rightmindfulness

Right mindfulness can be boiled down to observing the reality of your world, your self, and their ever-changing and interconnected nature.

Mindfulness is the foundation of insight and how we release the bonds that tie us to our suffering, but it must be combined with right concentration or we can fall into self-reinforcing loops of lamentation, victimhood or anger.

Mindfulness is where we observe phenomena, while the brain states cultivated through concentration are how we release them.

The satipanna sutta is the traditional account of right mindfulness. It essentially says to observe everything as it is, without grasping and without clinging. See how your thoughts change, how your body changes, how every breath and every step and every sound is different. See how you react to external and internal stimuli. See how emotions arise, stay awhile, and then dissipate. See how they are all as one: an external thing triggers and internal state triggers a thought triggers an emotion triggers an action triggers a consequence.

Mindfulness is where the scientist gathers data.

And this data all feeds back into the inherently true algorithm that everything is always changing. Nothing will last forever. Your ‘self’ is just a construct of learned behaviours because of chance and repetition. This self is ever changing and there is nothing to cling to.

This is where we come to the noble truths: impermanence, suffering, and the cessation of suffering.

We intuitively believe that we are whole and lasting and permanent, but life shows us time and again that this is not the case. This is inherently traumatic.

The positive will leave and the negative will approach. Our self will change in response to this and we will be reborn as a new person. This self will go and act in the world, through desire or repulsion, and set in motion a chain of events because they are acting through kamma. The fruits of the kamma are not the issue; the issue is the intent.

When we are intent on a result, we try to enforce our will on a world which does not care and may not respond. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but it causes is suffering regardless. Placing a bet on a horse for example: the excitement and fear and anxiety… does any of that feel nice? Excitement, even… it is almost identical to fear on a physiological level. Do you feel satisfied when you are excited? When you crave that next beer?

Right mindfulness is about simply observing these phenomena for what they are. How they play into each other. How a craving for a result will cause you suffering, and how getting that result will cause you to crave more. The monkey always needs more bananas for the same sense of reward.

It also involves all other aspects of the eightfold path. How you feel better if you have a right livelihood that doesn’t harm other people. How the brain chemistries cultivated through right concentration help you release emotions. How the belief cultivated through right view helps you enter right concentration more easily. How right thought leads to the extinguishment of your own pain. And so on.

Right mindfulness is being aware of how you are feeling reading this. Whether you have any aversion to hearing a new interpretation, or whether you are happy for the fresh viewpoint. 

Right mindfulness is simply gathering data about the reality of existence.

You will do a better job if you have good sensing apparatus, honed through right concentration.

"A person with good eyesight opens the bag and reviews its contents, discerning each type of grain: 'This is hill rice, this is red rice, these are beans, these are peas, this is millet, and this is white rice."

Something about my mind loves the word millet. That is right mindfulness.

Science.

/jb202509170954