Mindfulness without meditation practice is snake oil
As “mindfulness” becomes more popular we should be wary of the spectacle attached to it.
Not because people are making money off of it or it’s becoming disconnected from its Buddhist roots — but because the more we talk about and sell mindfulness, the more likely we’ll forget about what actually produces it: meditation practice.
Without meditation, mindfulness is a well-meaning but shallow lifestyle choice — a “Live, love, laugh” sign.
We have to practice, regularly even, to produce mindfulness. “Produce” isn’t even the exact word. It’s more that mindfulness is always there and we just have to get ourselves, our sense of me-ness, out of the way. We are already always mindful; it just gets blocked by the patterns we’ve developed (for legitimate reasons, like childhood trauma or racism) to protect ourselves from being open and vulnerable.
Luckily, meditation gives us a step by step process for doing that. You start by noticing and following your breathing with your mind. The breath becomes your reference point. Usually, as you go about your day, your reference point is yourself, weighed against the rest of the world — this is the concept of “ego.” So already, meditation calls for a simple but fundamental shift. But don’t concentrate too hard on your breath. Pay attention to it but leave some empty space for feeling bodily sensations and listening to sounds in the background — like having another tab open on your browser.
During meditation, your mind should feel focused and alert, but also at rest. Tibetan master Chögyam Trungpa described it like eating popcorn while watching a movie: “Twenty five percent, maybe fifty percent of [your] attention is on the screen, and another 25 percent is on popcorn, and another 25 percent is on [your] companion or [your] Coca-Cola or whatever.”
If you haven’t meditated, all this might seem easy or boring or pointless, but it’s difficult to actually do nothing for a change — to stop checking Facebook, seeking attention from your girlfriend, trying to be “productive,” to stop doing. It’s hard to be mindful, partly because we often confuse it with something more elaborate, like becoming enlightened. It’s much more simple than that, like playing when you were a kid. As Trungpa wrote, “Being mindful is being there, fully minded.”
And it’s worth the effort. Mindfulness has practical benefits. But more significant than helping you stay focused or be more “productive,” it’s the starting point for getting over yourself, or as some say, making friends with yourself.
I first consciously experienced the benefits of being mindful five or six years ago at one of psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach’s talks. (Remember, mindfulness is always there, we just forget about it.) Tara was joined by the Nepalese Tibetan teacher Tsokyni Rinpoche, who, even in front of 200 or so mostly white Americans, many with high power D.C. jobs, beamed with the energy of being completely cool with himself. Wearing a traditional monk’s red and yellow robe, he led a 20-minute guided meditation followed by a “dharma talk,” the name for a discussion about Buddhism and meditation practice, during which he cracked perfectly timed jokes about his U.S. travels.
Halfway through the talk I noticed myself check out. I don’t belong here. His wisdom is outdated. These people are privileged, white hippies with too much money and time. But something else happened: I didn’t take these thoughts all that seriously. I simply noticed myself leave, smiled a little inside, and then chose to come back to listening.
I’ve always been able to leave the present moment like that but with more of a cold detachment. One time as a kid I had an asthma attack after soccer practice but didn’t want to bother my dad who was talking to another parent for what felt like 30 minutes but was probably five. I remember sort of floating above the situation as my breaths grew shorter and shorter, letting the present moment go by, thinking, “Well, if I die, it’s his fault.” I was leaving the moment out of fear — I wasn’t present.
But as Tsokyni Rinpoche talked, because I had just meditated, I simply noticed myself leave. I was retreating to open consciousness — the ground of mindfulness — not a narrower, lesser part of myself. This gave me space to gently come back. It’s taken years of therapy and falling on my face over and over again to learn that I created that narrower part early in life, likely as a way to protect myself, as all kids do. So it’s not something to push away or purge; rather, it’s a part of me that just needs to be seen, understood, and forgiven even, every time it shows up.
You might’ve put two and two together by now: meditation is crucial to this growth process. Meditation is crucial to mindfulness.
