactive to things that used to easily annoy, frustrate, or captivate me in the past.
These days I can increasingly catch those problematic thoughts or emotions as soon as they arise in my mind and see them as what they are without identifying with them.
As a perfect case in point, I was able to free myself from a decade-long addictive habit early this year and mindfulness played a crucial role in the process.
Takeaways
Mindfulness vs Presence:
- Mindfulness is not about the time dimension of being present. You can be present and mindful while thinking about the past or the future.
- Being present does not equate to being mindful. Presence is a common manifestation of mindfulness, but they are not the same.
- At its highest level, mindfulness is about the absence rather than the presence of the self.
Mindfulness and Identification:
- Mindfulness is first and foremost about non-identification with what you experience.
- Mind watching as a mindfulness practice can effectively counter the tendency to identify.
- Free of identification is what sets your mind free.
For a good place to start or enrich your journey of mindfulness, I highly recommend Waking Up by Sam Harris.
