The third Field of Zen practice is Mindfulness, which is cultivating clear awareness of what is happening, moment by moment, within you and around you. Mindfulness is absolutely fundamental to Zen practice, allowing you to practice within all the other Fields. Without awareness, you can’t live your life by choice instead of by karma.
Read/listen to Chapter 3, Part 3
See all Ten Fields of Zen Practice
Quicklinks to Article Content:
What is Mindfulness?
Practical Instructions for Mindfulness
Awareness as a Prerequisite for Practice
Carrying the Five Efforts off the Zazen Seat
Expanding Mindfulness in Your Life
This episode is chapter four of my book, The Ten Fields of Zen Practice: A Primer for Practitioners. Before I get started on the chapter, though, I want to share a short addition I’ve made to chapter one, “What Is Zen Practice?” because it offers some important context to this episode.
Added to Chapter One – “What Is Zen Practice?”
The Essence of Zen Practice
The essence of Zen practice is this: Living your life by choice instead of by karma.
Karma is the law of cause-and-effect as it applies to human experience and actions. The current state of your being is the result of an infinite number of causes arising from your past actions of body, speech, and mind, and from the actions of others. Your current state is also affected by infinitely many causes that have nothing to do with the conscious actions of human beings, such as those associated with evolution.
If you live by karma, the sum of all the causes that have led up to your current state at this moment, you will often be propelled toward choices and actions that lead to stress, suffering, craving, ill-will, and delusion. Of course, not all of your karmically conditioned behavior will be negative. Enough of it will be, however, to keep you trapped in patterns you would rather escape. At the very least, allowing your life to be driven by karma means you are taking a passive approach to it, riding the stream wherever it flows until – all too soon – life is over. There’s nothing wrong with this approach unless you have deeper aspirations.
All the elements of Zen practice are aimed at increasing your ability to live by choice instead of by karma. Through practice you become intimately familiar with the workings of your own mind, body, and heart. You learn how to recognize moments of choice and use them skilfully; to distinguish between those things you can influence and those you can’t; to discern whether or not your actions of body, speech, and mind cause suffering for self or others, and to recognize what actions you can take in any given moment to relieve suffering, regardless of whether anything in your external circumstances changes.
What is Mindfulness?
In Zen practice, mindfulness is cultivating clear awareness of what is happening, moment by moment, within you and around you. When you sit zazen you are, of course, cultivating awareness, but “mindfulness” is the term we use for paying attention to life whenever we aren’t doing zazen – which is usually at least 90% of our waking hours!
Mindfulness in our daily activities differs significantly from Zazen, of course. In Zazen you very deliberately set aside all activities, physical and mental, in order to prioritize becoming intimate with Life. You aim to create ideal, conducive conditions for relinquishing your tight grasp on your mental map of Reality, and this opens up the possibility of perceiving things directly. Limiting yourself to the simple act of sitting still, you can surrender to the practice of Zazen. Without the need to respond to anything, you can set aside your efforts to figure things out or fix things, allowing you to become open and receptive.
As soon as you get up from the Zazen seat and start engaging with the world, you have a strong inclination to rely on your mental map again. Faced with life’s demands, you are tempted to allow yourself to be carried along by karma instead of making the effort necessary to live by choice. It can be difficult to carry any spaciousness, calm, or insight you have experienced in Zazen off the meditation seat, and it’s best not to expect to be able to.
However, you shouldn’t regard Mindfulness as the practice of Zazen in challenging circumstances. Zazen is Zazen, Mindfulness is Mindfulness. When you get up from the Zazen seat, you have precious opportunities for practice that you will never encounter in Zazen. The effort you make in Mindfulness is, in many ways, similar to what you do in Zazen, but the conditions are very different.
Practical Instructions for Mindfulness
Unlike Zazen, Mindfulness is not defined by dedicated time and space. Instead, Mindfulness should permeate your life. It should be a practice you carry with you throughout your entire waking hours, and perhaps even into sleep.
However, it is fine to also dedicate time and space to practicing Mindfulness in a deliberate way, in order to explore your faculty of awareness. Many people, before Zen practice, are used to paying full attention only to activities which are too new or demanding to be done on autopilot, or to those things which interest, entertain, or alarm them. To most people, it’s a radical concept to cultivate clear Mindfulness no matter what you’re doing, such as while you are washing the dishes, changing a baby’s diaper, or engaging in a conversation you have long since gotten bored with.
It can be helpful to set aside time to focus on cultivating Mindfulness, ideally while doing a simple manual task like cleaning, cooking, gardening, or exercising. When you do this, do not listen to music or other audio entertainment. Do not carry on conversations. Just focus on your simple activity.
Whether you are entering a dedicated period of simple Mindfulness practice or are in the midst of your everyday life, the practical instructions are the same:
1. Set your intention
Mindfulness begins with the intention to cultivate clear awareness of what is happening, moment by moment, within you and around you.
2. Expand your awareness to include all aspects of the situation
Usually, your awareness is constricted. You fixate on a goal, an object of desire, the contents of your daydreams, or on compelling thoughts or emotions. When you practice Mindfulness, you expand your awareness in much the same way as you do in Zazen. You don’t need to go to the other extreme and try to catalog every possible perception you could have, you just open your awareness like an infant experiencing everything for the first time. Something interesting and relevant could come from anywhere, at any time.
3. Make special note of whatever is happening in your body and mind
Often, your awareness is directed outwards, or toward the content of your thoughts. When you practice Mindfulness, it’s important to take a step back and shine the light of awareness on your body, including physical sensations and areas of tension, any emotions that are arising, and the thoughts going through your head. These are all aspects of the situation you’re in, but you’re usually too identified with them to think of them this way. Mindfulness helps you perceive your own internal experience more clearly.
4. Maintain an open, curious, and objective attitude
Naturally, this can be difficult to do when the situation you’re facing is challenging, or when aspects of your physical and mental experience are uncomfortable or contrary to how you would like them to be. It is important not to suppress or deny any negative feelings or reactions you experience, but rather to expand your awareness to include them as aspects of your situation, just as you do in Zazen. It may help you gain a measure of objectivity if you imagine you are watching everything unfold from another vantage point, like watching a movie of your life.
5. Respond carefully to your moments of choice
Inevitably, your awareness will become constricted again. The instant you become aware that your mind has become fixated on a goal, an object of desire, the contents of your daydreams, or on compelling thoughts or emotions, you are no longer lost but have remembered your intention. Expand your awareness as you did before, taking care to include everything that just happened and is happening. Do this over and over again, letting go of any concern about how well or how poorly you are doing. Try not to wish for thoughts, feelings, mind states, or sensations to disappear or continue. Just include them in your awareness and they will not be a problem.
6. Surrender as completely as you can to the simple process of Mindfulness
Just as you judge the quality of your Zazen based on the sincerity of your effort and not on the character of your experience while sitting, so it should be with Mindfulness. It’s human nature to imagine what the experience of Mindfulness should be like, but this just gets in the way of our practice. You may expect that the intention to be Mindful will result in a prolonged state of self-consciousness, like a form of mind control – that you will be able to spend significant amounts of time centered in a sense of “I” who is hyper aware of everything that’s going on within you and around you, as long as you will it to be so. This is unlikely to happen often, especially when you are actively engaged in your life.
Fortunately, experiencing the benefits of Mindfulness does not require prolonged periods of mind control. In Zen, Mindfulness, like Zazen, is a more natural, gentle, and holistic practice than that. It is the expansion of your awareness over and over and over that transforms you, gradually. Your relationship to life is changed by your willingness, at each moment, to relinquish your fixation on self-centered thoughts, feelings, and agendas in order to take a bigger perspective.
Awareness as a Prerequisite for Practice
Mindfulness – cultivating greater awareness at all times – is a prerequisite for Zen practice, which is living your life by choice instead of by karma.[1] When you are driven by karma, your views are constrained by karma. You may be so caught up in emotions, reactivity, compulsions, fixed views, or habits that you forget even to look for choices. Alternatively, you may feel you have no choice, or you may see only those choices which tend to perpetuate your karmic patterns. For example, you may experience anger in response to someone’s behavior. If your karma compels you to nurture that anger by dwelling on the other person’s action, you are likely to act out your anger or get stuck in it, seeing no alternative. From a karmic point of view, it looks like someone’s action caused your anger, and that’s all there is to it.
When you are able to be mindful throughout your experiences, you see that every situation you encounter is much more complex and nuanced than your karmic view suggests. You learn to notice when your karmic patterns are arising, and become familiar with how they feel, how they progress, how they pass away, and the repercussions they leave behind. You start recognizing moments of choice before, during, and after situations where your karmic patterns unfold. You discover new ways to turn your mind which can transform your experience and behavior even if nothing changes in your external circumstances. In the example of anger about someone’s behavior, you may recognize how your anger is not helping the situation, and how it is bound to dissipate as long as you don’t feed it. This kind of insight can make all the difference when it comes to living by choice instead of by karma.
Carrying the Five Efforts off the Zazen Seat
The importance of Mindfulness extends far beyond its utility in freeing you from karma.[2] The practice of cultivating clear awareness at all times allows you to carry the Five Efforts off the Zazen seat.[3] Every moment of your life can be dedicated to building tolerance for Life, making peace with Life, becoming intimate with Life, seeing the true nature of Life, and being one with Life.
Mindfulness practice can help you build tolerance for life because it brings awareness and a bigger perspective to situations that distress you. Instead of fixating on, or reacting to, any uncomfortable or triggering experience, you make an effort to expand your awareness such that, just like in Zazen, both the source of distress and your reactions to it become only part of the larger landscape of the present moment. In addition to whatever is troubling you, there is your body, your breathing, the relative safety of your current circumstances, perhaps even patience and compassion for yourself. If you can return to Mindfulness repeatedly throughout a troubling experience, you will learn more about yourself and your patterns. You will be able to observe firsthand how resistance, denial, and avoidance are fruitless responses that usually just lead to more suffering, while facing difficulties with Mindfulness leads to a gradual increase in your tolerance for what is painful, scary, or difficult.
Making peace with life through Mindfulness is a fascinating journey. Essentially, as you make an effort to be Mindful in any given situation, you will find your ability to do so is directly connected to the level of peace you feel in the midst of it. When your primary response to a situation is resentment, fear, or dissatisfaction, it will be very difficult to be Mindful. Your karma will be pushing you toward self-centered rumination or defensive action. Your body and mind will resist taking a larger perspective, focused as they are on self-interest. The practice of Mindfulness even when we don’t feel at peace with Life allows us to learn more about ourselves. It helps us detach somewhat from the views we hold about the way Life should be, and notice new ways of seeing things.
You become more intimate with Life through Mindfulness as well. When you start paying attention to whatever is happening, regardless of whether a situation seems relevant to your self-interest, you perceive much more. Your willingness to expand your awareness makes you open to Life just as it is. This leads to insight because your openness allows you to explore the true nature of Life – from the details of your own karma to the perception of Emptiness. All of this results in being better able to simply be one with Life.
Expanding Mindfulness in Your Life
When you hear that Mindfulness should permeate your life, and that it should be a practice you carry with you throughout your entire waking hours, you may think that this requires you to keep up a constant mental effort. You might assume Mindfulness means to continually monitor your mind and force your attention back to something you call “the present moment.” Just as people often have a limited idea about the kind of awareness we are cultivating in zazen, they often assume that being Mindful means to be aware only of whatever sense data they are receiving at the moment from their immediate surroundings – that any thoughts or feelings not directly relevant to what is happening at the moment do not belong, and should be cut off or suppressed.
A dualistic approach to Mindfulness is where you imagine you are an “Executive I” who is trying to exert control over your unruly mind. This can lead to an anguished sense that your life is composed of short periods of Mindfulness during which “you” are present, and much longer periods where “you” aren’t present and your life is being wasted. It’s important to realize that a satisfying sense of “I am being Mindful right now” is simply a particular state of consciousness. States of consciousness come and go; if you identify with one of them as being “you” above all others, it will be a recipe for suffering and discontent.
While some diligence is required, especially when you are new to the practice, Mindfulness can be approached in a more holistic way. Instead of pitting your will against your unruly mind – as if these are actually two separate things and you get to choose one over the other – you can look at Mindfulness practice as a matter of choice. You deepen your Zazen and expand your Mindfulness by cultivating willingness to be present for Life. All the ways I recommend deepening your Zazen can be employed to expand your Mindfulness, including cultivating Bodhicitta, Dharma Study, reminding yourself of the short and ephemeral nature of life, being motivated by love, or leaning into the mystery of Life with curiosity.[4] Practice in all of the other Fields of Zen contribute to your understanding and peace of mind, which in turn makes you more willing to be present for Life just as it is.
After you’ve built up more tolerance for Life and made peace with many of the things that have previously led you toward resistance, denial, and avoidance, the biggest obstacle to Mindfulness is your belief that whatever is currently happening is not worth paying full attention to. Without practice, you generally only pay attention to whatever you perceive as being advantageous, entertaining, pleasurable, or threatening to you. Everything you encounter is filtered through a lens of self-interest, and when your situation is judged through this lens to be irrelevant, uninteresting, or unpleasant, you stop paying attention to it. You daydream or seek distraction or entertainment.
Paying attention primarily to what you perceive as advantageous, entertaining, pleasurable, or threatening is natural. It isn’t helpful to negatively judge yourself if you realize you are doing this. It is helpful to recognize – through Mindfulness practice – how much you’re missing when your attention is motivated chiefly by self-interest. You miss how quickly the finite and precious days of your life are passing. You miss the ways the universe supports you every moment through your beating heart, the air you breathe, and the food on your table grown by hands other than your own. You miss the flower that blooms for a single day, or the solitary goose flying by overhead. You miss the positive and negative impacts of your actions on other people. You miss the subtleties in other people’s behavior, which can tell you how they are feeling.
In the Soto Zen tradition, we have a beautiful way of practicing I call “Nyoho,” or “in accord with” (nyo) “the Dharma” (ho).[5] The Dharma can mean the Buddhist teachings or, at a deeper level, simply the truth. When you engage in Nyoho practice, you honor the truths of Emptiness and Interdependence even in your smallest, most mundane activities. You handle or interact with objects with respect, gentleness, and gratitude – your toothbrush, your tea cup, your clothing, your car. You come up with ways to do each mundane task in a way that will encourage Mindfulness rather than remaining on autopilot: Saying a verse of gratitude before eating, bowing to your computer before starting it up, or closing doors quietly. Adding Nyoho to your Mindfulness practice can increase your gratitude and humility while also increasing your awareness of each moment. There is nothing in this precious life that’s beneath your attention.
Read/listen to Chapter 3, Part 3
See all Ten Fields of Zen Practice
Endnotes
[1] I discussed how Zen practice is living by choice instead of by karma in Chapter One, including what is meant by “karma.”
[2] See Chapter Six (Karma Work: Taking Care of Our Lives) for much more on freeing ourselves from karmic patterns. [as this episode is posted, chp 6 is not available, but you could see Episode 233]
[3] See Chapter Three (Zazen: Our Total Response to Life) for a detailed description of the Five Efforts.
[4] See section “Deepening Your Zazen” in Chapter Three (Zazen: Our Total Response to Life)
[5] “Nyoho” in Soto Zen is traditionally used only in the context of “Nyoho-e,” where “e” means clothing. This is a tradition of sewing Zen robes in accord with the Dharma. I take the liberty of using the term more generally because it is clear from Soto Zen teachings that careful and respectful attitude toward Zen robes is meant to be extended to all objects and activities, no matter how mundane. See Episode 87 on Nyoho.
