I am doing a course on mindfulness through Coursera. The balance created by looking at non-Buddhist sources on the topic of mindfulness was for me inspiring and brought me much closer to the ideas that had been presented. It seems that the term mindfulness has been drawn from Buddhist origin but the concept of mindfulness is certainly not a concept that is new to the West. As was shown in the discussion on Stoicism the idea of being mindful might be viewed from a slightly different perspective but it definitely deals with the topic of mindfulness. Since Stoic philosophy is basic to my own philosophy I can relate strongly to the stoic definition of mindfulness. My own mindfulness practice was drawn primarily from Western thought and less from the east. I personally think that the Western Esoteric tradition and mystical movements has a lot to contribute to the mindfulness debate. I fully understand that this course cannot tap into all the sources.
On the temple of Delphi in ancient Greece above the portal was inscribed the injunction “know thyself”, is that not in part a call for mindfulness. The Western mystery traditions have for ages focused on tools and techniques to acquire a better or more mindful perspective of who we are through self knowledge. Plato’s students used the hypomnemata as the foundation to his philosophic approach to knowledge. The hypomnemata constituted a material memory of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering these as an accumulated treasure for rereading and later meditation. Plato’s concept of idealism claimed that reality is fundamentally mental…and gave within its definition emphasis to mindfulness. Plato was a student of Socrates who taught us much about critical thinking…or an awareness not to take things at face value but to critically question things. That ability to question is another vehicle to mindfulness. Pythagoras taught his students to be quiet for 5 years as part of their philosophical training and showed the importance of silence as a means to mindfulness. We might even see that as a very extreme approach to achieve mindfulness from refraining to speak. Thus if we look at the cauldron of Western thinking as it is given down from ancient Greece we see how an approach to mindfulness has shaped and developed itself.
Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras had a certain influence on the development of Stoicism in ancient Roman thinking since they are quoted by Stoic philosophers. We see that central to stoicism is the mindfulness of what is important and what is not, what is within our control and what is not. This is a mindfulness that is a practical day to day awareness. Combine that with the two Stoic practices to envision the day ahead in the morning and to evaluate the day at the end of the day are further tools brought to the front to mindfulness on a practical level. The Stoics extended mindfulness to an even higher conception by putting virtue as the ultimate focus that should pervade our lives in order for us to be truly happy and taste the Ultimate Good.
Hermeticism is a religious, philosophical system based on writings attributed to Hermes Tresmegistus. These writings had a significant impact on Western philosophical development. Hermetic tradition holds that all is mind and mind is all. Thus the whole tradition puts another strong emphasis on a reason to be “mindful”. The maxim “As above so below” reflects something of the mindfulness that reflects from the Hermetica for it states that whatever happens in reality also happens on every other level, which includes the mental level. Thus for the Hermetic practitioner mindfulness is an awareness of how our thinking impact on our perception of reality and visa versa. The Hermetic Arcanum for example says: “Let him that is desirous of this knowledge, clear his mind from all evil passions, especially pride, which is an abomination to heaven, and is as the gate of Hell; let him be frequent in prayer and charitable; have little to do with the world: abstain from company keeping; enjoy constant tranquillity; that the Mind may be able to reason more freely in private and be highly lifted up; unless it be kindled with a beam of Divine Light, it will not be able to penetrate these hidden mysteries of truth”. This might sound over religious but it is still a clear call to clear the mind in order to fill it with a different type of thinking.
If we jump to a a later age we find that even Sir Roger Bacon who started the idea of a scientific method with the maxim “Knowledge is power” was born from a concept of a call for a more mindfulness of what truly is. Until Sir Roger Bacon the scientific thinking was mainly based on what people thought and said and not through an experiential search. The product of science was a product from Western thought to become more mindful of what actually can be observed, tabulated and tested. That is in itself a call for greater mindfulness not just by asking critical questions but also by a scientific process of investigation.
We can trace back the idea to more recent Western philosophers like Descartes who proclaimed the adage: “Cognito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am”. With it he placed at the centre of Western mindfulness the idea that we can doubt everything but we can be certain that we exist through the knowing that we are thinking. It is no wonder that Descartes writing is called “Meditations on first philosophy” We gain a deep sense of certainty when we focus our attention on our selves and more specifically our thinking. That certainty is the ultimate leverage from where man can begin with a certainty that is self-evident and not a deduction. We can continue and look at a plethora of Western Philosophers that brought some insight to a Western conception of mindfulness.
A deeper search will also show that traditional world religions e.g. Christianity, Judaism and Muslim all have approaches to mindfulness although it might be coloured through different lenses. The principle I want to convey is that almost all religions and traditions had some view on mindfulness and that if one really want to develop an appreciation of the richness within the idea of mindfulness there is still much more to be extracted into the cauldron of “constructive mindfulness” as a learning method that continues to evolve the concept of mindfulness.
There is too much to go into in more detail. I am quiet amused how much emphasis “constructive mindfulness” places on Buddhism as the source of mindfulness and mentions other traditions as more peripheral ideas that might be considered. It will bode well for constructive mindfulness in a modern jacket to consider the rich tradition and thought from the West. The result might be an approach even more suited for modernity that is neither Western nor Eastern but a true investigation in all traditions.
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