Michael Mitchell: Archive

"In these books, mindfulness has come to comprise a dizzying range of meanings for popular audiences. It's an intimately attentive frame of mind. It's a relaxed-alert frame of mind. It's equanimity. It's a form of the rigorous Buddhist meditation called vipassana ('insight'), or a form of another kind of Buddhist meditation known as anapanasmrti ('awareness of the breath'). It's M.B.S.R. therapy (mindfulness-based stress reduction). It's just kind of stopping to smell the roses. And last, it's a lifestyle trend, a social movement and -- as a Time magazine cover had it last year -- a revolution."

--Virginia Hefferman, The Muddied Meaning Of "Mindfulness"

Of course, most words can be abused to mislead people into believing almost anything, and the more abstract the word the more effective it is as a tool of deception, but I don't see how the meaning of "mindfulness" has been muddied in these examples. Sure, there may be a dizzying range of things to be mindful of, and there may be a dizzying range of bullshit methods of mindfulness, but the word itself cannot have a dizzying range of meanings.

Mindfulness means to be consciously aware of something. No matter how many religions and gurus package it as "being in the moment," it's meaning endures. No matter how many people buy into it as a movement or a lifestyle, it still means conscious awareness and that's what it will always mean whether we are mindful of it or not.

I think this article is a great example of how we don't understand what words are and how they work and what their purpose is. The meaning of a word is fixed, not dynamic. Words are not connected to or associated with or related to their meanings. Words are not metaphors for reality; they are symbols that represent their meanings. In other words, a word is its meaning. Connotations a word may bring to mind are irrelevant.

The last thing my mother says to me on her death bed could be: "Remember to water the garden." and then afterwards every time I hear the words "water" or "garden" I may think of death or feel sad or whatever, but it doesn't change the meanings of the words "water" and "garden." Believing the word "mindfulness" is equal to a "mindfulness" movement or a meditation method or whatever is just as absurd as believing "water" is an emotion because it evokes sad feelings.

I may agree or disagree with the article's theme that I should be mindful of the "mindfulness" movement, but the meaning of the word itself is very clear. A theme about determining what one should be mindful of would be more helpful. A theme exposing the "mindfulness" movement as "mindlessness" would be even better. But the theme that so many different groups and individuals chose the same concept to integrate their teachings and brand their products is meaningless.

For the record, I think the problem with selling mindfulness is that people are buying it, not that people are selling it. Do we really need instruction on how to be mindful? Sure, it's easy to get distracted, to forget yourself for years even, but everyone over the age of 5 knows how to be mindful. Most of these consumers are just looking for a pill or some psychological trick or a drinking game to make it easier to abdicate the responsibility of consciousness. Mindlessness without consequences is what they're really buying and, according to the article, they're getting what they paid for.