Since first trying meditation twenty years ago, my understanding of mindfulness has been in a state of constant evolution. This evolution has not been one of gaining knowledge about what mindfulness is but of shedding ideas about what mindfulness is. For example, I once thought of mindfulness in terms of self-mastery, as a way of gaining control over my thoughts and emotions. I now see it as practice of letting go of the attachment to self, of accepting that I have much less control over the mind’s machinations that I might like to think.
One of the teachers who helped me see the value of unlearning in this way was Stephan Bodian. I studied with Bodian one-on-one as part of mentorship program he offers. He spent many years as a Zen monk before studying with Jean Klein, a teacher of Advaita Vedanta. One of the most illuminating conversations we had was on how to view moral frameworks like the Buddhist precepts. Stephan said that rather than thinking of them as prescriptions for how one must live to find enlightenment, we ought to think of them as descriptions of how an enlightened being would behave. This idea of moving from a prescriptive view to a descriptive one has reshaped my whole approach to contemplative practice, including mindfulness.
As McCown (2013) suggests, mindfulness is co-created by the relationships within a given group. As a teacher, my goal is not to deliver a fully formed definition of mindfulness but to nurture an environment of curiosity, openness, and safety in which the meaning of mindfulness is co-created. The many definitions and frameworks covered here are valuable in that they provide language that might help others clarify and describe their experiences in the practice.
The Buddha himself said “ehipassiko” - “come and see” (Fleischman 2005). As McCown puts it, the pedagogy is the practice. With this in mind, my practice of teaching mindfulness will be one of ehipassiko: let’s sit together and see what comes up.
