Mindfulness, Discriminating Awareness and Caring Attitude

Reaction versus Response

To develop balanced sensitivity and avoid the two extremes of insensitivity or oversensitivity, we have discussed the need to work on two factors: how we pay attention and how we respond. There is a difference between the two words, respond and react. React is what a chemical does and respond is what a human being does when they aren’t compulsively and habitually acting like a chemical. Often, we find that we are reacting like a chemical. We don’t even think and automatically act because of deeply ingrained habits. 

Discriminating Awareness

In fact, we don’t need to behave in that way. We’re human beings and have the ability to discriminate between what is helpful and harmful. We can respond based on choice. We are aiming for this, to respond in an appropriate way and not to just react in old neurotic patterns.

Some might object to this and debate whatever faults might be found in this. They might say that discriminating beforehand, and making a choice and so on, means that a person isn’t acting naturally and is being artificial and contrived. Wouldn’t it better to just be natural?

However, when we look at our natural and spontaneous ways of behaving, often it’s in very neurotic ways. Just because something is spontaneous doesn’t mean that it’s a helpful, appropriate or the best way of dealing with a situation. We can use the example of a baby crying at night. Spontaneously someone might want to smack the baby or scream at it to be quiet. However, no one would agree that this spontaneous so-called natural reaction is a sensitive or balanced way of dealing with a baby.  

Let’s examine a bit more deeply the meaning of something being spontaneous or natural. Actually, what automatically comes up is based on habit and familiarity. Therefore, if we have deeply engrained neurotic habits, that’s what comes up. However, if we train ourselves in more beneficial ways of acting and behaving, eventually these healthier ways of dealing with others and ourselves will spontaneously and naturally arise. 

When we use discriminating awareness to help guide our response to things, it doesn’t mean that it is in an artificial intellectual type of way. For example, if we look over there, there is an opening in the wall and there is the wall. We discriminate between those two things and we know to walk through the doorway. We don’t smack into the wall. We wouldn’t say that this is an artificial intellectual action. Of course, we discriminate what is helpful or harmful, useful or not useful. We use discriminating awareness to be able to live and function in this world. If we didn’t discriminate, we would eat the plate rather than the food on the plate. 

The Basis: A Quiet Mind and Caring Heart

Therefore, in our sensitivity training, we are training to develop this natural ability as a basis for being able to discriminate between what is helpful and what is harmful. We have discussed the need for a quiet mind and a caring heart or attitude. A warm heart is different from a caring heart. For example, we go to a restaurant to eat, and there are many different types of foods. Some are clean and healthy to eat while others are greasy, hard to digest and unhealthy. If we come into the restaurant and we are constantly chattering or our minds are cluttered with all sorts of thoughts, we don’t really pay attention to what we order or put on our plates. The result is we can get sick. If we don’t have a caring attitude, we don’t take ourselves seriously. We don’t care what we order or if we make ourselves sick or not. We’re not careful and we just take anything. We don’t take seriously that our actions will have consequences. We don’t take seriously what a situation actually is. For instance, we don’t take seriously that another person might be upset or somebody is too busy. 

This caring attitude is the basis for having a warm heart. The word “caring” also relates to the word “careful.” To just have a warm heart without caring can actually be quite self-centered and self-enclosed. This is why the quiet mind and the caring attitude are the basis for developing more positive qualities. Without that basis, it’s very difficult to proceed in gaining balanced sensitivity. This caring attitude needs to be directed toward others and ourselves. We need a balance of those two. One without the other isn’t sufficient. 

Mindfulness Is the Mental Glue

We have been working on the quiet mind, the first of the two legs we need to stand on. As we’ve experienced, this isn’t so easy to develop. It requires all the methods of gaining concentration that are taught in Buddhism and other disciplines. These teachings aren’t exclusively Buddhist. They are in other Indian traditions as well. We need what is usually translated as mindfulness. This is actually the mental glue; although this isn’t a very nice expression, it best describes the meaning. This is the factor that keeps our attention glued to something, the factor with which we hold the attention and don’t let go. We need that in order to hold onto our focus on the other person when we are with them in a conversation. We have to hold on and need the mental glue to the caring attitude as well. Without that, we might get bored or disinterested in the conversation. This often happens, doesn’t it?

With that mental glue is the alertness to notice when the glue has become loose and our mind is wandering, thinking about something else or an inappropriate emotion is coming up and so on. When we are holding on, automatically there is a part of the mind that is introspectively alert to any time that the glue is becoming too loose or too tight and then corrects the hold. If our minds wander, or we play movies in our heads, or emotions come up, then we need to apply the three methods that we’ve learned – letting go, writing on water or swells in the ocean – to quiet the mind and reestablish the mental glue on the other person in a proper balanced way. That’s what we need to do to quiet the mind again. 

The faults of the mental glue can be in either direction, too loose or too tight. This coincides with our two categories of too sensitive or indifferent. When too tight, too sensitive or overly emotional, we are too intense with the other person, staring and invading their space. It makes it impossible for the other person to focus. One needs to make the proper adjustments. 

Also, we need to note that the introspection is not completely separate from the mental glue. If we conceive of it as an isolated factor, what happens is that our attention is divided and only part of our attention is on the other person. The other part is on what is going on in our heads. This can go to the extreme of paranoia about losing attention or acting inappropriately. That’s not very balanced either. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama always explains, the main thing is the mental glue. If we maintain this, then automatically there is an alertness to the quality of the mental glue. It’s part of holding on. Put the main part of the focus on the other person, and in really doing that, automatically we notice when it slips.

We can see how the caring attitude is essential because it’s in accord with the mental glue that causes us to not just be focused on another person, but to care if we are mentally wandering, care about our emotions and focus being too intense and so on. Shantideva, the great Indian Buddhist master who wrote Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, Bodhicharyavatara, explains in two chapters a discussion of ethical discipline being the foundation for concentration. One chapter is usually translated as “Conscientiousness,” actually the mental factor we are calling the caring attitude. We have to care that we don’t come under the influence of anger and other disturbing emotions and so on. Then, the second chapter is on mindfulness, this mental glue. This is the source for much of what we are discussing in balanced sensitivity.

Brief Review of Practice 

Let’s return to our practices. We learned the three methods for quieting the mind: letting go, writing on water and the swell on the ocean. We worked with the first phase of the training working with photographs and thoughts of others. Before we go onto the next phase, let’s do a brief review exercise of what we have covered thus far. This is just like athletic training in that we have to repeat and do it over and over again to familiarize ourselves with it.

Let’s do it again. I suggest that we work with the three photos, of an acquaintance, a friend and someone we dislike, one at a time in sequence to see how we can maintain the quiet mind.

Guided Meditation

• Start by quieting down and focus on the breath.
• Look at the photograph of the bare acquaintance with a quiet mind using any of the three methods that are appropriate.
• Pause for a moment and let the experience settle.
• Now fix your mental glue on the picture of a friend. If it becomes too strong or too weak, apply the appropriate method to quiet the mind.
• Pause for a moment and let the experience settle.
• Lastly, turn to the person that we don’t like. Fix the mental glue and if it’s too tight or too loose apply the appropriate method.
• Each of these three methods only requires a second or two to apply. Just let go of a thought, for example, and then continue with the mental glue.
• Writing on water for each syllable is done and finished. Then, continue with mental glue on the person.
• The wave on the ocean is just one second of feeling like that and then return to the mental glue.
• Put down the photos and let the experience settle.
• Focus of the breath.