The effort to be aware
So, what's been happening? A few weeks ago I felt as though I'd fallen in love with simple mindfulness again. It seemed so natural to be present with moment-to-moment experience. When sitting on the cushion, I didn't really long for anything else to happen outside of this quiet contentment. No longing to get anywhere or trying to create a special feeling.
It's hard to know what creates these movements in our practice but I feel like one factor was a question I was asking myself. The question is not "Am I mindful?" or "I need to be more mindful, how can I be more mindful." The question is...
How much effort am I making to be mindful right now?
- If the answer is, "none"--as it often is--then I can just make a little more effort than that.
- If the answer is, "too much"--as it sometimes is, perhaps more so on the cushion--then I can relax.
A reinforcing feedback loop
Since I've been reading a lot about systems thinking lately, here's a diagram showing how this practice builds on itself. As we dial in the level of effort and become more grounded and aware in the present moment, there is more awareness available to keep an appropriate effort going.
How does this work?
Well, firstly, I feel like any effort greater than "none" creates a little momentum that can gradually build. This is very much the idea of Sayadaw U Tejaniya, who often points out that it only takes very little effort to be aware. He's looking for a level of effort that we can maintain all of the time.
Too much effort, on the other hand, can easily become too much to maintain for very long. Awareness is here while we're making a big effort and then drops away as soon as we forget. There's no subtlety. Then it becomes a struggle, we're not actually being relaxed and mindful anymore, we're starting to push on experience, there's an insistence, a craving.
The final point I want to make here is that we are not necessarily in control of the result. In this sense, mindfulness is the result we'd like. But we it's maybe not so helpful to say, "I'm going to be mindful... now." That's trying to force things. But we can put forward an intention and a little effort that, if consistent, can have wonderful results.
So where am I now with this?
Work and family life have been quite busy lately, and I've been messing around with computers quite a bit too. So this thread was somewhat submerged in the daily tumult. One of the nice things about writing a blog like this is that when something is working, I make a note to write a post about it. That in turn tends to surface and remind me to pick the thread back up again. I have done so in the course of writing this, and it's certainly helpful.
Finally, my daughter came up with a joke that struck me as plausibly Buddhist. What do you call a fruit that clings to things? A graspberry!