Category Archives: Observing Mindfulness

Masters of Mindfulness and Heroes of Science

Observing Mindfulness

One way the mindfulness movement reflects a religious sensibility is in the reverence shown towards sacred texts: the sayings of individuals thought to have achieved enlightenment. Such reverence towards specific individuals isn’t really compatible with a scientific mindset.   Scientists may admire Darwin as an exemplar of scientific virtue but that is different than revering him as a master. When an evolutionary biologist struggles with some scientific conundrum, he doesn’t look up Darwin for guidance or “answers”.

I suspect that scientists who meditate switch back and forth between perspectives:  mindful watching and empirical sleuthing. You can’t really inhabit both ways of being and seeing at the same time.

 

 

Mindfulness as a Toolkit

Observing Mindfulness

Parts of mindfulness practice may be useful, but does that mean you have to embrace the entire belief system associated with mindfulness practice – that is, an ideology with religious overtones? In his book Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn seems to say so:

…meditation practice is, more than anything, a way of being. It is not a set of techniques for healing. 3707 (Kindle pagination)

This is odd, because in discussing various Buddhist groups, Kabat-Zinn says it is fine to “take what appeals to you and leave the rest” (9736).

He does not allow such a discriminating approach to mindfulness:

…we are asking even more of our patients and of ourselves than just a time for formal meditation practice. For it is only by making the practice a “way of being” that its power can be put into practical use. The real mindfulness practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment, whatever we are doing, whatever our circumstances. 1376-1383

So, according to Kabat-Zinn,  it’s not kosher to consider mindfulness a toolkit, to use at certain times, when needed. No, mindfulness is a “way of being” that requires a lifelong commitment to “living a life of awareness” (8581).

Some mindfulness advocates will say that “awareness” and “way of being” are not religious or ideological concepts. However, these concepts are based on a whole set of assumptions and beliefs about wider, nonhypothetical truths, which are religious in their “aura of utter actuality” and ideological in their systematized interrelationships.

References:

Kabat-Zinn, Jon (2013) Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, Kindle Version, Revised Edition; Bantam Books, New York

Geertz, Clifford (1993) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, pp.87-125. Fontana Press, London.

Mindfulness: Is Health and Happiness Enough?

Observing Mindfulness

For the sake of argument, let’s say that adopting mindfulness as a way of being contributes to happiness and physical health. Then again, belonging to almost any faith community increases happiness and physical health. That fact alone doesn’t entice me to convert or join. Truth-value matters.

You don’t see psychologists promoting, say, Mormonism as a reliable ticket to well-being, even though it may be – as long as you buy into the Mormon doctrine. The difference with mindfulness is that many psychologists do buy the creed, so they don’t seem to have qualms about trying to sell it to others.

None of this is to deny the value of mindfulness practice.  Or even the value of temporarily adopting a mindset. The question is whether the value can be retained without embracing the religious and ideological elements within the mindfulness message.

Label and Dismiss – Or Not

Explorations Outside the Box, Observing Mindfulness

Sometimes labeling, reducing (making little and laughable), and purposely ignoring complexity can be useful. We don’t have to give our full attention and cognitive resources to everything.  We have to choose: does this matter enough?  Do I want to linger here for awhile, hear it out for awhile? Sometimes, sometimes not. Psychological distancing can be  the best option (e.g. Kross et al 2012). Sometimes, when you’ve heard it all before, many times, sure – nod, label and dismiss, then redirect your attentional resources elsewhere. I’m talking about what we say to ourselves and others.

Reference:

Kross, Ethan; Gard, David; Deldin, Patricia; Clifton, Jessica; Ayduk, Ozlem “Asking why” from a distance: Its cognitive and emotional consequences for people with major depressive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol 121(3), Aug 2012, 559-569. doi: 10.1037/a0028808

 

Can We Live without an Army of Convictions?

Explorations Outside the Box, Observing Mindfulness

As previous posts have amply shown, I’m not a big fan of mindfulness  as a quasi-religious ideology.   I’m not going to propose a specific counter-ideology. Sure, I have beliefs about what makes life worthwhile, what matters, the is and the ought.  Merely having beliefs is not the same as adhering to an ideology. To the extent that we think, feel, perceive, speak, or move, our brains are assuming a version of reality. To the extent that we are ethical and goal-directed creatures, we have a sense of what is good and desirable. To the extent that we are able to articulate our assumptions, values and goals, you could say we have “beliefs”.  Run-of-the-mill beliefs are held with more or less conviction, are more or less systematized and are more or less contradicted by other beliefs produced inside the same head. Beliefs surface and then sink into cognitive obscurity. Beliefs are often wimpy cognitions without allies.  In contrast, ideologies are convictions bolstered by an army of related convictions.

Benefiting from Mindfulness Practice But Not Believing in Mindfulness

Observing Mindfulness

One can benefit from mindfulness practice without believing that suffering is the main fact of life, desire is undesirable because it is the source of suffering, or that modern life is teaming with toxic elements.   You don’t have to believe in the categorical discontinuity between being “awake” or “enlightened” and the normal state of consciousness, nor do you need to elevate the Buddha and other masters to a status beyond the merely human. You don’t need to believe that there’s a special state called “awareness” that the vast majority of humanity does not inhabit and which is different than executive attention, existing in parallel with other neurocognitive processes.

Separating the method from the madness: Mindfulness as a Technique not a Way of Being

Observing Mindfulness

Pace Jon Kabat-Zinn, who says mindfulness is a way of being that cannot be reduced to a set of techniques, I’m going to propose that mindfulness practice can indeed be considered as a bunch of techniques. One does not need to invest in its religious ideology to benefit from these techniques. For instance, one does not have to buy into the exaggeration of the ideological square and the privileging of religious experience over evidence and logic.

Quick Review – the Ideological Square, simplified yet faithful to the original:

  1. Exaggerate our wonderfulness
  2. Exaggerate their awfulness
  3. De-emphasize our bad side
  4. De-emphasize their good side

 (“their” = “not-us”)

References:

Jon Kabat-Zinn (2013) Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, Kindle Version, Revised Edition; Bantam Books, New York

Self-Awareness and Metacognition: Not Enough to Avoid Regrets

Explorations Outside the Box, Observing Mindfulness, Scientific Encounters

It would seem that awareness is related to what psychologists call “metacognition”. Metacognition is not one thing. The metacognitive system is composed of distinct anatomical and functional parts. So metacognition encompasses a lot of different things, including declarative knowledge about oneself, as well as anticipatory and emergent self-awareness – meaning anticipating and monitoring one’s environment, responses and behavior as the world unfolds.

Metacognitive processes do not need to be fully conscious. They include an unarticulated knowingness or emotional sense about oneself in specific situations that affects planning/preparation and results in ongoing self-regulation (Efklides 2006).  Interestingly, general self-knowledge is not correlated with the ability to accurately anticipate or monitor/adjust/correct behavior in specific situations (O’Keefe et al 2007).

Self-awareness doesn’t mean explicit or focal attention with the “self” as its object. It can inhabit the edges. It can be a sense or a knowingness. Can we be knowing, aware, but wrong? I ask because some people may assume that awareness confers accurate understanding, or at the very least is a necessary condition of accurate understanding.

Does it?

References:

Efklides, Anastasia. (2006). Metacognition and affect: What can metacognitive experiences tell us about the learning process? Educational Research Review, 1(1), 3-14. 

O’Keeffe F, Dockree P, Moloney P, Carton S, Robertson IH (2007) Awareness of deficits in traumatic brain injury: a multidimensional approach to assessing metacognitive knowledge and online-awareness. J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 13(1):38-49.

Higher Awareness, Higher Consciousness, or What

Explorations Outside the Box, Observing Mindfulness

People sometimes speak of “awareness”as if it were a higher state of consciousness.  But awareness can be dim, or soft, or vague. The brain is “aware” of a lot of things that “we” are unconscious of. To decide and to act requires awareness “on some level”.

Is higher awareness  possible? That is, awareness that is more than an attentional spotlight and through which “one is able to gain the insight that leads to the end of attachment.”

If one acquires insight and loses attachment in conjunction with years of meditative practice, how much credit goes to the awareness and how much to the teachings that promote a specific worldview?

Quote from: http://www.dhammaloka.org.au/community/showthread.php/562-Awareness-mindfulness-and-consciousness-101

 

Wandering Thoughts and the Future

Explorations Outside the Box, Observing Mindfulness, Scientific Encounters

Thoughts exist within a world of references and intentions. Content analysis of “wandering” thoughts has shown that such “stimulus-independent” thoughts are largely goal-directed and future oriented (Baird et al, 2011). Thoughts can be conversational and goal-directed at the same time. Imaginary conversations are like rehearsals; we silently speak to ourselves when planning. Even when we are rehashing past conversations, what may start as an act of memory often becomes elaborated, with what we shoulda, coulda, woulda said, if only we had thought of it at the time. This is one way the social animal prepares for future interactions.

Reference:

Benjamin Baird , Jonathan Smallwood, and Jonathan W. Schooler (2011) Back to the future: Autobiographical planning and the functionality of mind-wandering. Consciousness and Cognition Volume 20, Issue 4, 604–1611