Mindfulness: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation?

A Conversation among Jan Chosen Bays, Joseph Goldstein, Jon Kabat-Zinn

and Alan Wallace

Mindfulness has played a key role in western Buddhism, particularly in the

teaching of vipassana and more secular programs such as Mindfulness-Based

Stress Reduction (MBSR). Having been steeped in both these traditions

myself I was surprised to learn that the Tibetan Buddhists have a different

understanding and usage of the term mindfulness.

Some of these differences arise from diverging scriptural sources and

interpretations dating back to the time of the Buddha. Our intention here is

not to present a scholarly argument nor definitive interpretations of

mindfulness. Rather, we would like to help make explicit ways that

contemporary streams of Buddhism use this term, particularly since

practitioners today have unique opportunities to practice with teachers from

all the Buddhist traditions.

To explore mindfulness, Inquiring Mind invited Jon Kabat-Zinn, the

founder of MBSR who was called “Mr. Mindfulness” in a headline in the

Washington Post; Alan Wallace, a Buddhist scholar and prolific writer on

Buddhism with whom I am collaborating on another secular meditation

program, Cultivating Emotional Balance; Joseph Goldstein, a vipassana

teacher known for his bell-like clarity and as a spokesperson for

nonsectarianism in his book One Dharma; and Jan Chozen Bays, Zen priest

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and pediatrician to whose trenchant and witty voice I had been introduced at

the 2005 Mind and Life Conference in Washington, D.C. As someone who has

studied and worked with these teachers, I was honored to facilitate this

dialogue along with Inquiring Mind coeditors Barbara Gates and Wes Nisker.

—Margaret Cullen

I. What Is Mindfulness?

Inquiring Mind: As Western students of Buddhism are increasingly

exploring different Buddhist traditions, many have encountered conflicting

interpretations of basic terms and practices. In particular, the term

mindfulness is broadly used by Western teachers and students, sometimes in

opposing ways. As you learned it and teach it, what is mindfulness?

Jan Chozen Bays: What is the Zen teaching on mindfulness? I guess I would

say, “When eating, just eat. When tired, just sleep.” There’s a lot in there. I

often tell my students that mindfulness is a mind that is full of everything

that is, not what you think about everything that is.

Jon Kabat-Zinn: In teaching Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR),

my colleagues and I use the word mindfulness in a lot of different ways,

some narrower and some broader. Sometimes I use mindfulness as a kind of

umbrella term for the dharma. But in terms of an operational definition of

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mindfulness for people in a stress-reduction clinic or for a medical or

scientific audience, I tend to speak of it as an awareness oriented in the

present moment and cultivated by paying attention on purpose with a

discerning, nonjudging, nonreacting, mirror-like quality of mind which is

underneath discursive thinking.

Alan Wallace: From all the research I’ve done on this, the primary meaning

of mindfulness, or sati—in the Pali canon, in the Sanskrit canon, and later in

the Tibetan canon—is that of recollection, of memory. In fact, I believe sati is

the only word in Pali, Sanskrit or Tibetan that means “recollection” or

“memory.” As the Buddha himself says, “The noble disciple is endowed with

perfect sati; he’s one who recollects what was done and said long before.”

Mindfulness can be retrospective, as in the psychological category

more commonly understood as memory. It can be in the present moment, as

an ongoing flow of remembering to remember to remember. And

mindfulness can be prospective: remembering to pick up bread on the way

home from work tonight.

In the meditative context, mindfulness enables us to retain our

attention upon a familiar object without distraction. Of course, we can be

mindful of many things without that recollection itself being instrumental in

liberating the mind from its afflictive tendencies. The type of mindfulness

that is liberating is that which is discerning, intelligent and able to distinguish

one type of phenomena from another. In a recent conversation I had with

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Ajahn Amaro, we talked about sañña-sati as the type of mindfulness that

liberates. It is a discerning mindfulness that recognizes: “This is conducive to

my own and others’ well-being, this is unconducive. This leads to misery, this

leads to liberation.”

Joseph Goldstein: One of the problems we face in trying to understand the

meaning of certain terms, like mindfulness, is that the Pali or Sanskrit words

often include a range of meanings, each with various nuances of

interpretation and implication. As I understand it, mindfulness is

remembering the present object (it’s function is nonforgetting) with the

implication that the mind for that moment is free of attachment, aversion

and delusion. So mindfulness itself includes what Alan is referring to, the

aspect which liberates.

AW: None of the Buddhist Sanskrit sources, such as Vasubandhu’s Treasury

of Abhidharma and Asanga’s Compendium of Abhidharma, equate sati with

bare attention or suggest that bare attention is intrinsically wholesome.

Neither do the Buddhist Pali sources, such as The Questions of King Milinda

and Buddhaghosa’s classic text, The Path of Purification. Sanskrit Buddhist

definitions of sati suggest that as one of ten mental factors that is present in

every mind moment, and not invariably wholesome, mindfulness takes on

qualities of the mental factors with which it’s conjoined.

In the context of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, for example,

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mindfulness clearly has, as religious scholars would say, a soteriological

function—that is, the function of liberating. On the other hand, a rabbit can

be very mindful of its surroundings because it doesn’t want to be eaten. A

fox can be very mindful of its surroundings because it wants to eat the

rabbit. In these contexts, mindfulness is neither wholesome nor liberating. A

sniper who is trying to shoot somebody can be very, very mindful. Of course,

there’s nothing liberating about that, even if he doesn’t do it with hatred or

craving. The context is crucial.

JG: I believe the Theravada Abhidharma explains mindfulness a little

differently from what you mentioned Alan. In my understanding of those

teachings, mindfulness is always a wholesome factor, unlike one-pointedness

and attention, which are both ethically neutral. In the context of these

teachings, I don’t think we would say that a cat waiting to pounce on a

mouse is being mindful. Rather that it’s quite concentrated with strong

attention. Attention as a mental factor directs the mind towards the object

and concentration keeps it undistracted. It is the same with the sniper. He

might be concentrated; the attention factor is certainly there. But in a true

moment of mindfulness there is freedom from greed, hatred and delusion

from the mind-state of the cat or the sniper, where there is probably great

identification with the motivating factors.

JKZ: Alan, what you are saying in some ways emphasizes why I use

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mindfulness as a kind of umbrella term: if we were to use it only in its

narrowest operational definition, mindfulness would be devoid of morality. As

with the sniper, there are aspects to the quality of attention that really have

no, as you say, wholesome or unwholesome valence at all. So in MBSR we

often speak of mindfulness not just as a bare attention but as an affectionate

attention. Woven into it is an orientation towards nonharming and seeing

deeply into the nature of things, which in some way implies, or at least

invites, one to see the interconnectedness between the seer and the seen,

the object and the subject.

We’re trying to bring mindfulness into the mainstream of society in a

way that draws people into an experience of cultivation, reflection and a

deep intimacy with the present moment in a way that very much does

include the element of discernment. If what we taught didn’t have behind it

the true transformative and liberative power of the dharma from the get-go,

there wouldn’t be much point in offering it as a challenge to people who are

suffering in the first place.

JCB: Jon, when you said you don’t teach just bare attention but affectionate

attention, it sounded like a wonderful antidote to the tendency of the mind in

the West to have undetected and subtly pervasive negative feeling tones.

As to Zen approaches to instructing students, I’d say that Zen is

probably the most pitiful tradition in terms of teaching people how to

meditate. My instructions were, “Sit down, face the wall, count your breath

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to ten, and if you lose track, start again.” That was it. Zen is called the

practice without a handrail for a good reason. A lot of the teachings in Zen

are implicit rather than explicit, and in the West I think it helps to have

things much more explicit. Myself, I’ve gone back to the Pali Canon. I read it

and teach it all the time. In fact, recently I taught a retreat on the Four

Foundations of Mindfulness.

Zen tends to skip to mind-ground, to what I see as the fourth

foundation of mindfulness. But I think it helps to go through the four

foundations, beginning with just body as body, and moving to feelings as

feelings, mental contents, and then mind-ground. To me, there are three

aspects to mindfulness. We’ve already touched on them some, but not

explicitly as three. First is bare attention, a full awareness, ideally without

attachment, aversion or self-identification. That, to me, is perfected

mindfulness, samma-sati. Before that we have lifetimes of relative

mindfulness. We keep on perfecting mindfulness. It might start out as barely

attending—we have to be frank—and then we cultivate it. Alan mentioned

the second aspect of mindfulness, the recollecting and returning that bring

us back to the first aspect, the clear attention or clear awareness. The third

aspect of mindfulness is seeing deeply into things, at a micro level and also

at a macro level. Mindfulness is like a microscope and a telescope; it can be

focused in on the space between milliseconds, and it can be pulled way out

to extend our awareness into forces in the universe.

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JKZ: I’d like to add that, as I understand it, mindfulness plays a special role

among all the other elements of the Eightfold Path. One view of mindfulness

that influenced me deeply from very early on was Nyanaponika Thera’s in

The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. He writes: “Mindfulness, then, is the

unfailing master key for knowing the mind, and is thus the starting point; the

perfect tool for shaping the mind, and is thus the focal point; and the lofty

manifestation of the achieved freedom of the mind, and is thus the

culminating point.”

JG: I think it’s true in the sense that through the practice of mindfulness, all

of the other factors of enlightenment (mindfulness, investigation, energy,

rapture, calm, concentration and equanimity) are automatically cultivated.

Mindfulness does have that function of drawing the other factors of

enlightenment together.

II Clarifying Related Terms

IM: Just as the term mindfulness is used in various ways depending on the

tradition, the historical source or the context (such the Eightfold Path or the

Seven Factors of Enlightenment), other related practices also are often

taught with conflicting meanings. Let’s try to clarify some of the differences.

Mind

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JG: It can be confusing for students when teachers use the same word to

mean different things, especially when we don’t first define it for use in that

particular context. For example, often we use the words, mind,

consciousness and awareness synonymously. At other times, they might

have quite distinct meanings. Mind can refer to the whole range of mental

activity; it can also mean “consciousness,” the knowing faculty, as

distinguished from the fifty-two mental factors. Sometimes we use

awareness to mean “consciousness,” sometimes “mindfulness,” and

sometimes “mindfulness plus wisdom.” The point here is that as we translate

some very specific terms from the Pali or Sanskrit, often there is not an

equally precise English version. Perhaps a worthy project for Western

Buddhists would be to create a standard dictionary of terms.

Samadhi

AW: I think sometimes samadhi gets a bad rap when it’s compared to

mindfulness, as if samadhi somehow has a quality of fixation or tunnel vision.

When it’s placed on the Eightfold Path within the threefold framework of sila,

samadhi and pañña, it’s samadhi that is central, not mindfulness. Samadhi is

the collectedness and composure of the mind, a kind of heightened sanity.

And it may be focused on a single point, a whole field of experience, or an

ongoing flow of events, like the breath or thoughts. Mindfulness, as the

mental factor of not forgetting an experienced object, supports samadhi,

which is the sustained, coherent focus of attention upon a chosen object. In

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vipassana, one discerningly applies the mindfulness (as in the Four

Applications of Mindfulness) that has already been cultivated in the practice

of samadhi

Sampajañña

AW: There’s another factor—and I’m surprised how little this crops up in

what I’ve read from the modern Theravada tradition—called sampajañña in

Pali. It’s translated variously as “clear comprehension” and “full awareness.”

It’s really more the introspective monitoring of the state of one’s body and

mind, both internally and in relation to the environment. In order to achieve

samadhi, in order to balance the attention, you need not only mindfulness in

the service of samadhi, but you also need this monitoring, this quality control

of the mindfulness, so that when the mind falls into laxity, you’re able to

discern that very quickly. When it falls into excitation, rambling, distraction

and so forth, you’re able to discern that as well. Sampajañña, then, has a

meta-cognitive function. And both mindfulness and sampajañña are crucial

for balancing the mind. Without such awareness of your own mental

processes, you’re basically operating on autopilot out of sheer habit.

JKZ: Right. That’s precisely why I tend to include the dimension of meta-

cogntion, or meta-awareness under the umbrella of mindfulness—we can be

mindful of the quality of our awareness just as we can any other object of

attention. In introducing the cultivation of mindfulness to people who have

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no experience with formal meditation practice, this orientation is woven into

the practice in a way that becomes almost second nature to people. Anybody

who is just getting started soon realizes that there’s much more going on

than just the breath. We see how easily we get distracted and soon realize

there’s a faculty that’s actually aware of when our mind wanders; otherwise

we’d never bring it back. I’m not criticizing the various more precise

scholarly views of this at all. I’m just trying to find a language, a context and

a container that can make the dharmic and liberative elements of practice

available to people in ways that are maximally skillful, generate minimal

resistance, and that neither denature nor complicate and put out of reach

the fundamental beauty and simplicity of wakefulness and wisdom.

JG: Sampajañña actually is talked about a lot in Theravada teachings. I

recently sat a retreat with Sayadaw U Pandita where he spoke often about

this quality of mind. One of the interesting applications of clear

comprehension is that it applies to our relationship to our environment and

what’s happening around us, as well as to what is happening within us. For

example, one aspect of sampajañña is considering the suitability of an

action. That opens up the whole aspect of motivation, of whether the action

is wholesome or unwholesome, and if wholesome, whether it’s the right time

to do it. I see this as an important function of sampajañña: enlarging the

context of mindfulness beyond attending to only our internal process.

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Vipassana, Shamatha, Mindfulness

IM: Joseph, could you differentiate between shamatha, mindfulness and

vipassana practices?

JG: In some of the Theravada traditions there are some clear distinctions

between shamatha and vipassana. In shamatha practice, we take a single

object of concentration, like the breath, a light, an image, etc., and train the

mind to stay focused on it. Here, the idea is not to see its changing nature;

rather, there’s a whole sequence of practices and experiences that lead the

mind into absorption in the object. In vipassana, on the other hand, the aim

is to see the three characteristics: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and

not-self. So shamatha and vipassana have very different functions. The word

vipassana means “seeing clearly” or “seeing precisely”; passana means

“seeing” and vi means “clearly or precisely,” which refers to the deepening

penetration or opening to the three characteristics. We train in seeing the

momentary arising and passing away of all phenomena and in the

nonclinging wisdom that arises from that clear seeing. Of course, the deeper

the concentration that comes from shamatha practice, the more powerful

the vipassana practice becomes. So I see the two as very much mutually

supportive. The Buddha himself said that concentration is the foundation of

wisdom.

We might consider vipassana as the over-arching term for meditative

techniques leading to liberation. Mindfulness is a central practice of all these

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teachings. And as mentioned earlier, mindfulness brings together all the

other factors of enlightenment.

III. Mindfulness in the Modern World

IM: How do you honor these ancient traditions while, at the same time,

allowing the unfolding of Buddhadharma in the West to be a dynamic

process?

AW: I see this contemporary generation of Buddhist teachers and

practitioners in dialogue with the continuum of elders, going right back to the

Buddha himself. Not that we’re supposed to be just obedient puppets and

say whatever the last generation said.

But insofar as we’re preserving the currents of Buddhist traditions,

which some people care about and others don’t, then going back to the

original meanings of the terms we use provides some continuity. We

shouldn’t freeze the meaning of Buddhist terms and concepts, but at least

we should know where they came from and how we are using them in light

of their traditional usage.

I think there’s a danger nowadays of creating artificial polarities, for

example by drawing a sharp distinction between scholars and practitioners.

In this exaggerated dichotomy, scholars are portrayed as bookworms who

have only an intellectual interest in Buddhism, while practitioners views

themselves as people who are really after experience. In this scenario

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practitioners often look down on the scholars, scholars look down on

practitioners, and higher scholars look down on lower scholars [laughter].

IM: That’s why we’re all talking together today—to facilitate communication

and understanding. Mindfulness in the modern world needs language that

can serve those interested in the depth and beauty of the lineage as well as

those who simply seek relief from the dukkha of stress and the myriad

manifestions of dis-ease resulting from our speedy consumer culture.

JKZ: These times call out for some kind of real recognition of the potential

transformative power of the dharma.

JG: Maybe not any more than at any other time, but certainly now. Whether

we move toward greater suffering or the alleviation of suffering depends on

whether we’re mindful of our emotions or we’re not mindful of our emotions.

JCB: That’s the beauty of the studies you’ve done, Jon; they’re framed in a

context that people can understand. People think, I can be healthier if I do

this, and then become curious and begin investigating. It’s wonderful to see

people start to do mindfulness meditation for their blood pressure and by the

fourth week find themselves saying, “Who’s actually thinking? Who am I?

What’s going on here?” Mindfulness is a wonderful way to lead people in.

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IM: As an MBSR instructor, I have seen a tremendous hunger for the

nourishment which mindfulness provides.

JCB: I imagine people in primitive times had more of that nourishment in

their lives: they watched campfires, they stood by streams trying to intuit

where the fish were just by watching the flow of the water, and they layed on

the hillsides at night with their sheep watching the sky. And so we’re

supplying something that we’ve forgotten, that we’ve left behind. When it

comes back into people’s lives, even in the MBSR classroom setting, people

feel nourished and healthy and free.

IM: At the Fall 2005 Mind and Life Conference, I noticed several times when

His Holiness the Dalai Lama didn’t seem to connect with the way Westerners

were using the word mindfulness. It made me wonder if he fully recognizes

how starving we are for this medicine and how broad an application it can

have in our culture.

JCB: The idea of stress could be foreign to somebody whose has spent their

whole life doing what theit great-great-great-grandparents did, like standing

and watching the ice freeze. If your culture is not highly technologically

evolved, if information doesn’t get poured into you all the time, if

everybody’s not trying to get advanced degrees and stuff knowledge into

their heads, maybe mindfulness is much more present.

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AW: I saw a number of points at that conference where there was a

disconnect. His Holiness is well versed in all schools of Indian and Tibetan

Buddhism, but the way some Buddhist terms are being used in the modern

vipassana tradition differs from the Buddhist traditions with which he is

familiar. Also, the practice of bare attention is not prominent in the Tibetan

tradition as a whole, which includes an extremely rich and diverse array of

meditation practices.

There’s another factor here, too, that I think easily escapes our vision.

In quite a number of traditional Buddhist countries—Tibet is a good example

of this—there is incredible faith and devotion. I consider myself quite a

devout Buddhist, but the level of faith and devotion of an elderly Tibetan

woman living in the backwoods of Tibet is unimaginable to me. It is hard to

comprehend the great trauma Tibetans experienced with the invasion of

their country—the torture and the genocide. Yet they have done remarkably

well, considering that many are relatively free of post-traumatic stress

disorder. Their way out of that was by faith, not by bare attention; it simply is

not a central feature of Tibetan Buddhist practice.

JKZ: After the recent Mind and Life Conference, some interesting things

happened in meetings with His Holiness. As you know, in my presentations I

sometimes equate stress to dukkha, as do a number of other contemporary

teachers. Now there’s no real word stress in Tibetan. But later that week,

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when His Holiness spoke in front of 14,000 neuroscientists, at one point he

said, “I think the Dalai Lama is a little bit stressed.” It was really quite

something.

AW: He learned a new word.

JKZ: And used it totally appropriately and with a lot of humor.

JG: In expressing the scope and practice of mindfulness, it’s important to

remember that training in it is often difficult. Munindraji, my first teacher,

would often say, “Mindfulness is simple but not easy.” The Buddha spoke of

the practice as being like swimming upstream, swimming against the current

of our conditioning. Along the way, we face challenges and different

obstacles. These are part of the path. Times of our greatest difficulties are

also often times of our greatest insights.

IM: Any closing reflections.

JCB: The more I practice the more I have absolute faith that what the

Buddha taught is true—that mindfulness truly works, beginning with body as

body, feelings as feelings, and proceeding to mind objects and mind-ground.

It has to be done in that order. Then when the mind-ground becomes very

big and inevitably collapses because of impermanence, we start again with

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the body.

AW: As an endnote, I’d like to repeat the Buddhist adage that wisdom

without compassion is bondage and compassion without wisdom is bondage.

Mindfulness can be a servant to both the cultivation of wisdom and

compassion. We have the four Brahma-viharas (lovingkindness, compassion,

empathetic joy and equanimity), which I think are a marvelous, elegant and

majestic complement to the Four Applications of Mindfulness. Seeing the

interrelationship, the synergy, between the active cultivation of the heart

and the cultivation of wisdom makes the practice of Buddhadharma very

rich, very balanced.

JKZ: I think it is wonderful to have a diversity of viewpoints and to reflect on

the degree to which mindfulness is recollection, the degree to which it’s bare

attention, the degree to which it’s open-hearted presencing. All of these

expressions of mindfulness, as Alan rightfully said, are not frozen. Otherwise

Buddhism would be a quaint museum. Instead, these are forces that are

actually transmuting our own lives and even our own bodies as we practice

and as we live our lives.

JCB: So maybe our last message is to practice mindfulness and then you’ll

find out what it is.

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[Sidebar to the first section, on the first spread]

Defining Terms

In the compound Pali term sati-patthana, the first word, sati, (Sanskrit:

smirti), had originally the meaning of “memory,” “remembrance.” In

Buddhist usage, however, and particularly in the Pali scriptures, it has only

occasionally retained that meaning of remembering past events. It mostly

refers there to the present, and as a general psychological term it carries the

meaning of “attention” or “awareness.” But still more frequently, its use in

the Pali scriptures is restricted to a kind of attentiveness that, in the sense of

the Buddhist doctrine, is good, skillful or right (kusala). It should be noted

that we have reserved the rendering mindfulness for this latter use only. —

Nyanaponika Thera, from The Heart of Buddhist Meditation.

[Sidebar on the second spread]

A Note on Translation from Bhikkhu Bodhi

Any language, I have found, has an underlying conceptual scheme built into

it by the metaphors that govern its vocabulary and by the connotations and

nuances of its words. Thus in translating from one language into another,

one is always faced with the problem of dissonance between their two

underlying conceptual schemes. This leads to conflicts that often can only be

resolved by sacrificing important conceptual connections in the original

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language for the sake of elegance or intelligibility in the target language.

This problem becomes all the more acute when one is translating from an

ancient language utilizing a somewhat archaic set of conceptual metaphors

into a modern language pertaining to a very different culture.

We can see this problem in some of the simplest Pali words. For

instance, the word samadhi can be translated as “concentration, composure,

collectedness, mental unification, etc.,” but none of these renderings convey

the idea that samadhi denotes a specific meditative state, or set of

meditative states, in the Buddhist (and broader Indian) system of spiritual

cultivation. Even the word sati, rendered mindfulness, isn’t unproblematic.

The word derives from a verb, sarati, meaning “to remember,” and

occasionally in Pali sati is still explained in a way that connects it with the

idea of memory. But when it is used in relation to meditation practice, we

have no word in English that precisely captures what it refers to. An early

translator cleverly drew upon the word mindfulness, which is not even in my

dictionary. This has served its role admirably, but it does not preserve the

connection with memory, sometimes needed to make sense of a passage.

Satipatthana is often translated “foundation of mindfulness,” which

sounds elegant; but if one knows Pali one might suspect that the compound

represents not sati + patthana (which gives us “foundation of mindfulness”),

but sati + upatthana, “establishment of mindfulness” (the u dropping off

through union of vowels). Then, if one knows the texts in the original, one

will have encountered a number of phrases that pair sati with words related

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to upatthana, such as upatthitassati, “one with mindfulness established,” but

no other phrases that pair it with forms related to patthana. And this would

confirm the case for “establishment of mindfulness” over “foundation of

mindfulness.” However more graceful the latter might sound, the accent is

on the internal process of setting mindfulness up rather than on the object to

which it applies.

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