Mindfulness: East, West And In-Between

By: Bryan Murphy

Posted: 4/11/08

The great thing about the Internet is the fact that it's pretty much an unsorted, unfiltered, non-hierarchical tornado of pure information. Of course, that is also the terrible thing about the Internet as well. This intrinsically chaotic nature is what keeps Wikipedia's founders and dedicated editors up at night, and what results in inattentive students writing research papers based on bogus data. Google's ability to sift through the madness has made it one of the most valuable corporations in America and in the world.

Still, the ups of pure information overload often out-up the downs. One of the few truly and purely enjoyable experiences provided by modern technology is traversing through a warren of digital link-clicking that one never would have replicated in the physical world - thereby stumbling upon a random factoid, bit of data or historical circumstance unexpected and incredible to such a degree that it leaves one's mind so blown that they half-suspect that their pre-frontal cortex snuck into a sorority house without telling them.

Such epiphanies are, by their very nature, subjective - a fact one knew previously or acquired mundanely is not nearly so startling as when one stumbles upon it themselves. Therefore, as personal anecdotes, I offer the moments when I first realized that bananas grow on herbs, that pineapples come from bushes, peanuts are legumes, and marshmallows are made out of the boiled corpses of large mammals.

Those examples are fairly old, however. At a certain point, one figures they've done, seen, read, learned and heard it all - or at least enough of it all that their mind is no longer so susceptible to incidental breakage.

Then one realizes that the fat little "Buddha" statue that one always sees around in Chinese restaurants, in souvenir shops and on postcards are not, in fact, statues of the true Buddha at all, but rather statues of a Chinese Buddhist monk named "Budai" in China or "Hotei" in Japan. This monk, upon reaching enlightenment, became a buddha, as anyone who reaches full enlightenment is called - Budai is commonly known as "the Laughing Buddha." Famous for his happiness, girth, and enlightenment, this monk became a minor deity in Buddhism, Shinto, and Taosim, symbolizing prosperity and joy. He never was, and never was meant to be considered, the actual Buddha. The shock of this blow to my purportedly worldly self-image was as severe as if I had been confusing Jesus with St. Peter for the last 20 years. My mind wasn't merely blown - it was shattered into dust.

The realization that the fat little fellow I had considered the legitimate representation of the religion of 376 million was not, in fact, the legitimate representation of the religion of 376 million people not only ruined a number of my stolen jokes - "I have the body of a god. Too bad that god is Buddha!" - but also caused me to realize how much of my knowledge I've taken as a given, uncorroborated and blindly swallowed. Information that we come across ourselves, we often feel the need to verify - such as the fact that peanuts are a legume, which I checked at least 10 times before accepting as truth. But social knowledge, passed down implicitly from our surroundings, is usually accepted unquestioningly.

The remedy to the sort of mindlessness that leads to one never bothering to research the foods we eat, the politics we endorse and the deities whose tummies we rub - it's a difficult sort of mindlessness to combay, not that people haven't tried.

Mindlessness and its remedy have been a hot topic with theorists since at least, well, the time of Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhism stresses the grave importance of "right attentiveness" as one of the steps on the "eightfold path" to enlightenment - "right attentiveness" stressing the ability to be aware and in control of the activities of one's body, feelings, mind, and thoughts. All of meditation, Buddhist or otherwise, is at least somewhat involved with cultivating mindfulness.

Modern psychological and psychiatric research and theory takes aim at the bane of mindlessness, as well. Psychologists such as Ellen J. Langer, author of "Mindfulness" and "The Power of Mindful Learning" have found that mindless learning can cause significant difficulties, inspiring functional fixedness - leading to decreased creativity and ingenuity - and a sense of learned helplessness, whereby the rote learner falls into a sense of fatalism and depression. As simple a "mindful" encouragement as giving the elderly living in nursing homes as jigsaw puzzle to complete, and not helping them to complete it, has been shown to improve the health and longevity of the elderly included in Langer's studies. Modern therapies have arisen to take advantage of the therapeutic benefits of "mindfulness", such acceptance and commitment therapy, which encourages those undertaking it to accept the impossibility of changing the past and commit themselves to move forward in a chosen direction, and dialectical behavioral therapy, a treatment method specially designed to treat borderline personality disorder.

The health-related benefits of mindfulness were considered an important reason to cultivate "right attentiveness" even in the Buddha's time, when it was remarked upon in Buddhist scripture that an enlightened individual could be recognized by their "joyful and elated, jubilant and exultant," healthful and attentive dispositions, derived from their full realization of true nirvana.

However, a certain division can be drawn between the emphasis on mindfulness in religious theology and individual psychotherapy, and the sort of mindfulness that perhaps ought to be inoculated in the populace at the levels of middle and higher education. The division rests mostly in internal versus external mindfulness. Being aware of one's own thoughts and sensations is all well and good for one's own psychosocial development, health and happiness - but such internal awareness does not reflect terribly much on one's awareness of the facts and schemas which swirl around their everyday life in this hectic information age.

As might be expected of a science, as opposed to a religion, modern psychology involves a bit more of a frameworks towards fostering this sense of mindfulness, and how it can be inoculated through certain education techniques. In America's defense, it does a much better job of encouraging a sort of self-aware creativity in its educational system than many other nations, such as Japan, India and - I speak from experience - Singapore. However, merely encouraging students to "think outside of the box" - as is often all that is offered in an educational setting - fails to take advantage of the latest breakthroughs in modern psychological research. When one of America's three most successful politicians has risen to the top of the ladder offering little more than vague promises of hope and change, perhaps more needs to be done to encourage a sort of critical "mindfulness" in the American people.

And, perhaps, we'll stop rubbing "Buddha's" tummy when we go for some Spring Rolls and General Tso's, while we're at it.

Weekly Columnist Bryan Murphy is a 4th-semester economics major currently studying abroad in Singapore. He can be contacted at Bryan.Murphy@UConn.edu.