"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.
Attitude 4: Letting Go (timestamp 11:55)
Letting go -- we could think of as the opposite of clinging or grasping. There's a certain way in which when we want something, we grasp it, we cling to it—even if it's an idea. And very often, we get very fixated in that kind of a way. Letting go is reminding us that it's possible to actually not get involved in grasping and clinging to what we want and trying to push away what it is that we don't want because it's inevitable that things will arise that are unpleasant, and we want to push those away, and that other things will arise, and they'll be pleasant (we'll want to hold on to them). So, letting go really means letting be, it means allowing things to be as they are and not be too caught up in having to have them be a certain way when the evidence is they already are not that way, so, therefore, not forcing. It, of course, goes with not striving as well, allowing things to be as they are. In India, they sometimes use a particular way of trapping monkeys, where they take a coconut and they cut a small hole in one end and then they tie the coconut with a wire to the base of a tree. And they put a banana inside the coconut, and then monkeys come down from the trees and they put the hand in the coconut. But the hole is crafted so that if you grasp the banana, you can't get your hand out of the hole; the fist is too big, so you have to let go of the banana to actually release your hand. So, the monkeys don't want to let go and that's how they're trapped. So, letting go or letting things be as they are, means allowing the recognition that when you are caught by your own desire, by your own attachment to things, being a certain way—that's painful—but that the letting go is actually the doorway to freedom. And it's something that you don't do once—it's something that you practice over and over and over again, moment by moment by moment every time—excuse me—every time you catch yourself clinging to something, you remind yourself it's possible to just let it be and to just let it go. The breath can remind us of that, too, because every time we take a deep—I’m sorry— because—the breath can remind us of that because every time we take a breath in, we have to let it go because otherwise there's no room for the next breath. So, it's a natural part of life to receive and then release, receive and let it go.
Attitude 5: Trust (timestamp 15:19)
Trust is a wonderful attitude to cultivate because there are so many different aspects of our lives that we're kind of strangers to, and as we cultivate intimacy with ourselves, we also cultivate a deep sense of trustworthiness and trust. And a good place to start is with ourselves and with our body, so can we actually come to trust the natural wisdom of the body and how beautifully the body supports our life. We very often take it totally for granted until something untoward happens, but noticing that, you know, in general, we can trust that the breath will take care of itself. Luckily, because if we had to worry about the breath, we would have died a long time ago. So: we trust that the breath comes in; we trust that the breath goes out; we trust that the ears can actually hear; we trust that the eyes can actually see; we trust that our organs take care of all of the metabolism and biology of being alive. There's a wisdom to the body that can remind us that we ourselves are trustworthy, and if there are so many beautiful things and so complex that are unfolding so, so beautifully in the body, well, why should the mind be any different? Why should the heart be any different? So, the more we can learn to bring trust to ourselves, the more we can actually learn to bring trust to our relationships and to other people, into nature, and to the various challenges that we face in life, so that we can actually reside in our own confidence, in our own ability to meet whatever comes towards us in ways that can be effective. It's all based on trusting ourselves, and that's something that we—can be cultivated by practice, so every time we don't trust ourselves, we can bring awareness to it and remind ourselves that, maybe, this is a good opportunity to shift from really feeling like we're not able to trust something to actually trusting it. When it's in ourselves, when it involves other people—that gets a little bit more complicated because you don't want to trust naively. But other wisdom factors will help us to take care of that.
Attitude 6: Patience (timestamp 18:17)
I don't know if you've noticed this, but a lot of times, I find that I'm impatient to get to the next important thing happening, and so missing the present moment because of my impatience. So, to actually intentionally cultivate patience, and a kind of recognition that things unfold in their own way, and that, in some profound way, things cannot be hurried. So, when we're always rushing to get someplace else, the by-product of that is that we're never where we actually are, which is a tremendous sadness and a tremendous loss. Sometimes, we're impatient with other people. Sometimes, we're impatient at work. Sometimes, we're impatient to get things done. But this wisdom of patience is something that is also profoundly healing and restorative and is akin to recognizing—as some children don't when they, for instance, try to make the butterfly come out before its time from the chrysalis—that certain things can't be hurried, but things do unfold in their own time. So, if we actually learn to be patient with ourselves, then we're inhabiting the present moment in ways that have great comfort and great profundity of both acceptance and wisdom associated with them.
Attitude 7: Non-Striving (timestamp 20:09)
In the cultivation of meditative awareness or mindful awareness, we take the unusual position (for Westerners) to actually not try to get anywhere else. This is what we call “non-striving” or even “non-doing”: to actually allow things to be held in awareness without having to operate on them, without having to make anything happen, or try to experience some special state of either relaxation or well-being or anything, but to simply be with the unfolding of life from moment to moment, without any agenda whatsoever. It turns out this is tremendously healing, tremendously restorative for us too, because we have so many agendas and we're always on the way to some better moment in the future or trying to escape from something in the past. But to actually be in a place where we're practicing non-striving and non-doing, where we just let things be as they are is, as I said, tremendously nurturing and healing. Not easy to do because we have so many different, you know, such—so many different items on our to-do list. So, the longer your to-do list, the longer we should give ourselves some time to practice non-doing all together, and non-striving, realizing that whatever is already here is good enough. Even if it's not pleasant in this moment, it's enough, and we don't need to try to escape from it or fix it or make anything happen. It's a tremendous discipline, a tremendous attitude to bring to life, and it doesn't mean you won't get things done. On the contrary, it means that whatever doing you do do will wind up coming out of being and, therefore, much greater wisdom and much greater appropriateness to the situation
Attitude 8: Gratitude (timestamp 22:27)
Now, people often ask me, “well, why did you stop at seven?”. And I say, “I don't know, I mean, I just stopped at seven.” But I left out a few that I really probably am going to put in the next edition, and one of them would be gratitude, to bring gratitude to the present moment. Because, well, say for one thing, just we're alive—we take that so much for granted. A little gratitude—“Wow, the body is working: I'm breathing in, I’m breathing out, my eyes work, my feet work, if you know the liver is working, the kidneys are working”—I mean, we take so much for granted. So, in that sense, the seven attitudes are a way to remind us of that, and gratitude really should be in that list.
Attitude 9: Generosity (timestamp 23:24)
Another
one would be generosity: a sense of like how powerful it is when you give
yourself over to life and that you give other people what would make them happy
not for yourself, not so that you can pat yourself on the back and say, “I am a
generous person,” but
because it gives joy to others. It enhances interconnectedness; you demonstrate that you care, and that you are actually giving some time and attention and thought to someone other than yourself. So, both gratitude and generosity, I think, should be included in that list.
Closing Remarks (timestamp 24:06)
I could go on, but I think that nine would be enough. It's hard to keep more than nine things in mind at any one time. And, of course, they're all completely interconnected, so you don't have to actually remember any of it. If you are practicing non-striving, then everything else is embedded in that, acceptance is—that is embedded in it. So, acceptance is embedded in that, generosity is embedded in that, gratitude is embedded in that, trust is embedded in that, and so forth. So, any one of these attitudes is the door into all of them, and that's why they really are forming, in some sense, just different ways of understanding what mindfulness is really about. And I probably should say that in all Asian languages, the word for “mind” and the word for “heart” are the same word. So, in English when you hear the word “mindfulness,” if you're not hearing the word “heartfulness,” you're really not understanding it fully. And so, that—those attitudes are really part of the heartfulness element of it, whether it's seeing things as they actually are, the most profound thing you can see is the interconnectedness of all things. As soon as you see that, then emotions like anger, for instance, are very different because our fear for that matter are really transformed in some way because of our interconnectedness. So, it's a way of seeing other people as they really are, and not necessarily seeing them as threats, and then being able to find some domain of commonality that comes out of the heart, that comes out of the head, that comes out of the body, that comes out of life as one completely integrated whole.
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