Mindfulness Myths and Practice in Daily Life
Mindfulness Vs the State of No Thoughts
Mindfulness is certainly not about trying hard to achieve the state of no thoughts. It does not require you to block the arrival of thoughts, good or bad. However, it does ask you remain a silent witness. It does not want you to make any hue and cry about these thoughts. It does not want you to jump into the goodness or badness, or relevance or irrelevance of these thoughts. It only requires you to just say, “ok, thoughts! You are there. I know that you are there and what you are about but I am not going to spend even a single cell of my body to work on you.”
Mindfulness Vs the Vegetative State
At times people are of the opinion that since mindfulness does not require us to be judgmental, there can be no reaction to thoughts or activities which means that the person is removed of all feelings and sensitivities.
This argument is wrong. You can lead the daily life with all feelings and sensitivities, be it happiness, joy, anger, frustration, stress or any other emotion and being mindful at the same time.
While it is true that it does takes you into a meditative state in which the thoughts are not worked upon, it is essentially a tool to train the mind to not consider 99% of the junk thoughts which come to our mind. However, since daily activities, howsoever small these are, do require some thinking, mindfulness cannot be against thoughts totally. Mindfulness trains our minds to be in the present. This means that we shall be thinking about the work being done at present, without worrying about some random thought which can unsettle us. From this perspective, it is a tool to remove the unnecessary thoughts and teach us the art of filtering the clutter.
Let us take an example. Let us say that you have to wash the utensils. So, unless the thought comes, you will not get up and begin doing this activity. Now, while you are washing the utensils, it is important to think not about anything random but about these utensils only and how you are doing it. Similarly, if you are taking a walk in morning or jogging, it requires you to enjoy the walk, may be count the number of steps you have taken to remain focused.
No Thought Vs Think Well
Remember the word is ‘mindfulness’. It is not ‘mindlessness’. Therefore, it is not about achieving a ‘no thoughts’ status intentionally. Then, is it about thinking well about any damn thought that comes to mind? If that is to be done, and which is human nature to do, that can also be a part of mindfulness if you do not get worried or excited about it. There is no opposition to the arrival of thoughts and if these do merit working, then this can be done but other important activities shall be suspended. So, we do believe that thinking well about any future action is a part of the mindfulness itself because at times, thinking for future course of action is to be done. One cannot put thoughts in garbage if these are going to influence your future.
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