I am right now reading an article on NPR from the University of Copenhagen on a modern-day scholar who is questioning the basis of the modern-day Mindfulness movement.
If you have questions about Mindfulness, believe me, they have already been answered. By Buddhism.
In the Pali canon, the early Buddhist texts, in the highly rigorous logical works of Nagarjuna, Asanga, and Vasubandhu, and in the works of the great Theravada scholar Buddhaghosha.
In these works, Mindfulness is put on a rigorous logical foundation that would have amazed Aristotle.
Here, we find answers to every question we might ask about Mindfulness.
For example: this modern scholar from the article asks:
'One of the key claims of mindfulness is that we should learn to view thoughts and emotions that come and go as if they were clouds passing through the sky. ... that we must acknowledge our thoughts and emotions and notice them as events in the mind, but not invest them with importance. ... However, it does not stop there. In mindfulness, this notion is supposed to apply to all our thoughts and emotions, or at least mindfulness offers no clear way of drawing the line. But this becomes highly problematic. Consider our deeply-held convictions and attitudes about ourselves, other people, and the social and political world around us. Take, for example, feelings of anger we might have about the policy decisions of the Danish government.'
Can you change the policy decisions of the Danish government?
No?
Than let the thoughts about the policy decisions of the Danish government pass in front of your eyes like passing clouds.
Try to do what you can to help. And then let that help go. Do not worry about whether that help does anything.
Once you have sent that effort out into the world, it has passed beyond your control.
Help. Try. Send that out in the world.
And once that help has been sent, let it go.
Do not worry about if it works. That is beyond your control.
Yes. If our assumptions about society make us fear for things beyond our control, we should let those assumptions go.
Don't hold on to anything outside of your own heart and mind. Because anything out there is beyond your control.
This is the first thing that Buddhism teaches.
The world out there changes. It is beyond our control.
When we hold on to things out there in the world, in time they will change, and we will hurt.
If we let it go, if we don't hold on to anything out there that is beyond our control- because everything out there is beyond our control- if we let it go, don't hold on to it, then it cannot hurt us.
If we do hold onto it, than when it changes, that change will cause pain, and we will hurt.
The only thing we have control over is our own mind.
We can choose to let it go, or we can choose to let it hurt us. There is no third choice. For the world out there changes, and if we hold on to it, than it will hurt us when it changes.
'Consider our deeply-held convictions and attitudes about ourselves, other people, and the social and political world around us.'
These things will change.
If we hold onto those assumptions, when the world they are attached to changes, we will be in pain.
If we don't hold on to those assumptions, than we will not be in pain when the world they are attached to changes.
Let it go.
It is beyond your control.
Don't let it hurt you.
To know more, read the Pali canon of Buddhism, then go on to Nagarjuna, to Asanga and Vasubandhu, to Buddhagosha. But start with the Pali canon, or its Chinese counterpart.
It's all there.
All the answers to your questions about mindfulness are there, and much more, much more that the 21st Century has not even thought of yet.
All the answers to your questions about mindfulness are there.
God loves you! Choose freedom from pain, don't choose pain, for I care about you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson