AboutJoe McSorley Expertise I can answer questions dealing with Taoist philosophy and Zen and not the historicity and religion of Buddhism and its different schools. I studied under Dr. Richard DeMartino and Masao Abe of the Kyoto School of Zen.
Question QUESTION: Hello, I have a question about mindfulness.
I do breath meditation twice a day, each time for about 20-30 minutes.
However, I try to just generally be mindful throughout the day as well. For
example, I bike places very often, so while I am biking I try to pay attention to
the movement of my body and my breathing.
The odd thing is that I am usually better at being mindful while biking (or
other things, for example doing the dishes) than when I sit down to meditate.
Is this normal, is it anything to worry about? You see when I sit down to
meditate I can usually only stay mindful for a few minutes, after which I will
be caught up in a thought or other, and after a few more minutes I will
realize this, and will return to the breath. But when being mindful in daily
life, for some reason there are far less thoughts occurring, and if they do
occur they are 'quiet' thoughts, ones which quickly go away by themselves,
and it almost seems like I go "under" them, being aware of their occurring. I
am much less restless.
Do you have any idea what might cause this?
ANSWER: Dear Nicholass,
Thank you for your question. When you are being mindful during activity there is an object of your mindfulness, that being what you are doing. When you are riding the bike you are mindful of the action, it is something tangible that your mind is so-called mindful of. The one analogy many people use is mountain climbing because being mindful of your actions is life and death. Here it is extreme and forced so your whole being encompasses it without distraction. It is easier to do this because it is not an arbitrary practice; it is life and death. When you sit alone there is not that ‘thing’ to be an object of your mindfulness; now you have to be mindful of being mindful and that’s much more difficult to do. So there is nothing wrong with you other than you are fully human and living this dilemma – to practice being mindful means that you are not mindful because there is a ‘you’ that is practicing it that remains apart from it to practice it. In other words the very act of trying to be mindful creates non-mindfulness and this is everyone’s dilemma in Zen practice but it is a dilemma that must be overcome.
You might also want to think of mindfulness as alertness or full attention without discrimination. By this I mean that you observe without inner conversation or judgment- you just fully observe. Trying to be mindful is a little more abstract than just trying to be alert or observe, though they are really the same thing. It’s not that you are trying to observe or be alert to a particular thing but to all at once. When riding your bike you are mindful of your body, the road and motion but that can go deeper into an overall awareness that is neither mind nor body. In Zen parlance ‘to ride without riding’ or ‘no rider above the saddle, no horse below’.
So, you are right, to just sit is difficult but when real mindfulness grips you or ‘pure alertness’ it will no confine itself to any activity or posture, it will be at all times and without effort and totally liberating.
I hope this has helped you. Take care,
Joe
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: So, if I understand correctly, the only problem with being mindful, say, in
daily activities, is that a duality comes up of observer and the observed when,
in fact, no such duality exists? I did not quite understand what you meant
when you said 'being mindful of being mindful', or 'ride without riding' (that sounded a bit like Taoism actually).
Also, just a quick question, would you say that being in the present moment
could be likened to mindfulness?
Thank you
Answer Hello Nicholaas,
Mindfulness, as all Zen practices do, is trying to create a pseudo living in the moment. It is pseudo because there is still the dichotomy between observer and observed as you stated, but it is an attempt to set the conditions for true awakening to happen. This split is in all Zen practice, between the one practicing and that which is practiced. The Japanese call it ‘trying to lift the mat you are sitting on’.
There is a duality but that duality is ultimately false though to the individual it appears completely real. Dogen talks about this extensively; if the duality is false then why do humans suffer so to overcome it? You can think of this in terms of a phobia or false fear. Someone can be so stricken with fear they will not leave their home due to this. They create a hell for themselves because their view of the world is so skewed and false. Though the things they fear may not be real the pain they feel is. So the duality does exist to the person because it is that duality that creates the person or ego. We only know things by splitting ourselves to know it. For me to know something I have to stand apart from it to know it as an object of my attention. I say, ‘that’s a tree there and I am here observing it’. Now, apart from me, I try to grasp it but the very act of me doing this has created the separation between me and it and thus I cannot really know it. I cannot know it by splitting myself and I cannot know it by just being blank and thus a dilemma occurs. The ego is the act of splitting; we are the act of splitting from the world to know that we are. It’s not that we have an ego; we are the ego, this act of splitting. So we know that we are because we know what we are not. Everything we observe is not us yet we don’t know who it is that makes these judgments. We cannot be that which we perceive because what we perceive stands outside of us, again, the duality of perceiver and perceived, so how can we know ourself? Mindfulness is the attempt to stop this splitting process of our consciousness, to be in the present as subject and object, observer and observed simultaneously.
When we practice mindfulness away from activity what is it we are mindful of? Well, generally we then use breathing as an object of our mindfulness but that is still creating the split. So we become mindful of the fact that we are trying to be mindful and it is its own cat chasing tail dilemma. This is why I said it might be easier to be mindful when biking then when alone. Mindfulness is ultimately without an object, it breaks the dualistic reflection, and in this state the ‘I” no longer exists. The problems here is how do I do something that negates myself and still be doing it? The Taoist expression is wei wu wei or to do without doing and the Zen expression is non-dualistic duality. Awakening is awakening, it is not Zen, Taoist, East or West. All of those discriminations stand in the way of awakening. You can reach a point of riding where you are both unconscious of what you are doing yet you are the ‘doing of it’. While lost to the action you are completely the action, both bike and rider. Nishida calls this ‘pure being’. Ultimately you are the bike, rider, road and world simultaneously, nature expressed in all forms but not restricted to any form.
I know this can be mind numbing stuff though I do try to be as clear as possible. Let me know if this is any clearer.
Take care,
Joe
