An excerpt from the book "Coming
to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness"
Why Even Bother? The Importance of
Motivation
By Jon-Kabat-Zinn
If, from the meditative perspective,
everything you are seeking is already here, even if it is difficult to
wrap your thinking mind around that concept, if there really is no need to
acquire anything or attain anything or improve yourself, if you are
already whole and complete and by that same virtue so is the world, then
why on earth bother meditating? Why would we want to cultivate mindfulness
in the first place? And why use particular methods and techniques, if they
are all in the service of not getting anywhere anyway, and when, moreover,
I've just finished saying that methods and techniques are not the whole of
it anyway?
The answer is that as long as the
meaning of "everything you are seeking is already here" is only a concept,
it is only a concept, just another nice thought. Being merely a thought,
it is extremely limited in its capacity for transforming you, for
manifesting the truth the statement is pointing to, and ultimately
changing the way you carry yourself and act in the world.
More than anything else, I have come
to see meditation as an act of love, an inward gesture of benevolence and
kindness toward ourselves and toward others, a gesture of the heart that
recognizes our perfection even in our obvious imperfection, with all our
shortcomings, our wounds, our attachments, our vexations, and our
persistent habits of unawareness. It is a very brave gesture: to take
one's seat for a time and drop in on the present moment without adornment.
In stopping, looking, and listening, in giving ourselves over to all our
senses, including mind, in any moment, we are in that moment embodying
what we hold most sacred in life. Making the gesture, which might include
assuming a specific posture for formal meditation, but could also involve
simply becoming more mindful or more forgiving of ourselves, immediately
re-minds us and re-bodies us. In a sense, you could say that it refreshes
us, makes this moment fresh, timeless, freed up, wide open. In such
moments, we transcend who we think we are. We go beyond our stories and
all our incessant thinking, however deep and important it sometimes is,
and reside in the seeing of what is here to be seen and the direct,
non-conceptual knowing of what is here to be known, which we don't have to
seek because it is already and always here. We rest in awareness, in the
knowing itself which includes, of course, not knowing as well. We become
the knowing and the not knowing, as we shall see over and over again. And
since we are completely embedded in the warp and woof of the universe,
there is really no boundary this benevolent gesture of awareness, no
separation from other beings, no limit to either heart or mind, no limit
to our being or our awareness, or to our openhearted presence. In words,
it may sound like an idealization. Experienced, it is merely what it is,
life expressing itself, sentience quivering within infinity, with things
just as they are.
Resting in awareness in any moment
involves giving ourselves over to all our senses, in touch with inner and
outer landscapes as one seamless whole, and thus in touch with all of life
unfolding in its fullness in any moment and in every place we might
possibly find ourselves, inwardly or outwardly.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen
master, mindfulness teacher, poet, and peace activist, aptly points out
that one reason we might want to practice mindfulness is that most
of the time we are unwittingly practicing its opposite. Every time we get
angry we get better at being angry and reinforce the anger habit. When it
is really bad, we say we see red, which means we don't see accurately what
is happening at all, and so, in that moment, you could say we have "lost"
our mind. Every time we become self-absorbed, we get better at becoming
self-absorbed and going unconscious. Every time we get anxious, we get
better at being anxious. Practice does make perfect. Without awareness of
anger or of self-absorption, or ennui, or any other mind state that can
take us over when it arises, we reinforce those synaptic networks within
the nervous system that underlie our conditioned behaviors and mindless
habits, and from which it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle
ourselves, if we are even aware of what is happening at all. Every moment
in which we are caught, by desire, by an emotion, by an unexamined
impulse, idea, or opinion, in a very real way we are instantly imprisoned
by the contraction within the habitual way we react, whether it is a habit
of withdrawal and distancing ourselves, as in depression and sadness, or
erupting and getting emotionally "hijacked" by our feelings when we fall
headlong into anxiety or anger. Such moments are always accompanied by a
contraction in both the mind and the body.
But, and this is a huge "but," there
is simultaneously a potential opening available here as well, a chance
not to fall into the contraction -- or to recover more quickly from it
-- if we can bring awareness to it. For we are locked up in the
automaticity of our reaction and caught in its downstream consequences
(i.e., what happens in the very next moment, in the world and in
ourselves) only by our blindness in that moment. Dispel the blindness, and
we see that the cage we thought we were caught in is already open.
Every time we are able to know a
desire as desire, anger as anger, a habit as habit, an opinion as an
opinion, a thought as a thought, a mind-spasm as a mind-spasm, or an
intense sensation in the body as an intense sensation, we are
correspondingly liberated. Nothing else has to happen. We don't even have
to give up the desire or whatever it is. To see it and know it as
desire, as whatever it is, is enough. In any given moment, we are
either practicing mindfulness or, de facto, we are practicing
mindlessness. When framed this way, we might want to take more
responsibility for how we meet the world, inwardly and outwardly in any
and every moment -- especially given that there just aren't any
"in-between moments" in our lives.
So meditation is both nothing at all
-- because there is no place to go and nothing to do -- and simultaneously
the hardest work in the world -- because our mindlessness habit is so
strongly developed and resistant to being seen and dismantled through our
awareness. And it does require method and technique and effort to develop
and refine our capacity for awareness so that it can tame the unruly
qualities of the mind that make it at times so opaque and insensate.
These features of meditation, both as
nothing at all and as the hardest work in the world, necessitate a high
degree of motivation to practice being utterly present without attachment
or identification. But who wants to do the hardest work in the world when
you are already overwhelmed with more things to do than you can possibly
get done -- important things, necessary things, things you may be very
attached to so you can build whatever it is that you may be trying to
build, or get wherever it is that you are trying to get to, or even
sometimes, just so you can get things over with and check them off your
to-do list? And why meditate when it doesn't involve doing anyway, and
when the result of all the non-doing is never to get anywhere but to be
where you already are? What would I have to show for all my non-efforts,
which nevertheless take so much time and energy and attention?
All I can say in response is that
everybody I have ever met who has gotten into the practice of mindfulness
and has found some way or other to sustain it in their lives for a period
of time has expressed the feeling to me at one point or another, usually
when things are at their absolute worst, that they couldn't imagine what
they would have done without the practice. It is that simple really. And
that deep. Once you practice, you know what they mean. If you don't
practice, there is no way to know.
And of course, probably most people
are first drawn to the practice of mindfulness because of stress or pain
of one kind or another and their dissatisfaction with elements of their
lives that they somehow sense might be set right through the gentle
ministrations of direct observation, and self-compassion. Stress and pain
thus become potentially valuable portals and motivators through which to
enter the practice.
And one more thing. When I say that
meditation is the hardest work in the world, that is not quite accurate,
unless you understand that I don't just mean "work" in the usual sense,
but also as play. Meditation is playful too. It is hilarious to watch the
workings of our own mind, for one thing. And it is much too serious to
take too seriously. Humor and playfulness, and undermining any hint of a
pious attitude, are critical to right mindfulness. And besides, maybe
parenting is the hardest work in the world. But, if you are a parent,
are they two different things?
I recently got a call from a physician
colleague in his late forties who had undergone hip replacement surgery,
surprising for his age, for which he needed an MRI before the operation
took place. He recounted how useful the breath wound up being when he was
swallowed by the machine. He said he couldn't even imagine what it would
be like for a patient who didn't know about mindfulness and using the
breath to stay grounded in such a difficult situation, although it happens
every single day.
He also said that he was astonished by
the degree of mindlessness that characterized many aspects of his hospital
stay. He felt successively stripped of his status as a physician, and a
rather prominent one at that, and then of his personhood and identity. He
had been a recipient of "medical care," but on the whole, that care had
hardly been caring. Caring requires empathy and mindfulness, and
openhearted presence, often surprisingly lacking where one would think it
would be most in evidence. After all, we do call it health care. It
is staggering, shocking, and saddening that such stories are even now all
too common, and that they come even from doctors themselves when they
become patients and need care themselves.
Beyond the ubiquity of stress and pain
operating in my own life, my motivation to practice mindfulness is fairly
simple: Each moment missed is a moment unlived. Each moment missed makes
it more likely I will miss the next moment, and live through it cloaked in
mindless habits of automaticity of thinking, feeling, and doing rather
than living in, out of, and through awareness. I see it happen over and
over again. Thinking in the service of awareness is heaven. Thinking in
the absence of awareness can be hell. For mindlessness is not simply
innocent or insensitive, quaint or clueless. Much of the time it is
actively harmful, wittingly or unwittingly, both to oneself and to the
others with whom we come in contact or share our lives. Besides, life is
overwhelmingly interesting, revealing, and awe-provoking when we show up
for it wholeheartedly and pay attention to the particulars.
If we sum up all the missed moments,
inattention can actually consume our whole life and color virtually
everything we do and every choice we make or fail to make. Is this what we
are living for, to miss and therefore misconstrue our very lives? I prefer
going into the adventure every day with my eyes open, paying attention to
what is most important, even if I keep getting confronted, at times, with
the feebleness of my efforts (when I think they are "mine") and the
tenacity of my most deeply ingrained and robotic habits (when I think they
are "mine"). I find it useful to meet each moment freshly, as a new
beginning, to keep returning to an awareness of now over and over again,
and let a gentle but firm perseverance stemming from the discipline of the
practice keep me at least somewhat open to whatever is arising and behold
it, apprehend it, look deeply into it, and learn whatever it might be
possible to learn as the nature of the situation is revealed in the
attending.
When you come right down to it, what
else is there to do? If we are not grounded in our being, if we are not
grounded in wakefulness, are we not actually missing out on the gift of
our very lives and the opportunity to be of any real benefit to others?
It does help if I remind myself to ask
my heart from time to time what is most important right now, in this
moment, and listen very carefully for the response.
As Thoreau put it at the end of
Walden, "Only that day dawns to which we are awake."
Copyright © 2005 Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
Excerpted from the
book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through
Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Copyright © 2005 Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
(Published by Hyperion; January 2005; $24.95US/$34.95CAN; 0-7868-6756-6)
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.,
is the founding director of the Stress
Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care,
and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, as well as
Professor of Medicine emeritus. He leads workshops on stress reduction and
mindfulness for doctors and other health professionals and for lay
audiences worldwide. He is the bestselling author of Wherever You Go,
There You Are and Full Catastrophe Living, and, with his wife,
Myla Kabat-Zinn, of a book on mindful parenting, Everyday Blessings.
He was featured in the PBS series Healing and the Mind with Bill
Moyers, as well as on Oprah. He lives in Massachusetts.
For more information, please visit
www.writtenvoices.com.
