Myth #1: Mindfulness is just Buddhism in disguise
Mindfulness is a basic human inheritance and capability, and it’s not owned by any group, religion, or philosophy. As a capacity of the human mind, mindfulness can be trained with practices and disciplines, just as one can become a more skilled violinist through long practice or build one’s strength through weight training. Buddhist practitioners have done deep research on the subject, and the many Buddhist traditions offer myriad insights, but that doesn’t mean Buddhism owns mindfulness any more than Italians own pasta or Greeks own democracy.
Ironically, two concerns surround the relationship between mindfulness and Buddhism: Some Buddhists are concerned that mindfulness, if ripped from its moorings in Buddhism, is a sham; another group of critics is concerned about the opposite: that mindfulness—in a hospital or school, for example—is stealth Buddhism that will pop out and ensnare participants once they’re trapped in its web. Both of these assume mindfulness is inexorably married to Buddhism. It is a central practice in Buddhism, but the Buddha would not have claimed to have invented mindfulness, just as Newton would not have claimed gravity as his invention.
Some say it’s simply wrong to take mindfulness out of the context of Buddhism. They argue that it can be ineffectual—or even harmful—without two supports they feel are essential to meditation practice: ethical action and wisdom. Yet, the notion of ethical (or beneficial) action and seeing things clearly were also not invented by the Buddha, nor did the compassionate Buddha regard them to be part of a closed system. It’s unfair to deny the benefits of meditative practice to people because they’re not Buddhist and presume they can’t discover their interdependence with others and find ethical conduct and wisdom within themselves and the communities they’re part of.
For most of its history, mindfulness was not a word in wide use. This made it ripe for the picking when translator T. W. Rhys Davids decided to use it to render the Pali word sati, a Buddhist term for one of the key elements of meditation practice. Some commentators like to make reference to this event to establish the true meaning of mindfulness. But words don’t have “true” meanings. They grow and change and enter new contexts. Semantics is tough enough for concrete words, but when you venture into describing aspects of mind, you’re in a whole nother mess of bother. Words fail you.
Mindfulness today is no longer only the English translation of sati. It has also become a general term to describe qualities and virtues that arise from meditation, including compassion. Buddhism is a healthy and growing tradition with a long history of dedicated meditation practice and insights that have been contributed to the world. But mindfulness, both the innate human ability and the practice to cultivate it, are open source.
Myth #2: The result of meditation is a boring, bland, cult-like calmness and complacency
It’s so easy to confuse the practice of meditation with what the results are presumed to be. Since we slow down when we meditate (we move little or not at all, and our thought process eventually decelerates a bit), it’s natural to think this means everyone who meditates is supposed to be slow, forever, in everything they do: Meditators can’t be short-order cooks, nor sprinters. They do everything in slowmo, one thing and one precious thought at a time. Air traffic controllers can forget about meditating.
According to this mythical notion, the meditator is colorless, bland, blissed out, and checked out. So wrapped up in her own mind and how it’s doing, she has no time for worldly matters. She’s not only a pacifist. She’s a passivist. No outrage, lust, sarcasm, or humor allowed. Unfailingly earnest at all times.
This is an old stereotype, but like all stereotypes, it’s pernicious and evergreen. And it gains new currency from new commentators. In a screed in GOOD magazine a few years back, a writer lamented the years she lost to meditation, the ones where she “moved at such a slow pace and got so little done and participated in so little in the world outside of those who have the luxury to yoga-fy and meditate and manage their thoughts that I am ashamed.”
A healthy mind and a healthy community is diverse and able to draw on all its glorious parts to their fullest extent.
Whoever suggested mindfulness meditation requires you to manage or police your thoughts—and also get nothing done out in the world—missed the point. The point of slowing down during meditation practice is to allow one to see how one’s own mind operates. And there are, as we all know, countless types of minds (shy, outgoing, fast-moving, slow-going, ambitious, reflective…) and within each mind a vast array of emotions (from sad to ecstatic and every shade in between, including complex amalgams of various emotions that defy description). A healthy mind and a healthy community is diverse and able to draw on all its glorious parts to their fullest extent.
One of the leading institutions studying meditation is about just that. The Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, founded by neuroscientist and emotion specialist Richie Davidson, uses that phrase to refer to inquisitive minds that make full use of a wide range of capacities and colorations. Meditation is one means to enable that fundamental healthiness of mind. Far from dulling us into sameness, mindfulness practice allows us to be ourselves more freely, with all the juicy and unique bits in full flower.
Myth #3: Mindfulness fixes something that’s wrong with you
What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? I’m so bad at it. I’m just bad altogether. My mind is a scattered mess! These other people seem fine. Everyone who has ever meditated, or tried anything new—playing the guitar, becoming a parent, snowboarding—has had thoughts like these running through their head. Often repeatedly, and in a downward spiral that ends with “I’m not cut out for this. I’m no good. I quit.”
It’s an odd trait we humans have. We like to beat up on ourselves. We like to say, “the problem with you/me is…” And popular meditation literature can provide lots of adjectives to complete that sentence:
Too distracted
Too speedy
Too negative
Too spaced out
Too etcetera
All of them lead to corresponding ideas of
what meditation must be like. We’ll solve these problems! Heads vacuumed free of thought, utterly undistracted, we’ll go to a special place where each and every moment is momentous. We’ll be… Wait for it, cue flute music… Meditating.
But it’s not like that.
Meditation is not getting to a fixed destination. It’s exploring. We get to venture into the workings of our minds: our sensations