Abstract
The contemporary mindfulness movement emphasizes cultivating present-centered awareness. While this simple practice seems to offer real benefits, it has been criticized on the grounds that it psychologizes the Buddhist teachings on which it relies and, in doing so, discards the Buddha’s central concern: undoing fundamental forms of ignorance and craving that fuel the fires of samsaric suffering. Supporters reply that linking the practice of mindfulness to such traditional teachings would erect a needless barrier to its benefits; some also maintain that mindfulness as they present it preserves and updates what is most central to Buddhism. This chapter sidesteps this debate by introducing a different way of being mindful, one that focuses on the fullness of space rather than the present-centered immediacy of time. The basic practice is to investigate the space, or field, within which appearances arise rather than the specific appearances themselves. Field-centered mindfulness builds on present-centered mindfulness, but introduces a fundamentally different orientation to the stream of experiences and appearances we encounter. In doing so, it challenges the standard subject/object framework, which receives little if any attention in the practice of present-centered mindfulness. Without requiring practitioners to study and accept Buddhist doctrines or a Buddhist worldview, a space-centered approach offers a way of seeing that seems congruent with key Buddhist insights. For this reason, it has the potential to become what ancient Western philosophers called a therapeia, a cure for the existential ailment characteristic of our times.
Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them. Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way
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Notes
- 1.
Challenging the existence of the self is not necessarily the same as questioning the subject/object or self/world framework, a concern not universal among different Buddhist traditions. For my purposes, it is enough to acknowledge that the two questions are connected. My thanks to Linda Heuman for emphasizing to me the importance of this distinction.
- 2.
A few examples: Śāntideva, in the classic Mahāyāna text known as the Bodhicāryāvatāra (Padmakara Translation Group, 1997, ch, 8, verse 134, writes, ‘All the harm with which the world is rife,/ All fear and suffering that there is,/ Clinging to the ‘I’ has caused it!’ In the Pāli Canon, the Buddha tells his followers, ‘Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as ‘I’ or ‘mine’’ (Goldstein 2003, p. 134). Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1999, p. 15), a twentieth-century Tibetan master, writes, ‘An ordinary person’s attention strays according to any movement of mind. Suddenly there is the confusion of believing in self and other, subject and object, and this situation goes on and on repeating itself endlessly. This is samsaric existence.’
- 3.
I am grateful to David McMahan for calling my attention to this Sutta.
- 4.
Compare what the discipline of phenomenology calls the ‘phenomenological reduction’: the decision to suspend claims about what does or does not exist in favor of an inquiry into how things appear. Interestingly, Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, spoke of carrying out the phenomenological reduction as a rigorous meditative practice that is transformative for those who thoroughly engage it (Cogan 2016).
- 5.
The subject/object framework is not the same as the self/world framework, but there is considerable overlap. I shall use both descriptions, depending on the context.
- 6.
This is not to say that physical objects are ‘only’ our experience of them, like objects in a dream. Nothing I am saying here speaks to issues of ontological status. In this sense, the approach I am taking is broadly phenomenological.
- 7.
This point is made quite clearly in The Questions of King Milinda (Rhys Davids 1963, vol. I, p. 127), an important text in the Theravādin tradition. King Milinda asks how it is possible that an advanced practitioner can transport himself instantly to the Brahma world, one of the highest heavens. In reply, the sage Nagasena asks the king where he was born and if he remembers some activity there. When the king tells him he was born at a place about 200 leagues distant and that he does remember doing something there, Nagasena replies, ‘So quickly, great king, have you gone about two hundred leagues.’
- 8.
Phenomenological approaches maintain that the world of things and events as we encounter it can only be described as ‘objectively real’ from the viewpoint of the physical sciences. The world or worlds we inhabit, in contrast, are constructed by the meaning we assign them. They maintain that separating out ‘subjective’ experience from the ‘objective’ reality that manifests in physical space is the mark of a discredited Cartesian dualism (Dreyfus and Taylor 2015; Husserl 2002).
- 9.
Another way to put this, one that was in fact regularly used to describe Warrior’s style of play, is that they were unselfish (Strauss 2015).
- 10.
What this might mean is suggestively presented in the film Being John Malkovich (1999). For reasons never explained, the characters in the film have the ability to use a kind of ‘chute’ located at a particular place in physical space to enter the mental space that constitutes the mind of John Malkovich. At a certain point, Malkovich, himself one of the film’s characters, enters his own mind. When this happens, he encounters nothing but himself.
- 11.
These questions can also be put in more traditional Buddhist terms. In discussing how Buddhism challenges our commitment to the self, Ganeri (2007, p. 174) writes: ‘We are not in error when we think of the world in a person-involving way; it is just that we could do better … by thinking of it in some other way altogether, by standing in a different cognitive relation with the world.’ Compare, in a non-Buddhist context, Dennett (1986). Similar issues arise when we consider our propensity to frame the world in terms of narrative (Bruner 1987; Tarthang Tulku, 1987).
- 12.
MBSR, the best known version of mindfulnesspc, includes in the training it gives students the practice of metta (Sanskrit maitri) or loving kindness, in which one wishes for the happiness of others. Rosch (2015) and others have pointed out that while this practice is well known in traditional Buddhism, it is not usually considered a mindfulness practice. However, it fits quite well with the practice of mindfulnessfc. The meaning that pervades a field is one that we ourselves can activate, and that is just what the practice of loving kindness does. Interestingly, flooding the field of experience in this way is precisely how the practice of loving kindness, and the other ‘immeasurable states’, is presented in the Canon. See the Tevijja Sutta, DN 13.
- 13.
As Sharf (2014) points out, a similar calculus has been made at other moments in history when Buddhism was entering cultures where it was not previously known.
- 14.
It is always possible that at least a few people who are introduced to mindfulnesspc will go on to more traditional forms of Buddhist practice. But my own casual discussions with teachers of MBSR and similar programs suggest that this does not often happen. In a more systematic study, Rosch (2015) has written about her experience in attending three MBSR trainings and conducting interviews with a number of participants. She concludes that most participants in MBSR training do not develop much sense of what mindfulness (i.e., mindfulnesspc) is, nor do they actually practice it very much. Instead, they are more likely to engage practices that they find familiar or easy to understand (e.g., relaxation practices, generating loving kindness, and hatha yoga, all of which are a part of the training). If true, this makes it quite unlikely that they will go on to engage more traditional Buddhist teachings. Of course, there will always be exceptions.
- 15.
I can speak to this point in terms of my own experience. As a practicing Buddhist, I find that the writings of contemporary Buddhist teachers and writers often offer valuable insights, images, and practices. Yet I have my doubts that new insights and new practices are really what I need. I am not lacking in good Dharma advice and sound instruction; it is just that I do not follow it. Perhaps this is due to my own psychology—a personal failing. But it seems more fruitful to trace it to my commitment to a limited vision of the way things are. Expanding that vision seems to me the therapeia that will serve me—and others who share my situation—best.
- 16.
My thanks to Linda Heuman, Hayward Fox, and Michael Gray for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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Petranker, J. (2016). The Mindful Self in Space and Time. In: Purser, R., Forbes, D., Burke, A. (eds) Handbook of Mindfulness. Mindfulness in Behavioral Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44019-4_7
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