“When we're not mindful [of our response to what is happening in the moment], pleasant feelings habitually condition desire and clinging, unpleasant feelings condition dislike and aversion, and neutral feelings condition delusion, i.e., not really knowing what is going on. Yet when we are mindful, these very same feelings become the vehicle of our freedom.” In this quote Joseph Goldstein is pointing out an often overlooked Buddhist concept, that in every moment our minds are labeling the information coming into our awareness as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral (not important).
Two examples of the power of bringing mindfulness to this process
I was leading a body scan meditation to some Keene State College students. I mentioned that when you notice an unpleasant or even painful sensation, to see if you can simply observe it rather than hating it. Afterwards, a student said that she had gone to the gym the day before after having not gone for months. As a result, she was sore all over and hating it. After I made my comment, her experience of the sensations of soreness on her body went from being miserable and hating it to realizing that it wasn't that bad and that the soreness wasn't forever.
This is a snippet of a dialogue in a course I was taking after we had meditated for about 30 minutes.
Teacher: What did you notice?
Participant: I noticed that I felt sad.
Teacher: And then what?
Participant: I noticed that I didn’t want to feel sad.
Teacher: And then what?
Participant: I felt even worse.
The point in both examples is that while we can’t control what comes into our awareness, we can bring mindfulness to what we are adding to that experience. In the second case, sadness was the experience and the aversion to this unpleasantness was what was added. Over time we can notice when we are adding and realize that there are other choices.
Jon Kabat-Zinn operationalized this process in the well-known and researched Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. These were his instructions:
For one week, bring mindfulness to one pleasant event each day, e.g., receiving praise or hearing a bird song.
Specifically, bring mindful attention to:
1) your body, e.g., being aware of your shoulders relaxing, a smile...
2) your emotions, e.g., joy, contentedness...
3) your thoughts, e.g., “That was sweet,” “It’s so nice to be outside"...
4) what you noticed as you reflected on the experience, e.g., "It was such a small thing, but I’m glad I noticed it."
For the next week, bring mindful attention to one unpleasant event each day, e.g., waiting in line or worrying about something or a headache. As before, bring mindful attention to what you noticed in your body, your emotions, your thoughts, and what you noticed when reflecting on the experience.
If you are hesitant to do so, you might want to read some of the insights that participants (in the MBSR courses that I taught almost 30 times) noted in our discussions.
Insights from bringing mindfulness to pleasant events
• "Fully experiencing a pleasant event changed my attitude for the whole day!"
• "Those happy moments become elongated and they followed me throughout the day."
• There are actually many pleasant events almost every day.
• “I had an increased openness to so many other pleasant events that often go unnoticed”; we are so often on automatic pilot.
• "Seeing beauty in the ordinary"
• Focusing on the pleasant was helpful to balance the tendency to focus on the negative, which is so common.
Insights from bringing mindfulness to unpleasant events
• When you bring curiosity and non-judgment to something unpleasant, "I realized that it’s not as bad as I first thought."
• When being mindful, the experience went from intolerable to just unpleasant.
This reminds me of a comment my mom made to me when I was adding to an unpleasant experience: she told me I was “making a mountain out of a molehill.” I'm also reminded of a quote from Mark Twain: "most of the worst events of my life never actually happened."
When we bring curiosity and non-judgmental awareness to the unpleasantness, it softens, and our experience can go from highly unpleasant to mildly unpleasant to sometimes just “this is how it is now.” The now is important because we often literally contract in reaction to the unpleasantness because we lose perspective; that is, that this unpleasantness is impermanent.
I acknowledge that it is sometimes almost impossible to bring mindful attention to something that is extremely physically or emotionally painful. In those cases, distraction can be a more useful choice. I was aware of this several times during my stay in the intensive-care unit and during my recovery from the aortic dissection.
I end with the Buddha's actual words: "the uninstructed person does not know of any escape from unpleasant or painful feelings other than seeking something that is pleasant." One of my meditation teachers gave a personal example. She was relaxing at home and suddenly had the desire for a piece of chocolate. Upon reflection, she realized that just before that desire for chocolate, a sudden feeling of sadness had arisen. When she allowed herself to sit with that feeling of sadness for just a few moments, that urge for chocolate dissolved.
If you decide to try out this exercise, other readers and I would love to hear what you noticed.