The Problem of Mindfulness

Sometimes mindfulness can be stressful.

In fact, the thing I like most about a lot of media (my newest favorite being the series It's Always Sunny In Philidelphia downloaded from iTunes) is the mindlessness of it.

So after that first post - a grandiose statement I had been conjuring in my mind for a couple months and wanted to make it come out perfect - I was feeling a bit stressed. It took me about 4 hours or so to decide which blog site to use (later post on why I chose blogspot and my disappointment when I learned it's owned by Google), create my account, and write the post. Like a pendulum, I swung back from the positive mindful and aware mindset I had been hoping this blog would help me achieve, and actually found myself indulging in all sorts of mindless media, along with beer and potato chips.

Those well practiced in mindfulness may have some tips on how to get over this problem, i.e. stress caused by extra awareness that makes it difficult to practice vigilent mindfulness. I must admit that my knowledge and practice of mindfulness is pretty limited. My Mom, now a mental health counselor, introduced me to the concept. I've picked up Tich Nhat Han books a couple times in the past 5 years, only to read a couple pages and then put them down, finding his approach too difficult for me for precisely the reason above. He encourages us to practice mindfulness all the time, to embrace the moment of whatever we are doing. "While I am washing the dishes, I know that I am washing the dishes. While I am walking, I know that I am walking." But I don't always want to be mindful. Sometimes, I like to let my mind wander, to imagine, to day dream, to dwell on the past and the future. The brief moments when I've experienced mindfulness have been through vipassana or zazen meditation. I've toyed with these practices after getting some basic instruction from Western teachers about how to sit and focus on the breath in vipassana, or "let your thoughts pass" in zazen. But I have only practiced them in spurts, daily for a week or a month or so here and there. I can't seem to really commit to them long term.

However, I feel that I've gained a little insight from the little sitting I've done about mindfulness and concentration. With vispassana, I discovered that my thoughts of course wander after a breath or two, but the key to concentration is constantly bringing my attention back to the breath. After about a month of practice, I was able to concentrate on two or three or more breaths at a time before my mind wanted to wander. With zazen, I've experienced my thoughts passing, allowing them to float by like clouds without really being attached to their meaning or significance. In other words, being aware of my thoughts in a detached way. When in a particularly sublime state, I am able to concentrate on the space between thoughts and let my mind go blank before I feel the next thought arising.

This is the sort of mindfulness I am aiming for with this blog. A detached awareness and prolonged concentration that keeps me coming back to reflecting on media use and abuse, with the hope of someday making my use of media and technology more intentional and mindful. So I will set aside time for this reflection, but I don't have faith in myself to be mindful all the time. Perhaps I can at least become aware of when I'm using the internet, computer, cell phone, etc. in a state of clarity, or when I'm using them to simply stroke my ego and tune out the real world.