“Being nonjudgmental” can also be used to mean seeing
something “objectively,” as if from the outside. If we are able
to see the pain of cancer as “just sensation,” we apparently
feel less judgmental about it. We no longer evaluate the pain
as “bad.” Similarly, if we are able to see a suicidal thought as
“just a thought,” we have essentially neutralized it. We no lon-
ger see it as a dangerous thought that requires some response.
“Being nonjudgmental” in a therapy setting often means
little more than refraining from harsh judgments about
oneself. It means not giving in to negative self-talk and self-
criticism. One writer glosses it as not criticizing oneself “for
having irrational or inappropriate emotions.” It means “Don’t
beat yourself up!” and it relates to Western psychological vir-
tues such as self-esteem and positive regard.
“Being nonjudgmental” can also mean making an accu-
rate judgment. A psychologist recently explained to me that
the injunction to be “nonjudgmental” only applies to “bad,”
self-destructive judgments. The good judgments we make are
quite okay. When I asked her whether an appropriate judg-
ment was still a judgment, she smiled and said, “No. That
would be an evaluation.” She was trying to draw a line in a
bucket of water and she knew it. And how can you decide
which is a good or bad judgment without judging them?
The word “acceptance,” on the other hand, is the positive
side of “nonjudgmental,” and it is a useful concept when we
meditate. Hardly anyone has a “perfect” meditation. Most of
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us have some physical discomforts or unwanted thoughts or emotions, however minor, when we sit. Moreover our lives are
often a mess. Because it is so easy to live in denial, fantasy,
distraction, and hope, it can take a lot of mindful effort and
courage to see where we actually are. “Being present” is not
just about smelling the roses. It is also about smelling the shit.
Persuading people to sit still for a long time trains them to
be more comfortable within their less-than-perfect, present-
moment experience as it occurs during the meditation. Psy-
chologists call this “negative affect tolerance.” It is similar to
older Stoic virtues such as patience and endurance.
“Nonjudgmental” is often promoted as a self-evident
universal virtue on a par with compassion and tolerance. It
seems to imply that making any kind of judgment, at least
when we meditate, is wrong and is likely to increase our suf-
fering. Psychologists and popular writers would of course say,
“I don’t mean it that way,” but this is a persistent problem with
the term. In practice the word “nonjudgmental” always has
to be qualified.
Writers often tie themselves up in knots trying to explain
it. In The Mindful Brain, Daniel Siegel somewhat apologeti-
cally says that “this nonjudgmental view in many ways can be
interpreted to mean something like ‘not grasping onto judg-
ments,’” but “being able to note those judgments and disen-
gage from them may be what nonjudgmental behavior feels
like in practice.”2 And the clinician Ruth Baer says that if you
label a negative judgment as “aversion,” then it ceases to be a
judgment: “Disliking peanut butter is not a judgment. Rather
an aversion to peanut butter can be mindfully observed and
accepted without judgment.”3
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“Nonjudgmental” can work as a general mood-setter in
meditation. It can also work to suggest a more sympathetic
attitude toward yourself. As a technical term, it lacks pre-
cision. Many Modern Mindfulness writers see its practical
shortcomings in that respect and prefer to use other terms.
Fortunately, there are some excellent alternatives.
“Nonreactive” is a better technical term than “nonjudg-
mental” because it more accurately describes what hap-
pens. We can’t avoid making judgments, but we can choose
not to react. We may quite correctly judge a chronic pain
or a depressive state as “bad,” but we can reduce our usual
response to them. Many writers and researchers are now
dropping “nonjudgmental” as unworkable and are using
“nonreactive” instead. This small shift alone is helping to
make the language of Modern Mindfulness more compatible
with our actual experience.
Another good replacement term in relation to thought is
“nonelaborative.” This term describes the mental action of
noticing an emerging thought but not entering into an open-
ended conversation with it. It involves responding to a thought
but in a way that quickly closes it down. Non-elaboration is an
essential part of attention as a cognitive skill. We have to be
able to shut down any thought in order to switch to another
or to maintain focus on a more important one. In meditation
language, this is called “noticing without reacting.”
An even more accurate term is “no secondary process-
ing.” To notice anything at all, however slight or subliminal,
including thoughts, involves what cognitive psychology
calls “processing.” Within milliseconds the brain assesses it:
“What is this? (Perception.) Is it good or bad, useful or useless?
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(Evaluation.) Does it deserve any more attention or some action? (Response).”
This “primary processing” occurs with every momentary
change in our inner and outer environments, and it can’t be
avoided. It is mostly automatic or unconscious, and the most
common response is a nonresponse. When meditating, how-
ever, we can make sure that this primary processing doesn’t
spill over into elaborative, goal-directed secondary processing.
Despite all the above, the word “nonjudgmental” can still
be awkward to use. Paradoxically, the main function of mind-
fulness in vernacular English is to improve our judgments,
not to abandon them. For at least six centuries, “to be mind-
ful” has meant “to pay attention in order to avoid mistakes
or improve performance.” The modern understanding of
“mindfulness” as meaning “nonjudgmental and accepting,”
on the other hand, has only been around for forty years.
This raises an obvious point. There is surely nothing
wrong with making judgments. We do this thousands of times
each day. Good judgments really are good. Only faulty, self-
destructive judgments are bad. Aristotle regarded an ability
for this type of discernment as the first of the social virtues.
He said that being able to make good judgments in situations
of uncertainty is essential for a well-directe
d, satisfying life.
To summarize, mindfulness in the sense of “nonjudgmen-
tal” can be a useful rule-of-thumb term in therapy or medi-
tation instruction. It is an umbrella term for a wide range of
loosely related concepts, but it tends to crumble at the first
level of scrutiny. Anyone who works in the field of mindful-
ness should recognize the limitations of this iconic word, and
use it carefully.
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N O T E S
Introduction
1 The Satipatthana Sutta is the tenth in an important collection of 152 sutta (texts of the Buddha’s sermons) called The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. All of these texts are part of the Pali Canon, a collection of original discourses and monastic rules set out by
the Buddha and recorded in Pali (the liturgical language of early
Buddhism)—which is why we discuss them using the Pali word sutta
rather than the more familiar Sanskrit word, sutra.
2 David R. Vago and David A. Silbersweig, “Self-Awareness, Self-
Regulation, and Self-Transcendence (S-ART): A Framework for
Understanding the Neurobiological Mechanisms of Mindfulness,”
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6 (October 2012), introduction.
Chapter 7: Why Focus on the Body?
1 Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Nanamoli, The Middle Length Discourses
of the Buddha (Boston: Wisdom, 1995), 949.
2 Bodhi and Nanamoli, The Middle Length Discourses, 949.
3 Bodhi and Nanamoli, The Middle Length Discourses, 953.
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Chapter 8: To Sit or Not to Sit
1 This is my own translation, which resembles other translations except
that I have added the exclamation mark to the phrase “By not thinking!”
If you want a direct taste of Dogen’s style, you can find various
translations of “Fukanzazengi” on the internet. It is only three pages long.
If you also examine his Bendowa (twenty pages, also easy to find on the internet), you will have almost all you need to understand Soto Zen.
2 Dogen, “Fukanzazengi: Universal Recommendations for Zazen,” trans.
Norman Waddell and Abe Masao, in The Art of Just Sitting, ed. John Daido Loori (Boston: Wisdom, 2002), 23.
3 Dogen, Shobogenzo Zuimonki: A Primer of Soto Zen, trans. Reiho Masunaga (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1975), 44.
4 Dogen, “Fukanzazengi: Universal Recommendations for Zazen,” 21.
5 Sheng Yen, Attaining the Way: A Guide to the Practice of Chan
Buddhism (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2006), 163.
6 Jon Kabat-Zinn, Coming to Our Senses (New York: Hyperion, 2003), 65.
Chapter 14: Sati: The Analysis of a Word
1 Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation: Satipatthana
(London: Century Hutchinson, 1962), 24.
2 Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Mindfulness Defined,” accesstoinsight.org/lib/
authors/thanissaro/mindfulnessdefined.html (2008).
3 U Pandita, In This Very Life (Boston: Wisdom, 1992), 100.
4 Soma Thera, The Way of Mindfulness (Colombo, Ceylon: Vajrarama, 1949), xii.
5 Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification, trans. Nanamoli Bhikkhu (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1991), 467.
6 Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification, 262.
7 U Pandita, In This Very Life, 100.
8 Soma Thera, The Way of Mindfulness, xiii.
9 Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification, 658.
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10 Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2013), 11.
11 Analayo, Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization (Cambridge, MA: Windhorse, 2003), 41.
12 Soma Thera, The Way of Mindfulness, xiii.
13 B. Alan Wallace and Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Nature of Mindfulness and
Its Role in Buddhist Meditation: A Correspondence between B. Alan
Wallace and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi” (unpublished manuscript
held at the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, Santa
Barbara, CA, winter 2006). Bodhi cared for Nyanaponika in his
declining years.
14 Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, 39.
15 Soma Thera, The Way of Mindfulness, xiii.
16 Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification, 24.
17 U Pandita, In This Very Life, 99. Notice that U Pandita also dislikes the term “mindfulness” as a translation of sati, as do all the Buddhist commentators in the chapter.
18 Kabat-Zinn, Coming to Our Senses, 65.
19 Dogen, Shobogenzo Zuimonki: A Primer of Soto Zen, 44.
20 Robert H. Sharf, “Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters),”
Transcultural Psychiatry 52, no. 4 (2015): 478.
21 Sharf, “Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters),” 476.
Chapter 16: Emotion at the Atomic Level
1 Bodhi and Nanamoli, The Middle Length Discourses, 217.
2 Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification, 337.
Chapter 17: Painful Emotion
1 People often refuse to believe me when I say the Buddha was an
extreme ascetic. It is so alien to the popular view of him that I’ve
even been accused of lying. So here are some further quotes from
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the Buddha to illustrate his views, from Bhikku Bodhi and Bhikku Nanamoli’s The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: “This body should be regarded as impermanent, as suffering, as a disease, as a
tumour, as a dart, as a calamity, as an affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as void, as not-self” (605). “Sensory pleasures are impermanent, hollow,
false, deceptive, illusory. Sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair
are born from those who are dear to you” (718). “The pursuit of sensual
desires—low, vulgar, coarse, ignoble and unbeneficial—is a state beset by suffering, vexation, despair, and fever” (1080).
Satipatthana Sutta itself has meditations on the nine stages of the decomposition of a corpse and a contemplation of the thirty-two parts
of the body as repulsive. The Buddha felt that the deliberate cultivation of disgust was a good antidote to the snares of sensuality.
Chapter 18: States of Mind
1 Because the Pali Canon is addressed almost entirely to monks,
Buddhism lacks the sophisticated social prescriptions that we find in
other religions. It can’t draw on the national histories and dramatic
stories of human interactions that serve as guides for behavior in the
Western religions or in Hinduism. Even its myths tend to be confined
to moral homilies and stories of heroic monks. Buddhism has little to
say about familial or societal norms other than recommending that
laypeople try to behave like monks as much as possible.
2 U Pandita, In This Very Life, 110.
3 Buddhaghosa, The Path of Purification, 658.
4 B. Alan Wallace, The Attention Revolution (Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2006), 101.
5 I can’t find the exact quote, but there is a similar metaphor in another original Pali text, the Anguttara Nikaya 3:32.
Chapter 19: Optimizing Emotion
1 If you suspect that your diagnosis for anxiety or depression isn’t right, and the medication isn’t helping, I recommend
this book by Edward
Shorter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). I can also recommend
Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the
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Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker (New York: Crown, 2010).
2 Allen Frances, Saving Normal (New York: Harper Collins, 2013), xiv.
3 Frances, Saving Normal, xvii.
4 Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error (New York: Penguin, 1994), 34–39.
5 Damasio, Descartes’ Error, 41.
Chapter 20: Embodied Thought
1 Paul R. Fulton and Ronald D. Siegel, “Buddhist and Western
Psychology: Seeking Common Ground,” in Mindfulness and
Psychotherapy, 2nd ed., ed. Christopher K. Germer, Ronald D. Siegel, and Paul R. Fulton (New York: Guilford, 2013), 44–45.
2 Mark Williams and Danny Penman, Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan
for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (New York: Rodale, 2011), 11.
3 Paul R. Fulton, “Mindfulness as Clinical Training,” in Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, ed. Germer, Siegel, and Fulton, 70.
4 Jon Kabat-Zinn, Arriving at Your Own Door (New York: Hyperion, 2007), 49.
5 Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, 2nd ed. (London: Piatkus, 2013), 65.
6 Dogen, “Fukanzazengi: Universal Recommendations for Zazen,” 22.
7 Dogen, “Fukanzazengi: Universal Recommendations for Zazen,” 21.
8 John Daido Loori, “Yaoshan’s Non-Thinking,” in The Art of Just
Sitting, ed. Loori (Boston: Wisdom, 2002), 140. Dogen’s baroque
and hyperbolic masterpiece, nearly one thousand pages long, is the
Shobogenzo, which elaborates at great length on the themes presented here. Fortunately, Dogen’s key ideas on practice are found in the three-page “Fukanzazengi,” which is readily available in various translations
on Google. His other major text is Bendowa.
9 Hakuun Yasutani, “Shikantaza,” in The Art of Just Sitting, ed. Loori, 51–52.
10 Bodhi and Nanamoli, The Middle Length Discourses, 941.
11 Bodhi and Nanamoli, The Middle Length Discourses, 949.
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Chapter 21: Attention
1 Joaquin M. Fuster, The Prefrontal Cortex, 5th ed. (London: Academic Press, 2015), 3.
Chapter 22: Good Judgment
1 Analayo, Satipatthana, 41.
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