The Problem of Mindfulness
aeon.co
The Problem of Mindfulness
1–10 of 161 posts
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#2Mindfulness was a major step forward in the exploration of the self, at least for western culture. I see this criticism as the next step forward. I too have felt some ambiguous disconnect between mindfulness and experience that this essay does a good job capturing. The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will. That was a step forward in breaking down the self, and this next step is to unify these ideas with the self and existence.
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#3I've had very similar thoughts about mindfullness. Mindfullness tells you to observe your fears and other feelings and see that they come and go, while it does not focus at all on whether and to what degree they are actual valid and important. Feelings are often signals from your subconsciousness, which is trying to tell that something. Of course, a lot of the time these signals can be BS or blown out of proportions - but effectively ignoring them via mindfullness is not a good approach in my opinion.
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#4> Of course, it’s often pragmatically useful to step away from your own fraught ruminations and emotions. Seeing them as drifting leaves can help us gain a certain distance from the heat of our feelings, so as to discern patterns and identify triggers.
I try to do 10-15min daily meditation exactly for this and it work.
Counterpoint for “researching” where your thoughts come and searching for the problem: As an anxious individual, my whole life was/is imprinted with anxiety, there is no root cause of it in what I’m thinking. That’s the brilliance of mindfulness, I can cope with the anxiety accepting my thoughts, without trying to change them.
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#5I've had very similar thoughts about mindfullness. Mindfullness tells you to observe your fears and other feelings and see that they come and go, while it does not focus at all on whether and to what degree they are actual valid and important. Feelings are often signals from your subconsciousness, which is trying to tell that something. Of course, a lot of the time these signals can be BS or blown out of proportions…
The same coping mechanism is being used in NLP. I have a feeling it's just a way of dealing with an environment which isn't healthy for the human being. It would be better to adjust the environment.
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#6"Western metaphysics typically holds that – in addition to the existence of any thoughts, emotions and physical sensations – there is some entity to whom all these experiences are happening, and that it makes sense to refer to this entity as ‘I’ or ‘me’. However, according to Buddhist philosophy, there is no ‘self’ or ‘me’ to which such phenomena belong."
This reminds me of this quip by Richard Feynman:
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#7Mindfulness was a major step forward in the exploration of the self, at least for western culture. I see this criticism as the next step forward. I too have felt some ambiguous disconnect between mindfulness and experience that this essay does a good job capturing. The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't…
> and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will.
There's a lot going on here. So, I don't exist, and yet an effort to reach the state of non-existence needs to be made (sounds like some faith/belief is required here to even begin). And, thoughts are without a self, which follows from the non-self notion. That all makes sense within this philosophy, but what about free will?
It sounds like the state of non-self would be the essence of freedom, and therefore, choice, and not a fixed universe in which everything is preordained.
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#8While there are a lot of truths in this article, there's also a thread of misconception running through it, embodied most prominently in the line "Without some ownership of one’s feelings and thoughts, it is difficult to take responsibility for them."
Mindfulness is about creating space between you and your thoughts, not ignoring or discounting them. It allows you to look at them subjectively, rather than being carried away by them. This in no way prohibits you from being introspective, and analyzing the origin of these feelings/thoughts. If anything, it empowers the individual to more rationally grapple with them, without falling into the various psychological traps that often come with certain feelings, such as rumination or avoidance. And whether or not we believe that there is a self, this is no way invalidates the reality that your thoughts ultimately reside inside the mind of a human being, with a real world story. It's unclear to me why the author does not recognize this duality. Most of the literature on mindfulness I've read, including Jon Kabat Zinn's, explicitly mention this duality and its power.
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#9I'm surprised that the article doesn't reference this book:
David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Buddhist-Modernism-David-McMah...
Re: The Problem of Mindfulness
#10Mindfulness was a major step forward in the exploration of the self, at least for western culture. I see this criticism as the next step forward. I too have felt some ambiguous disconnect between mindfulness and experience that this essay does a good job capturing. The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't…
> The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't your own and you have no free will.
You have spent billions of years not existing, you will spend billions of years not existing, yet you also want to achieve this state of not existing within your comparatively short actual lifetime?
What a waste.