Useful metaphors for mindfulness

The basic attitudes that guide mindfulness are to cultivate a curious and non-judgmental awareness toward what we are noticing. In doing this, we see more clearly, and this results in wiser actions.

There are many metaphors to assist us in this endeavor, which is both simple and complex. I share a few that I have collected or developed over the years.

Curious mind
In The Meditative Mind, Daniel Goleman quotes Indian philosopher Krishnamurti's advice to children: “You have to watch, as you watch a lizard going by, walking across the wall, seeing all its four feet, how it sticks to the wall…As you watch, you see all the movements, the delicacy of its movements. So in the same way, watch your thinking, do not correct it, do not suppress it—do not say it is too hard—just watch it, now, this morning.”

Accepting what is happening
Many teachers use the terms non-judgment and accepting when characterizing mindful attention. And many people have struggled with these two terms. I could write an entire blog post on the unpacking of these terms by various teachers. Here are two alternative terms I have found helpful:
• non-attacking attention
• non-contentious attention
Both of these terms remind us to notice when our attention feels like attacking or has a contentiousness relationship to those thoughts.

Seeing clearly
As I was on a morning walk in a forest I noticed birds disturbed by my presence often flying away. I stopped for a few minutes and many birds returned. I watched two downy woodpeckers walking up two adjacent trees as they ate their breakfast of insects. I listened to a bird singing on a branch just above my head.

This reminds me of a cartoon of two dogs sitting on meditation mats and one dog saying: “the key to meditation is learning to stay.”

Walking Down the Street
Imagine taking a walk with a friend in town where you know many people. As you are walking, someone shouts hello to you from across the street. Rather than ignoring them, you wave back and then continue your conversation. Now imagine someone interrupting you, for example, “I’ve been meaning to call you about…” You listen for a few seconds and then politely tell them that you will call them back later. And you return to your conversation.

So too with meditation. We can meet each interruption—a thought, a noise—with hospitality. If some persist, we can acknowledge being pulled away from the meditation, maintain an attitude of hospitality and then go back to the meditation. In this way, our meditation time need not be a stressful experience with expectations and shoulds, but a rather a time to simply pay attention to what is happening moment to moment.

We are not in control of our minds
Many terms have been used to describe the restless of our minds, monkey mind and puppy mind being just two.
• From Huston Smith in The World’s Religions: “I tell my hand to rise and it obeys. I tell my mind to be still and it mocks my command.”
• Another teacher likened meditation to thinking we are flying the plane and suddenly realizing that plane often does not go where we direct it to go. So who is flying the plane?
• A friend in talking about thoughts that can arise during meditation: “Hey, I didn’t order that thought!”

Mindfulness of thoughts during meditation
Many metaphors have been suggested for the attitude when we are observing thoughts. These all have the sense of witnessing.
• Imagine thoughts as clouds floating by, and noticing how they dissolve.
• Imagine thoughts as autumn leaves floating through the air, carried by the wind, but eventually landing.
• Likening the process to sitting on a train looking out the window, and not jumping out every time you see something interesting.

Molehills to mountains to molehills
When we are facing something unpleasant—a physical pain, an emotional pain, a task that we really don’t want to do—we watch the molehill start to grow and grow, and we realize that we are the ones that are making the mountain. The miracle of mindfulness is that when we stay with mindful attention, we watch the mountain begin to shrink back to a molehill and sometimes even disappear altogether.