Click here to download - Jamshedpur Jesuits

Basic to healing: Mindfulness
practice and meditation are basic to
healing and therapy. Mindfulnessbased
therapies and practices are most
popular in the West; they are secularized
and watered-down versions of
the originally Buddhist rigorous forms.
Mindfulness meditation is basically
Buddhist and it is central to its practice
and theory.
Mindfulness in Pali language is sati,
in Sanskrit smrti: it means remembrance
or recollection: remembrance as
paying attention, being present,
being aware, holding. The Buddhist
practice of mindfulness is the basis
of vipassana meditation. Vipassana is
Wellness
teaching of mindfulness in this sutra
as well as in vipassana courses is a bit
problematic. For, their mindfulness
practice is portrayed as watching,
observing, analyzing and labeling
of one’s sensations, emotions and
thoughts; it is self-consciousness taken
to extremes, which is counterproductive.
Mindfulness comprises the threefold
of awareness, attitude and awakening
to the ground of awareness itself. The
interpretation of these dimensions is
many-sided and also a bit controversial.
Let me present the essentials very
briefly.
Awareness: Mindfulness is first of
all awareness: non-judgmental awareness
By Ama Samy, SJ
and is concrete, moment to moment.
Mindfulness of course is embodied selfawareness.
An exercise: Sit for a few minutes
and pay attention to your breath and
body sensations. You can pay attention
to your breath sensation, to your
body, to your being seated, the sounds
around you and so on, but breathawareness
is basic. Pay attention to how
your breathing feels, in the abdomen
particularly. Your abdomen is moving in
and out, just be aware of the sensations.
When you are aware of this, your
awareness is not restricted or confined, it
vast and boundless, and yet it is focused
on the breathing sensation and body.
Meditative
Mindfulness
ancient Buddhist meditation, but it was
revived only in the last century in Burma
and Thailand. There are more than one
school of vipassana, and they are not
without controversies. V i p a s s a n a
is contrasted with samatha, which is
concentration and samadhi.
Vipassana means clear seeing or
inquiry - seeing into the impermanent
nature of all reality and of the
impermanence and passing nature
of the self. Satipatthana Sutta is the
classic teaching of mindfulness. The
of what is happening in your body and
mind as well as in the environment; it is
being present and paying attention; it
is not observation or watching; it is felt
sense, like drinking water and knowing
if it is cold or warm. Some make a good
distinction between embodied selfawareness
vs conceptual self-awareness.
Conceptual self-awareness is based in
language, is rational and explanatory
and is abstract; embodied self-awareness
is based in sensing, feeling and acting;
it is spontaneous, open to change
Mindfulness is being grounded
and centred in the body, in the felt sense
of the body as well as what is happening
to your mind and in the environment.
It is slowing down, being present, alive
and aware. Not being carried away by
fantasies or thoughts, but coming back
again and again to the breath and body.
Though your attention is centred
on the breath, there will be a spaciousness
to awareness, a spaciousness like the vast
sky. In this spaciousness, you can let-be
yourself, giving oneself space for all
JIVAN: News and Views of Jesuits in India NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2012 19