fulness further away from “attention,” which is a perpetually
volatile cognitive function, toward a relatively stable and
ideal “state of mind.”
The word “nonjudgmental” is still important, but it
remains problematic. A definition built on a negative is diffi-
cult to grasp, so other descriptors are frequently included. For
example, in the 2003 paper Kabat-Zinn added: “The words for
heart and mind are the same in Asian languages; thus ‘mind-
fulness’ includes an affectionate, compassionate quality
within the attending; a sense of open-hearted friendly pres-
ence and interest.”4 (See Thanissaro’s criticisms that follow.)
These new descriptors all incidentally tend to push the mean-
ing of mindfulness even further from “attention” and more
toward “an ideal state of mind.”
When I was a young meditator in the Tibetan tradition, I
was encouraged to look into my heart and listen to “the Bud-
dha within” (the bodhicitta). This approach effectively side-
lines the historical Buddha and even the whole Theravada
tradition, but it is a common strategy in Tibetan and Zen
Buddhism. It is a large part of the Mahayana’s polemic dis-
missal of original Buddhism and the Pali Canon.
This belief that intuition alone is an infallible guide to
truth is also a strong part of the American psyche. The New
England transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson’s great
essay On Self-Reliance (1841) argues that a firm intuition is
always superior to learning, cultural knowledge, the dictates
of authorities, and even the apparent facts of a given mat-
ter. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s efforts to intuit and describe the ideal
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meditative state of mind are in keeping with this approach. It may be no coincidence that Emerson lived and worked only
twenty miles away from Boston, where Kabat-Zinn developed
MBSR. It seems that Emerson had a big aura. This faith in the
reliability of intuition and personal interpretation saturates
the popular literature about mindfulness. In the absence of
any doctrinal guidelines, any journalist or popular writer can
have a go at defining mindfulness with little fear of criticism.
WHAT DO THE SCHOLARS SAY?
Buddhist scholars, however, are much more concerned with
the historic facts and the literal meaning of words. So how
do modern definitions of mindfulness compare with sati as I
described it in chapter 14? First, Modern Mindfulness is a more
complicated construction. It contains more essential adjec-
tives and qualifiers than sati. Second, sati refers to a cognitive function (attention), whereas Modern Mindfulness refers to an
ideal meditative state of mind. Third, the purpose of sati (the
conscious perception and evaluation of something) is to make
good judgments prior to a response, whereas Modern Mind-
fulness is invariably described as a passive and nonjudgmen-
tal state. Buddhists and scholars have repeatedly criticized
Modern Mindfulness on this last point, but their pop-guns
have had no effect on the Modern Mindfulness juggernaut.
In 2004 Scott Bishop et al. cleverly converted Kabat-Zinn’s
term into academic language. Mindfulness, they wrote, “has
been described as a kind of nonelaborative, nonjudgmental,
present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or
sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged
and accepted as it is.”5 This definition, however, is clearly out
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of line with the traditional model, according to the Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. In his 2006 book, The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind, Wallace
says that “the modern understanding departs significantly
from the Buddha’s own account of sati and those of the most
authoritative commentators in the Theravada and Indian
Mahayana traditions.”6
Wallace supports his point by quoting from an early
text called the Milandapanha, an early Buddhist attempt to
explain the nature of sati, which says that sati “calls to mind wholesome and unwholesome tendencies.”7 Sati sees ahead to
the outcomes of these tendencies, explains Wallace: It identi-
fies particular tendencies as either beneficial or unbeneficial,
helpful or not helpful. Wallace goes on to say, “Rather than
refraining from categorizing experiences in a nonjudgmen-
tal fashion . . . sati is said to distinguish between wholesome
and unwholesome, beneficial and unbeneficial tendencies.
The contrast between ancient and modern accounts is strik-
ing.”8
In sum, there is no mystery in scholarly terms about what
sati means, or at least what it is not. It has been exhaustively
analyzed in the traditional commentaries. It would be fair
to say that no serious Buddhist scholar would agree with the
Modern Mindfulness definition of sati as “nonjudgmental.” It
is completely unsupported. Not a shred of evidence exists for
such a meaning in the original texts, and there is a mountain
of evidence to the contrary.
So how did sati come to be associated with qualities
such as nonjudgment, acceptance, and even compassion?
In his thoughtful article “Mindfulness Defined,” Thanissaro
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Bhikkhu makes a perceptive observation. Each of those terms is found in the original texts, but they don’t apply to sati!
Thanissaro points out that the word “nonjudgmental”
correlates much better with the Buddhist term upekkha than
with sati. Upekkha is that state of stillness and detachment in which all one’s affective responses to the world have vanished. The absence of liking or disliking means the absence
of any “approach or withdraw” tendency. This also implies no
judgment and therefore no decision to act in any way.
Thanissaro also comments that the word “acceptance”
is much closer to the Buddhist term sukha (contentment)
than to sati. Sukha is a kind of deep unshakeable happiness independent of circumstances. According to Thanissaro, it
includes the sense of present-moment enjoyment: “Appreci-
ating the moment for all the little pleasures it can offer: the
taste of a raisin, the feel of a cup in your hands.”9
He goes on to say, “I’ve heard mindfulness described as
‘affectionate attention’ or ‘compassionate attention,’ but affec-
tion and compassion aren’t the same as mindfulness. They’re
separate things.”10 (“Compassion” equates loosely to the Pali
words metta and karuna, but it is quite unrelated to sati.) Thanissaro continues: “Popular books offer a lot of other
definitions of mindfulness, a lot of other duties it’s supposed
to fulfill, so many that the poor word gets totally stretched
out of shape. It even
gets defined as Awakening, as in the
phrase—a moment of mindfulness is a moment of Awaken-
ing—something the Buddha would never say.”11
Thanissaro’s conclusion is very sensible: “It’s best not to
load the word mindfulness with too many meanings or to
assign it too many functions.”12 Pali and Sanskrit, the two
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languages of ancient Buddhist texts, are both capable of highly refined psychological distinctions. This subtlety is
destroyed when one word is expected to serve a range of often
contradictory meanings.
Thanissaro’s analysis also explains why the modern defini-
tions of mindfulness have failed to gel. Sati means attention.
This is a single unified function: the perception and evalua-
tion of something prior to a response. Modern Mindfulness,
however, is an umbrella term, covering ideas of mindfulness
as attention ( sati) + being nonjudgmental ( upekkha) + acceptance ( sukha) + compassion ( metta) + body-mind stillness
( passaddhi) + openness ( sunyata). It is also regarded as a therapy, a meditation practice, a way of life, and the essence
of Buddhism itself. It would be fair to say that mindfulness
as described in the psychological literature is not a unified
concept at all. Let’s hope that the researchers will eventually
disambiguate it back into its component parts, and assess
their relative importance. My guess is that attention ( sati) is
probably more valuable than the rest of the mindfulness bun-
dle combined.
IS MINDFULNESS MORE MORAL THAN ATTENTION?
Sati is a Buddhist word but not a Buddhist concept. Attention
is a universal and ubiquitous cognitive function, and it is not
even moral. The Buddha said, as is obvious, that sati can be
used equally well for good or bad purposes. For example, sol-
diers need to focus well to kill. The Buddha even had terms that
highlighted this. He talked about “right” mindfulness ( samma-
sati) and “wrong” mindfulness ( miccha-sati). However, this doesn’t sit well with psychologists or modern Buddhists or
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popular writers, all of whom would prefer a more elevated description of sati.
Nyanaponika proposed a solution in his 1962 book that is
now commonly adopted by all. He spent two pages brilliantly
describing sati as attention, “the cardinal function of con-
sciousness.” He links it to memory, heightened perception,
associative and abstract thinking, and the research work of
the scientist and philosopher.
Finally he makes a distinction between “attention” ( sati)
and “right attention” ( samma-sati). This latter term is the seventh stage in the Eightfold Path of training contained in
the Four Noble Truths. Nyanaponika argued that the word
“mindfulness” should only be used for “right mindfulness.”
It should only refer to that kind of attention that is directed
toward moral goals in the Buddhist context. Otherwise, it is
just mundane, everyday “attention.”13 Ever since Nyanaponi-
ka’s proposal, “mindfulness” has carried some kind of moral
quality, however ill defined that might be.
When Buddhist writers discuss mindfulness, then, they
particularly identify it with samma-sati rather than just sati.
For non-Buddhists, mindfulness is less specific, but it still
suggests a Buddhist-flavored, compassionate, friendly, pas-
sive kind of attention. Of course, this complicates the term
enormously. Mindfulness becomes the kind of attention
that a good Buddhist would approve of, but how would you
scientifically describe that? Nonetheless, the psychologists’
claims to authority based on Buddhist sources do have some
validity. They have mistranslated sati, but, perhaps in com-
pensation, they have embellished it with other elements of
Buddhist morality.
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26
Using the Language
Scientists and psychologists routinely take words from
common English and redefine them as technical terms. If
a word has two or three separate meanings, we will still tend
to assume that they are all essentially the same. Our habitual
laziness alone guarantees this blurring of distinctions and the
blunting of our mental tools. The field of mindfulness is par-
ticularly vulnerable to this cognitive confusion.
If a word has multiple meanings, we need to know which
one we are using in any context. A psychologist recently
contacted me with a problem. She was contracted to teach
mindfulness to improve work safety on a mining site, but
she couldn’t see how developing a state of nonjudgmental
acceptance would help. Of course it can’t. She needed to teach
mindfulness in its sense of “paying attention to avoid mis-
takes.”
It makes a huge difference whether we see mindfulness
as a discriminating, choice-making function or as a passive,
meditative state of mind. There are strange consequences if
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we take the Modern Mindfulness definition of nonjudgmen-
tal acceptance seriously. We need to make judgments contin-
uously all day long. We have to be mindful to care for a child,
to handle machinery, or to shop for food. We couldn’t cross a
road safely in a state of nonjudgmental acceptance. Nor if we
tried and got hit by a car is nonjudgmental acceptance the
best response to a broken leg. Modern Mindfulness would be
entirely counterproductive in these situations.
Defining Modern Mindfulness as an ideal state of mind
limits it enormously. It locks up mindfulness with the
monastic virtues of inactivity, emotional detachment, and
withdrawal. Unfortunately, this is a tiny part of our daily
experience. It seems that we can be mindful in the modern
sense only when no response is required—for example, when
we are meditating, or in a therapy session, or on a retreat.
Whenever we had to make a judgment or choose between
options, we would actually have to stop being mindful to do
so. Nor could we mindfully think about the past or future.
Of course this is quite absurd. No one goes that far, but this
is the problem with the Modern Mindfulness definition. If
taken literally the way technical terms should be, it can only
apply within meditation, or when no action is required, or
when it is best to temporarily suspend action. On the other
hand, the definition of sati as attention (which is naturally
evaluative), does not suffer from this limitation. It is applicable
all day long and clearly improves the quality of our actions.
I’ve discussed this paradox with psychologists. As a writer
I’m prone to be pedantic about the accurate use of words. I
’ve
found that psychologists are likely to be more pragmatic. In
mental health therapy, “nonjudgmental” usually means being
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less judgmental, or less reactive, or temporarily suspending judgment, or improving a judgment, or being less self-critical,
or seeing something “objectively,” or even making a correct
judgment. But it hardly ever means making no judgment at all.
NONJUDGMENTAL
If people associate any one word with mindfulness, it is
Kabat-Zinn’s “nonjudgmental.” In his 1990 book on stress
and self-care, Full Catastrophe Living, Kabat-Zinn says that
our automatic tendency to evaluate our experience as either
“good” or bad” prevents us from seeing things “as they actually
are.” “This habit of categorizing and judging our experience
locks us into automatic reactions . . . that often have no objec-
tive basis at all. . . . When practicing mindfulness it is import-
ant to recognize this judging quality of mind when it appears
and assume a broader perspective by intentionally suspend-
ing judgment and assuming a stance of impartiality.”1 In other
words, “being nonjudgmental” means the suspension of judg-
ment, and “impartiality” means making no response either
way—no “approach or withdrawal tendency.”
Since every perception comes with an inbuilt judgment or
valence, to be mindful means temporarily suspending that
judgment and asking, “Is this accurate or not?” In this way,
we can create a gap between stimulus and response for a bet-
ter judgment to arise. The usual outcome is to down-regulate
an emotion, or reappraise a thought. The reappraisal doesn’t
even need to be conscious. Most commonly a conscious per-
ception leads to an automatic reappraisal anyway.
In the therapy context, “nonjudgmental” usually means
being less judgmental than usual. Or it is about improving
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a judgment rather than abandoning it altogether. Modern
Mindfulness writers often distinguish between what they
consider to be automatic, thoughtless judgments (the bad
ones) and conscious, considered ones (the good ones).
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