So in our last session, we explored some of the reasons why people,
like you and me, might become interested in mindfulness.
In particular, we considered the popular contemporary image of mindfulness as
a scientific technique or technology that is deployed in secular context and
often for therapeutic purposes.
And we associated this approach with the image of a scientist.
In today's session, as part of this little series of talks exploring different
preconceptions about mindfulness and what it might mean to be a mindful person,
we're going to take some time to investigate one of the most popular and
pervasive associations with mindfulness.
And that is the image of the Buddhist monk.
As we discussed in the last session, the purpose of these little sketches
is really to reveal some popular impressions about mindfulness.
Before we start looking more seriously that where these impressions
might have come from and what kind of value they might have.
One of the things that's fascinating about these images is that while they often
contain a number of misperceptions and mistakes, even fabrications, they're
usually based on or at least come close to some genuine insights and associations.
Hence, exploring these images is quite a good way to
orient ourselves at a start of a course like this one.
We can learn quite a lot about what kind of assumptions we're bringing with us and
that's what kind of work we need to do while we're here.
Now to some extend, the image of the Buddhist monk
represents a classical aspirational image of spiritual development.
It sits somewhere between the sage and
the saint as what Robert Neville has called a spiritual model.
It expresses our ideal of enlightenment and
our emancipation from the confines of every day knowledge and wisdom.
In other words, while expertise and
understanding in every day life might make us good at our jobs, or
successful at exams, or able to solve concrete, practical problems.
The wisdom of the sage seems more attuned to dealing with the grandest questions
of meaning in life.
The universe, and everything.
So, it's not technical knowledge, but rather it emerges from patience and
experience and attunement with the world.
Indeed, the figure of the sage often appears to lack basic factual
knowledge and expertise about everyday tasks.
Sages can be idiots.
The wisdom of the sage is usually represented as somehow seeing
through the everyday to the profound.
As though the everyday world with which we're so obsessed and
in which we constantly strive for more accomplishments, more possessions,
more money, and so on, is itself somehow debased or sullied or even illusionary.
Hence, the sage seems to embody an alternative moral order, in which worldly,
or material success, is not only seen as trivial, but
is also seen as essentially vacuous.
It's not only that we spend our time and energy on things that have little value,
but it's also that we should, with moral force,
we should spend our time and energy on more elevated pursuits, instead.
So what does this mean in practice?
Well, in practice it means something a bit like this.
The model of the sage teaches us that instead of spending our
time worrying about passing an exam, impressing someone at a job interview or
earning enough money for a new iPhone, we should instead spend that time
sitting in meditation on the nature of our self and the present moment.
Sitting under a tree, instead of fretting about mistakes we made in the past,
feeling unhappy about our weight or
embarrassed about our clothing, or being angry about the injustice
that an undeserving colleague got the promotion that we wanted at work.
We should instead spend our time appreciating beautiful patterns being made
in the clouds in the sky or the delicate feeling of rain on our skin or
the wonderful feeling of warmth that the sun leaves on our face.
Now, this kind of sagacity involves a self-conscious and
pretty deliberate re-orientation of our relationship with life itself.
Because it involves moving against the prevailing norms and
values of commercial societies, it requires others
tremendous amounts of self discipline, practice, and cultivation.
The sage is committed and dedicated, devoted, which also gives him or
her an aura of purity and sacredness.
We revere the sage precisely because she is better than us.
We could be like her had we the necessary discipline and awareness, but we don't or
we choose not to, so we're not.
And as this course develops, we see how this classical idea of the sage
shares a number of the features with the environment of mindfulness today.
And for some people, the association between the cultivation of mindfulness and
the cultivation of wisdom or enlightenment is very strong.
Indeed, as we'll see in module three.
These associations are basic to the concept of mindfulness
in many traditions of philosophy around the world.
One of the most immediate connections that many people make between mindfulness and
the spiritual hero or the sage is mediated by this figure of the Buddhist monk.
As we've already seen in the last session and as we'll see over and
over again throughout this course.
It is well known that there is a sense, actually quite a complicated sense in
which mindfulness emerges from Buddhist traditions.
And hence, for some, its practices always and
already associated with this image of the monk.
From these associations, we can recognize the following three
popular preconceptions about mindfulness today.
The first is that mindfulness is somehow Asian or Oriental, and so
it's not clear how it might fit in to Western societies and cultures.
And we might identify this preconception as the Problem of Orientalism.
Which can work to both attract people and
repel people with different ideological dispositions as we'll see.
The second is that the practice of mindfulness is essentially, so at root and
deep down, a religious practice no matter what anyone tells you to the contrary.
Its purpose is only therapeutic to the extent that the Buddha
was the original therapist.
And his teachings emancipate us from suffering by liberating us from ourselves.
And we might identify this preconception as the Problem of Secularism, which
like the Problem of Orientalism, acts to attracts some and repel other people.
This problem can make people slightly nervous about the kind of ethical
commitment, expected of those who decide to take up the practice of mindfulness.
However, it is also associated with the surprisingly common assertion these days
that Buddhism is not really a religion at all.
So the third preconception is that, to practice mindfulness properly,
you have to sit in a particular way.
Probably the lotus position,
you have to hold your hands in a complicated pattern or mudra.
You have to chant a mantra, you have to burn incense and shave off all your hair,
and ideally you have to sit on top of a mountain next to a lake in a temple or
under a tree.
Now we might identify this preconception as the Problem of Trappings
which is closely related to both the problems of Orientalism and
Secularism, and again, this preconception can attract or
repel potential practitioners depending on their ideological standpoint.
As we'll see later, these trappings can be helpful for some people
who find them helpful but they're not basic to the practice of mindfulness.
And they can also make practitioners anxious about what it means to be
doing it right when they practice.
So I hope this little sketch of the monk as a kind of spiritual
hero has helped us to recognize some the popular preconceptions and
some of the assumptions about mindfulness today.
Our little friend,
the monk, will stick around with us to help out during the rest of this course.
In the next session, we're going to turn our attention to a different
kind of spiritual model, the warrior.
And in our case, the ninja.