Tag: mindfulness

  • the body and related signals

    Because mindfulness interventions are concerned with the idea of being present in the moment, focusing on the body and related signals in a non-judgmental way, such methods are of high interest in research on interoception.

    – Fischer, D., Messner, M., and Pollatos, O. (2017) ‘Improvement of Interoceptive Processes after an 8-Week Body Scan Intervention’. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 11, 452
  • there are no solitary beings

    The Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh describes that none of us is a separate self, but rather we are interbeings.

    Whatever I am doing, the energy of mindfulness enables me to do it as “us,” through interbeing, not as “me.” When I hold a calligraphy brush, I know I cannot remove my father from my hand. I know I cannot remove my mother or my ancestors from me. They are present in all my cells, in my gestures, in my capacity to draw a beautiful circle. Nor can I remove my spiritual teachers from my hand. They are there in the peace, concentration, and mindfulness I enjoy as I make the circle. We are all drawing the circle together. There is no separate self doing it. While practicing calligraphy, I touch the profound insight of no self. It becomes a deep practice of meditation.

    – Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Insight of Interbeing

    I suspect (but it is only a suspicion) that not being a separate self is different in kind from there being no self. But the difference is drawn together by the phenomenological experience of porous (boundary-less) connection in nondual awareness.