Being Mindful, Aware, and Mindfully Aware

Mindfulness means a lot of things to a lot of people. Over the past few years, mindfulness has gained popularity among almost all religions, faiths, secular movements, and even modern medicine. It has taken on various meanings and interpretations to the point that now, when it is used in a conversation, it is imperative that the intended meaning and context are clarified to avoid ambiguity. Therefore, for our article today, it is incumbent upon me to clarify what I mean by Mindfulness. However, to appreciate the profoundness of this idea from a Buddhist philosophical perspective, I wish to introduce another term that significantly qualifies the meaning of Mindfulness: Awareness. Awareness is the state of noticing that something is present or happening. It is an innate ability of the mind; therefore, we are always aware of something. Even now, you are aware of myriad sensations being fed through your senses. For instance, you are aware that you are reading these words and that they are affecting your thoughts and, potentially, opinions. You are aware of yourself; the fact that you are breathing, or a pain you might have in some part of your body; the fact that you are, in all likelihood, sat down right now, whether it is day or night; the physical texture of the paper your fingers are holding on to or the computer mouse if you are reading the e-paper. All of the above are examples of something that is present or happening. Your mind’s ability to perceive them is what we refer to here as awareness. More precisely, it is the state of mind where it takes an object and perceives it based on what the mind believes the object is. The key word here is “believes”. We will dedicate a separate article to detail this phenomenon of “what you believe is your perceived reality.” While this will make sense almost immediately for most, naturally, others will need further explanation. For the time being, though, let us work on this premise.

Now, let us get back to Mindfulness. More precisely, I wish to focus on the mental state of being mindful. The mind is full of something, but what exactly? It is from this viewpoint I invite our readers to interpret mindfulness. For the purpose of our article, by mindfulness, I mean one’s worldview. This is influenced by their knowledge, views, opinions and beliefs. The net result of all of this is one’s view. Views can be based on ignorance and therefore incorrect, or in wisdom and therefore correct. Either way, the mind always takes on a view whenever it processes a moment of awareness to make sense of what it has perceived. Therefore, when the mind becomes aware of something present or happening, and takes on a particular view about that object, it can be considered “mindfully aware”.

When we try to get our mind to the present moment with the right awareness, we observe its true nature – how it habitually wanders, daydreams and fantasises. We are constantly preoccupied with the past and the future. The mind rarely settles in the present. Like a restless monkey, a mind with expectations will always tirelessly swing between the trees of the past, present and future. Just look at how we always worry about our child’s past or future. This is evident when we move our focus onto our child at a particular moment; we can observe our mind wandering. One thing will lead to another, and finally, you find yourself thinking about something completely random, like what your favourite celebrity might be doing at this moment.

Our mind will gradually follow a train of thought, but if one is not careful, we will find our way into the quicksands of sensual desire, anger, sloth and torpor, doubts, restlessness, and worry, which are the five hindrances. These will hinder the mind from doing what it is supposed to do. Mindful Awareness is all about being conscious with the correct worldview. We could refer to this as Right Awareness. In relation to the topics of today’s article, it is about being aware of what your child and the authentic world are.

The Real World

The question, ‘So am I not perceiving the authentic world?’ may come into your head. The short answer is… well, you are not seeing all of it correctly. This world and everything in it are products of one phenomenon: Cause and Effect. Understanding cause and effect means that we become aware of nature. So, we must be mindfully aware of this and look at our lives from this angle.

Initially, let’s look at how the mind works.

The mind exists to perceive the world and, therefore, arises in response to contact between our senses (indriya) and objects (āramanna). This table outlines the primary causes giving rise to an individual mind to perceive the said object.

The living body is a beautiful machine that works autonomously. The body comprises billions of intricately interconnected cells, including the brain, heart, and lungs. The body consists of various organ systems, like the respiratory, immune, and excretory systems, to support vital biochemical and biophysical equilibrium called homeostasis.

What part of the body can we single out and call “the body”? Our heart does not represent our whole body, nor does the brain or a single cell. All parts of our body, if taken individually, do not represent our entire body. Yet we perceive “my body is (half – the mind accounting for the other half) me”. This concept has been speculated but has no underpinning proof. But if someone were to show you a picture and ask, “Where are you?” you point your fingers at yourself or your body and say there I am. Also, if you were asked the question right now, you would point to some part of your body, most likely your chest. Is your chest, you? Of course, practically, this is OK as we have to refer to things in the conventional sense, but we know something is wrong with this approach, don’t we? Can you point your finger at your child and say, ‘This is my child’? Is the child’s nose your child? Their head? Is the child’s good behaviour your child? If so, what about the child’s bad behaviours? Is that not your child? Is the child’s mind your child? Which part of the child is your child?

Let’s take a deeper dive to see how the mind works. The mind arises due to external stimuli. The mind that read the last paragraph is no longer there, has passed away or stopped manifesting. Therefore, the mind is not one continuous entity; instead, in very simple terms, it can be considered as short, distinct packets. We know our mind works at extreme speeds, too fast to fathom. When we deal with tiny particles like electrons and protons, we know their quantum behaviour. They have energy states which have determined levels. Either an electron is on level one or level two. The electron can’t be in between. Similarly, our mind arises and passes away, and the next appears. The mind isn’t there in any part of the body. It is a process – the process of perceiving.

The Art of Watching TV

The box sitting in our living rooms may seem pretty simple. You sit down and press some buttons, and it works, but remember, our mind can only perceive one thing at a time, so how does this work? We can see the picture on the TV screen and hear the sound from the speakers. On the screen, we see a person's mouth open and close and hear sounds from the speakers, but our minds somehow perceive that the sound is generated by the mouth on the screen. It may seem strange, but this is how we perceive it. This happens because the mind is not an entity or fixed object. The photons trigger the ‘seeing mind’, and the vibrations trigger the ‘hearing mind’ at different times. But as a result, we perceive a person talking on the television, which at best could be described as the product of the two mental activities, watching and listening. This collection of distinctive minds forms a mental impression that is not in the individual minds we encounter. You can experience this when your television is not working correctly. In the past, when televisions used antennae, because of the lousy connection, sometimes the sound would lag behind the picture as they failed to sync. This makes us feel uncomfortable and will ruin the watching experience. Likewise, like all other minds, your kids also learn like this. They also grow up after eating food, like all bodies, and due to many individual factors like teachers, friends, strangers and parents, the mind will change how it perceives and processes. Your child is an aggregation of zillions of thoughts and billions of different body materials, even in the shortest conceivable moment. The environment we provide is the platform for thoughts to arise. By changing the environment, we can help the child to improve their behaviour.
There is no argument that a ‘Child’ is an exquisite creation, mastery of creativity and aesthetic and functional perfection, not of you, but of nature. The child is the best thing that has happened to us as parents, and we would struggle to live without them. Our mind separates us from the rest of the world. We think and believe we are different creatures from all others. We tend to believe that success is to stand above all other living forms around us. We are looking for ‘my success’, ‘my child’s success’, ‘my team’s success’ and ‘my country’s success’. This polarization of the mind always divides the world into two parts: me and the rest of the world around me.

There is Nothing Fixed about Your Child.

We tend to set impractical expectations on our children to make a fine actor in the script of life you write as you would expect others - your audience, to see. This situation puts tremendous pressure on you to maintain the ‘good’ in your child’s behaviour. We seem to forget that our children are the same as us, mind and body. Like ours, a child’s mind is discrete and will always manifest according to the stimuli received through the senses in a given environment. They have a body subject to change. When the external environment applies energy to it, it is subject to change. The manifestation that we refer to as our child is not fixed but is constantly changing. Yet we still expect our child to be a perfect replica of our expectations and that perfection to be intact. What does it mean to be ‘fixed’? Here, fixed means it is unaffected by and independent of cause and effect.

As we can see, the mind and body manifest entirely due to all the causes present in each discrete instance. Merely understanding this is a great achievement. For some, this is easy to understand but difficult to put into practice. By being vigilant in perceiving your child as a mind and body that manifest from causes, we can avoid the peril of mentally ‘fixing’ our children. Another example to prove that your child is a manifestation is the child’s heart. We feel our child and his entire body are fixed, but if we look closer, we can see otherwise. Our child’s heart is a process, not a thing, and always pumping blood from moment to moment. That is why their hearts can cease at any moment. Think about this – if the heart is your child’s, and if, for whatever reason, we do a heart transplant to the child, now whose heart is it? Everything about your child and inside them are causes that arise and pass away. Your child is simply the intricate, inextricable effect of a virtually infinite number of causes of nature.

There’s a common saying, ‘Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,’ which means beauty doesn’t exist on its own but is created by observers. Just like beauty, there is nothing good or bad in your child’s behaviour. There is nothing fixed in your child. But still, your expectations are set on your child. Our children are effects of nature. The child is essentially not fixed as good, determined, positive, cheerful, optimistic and brilliantly accoladed. In other words, our child is an eternally transforming energy.

The Light Bulb

The light bulb is a perfect metaphor for our children. When we turn on the light switch, we feel that the light emanating from the bulb is fixed. We forget that electric energy is continuously transforming into light energy. We know that a household electricity supply has a frequency of 50 or 60 Hz, meaning the light blinks as many times in a second. This eternal process is complete of causes that manifest an effect of light. If we build a simple circuit to light up a light bulb and keep the switch off, we know that the required causes have not ‘aligned’ correctly, so the light is not lit. If we turned the switch on and the batteries were drained, the bulb’s filament was broken, or a rodent had chewed the wire, would the bulb still light up? If you leave out one of the causes in the process, the light will not manifest. But if you accept the bulb is the process of transforming energy, then you will understand the bulb is not lit up fixedly throughout, but that it has always been converting electric energy into light energy. The light bulb is a continuous process of producing the effect of light. It’s only a process which can be stopped at any time by removing just one of the causes. Like the bulb, our child is also a product of causes and effects. If we don’t understand this truth when our child is going through any hardship, like when their education, behaviour, health and image are degenerating, we tend to brood over how this has happened to ‘my child’, and we feel enormous sorrow. Similarly, we are thrilled when our children excel in their education and relationships. We are always puppeteered by our children’s actions, between pleasure and sadness. I invite you to think about where this expectation comes from. ‘Expectation’ is also a product of cause and effect. How dare you expect expectations to be void of causes?

The light bulb is a perfect metaphor; the same applies to our children. Our children can never be completely good or completely bad. They are continually evolving into their next iteration. It is great that they are not fixed because if our children were completely fixed, good or bad, they could never improve. They are in the process of expressing a behaviour as an effect. Now, as Smart Parents, we ought not to become devastated in the face of our child’s failures, as we know to bring them back from their fall, all we can do is try to supply the right causes, and if the causes come together, we should see the result that would be best for them. This kind of thinking pattern of a parent helps to find their liberation from the pain and the anxiety towards their children. This liberation can only be found when you pry open the iron cages of your mental prison. Use the above key to open the door, and don’t lose it. Keep this key in your hand to open other prison doors in your life. May your child be your teacher and enter an entirely new way of thinking and living.