Oakville Zen Meditation
Inside Mindfulness: What is it? and how it works in our brains.
I will not talk about how to meditate, or the beneficial effects of mindfulness-based meditation.
Go to “Dharma lecture” on our site, then type the topic in “search”, and you will have all talks on these subjects. Instead, I will elaborate specifically on what is mindfulness, and how mindfulness works.
What is mindfulness?
There is still confusion regarding the definition, meaning, and practice of mindfulness.
So, let’s go back to the basics. The word comes from the Pali word, “Sati”, which means literally
“ the active mind watching something at the moment”. It has been poorly translated in a single word as mindfulness and, yet, the genuine meaning has nothing to do with the conventional cognitive one. Therefore, being mindful carries 2 meanings:
1)The conventional, cognitive modane definition means:
To be mindful is to focus, and analyze for recall, memorization, analysis, creation, judgment, and decision. This type of mindfulness is, by definition purely cognitive, and decisional.
So, we can define it as: focusing thoughtfully, and decisional.
2) The true genuine mindfulness as described, and taught in Zen-Buddhist writings and other Oriental spiritual practices:
To be mindful is to pay attention, to be actively aware of what is happening specifically in our mind, body, and or environment in the present moment without any analysis, judgment, emotion, or decision. It is both a mental state and a physical practice. In the Zen Buddhist literature, mindfulness is often referred to as “egoless active awareness”.
This type of practice became popular in 1979 by John Kabat Zinn when he developed his mindfulness-based stress reduction program in Boston. MBSR is now used all around the world, especially in stressful working environments such as hospitals, military special forces, etc.
In a nutshell, again, genuine mindfulness is to focus specifically on something, in the present moment, and w/o any specific analysis or decision, that is thoughtless.
The analogy: I am mindful when my mind-brain is a mirror reflecting an object X in the present moment, and without judgment or decision.
How does mindfulness work?
2 important facts must be mentioned here before going further:
1 Using fMR our brain-mind produces thousands of thoughts/feelings non-stop 24/7, but it
2 Cannot process more than one thought/feeling at the very same time meaning, for example, that if you focus mindfully only on your breathing you are forcing your brain-mind to slow down, if not stop its chain of thoughts/feelings. It is the law of 1 and 0 like the binary system in computing.
By being mindful, you anchor your mind. It is like pressing the pause button while watching a video.
Forcing your mind to focus mentally, and unemotionally on just breathing, or just on a thought, or just an emotion, or a sensorial perception, or cooking, or walking, or anything inside or outside yourself, etc…you become a mono thinker for a short period rather than having your mind wandering non-stop. At this point, you control your mind and not your mind controlling you as usual. This is critical to understand the beneficial effects of mindfulness-based meditation.
Does mindfulness affect our brain structures and functions.?
Yes. Like most of our organs, our brain can modify its structures and functions according to the various tasks that we are asking it to perform. It is called neuroplasticity or simply rewiring.
Since being mindful in its Zen meaning means to practice non-judgmental, non-decisional active awareness, the following structural and functional changes can be observed using fMRI:
1) our cognitive prefrontal cortical brain develops, 2) our emotional centers localized in our reptilian brain become less active, and 3) the neuropathways connecting our emotional centers with the other brain centers are reduced in numbers and activity. This adapted rewiring is reversible if the practice of mindfulness is reduced. The opposite is also true: the more you practice, the more effective mindfulness becomes.
One may consider the practice of simple mindfulness, and mindfulness-based meditation as some sort of brain workout. Thanks
