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Creative
Ways to Transform Challenges: Why Even Bother? The Importance of
Motivation in Meditating Jon Kabat-Zinn, Excerpt from the book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through
Mindfulness (Hyperion, New York) If, from the meditative
perspective, everything you are seeking is already here, even if it is
difficult to wrap your thinking mind around that concept, if there really is no
need to acquire anything or attain anything or improve yourself, if you are
already whole and complete and by that same virtue so is the world, then why on
earth bother meditating? Why would we want to cultivate mindfulness in the
first place? And why use particular methods and techniques, if they are all in
the service of not getting anywhere anyway, and when, moreover, I've just
finished saying that methods and techniques are not the whole of it anyway? The answer is that as long
as the meaning of "everything you are seeking is already here" is
only a concept, it is only a concept, just another nice thought. Being merely a
thought, it is extremely limited in its capacity for transforming you, for
manifesting the truth the statement is pointing to, and ultimately changing the
way you carry yourself and act in the world. More than anything else,
I have come to see meditation as an act of love, an inward gesture of
benevolence and kindness toward ourselves and toward others, a gesture of the
heart that recognizes our perfection even in our obvious imperfection, with all
our shortcomings, our wounds, our attachments, our vexations, and our
persistent habits of unawareness. It is a very brave gesture: to take one's
seat for a time and drop in on the present moment without adornment. In
stopping, looking, and listening, in giving ourselves over to all our senses,
including mind, in any moment, we are in that moment embodying what we hold
most sacred in life. Making the gesture, which might include assuming a
specific posture for formal meditation, but could also involve simply becoming
more mindful or more forgiving of ourselves, immediately re-minds us and
re-bodies us. In a sense, you could say that it refreshes us, makes this moment
fresh, timeless, freed up, wide open. In such moments, we transcend who we
think we are. We go beyond our stories and all our incessant thinking, however
deep and important it sometimes is, and reside in the
seeing of what is here to be seen and the direct, non-conceptual knowing of
what is here to be known, which we don't have to seek because it is already and
always here. We rest in awareness, in the knowing itself which includes, of
course, not knowing as well. We become the knowing and the not knowing, as we
shall see over and over again. And since we are completely embedded in the warp
and woof of the universe, there is really no boundary this benevolent gesture
of awareness, no separation from other beings, no limit to either heart or
mind, no limit to our being or our awareness, or to our openhearted presence.
In words, it may sound like an idealization. Experienced, it is merely what it
is, life expressing itself, sentience quivering within infinity, with things
just as they are. Resting in awareness in
any moment involves giving ourselves over to all our senses, in touch with
inner and outer landscapes as one seamless whole, and thus in touch with all of
life unfolding in its fullness in any moment and in every place we might
possibly find ourselves, inwardly or outwardly. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master, mindfulness teacher, poet,
and peace activist, aptly points out that one reason we might want to practice
mindfulness is that most of the time we are unwittingly practicing its
opposite. Every time we get angry we get better at being angry and reinforce
the anger habit. When it is really bad, we say we see red, which means we don't
see accurately what is happening at all, and so, in that moment, you could say
we have "lost" our mind. Every time we become self-absorbed, we get
better at becoming self-absorbed and going unconscious. Every time we get
anxious, we get better at being anxious. Practice does make perfect. Without
awareness of anger or of self-absorption, or ennui, or any other mind state
that can take us over when it arises, we reinforce those synaptic networks
within the nervous system that underlie our conditioned behaviors and mindless
habits, and from which it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle
ourselves, if we are even aware of what is happening at all. Every moment in
which we are caught, by desire, by an emotion, by an unexamined impulse, idea,
or opinion, in a very real way we are instantly imprisoned by the contraction
within the habitual way we react, whether it is a habit of withdrawal and
distancing ourselves, as in depression and sadness, or erupting and getting
emotionally "hijacked" by our feelings when we fall headlong into
anxiety or anger. Such moments are always accompanied by a contraction in both
the mind and the body. But, and this is a huge
"but," there is simultaneously a potential opening available here as
well, a chance not to fall into the contraction -- or to recover more
quickly from it -- if we can bring awareness to it. For we
are locked up in the automaticity of our reaction and
caught in its downstream consequences (i.e., what happens in the very next
moment, in the world and in ourselves) only by our blindness in that moment.
Dispel the blindness, and we see that the cage we thought we were caught in is
already open. Every time we are able to
know a desire as desire, anger as anger, a habit as habit, an opinion as an
opinion, a thought as a thought, a mind-spasm as a mind-spasm, or an intense
sensation in the body as an intense sensation, we are correspondingly
liberated. Nothing else has to happen. We don't even have to give up the desire
or whatever it is. To see it and know it as desire, as whatever it is,
is enough. In any given moment, we are either
practicing mindfulness or, de facto, we are practicing mindlessness. When
framed this way, we might want to take more responsibility for how we meet the
world, inwardly and outwardly in any and every moment -- especially given that
there just aren't any "in-between moments" in our lives. So meditation is both
nothing at all -- because there is no place to go and nothing to do -- and
simultaneously the hardest work in the world -- because our mindlessness habit
is so strongly developed and resistant to being seen and dismantled through our
awareness. And it does require method and technique and effort to develop and
refine our capacity for awareness so that it can tame the unruly qualities of
the mind that make it at times so opaque and insensate. These features of
meditation, both as nothing at all and as the hardest work in the world,
necessitate a high degree of motivation to practice being utterly present
without attachment or identification. But who wants to do the hardest work in
the world when you are already overwhelmed with more things to do than you can
possibly get done -- important things, necessary things, things you may be very
attached to so you can build whatever it is that you may be trying to build, or
get wherever it is that you are trying to get to, or even sometimes, just so
you can get things over with and check them off your to-do list? And why
meditate when it doesn't involve doing anyway, and when the result of all the
non-doing is never to get anywhere but to be where you already are? What would
I have to show for all my non-efforts, which nevertheless take so much time and
energy and attention? All I can say in response
is that everybody I have ever met who has gotten into the practice of
mindfulness and has found some way or other to sustain it in their lives for a
period of time has expressed the feeling to me at one point or another, usually
when things are at their absolute worst, that they couldn't imagine what they
would have done without the practice. It is that simple really. And that deep. Once you practice, you know what they mean.
If you don't practice, there is no way to know. And of course, probably
most people are first drawn to the practice of mindfulness because of stress or
pain of one kind or another and their dissatisfaction with elements of their
lives that they somehow sense might be set right through the gentle
ministrations of direct observation, and self-compassion. Stress and pain thus
become potentially valuable portals and motivators through which to enter the
practice. And one
more thing.
When I say that meditation is the hardest work in the world,
that is not quite accurate, unless you understand that I don't just mean
"work" in the usual sense, but also as play. Meditation is playful
too. It is hilarious to watch the workings of our own mind, for one thing. And
it is much too serious to take too seriously. Humor and playfulness, and
undermining any hint of a pious attitude, are critical to right mindfulness.
And besides, maybe parenting is the hardest work in the world. But, if
you are a parent, are they two different things? I recently got a call
from a physician colleague in his late forties who had undergone hip
replacement surgery, surprising for his age, for which he needed an MRI before
the operation took place. He recounted how useful the breath wound up being
when he was swallowed by the machine. He said he couldn't even imagine what it
would be like for a patient who didn't know about mindfulness and using the
breath to stay grounded in such a difficult situation, although it happens every
single day. He also said that he was
astonished by the degree of mindlessness that characterized many aspects of his
hospital stay. He felt successively stripped of his status as a physician, and
a rather prominent one at that, and then of his personhood and identity. He had
been a recipient of "medical care," but on the whole, that care had
hardly been caring. Caring requires empathy and mindfulness, and openhearted
presence, often surprisingly lacking where one would think it would be most in
evidence. After all, we do call it health care. It is staggering,
shocking, and saddening that such stories are even now all too common, and that
they come even from doctors themselves when they become patients and need care
themselves. Beyond the ubiquity of stress
and pain operating in my own life, my motivation to practice mindfulness is
fairly simple: Each moment missed is a moment unlived. Each moment missed makes
it more likely I will miss the next moment, and live through it cloaked in
mindless habits of automaticity of thinking, feeling,
and doing rather than living in, out of, and through awareness. I see it happen
over and over again. Thinking in the service of awareness is heaven. Thinking
in the absence of awareness can be hell. For mindlessness is not simply
innocent or insensitive, quaint or clueless. Much of the time it is actively
harmful, wittingly or unwittingly, both to oneself and to the others with whom
we come in contact or share our lives. Besides, life is overwhelmingly
interesting, revealing, and awe-provoking when we show up for it wholeheartedly
and pay attention to the particulars. If we sum up all the
missed moments, inattention can actually consume our whole life and color
virtually everything we do and every choice we make or fail to make. Is this
what we are living for, to miss and therefore misconstrue our very lives? I
prefer going into the adventure every day with my eyes open, paying attention
to what is most important, even if I keep getting confronted, at times, with
the feebleness of my efforts (when I think they are "mine") and the
tenacity of my most deeply ingrained and robotic habits (when I think they are
"mine"). I find it useful to meet each moment freshly, as a new
beginning, to keep returning to an awareness of now over and over again, and
let a gentle but firm perseverance stemming from the discipline of the practice
keep me at least somewhat open to whatever is arising and behold it, apprehend
it, look deeply into it, and learn whatever it might be possible to learn as
the nature of the situation is revealed in the attending. When you come right down
to it, what else is there to do? If we are not grounded in our being, if we are
not grounded in wakefulness, are we not actually missing out on the gift of our
very lives and the opportunity to be of any real benefit to others? It does help if I remind
myself to ask my heart from time to time what is most important right now, in
this moment, and listen very carefully for the response. As Thoreau put it at the
end of Walden, "Only that day dawns to which we are awake." Copyright
© 2005 Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Hyperion, Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is the founding director of the
Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health
Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, as well as
Professor of Medicine emeritus. He leads workshops on stress reduction and
mindfulness for doctors and other health professionals and for lay audiences
worldwide. He is the bestselling author of Wherever
You Go, There You Are and Full Catastrophe Living, and, with his
wife, Myla Kabat-Zinn, of a
book on mindful parenting, Everyday Blessings. He was featured in the
PBS series Healing and the Mind with
Bill Moyers, as well as on Oprah. He lives in
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