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the same with eyes open; then walking to and fro in front of
his tree; then walking to the local village to beg some food.
He would then meditate while standing outside a rich man’s
home until lunchtime, when a servant would notice him and
bring him food. He would then walk mindfully back to his
tree; eat mindfully; lie down and rest.
These are the four formal postures: sitting, walking, stand-
ing, and lying down. These are acknowledged if not practiced
by nearly all Buddhist schools. The monk would surely have
done each of them with erratic and unreliable self-awareness
at first. Like all skills, they would need to be separately and
repeatedly practiced. Being an accomplished sitting medita-
tor doesn’t automatically spill over into being a good walking
or standing meditator. All skills are far more context-depen-
dent than we usually assume.
Unfortunately, learning to walk mindfully doesn’t seem
worthwhile to modern meditators. Many aspiring models,
not to mention yoga practitioners, gym junkies, politicians,
and celebrities, are more conscious of how they walk and
stand than are meditators. How many experienced med-
itators exhibit a sense of ease, balance, and flow when they
walk? The Buddha described this as a noble accomplishment.
According to legend, the emperor Asoka was inspired to
make Buddhism the state religion by seeing a monk walking
serenely through the gory aftermath of a mighty battle.
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The Buddha’s instructions have been extremely important
for me personally. After discovering them in 1975, I developed
the forty-two exercises in my 2005 book, The 5-Minute Medita-
tor. Twelve of these are walking meditations that can be prac-
ticed invisibly on any street. These exercises, and many I’ve
developed since, are the broad-based foundation of my own
discipline. I still enjoy sitting. I discovered recently that I can
still sit cross-legged for seven hours a day with no discomfort.
Nonetheless I am not fixated on this one posture. I meditate in
all the four formal postures nearly every day.
JUST SITTING, NOT THINKING
Almost no one nowadays knows about the instructions from
the Sutta, or takes them seriously if they do. The standard sit-
ting meditation described in chapter 1 is the universal para-
digm, and to be honest, there are some good reasons for this.
For the rest of this chapter, I’ll be the devil’s advocate and
argue the opposite point of view to the Buddha.
Long sitting meditation under good circumstances can
lead to exceptionally beautiful states of body and mind. These
are called the four jhana (absorption or trance states). The
jhana states are characterized by an extreme stillness of body
and mind ( passaddhi), physical bliss ( piti), deep contentment ( sukha), and a profound sense of philosophic and emotional
detachment from the world ( upekkha, or equanimity).
The Buddha regarded the state of absorption, or trance, as
the finest pleasure available in this uncertain world. Although
he may have viewed jhana as an essential springboard for
ultimate attainment, he repeatedly warned against mistak-
ing it for enlightenment itself. The “tranquility practice” of
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jhana was a common attainment of the many non-Buddhist schools of his time. The Buddha distinguished his teaching
from these by his emphasis on mindfulness ( sati) and insight
( vipassana). Nonetheless, there remains a long tradition
within Buddhism of infatuation with jhana as the ultimate
attainment. This inevitably leads to a heavy emphasis on sit-
ting meditation.
The thirteenth-century Zen philosopher Dogen is the
most articulate exponent of this approach. Dogen founded
the Japanese school of Soto Zen, which is solidly anchored
on sitting meditation ( zazen). He invented the practice called
shikantaza, which literally translates as “just sitting.” The
Japanese word is actually more emphatic. A better translation
would be “absolutely nothing but sitting” or “just sitting very
firmly.”
In a rich and compact early text called “Fukanzazengi”
(which translates as “universal recommendations for zazen”),
Dogen explained how to do shikantaza: “Sit firmly. Think of
not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? By not think-
ing! This is the very essence of zazen.”1 Dogen gave demand-
ing prescriptions on how to sit properly: straight, alert, and
only cross-legged on the proper Zen cushions, in full-lotus
or half-lotus posture. No other posture was acceptable in the
pursuit of enlightenment. A hair’s breadth of deviation from
this ideal, and the Way is as distant as heaven from earth.
For serious meditators, this emphasis on the sitting pos-
ture can verge on the fanatical. Many of us in the 1970s
and 1980s were encouraged to strive for the ideal and to sit
through the pain. It was regarded as a great virtue to sit for
hours with screaming knees and backs. (The insightful Zen
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writer Susan Moon recently commented that there seemed
to be a disproportionate number of dedicated meditators
requiring knee operations in later life.)
When criticized by monks of rival schools for ignoring the
other three classic postures of Buddhism (walking, standing,
and lying down), and for sidelining all Buddhist philosophy
and tradition, Dogen argued that zazen was the most direct
route to enlightenment: “The character of this school is sim-
ply devotion to sitting, total engagement in immobile sitting.
Although there are as many minds as there are men, still they
[all] negotiate the Way solely in zazen. Why leave behind the
seat that exists in your home and go aimlessly off to the dusty
realms of other lands?”2
Dogen even described sitting meditation as the entire
practice of Buddhism. The scriptures were irrelevant. The
practice alone was the attainment. Just to do zazen was to be
enlightened in that very moment. Dogen said, “Zazen is the
ultimate practice. This is indeed the True Self. The Buddha-
dharma is not to be sought outside of this.”3
Dogen goes on: “Cast aside all involvements and cease all
affairs. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and
cons. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, gaug-
ing of all thoughts and views. Cease from practice based on
intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following
after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your
light inward.”4 Dogen repeats this point about abandoning
all judgment and discrimination hundreds of times in his
voluminous writings. Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness
as “a state of nonjudgmental acceptance” almost certainly
derives, directly or indirectly, from Dogen. That is, Modern
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Mindfulness reflects the approach of shikantaza, not the instructions of the Buddha from the Pali Canon.
Shikantaza is similar to jhana but a little different as well.
Jhana in the Indian tradition typically turns inward, and dis-
connects from the outer world. Shikantaza is more open to
ordinary present-moment experience. The Chan Buddhist
Master Sheng Yen (1930–2009) says, “Be clear about every-
thing going on in your mind, but never abandon the aware-
ness of your whole body sitting. Whatever enters the door of
your senses becomes one totality, extending from your body
to the whole environment.”5
In the practice of shikantaza, you try to become “empty.”
You allow thoughts and sensations to pass through your men-
tal space. You aim for a passive, nonstriving state of mind: no
active thought, no judgment, no likes or dislikes, no attach-
ment or avoidance—just an unfocused openness to experi-
ence. Eventually, “body and mind drop away” and the sense
of separation between self and the world vanishes.
The Mahayana tradition calls this state sunyata (emp-
tiness) or bodhicitta (buddhamind) or anatta (no-self) or
“nonduality.” Literally thousands of pages in praise of it fill the
Mahayana scriptures of Tibet, China, and Japan. Kabat-Zinn
echoes this tradition when he says that that meditation is “the
direct realization and embodiment in this very moment of
who you already are, outside of time and space and any con-
cept of any kind, a resting in the very nature of your being,
in what is sometimes called the natural state, original mind,
pure awareness, no mind, or simply emptiness.”6
Kabat-Zinn trained extensively in Zen before developing
MBSR. Shikantaza, the practice of “just sitting, not thinking”
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is identical to MBSR in many respects: the emphasis on stillness and nonreactivity; long sitting meditations; the deval-
uing of thought and the abandonment of judgment; and the
idealizing of an “open,” uncritical acceptance of present-
moment experience.
The Zen conception of meditation has largely super-
seded the more substantial Theravadin tradition, at least in
the West. Our popular conception of Buddhist meditation
comes almost entirely from Soto Zen and Vipassana. Both
disciplines emphasize long and repeated sessions of seated
meditation. Both emphasize the superiority of direct experi-
ence over tradition and learning. The mind of a Zen master
is assumed to be identical to the mind of the Buddha, so this
makes the scriptures irrelevant. They might as well be used
as firewood (as at least one Zen master did to shock his stu-
dents). This authority from intuition has also enabled Zen to
abandon large swathes of traditional Buddhism while still
claiming to manifest its essence.
Dogen’s Zen is a halfway house between the asceticism
of the Buddha and the more accommodating, secular med-
itation practices of today. As a late reform movement in
Buddhism, it downplays ideas that many Westerners find dis-
tasteful. Karma and reincarnation are reduced to metaphors.
Emptiness ( sunyata) has replaced suffering as the big idea.
Sense-restraint, moral training, and monastic values become
optional. Stillness and “being present” replace the earnest
drive for enlightenment. And the four classical postures of
early Buddhism are reduced to just one.
Modern Mindfulness is often criticized as being a form
of “Buddhism lite,” but Dogen’s Zen had already established
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the new ground rules. Modern Mindfulness really can claim some Buddhist descent, but it derives from a stripped-down,
“be here now” form of Buddhism that is more acceptable to
Westerners than the ascetic original.
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9
Mindful Action
This chapter is not about meditation. It is about our com-
mon English-language use of the word “mindful.” The word
“mindful” goes back to the fourteenth century. Most of us will
use it occasionally, and we certainly understand what it means.
As native English speakers, we “own” this word as part of
our lexical heritage. We shouldn’t let psychologists and
popular writers obscure its original meaning with their new
interpretations.
In the English vernacular, “to be mindful” means “to pay
attention.” The phrase is particularly targeted at one’s actions.
It usually means: to focus on what you are doing to avoid mis-
takes or improve performance. As an adjective, “mindful”
means “alert” or “attentive.” It works just as well as an impera-
tive: “Be mindful!” means “Be careful! Don’t make mistakes!”
Acting mindfully is the opposite of being thoughtless or
clumsy or mindless or inadvertently offending others. It sug-
gests a fully conscious, discriminating quality of mind.
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We are always mindful for a purpose. Anything we con-
sciously notice has already been preselected by the brain as
potentially important, so we only give high-quality attention
to things that could be significant for our well-being. We
focus on something in order to better evaluate and respond
to it. When we do so, we usually shift our attitude or behav-
ior toward it in some way, however slight. We refine our judg-
ment. Paying attention would be a waste of mental energy
otherwise.
We have to be sufficiently mindful to accomplish any
kind of task: getting dressed, eating, driving, having a con-
versation, working, managing children, answering emails,
shopping, doing exercise, seeking entertainment, or doing
whatever other details of daily life need to be attended to.
All of these actions will suffer if done thoughtlessly, and
each one requires a certain level of self-monitoring attention
to be accomplished at all. If we’re too careless or distracted,
we can’t even reliably pick up a spoon. We’re just as likely to
knock it off the table instead.
Some activities are so routine and automatic that we can
virtually do them in our sleep. Others demand more focus.
Situations of novelty, danger, temptation, or inner conflict
will all prompt us to become more mindful. We also sharpen
up in situations that could go wrong, in those with hig
h poten-
tial for reward, and in those where clear thought or finesse are
essential for success.
We become mindful spontaneously when we need to.
Mindfulness is commonly a “stop and look before you act”
mechanism. This slows us down, if only for a nanosecond,
so that we can reflect on what we are doing. To be mindful
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means that we notice when we have eaten enough, so we stop.
We notice when an unintended tone of sarcasm enters our
voice. While in the supermarket, we recognize the conflict
between our desires for pleasure and good health.
To be mindful also means noticing and (ideally) resisting
impulses that it is best not to act upon: the tendency to grab
that food, to shop recreationally, to space out, to quit, to stare,
to get self-righteous, to give in, to complain. Mindfulness is a
huge part of what we think of as self-control.
Mindfulness helps us to make thousands of small yes-
or-no judgments each day to keep us out of trouble. It can be
thought of as the habit of self-observation or self-reflection
or self-monitoring. Without it, if we were mindless, we would
be at the mercy of every temptation and impulse, and we
wouldn’t even know why things were going so badly wrong.
This wouldn’t stop us from finding plausible reasons: bad
luck, upbringing, karma, discrimination, genes, conspiracy,
God’s plan.
Because mindfulness of action is built on learned rou-
tines, it can work quite smoothly for hours at a time. We mon-
itor and self-evaluate our behavior almost without realizing
it. However, when it comes under pressure this routine, low-
level mindfulness becomes fragile and prone to collapse. The
Buddha encouraged us to monitor our states of mind (the
third “foundation” of mindfulness, discussed more in chap-
ter 18) to preempt this danger.
Our capacity to pay sufficient attention suffers under
suboptimal states of mind. These occur when we are tired,
sick, hungry, emotionally aroused, overloaded with informa-
tion, obsessing about something, worrying about a chronic
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problem, or when we have just made too many demanding