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Mindfulness:What It Looks Like
De Seminario de Antropologia
Articles in English · Links to English websites · Glossary of anthropologic terms
Although mindfulness is an abstract concept, we can still describe many of its characteristics...
Mindful people are in touch with their feelings. They are aware of their strengths and weaknesses. They are able to make decisions. They can think independently. Rather than simple black and white alternatives, they are conscious of the shades of gray that fall between. They do not control people and do not allow others to control them. They are honest, and have a sense of truth that causes them to react when a story doesn't quite 'add up'. They are creative and effective problem solvers.
Mindfulness includes the ability to focus one's thoughts on an objective, while tuning out irrelevant distractions. For example, when a doctor listens to your heart with a stethoscope, he hears a series of heartbeats. Within each heartbeat, there are a series of subtle sounds. He must listen to each tiny segment, by mentally tuning out the rest of the sounds. This takes a lot of practice. We all need to develop the ability to temporarily ignore the extraneous distractions of the world, and focus on what truly matters to us. This process does not involve a denial of reality, but rather, the selective direction of attention.
The inability to focus is a very common problem. People often allow the various distractions that surround them to pull them in many directions. They are unable to steer their mental ship. Our senses are flooded with an abundance of information, much of which has no sense of logic, no goal, and no direction.
A sense of functionality is an important part of mindfulness. For example, if you examine a watch, you can tell if it is functioning properly. You can take off the back cover of the watch, and inspect the precision mechanism.
Mindfulness, or an intense and profound self-awareness, lies at the heart of an ideal society. Each individual’s behavior exerts an impact on other members of the society. Mindless individuals generate chaos. They harm the people who they love, often without realizing the consequences of their actions. In contrast, mindful individuals are intensely aware of their environment and the people around them, and follow a path of love, selflessness, and peace.
Every person, from the moment of conception, is dealt a unique personality that determines how and what he will learn, and the kind of social contribution that he will make, among other things. This process of individual and unique development works extremely well until the child is placed in the traditional classroom. At that point, the teacher essentially says: "You will learn what I want you to learn, and do the many assignments that I give you. If you do not, you're going to be in big trouble."
Mindless people are self-centered, and deny their social responsibility. They abdicate their responsibility as rulers of their own democracy. They lack the wisdom to know the difference between what they can change, and what they cannot. Mindless people lack a sense of purpose, and have no system of personal record keeping and organization. They are incapable of feeling real empathy. They may manipulate and use other people.
Mindless people deny responsibility for their behavior, and instead blame others. Though they are unable to control themselves, they seek to exercise power and control over the lives of other human beings; this is the most central cause of damage by mindless people at the interpersonal level. Often, such individuals are pseudo intellectual, writing and speaking in a dry, academic, and verbose style, yet their sentiments are void of any real substance. These are the people, who, lacking any sense of direction, go around in a rat race of meaningless activity. These people are the products of our present educational system.
