Science of Meditation Quotes on Mindfulness
With mindfulness meditation, you are observing in this case a feeling without like or dislike, that’s the idea, without judging it so to speak. You’re observing it you know, kind of objectively. And as a result it, it doesn’t control your thoughts.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-meditation/lecture/9MBND/meditation
So what is mindfulness meditation? Well it consists of observing anything in your realm of experience. Your own mind, your own feelings. Anything you can feel. Sounds you hear while meditating. And if you’re carrying it into everyday life it can be things you see. But it involves observing these things in a kind of unusual way in a special way. And you saw some of this in that conversation with Shinzen Young. In the way he talked about viewing unpleasant feelings. You know, normally your relationship to a, to a feeling like anxiety is first of all, you don’t like it. And second of all, it is controlling your thinking. So, for example, you might be sitting there going I’m going to screw up that presentation tomorrow. Or, you may be doing a counter narrative and saying well, it’ll be okay because there’s probably nobody in the audience who really matters that much anyway. But either way, the anxiety is controlling what you think about. And it’s kind of ironic. You know, here, you’ve got this feeling that you really don’t approve of, you don’t like. And yet, you’re letting it control your thoughts. Well, as you may have gleaned from the conversation with Shinzen. With mindfulness meditation, you are observing in this case a feeling without like or dislike, that’s the idea, without judging it so to speak. You’re observing it you know, kind of objectively.
And as a result it, it doesn’t control your thoughts.
Now when you think about it this is kind of an unnatural thing to do, because after all feelings were designed by natural selection to influence our thought and perception. We already saw a little of that in lecture one, the way fear can influence what you literally see.
And that is very much what feelings are about from natural selection’s point of view. They are supposed to, to help govern our behavior, and our thoughts, and our perception. So to try to turn the tables in this way and, and look at feelings in a way that, that can disempower them is, is really you know, quite a, quite a striking thing to do. and, and very unnatural, you know, and it’s, and it’s very much kind of a violation of natural selection’s agenda in a certain sense. and, and this came through in a description of mindfulness meditation that I heard not long ago when I was listening to a lecture from Bhikkhu Bodhi, who you may remember from our previous segment. These are lectures he actually delivered quite a while ago but they are available online and here’s what he said about mindfulness. He said, ordinarily the faculty of attention is used as an instrument for serving our purposes, our biological and psychological needs. But mindfulness is a kind of attention which operates independently of all ulterior aims and purposes. I like that idea of you know, talking about our, our, our basic biological and psychological needs as ulterior. You know, as in some sense, kind of illegitimate. Whereas, you know, from natural selection’s point of view, no, these are, these are the central valid, governing things of your life. This should determine everything you see about the world. And he’s kind of wanting to cast them aside. He goes on to say, mindfulness is attention that functions in an atmosphere of detachment. It’s attention that aspires towards a pure objectivity, an awareness which reflects the nature of objects exactly as they are, without adding to them, without elaborating upon them, without interpreting through the screens of subjective evaluation and commentary. So the idea is that the mind as it ordinarily works and is designed to work is not a reliable instrument of perception and of thought. Now, I agree with that. I believe that the human mind as it naturally works is not necessarily a reliable way of looking at the world in, in the most truthful way possible. And we’ll be hearing more of that theme. But I do want to pause now and just emphasize what a radical reorientation mindfulness is. You know, mindfulness, I think, has this reputation for being this kind of gentle thing, you know. You eat mindfully, you go through life mindfully and appreciate the beauty of life. And, and that’s actually all true, that’s, that’s possible, but at the same time there’s a kind of edge to mindfulness.
Because it does constitute a kind of rebellion against the agenda of natural selection. It’s not the way we’re designed to work.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-meditation/lecture/Y5tyv/can-our-feelings-be-trusted
Now some people would say that this is all the more reason to be mindful. If feelings can’t be trusted as accurate, then it makes sense to evaluate feelings mindfully, objectively, and decide which ones you’re going to let get traction. Decide which ones you’re going to engage with. In other words to, to view feelings with discernment. And, and this is a lot of what in Buddhism is referred to as wisdom.
Understanding which feelings it makes sense to engage in and which feelings it doesn’t.
