"Mindfulness is a source of happiness." (Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh)
Transcription by Danielle Durand, MA (Thanks, Danielle!)
Source: https://youtu.be/2n7FOBFMvXg?t=4 (full video)
Video Published: 2015-04-24 / Accessed: 2021-07-12
About Jon Kabat-Zinn (timestamp 0:09)
Jon is the founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is also the founder of its renowned Stress Reduction Clinic. He teaches mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in various venues around the world.
Introductory Remarks (timestamp 0:20)
The cultivation of mindfulness—of moment to moment non-judgmental awareness—is, really—it sounds very simple, but it's actually just about the hardest work in the world for human beings because we get so caught up in our conditioned states of mind, and when we begin to
cultivate awareness, it's really important to bring a certain attitudinal approach to it so that we're not trying to force anything to happen, or sit in a kind of rigid posture, or attain some special state that will, you know, that we sort of think, “ah, that's what it is,” “I'll be enlightened” or “I'll just be permanently wise,” or “I'll be this,” or “I'll be that.” The problem isn't actually with the enlightenment, or the permanently wise, or anything like that. The problem is with the personal pronouns “I,” “me,” and “mine.” They are very, very problematic because who we think we are and who we actually are, are very different, and there's a huge separation. What we think we are is very, very small compared to who we actually are. And so, when we are cultivating mindfulness in MBSR or with people, we encourage a certain kind of attitude that's brought to the formal and informal practices that you can keep in mind through your daily life as well. And these attitudes—there are seven of them—that I put in Full-Catastrophe Living when I was writing it because it really felt like if you bring—if you start to cultivate acceptance, if you start to cultivate non-striving, if you start to cultivate letting go or letting be, if you start to cultivate trust and patience—that these qualities can be cultivated in everyday life—with your children, with your parents, with your partner or spouse, with your colleagues at work. And so, it's a way of reinforcing and deepening the actual formal and informal meditation practices.
This lecture primarily outlines the seven (+2) essential attitudes of mindfulness and practices to implement them in our daily lives.
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Attitude 1: Beginner’s Mind (timestamp 2:36)
Beginner's mind is a lovely orientation to bring to the present moment. This moment is always fresh, always new—we've never been in this one before—and yet, we bring so many ideas, and attitudes, and desires to every moment that we can't actually allow ourselves, much of the time, to see things as if for the first time. Imagine bringing awareness to your children with beginner's mind so that you actually see them not through your lenses of ideas and opinions about your children, but fresh—the miracle of them, the amazing nature of them— so this is something that we could bring to any moment. [it has the virtue of.] Sometimes, we're so expert that our minds are just full of, you know, our expertise, but it leaves us without any realm for novelty or new possibilities. In the mind of the expert, they say there are very few possibilities, but in the beginner's mind there are infinite possibilities because we come to it fresh. So, it's a kind of a discipline to try to bring beginner's mind to every aspect of your life and not be so stuck in our ideas and opinions about how much we like this or don't like that or what the outcome of a particular situation might be. And when we come to things with this freshness. It actually, again, has tremendous transformative qualities associated with it. And when you bring it to other people, and you're open and spacious with them, and don't insist that they be the way they were half an hour ago or two years ago—or whatever it is— they feel seen, and recognized, and met in a way that they might not otherwise experience. That benefits them, and it also benefits us.
Attitude 2: Non-Judging (timestamp 5:04)
Non-judging is a very important element of mindfulness practice and, in fact, is part of my working definition of mindfulness, which is the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment non-judgmentally. And the non-judgmentally is the real challenge because when you start to pay attention to what's on your mind, you very rapidly discover that we have ideas and opinions about everything—just about everything—and we're always judging things in terms of “I like that,” “I don't like that,” “I want that,” “I don't want that,” “this is good,” “that's bad,” and it's like a steady stream of judging, judging, judging, judging, judging. So, when we speak of mindfulness is being non-judgmental awareness, it doesn't mean that there won't be judgments; it means that [you're] you will be aware of how judgmental we actually are, and then not judge the judging. And when we relate to it in that kind of a way, then we begin to see that that our judging is very often black and white; it's either this or that, this or that, good or bad, like, dislike, want, don't want. And we get imprisoned by that kind of view.
But being non-judgmental doesn't mean that all of a sudden you get stupid and think, “Well, I'm not going to be judgmental, so I'll just walk out in the street in front of an oncoming truck. What difference does it make?” No—it means that we will cultivate discernment (this is the capacity to see what's actually unfolding) but not to judge it, but to recognize it and to understand it in relationship to our experience. So, when we speak about non-judgmental awareness that's what we're talking about—we're talking about a very fine degree of discernment of clarity, of wisdom, of understanding the interconnections between things and, at the same time, noticing the tendency to judge quite quickly—like, don't like, want, don't want—and to recognize that that actually creates a kind of veil or a filter in front of our eyes that doesn't allow us to see the thing—to see things as they are, but to only see them through the lenses of our own ideas and opinions, and likes and dislikes, which is practically blinding to us. So, there—this is a wonderful discipline: the cultivation of awareness of judging and the cultivation of being gently non-judgmental, or not judging the judging that we do discover in ourselves. And over days, weeks, months, and years, we can begin to actually find a way to navigate through our judging in such a way that it no longer dominates our lives in quite the same way. And we recognize when it comes up that it's actually, in some sense, toxic. And the more we challenge it, and the more we rest in discernment and in pure awareness, the more we can live life authentically in the present moment without getting caught by our own habits of mind—unhealthy, if you will, habits of mind.
Attitude 3: Acceptance (timestamp 8:57)
Acceptance is a very active process—there's nothing passive about it. It's not passive resignation, but it's an active recognition that things are actually the way they are. Sometimes, they're not the way we want them to be. So, acceptance doesn't mean that we can't work to change the world or to change circumstances of one kind or another, but it means that unless we accept things as they are, we will try to force things to be as they are not, and that can create an enormous amount of difficulty. If we recognize the actuality of things, then we have the potential to apply wisdom in that situation to actually shift our own relationship to what is occurring in ways that might be profoundly healing and transformative. But without acceptance of one’s situation, then it's very difficult to know where to stand, and without knowing where to stand, it's very difficult to take the first step. So, some things are very hard to accept, like when it's something—when you experience pain, for instance, and you don't—in your body—and you don't know what it's from, it's very, very difficult to accept it because we—first, we want to know what it's coming from. And if we don't have any answer for what is causing the pain, then it can be very, very difficult to accept it. But what we find working with chronic pain patients is that before you can actually work with pain and suffering, you need to actually put out the welcome mat for it and accept it as it is because whatever has been done medically that could be done has been done, and you're still living with a certain degree of pain. What our people with chronic pain who come to our clinic experience is that there’s a lot of different ways to actually work with pain, but the first step is to actually put out the welcome mat for it, which is very hard to do when you're suffering, but it's actually a gateway into freedom from suffering. So, that's one of the most powerful ways in which acceptance can be brought to bear on healing and transforming one's life and is a very, very powerful factor and is a very, very powerful attitude in the cultivation of mindfulness.
