Recently I read an essay in either the New York Times or Washington Post by someone who spoke about how Thich Nhat Hanh's classic little book, "The Miracle of Mindfulness," had changed his life.
That spurred me to head to Amazon to see if I'd already bought that book. Yes, Amazon told me, you did, in January 2019. Looking through the Buddhism section of my bookcase, there it was, all 139 pages of it.
I've been re-reading parts of The Miracle of Mindfulness the past few days. Published 50 years ago, in 1975, the book is wonderfully clear and concise. Here's a passage that I quoted in a February 2019 post. It's a great depiction of what mindfulness is all about.
If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not "washing the dishes to wash the dishes." What's more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.
In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands.
Thus we are sucked away into the future -- and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.
Today I had a glimpse of another way to appreciate mindfulness while on a dog walk along one of the trails in our rural neighborhood. I was strolling along the familiar path, thinking about what I was going to write about on this blog in a few hours.
Suddenly it struck me that my body was on a walk in nature, while my mind was contemplating a future activity that I'd do while sitting at my laptop computer in my home. I realized, "My prehistoric ancestors would have found this to be dangerous, having their thoughts in one place while their body was in another place."
For if dangerous animals, or dangerous fellow humans, were lurking behind a tree or in the brush, and a distracted mind failed to notice them, that could be the last distraction an early human ever experienced before their death.
Nowadays there usually isn't such a stark penalty to be paid for a lack of mindfulness, which Thich Nhat Hanh says is "keeping one's consciousness alive to the present reality." He also says, "There is no reason why mindfulness should be different from focusing all one's attention on one's work, to be alert and to be using one's best judgment."
I'm grateful to Thich Nhat Hanh for clearing up something that has always bothered me, the familiar image of meditation as being akin to a rider controlling an elephant, with the elephant being our often unruly mind and the rider being... what?
I used to think that maybe this was a higher mind or soul, something separate from our everyday mind. But the image still didn't make much sense to me. If there is an entity that controls the mind, then what controls the entity doing that controlling? Another entity? If so, what controls it? Where's the end of all this controlling by various entities?
Thich Nhat Hanh has a simple answer from the Zen perspective: there's just one entity, the mind. It's both the controller and what is controlled.
When I mentioned the guard at the emperor's gate, perhaps you imagined a front corridor with two doors, one entrance and one exit, with your mind as the guard. Whatever feeling or thought enters, you are aware of its entrance, and when it leaves, you are aware of its exit.
But the image has a shortcoming: it suggests that those who enter and exit the corridor are different from the guard. In fact our thoughts and feelings are us. They are a part of ourselves. There is a temptation to look upon them, or at least some of them, as an enemy force which is trying to disturb the concentration and understanding of your mind.
But, in fact, when we are angry, we ourselves are anger. When we are happy, we ourselves are happiness. When we have certain thoughts, we are those thoughts. We are both the guard and the visitor at the same time. We are both the mind and the observer of the mind.
Therefore, chasing away or dwelling on any thought isn't the important thing. The important thing is to be aware of the thought. This observation is not an objectification of the mind: it does not establish distinction between subject and object. Mind does not grab the mind; mind does not push mind away.
Mind can only observe itself. This observation isn't an observation of some object outside and independent of the observer.
...Mindfulness of feeling in feeling is mindfulness of feeling directly while experiencing feeling, and certainly not contemplation of some image of feeling which one creates to give feeling some objective, separate existence of its own outside of oneself.
...The objectivity of an outside observer to examine something is the method of science, but it is not the method of meditation. Thus the image of the guard and the visitor fails to illustrate adequately the mindful observation of mind.
The mind is like a monkey swinging from branch to branch through a forest, says the Sutra. In order not to lose sight of the monkey by some sudden movement, we must watch the monkey constantly and even to be one with it.
Mind contemplating mind is like an object and its shadow -- the object cannot shake the shadow off. The two are one. Wherever the mind goes, it still lies in the harness of the mind.
...Once the mind is directly and continually aware of itself, it is no longer like a monkey. There are not two minds, one which swings from branch to branch and another which follows after to bind it with a piece of rope.
...Your mind will take hold of mind in a direct and wondrous way which no longer differentiates between subject and object. Drinking a cup of tea, the seeming distinction between the one who drinks and the tea being drunk evaporates. Drinking a cup of tea becomes a direct and wondrous experience in which the distinction between subject and object no longer exists.
Dispersed mind is also mind, just as waves rippling in water are also water. When mind has taken hold of mind, deluded mind becomes true mind. True mind is our real self, is the Buddha: the pure one-ness which cannot be cut up by the illusory divisions of separate selves, created by concepts and language.
But I don't want to say a lot about this.
Nice post
i also tend to agree with the idea that living in present moment is the key. But how many of us are able to do that. we think that we are living in present moment but we are just thinking.
Problem is we never had think-less state since our birth. so how could we just be think-less present. That's a true miracle if one can achieve. Mindfulness is long road. and less adventurous.
Posted by: October | January 22, 2025 at 02:59 AM
Idealism offends the senses, materialism offends the soul; the one explains everything but the world, the other everything but life. -- Will Durant
Posted by: sant64 | January 22, 2025 at 11:23 AM
I bought and read T.N. H’s ‘Miracle of Mindfulness several years ago and recall not being overly impressed. Still, knowing that on a second reading of some books can sometimes produce a different opinion – so, I’ll have another read sometime.
I’m totally in accord with ‘being alive with the present reality’ and that there is no ‘higher mind or soul – something separate from our everyday mind’, but not too happy at ‘there being only one entity, the mind’. Is the mind an entity? It could invite confusion.
Sorry to be a bit pedantic but entity is usually described as ‘something that exists separately from other things and has a clear identity of its own’. The mind (as far as I understand it) is totally dependent on the brain and senses – no brain, no sense input, no mind. Sure, the mind has a huge influence on us: how and what we think and feel, on our behaviour etc., all of which conspires to generate a false sense of who I am precariously based on ad hoc thought constructs. I guess it’s the way T.N.H. uses the term mind that I find misleading.
The last paragraph here from T.N.H.: - “True mind is our real self, is the Buddha: the pure one-ness which cannot be cut up by the illusory divisions of separate selves, created by concepts and language.” makes more sense to me in that the mind being a complex of etc, and particularly that it houses the construct ‘self’.
One of the insidious aspects of the mind’s contents is the ‘self’ construct. Being about the most divisive concept, the ‘self’ construct may be the hardest content of mind which prevents being in the reality of the present moment. It’s often pointed out in Zen that to study the Buddha way is to study the self. T.N.H.’s or Sukman’s meditation teachings (and Zen generally) could well help one to see beyond the confines of the delusions of the mind to reveal a truer picture of who/what one is.
If we think we are looking for something called enlightenment: Dogen said that the body is already enlightened but unseen due to the activity of the mind – of thinking. Steven Batchelor holds that enlightenment (or nirvana) is there when thoughts, feelings, emotions and beliefs (mind actions) result in conditioned reactivity (suffering) and that nirvana is freedom from such reactivity.
Posted by: Ron E. | January 23, 2025 at 06:47 AM
Quote of the Day
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."
— Albert Einstein —
Posted by: Tej | January 23, 2025 at 10:05 AM