Mindfulness

Written by Ubasaka Roy

MINDFULNESS (p. Sati)

My talk this evening is about ‘Mindfulness’ (or ‘Sati’, to give it its Pali name), the eighth great virtue in our weekly series of talks covering all ten virtues. Mindfulness is also known as ‘Mindful Awareness’ or simply just ‘Awareness’ but to avoid any confusion, throughout the talk, I will stick to using the word ‘mindfulness’.

Mindfulness – what it’s not!

To get a good sense of what something like mindfulness is, I often find it helpful to first consider what it is not ie the opposite state of ‘mindlessness’.

‘Mindless vandalism’, for example, is a phrase we all recognise and understand. It means to act without thinking, to destroy for no reason, to function unconsciously. The phrase ‘mindless living’ may not be a favourite of the press but we can apply it all the same. What is mindless living and how can we avoid it?

Ellen Langer is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard and in her book entitled ‘Mindfulness – choice and control in everyday life’, she identifies three classes of mindless behaviour. These three classes she calls:

Entrapment by category: A wealthy man rings your doorbell at 2:00am in the morning and offers you