Mindfulness, like faith,
without good works is
a spiritually dead thing
I was waiting on the side
of a busy street. Traffic
flowed by like thoughts in
neural pathways,
sometimes speeding,
sometimes congested. I saw occasional
acts of kindness and many missed
opportunities to make people feel better.
Across the street the automatic doors of
a large supermarket were opening and
shutting continuously.
A woman emerged carrying several
paper bags filled with groceries. A box
fell off the top of one and her careful
balancing act was in jeopardy. She was in
a dilemma that I was sadly unable to
help her with; and no one else around
even seemed to notice. At such moments
a universal empathy switches on. I knew
what it was like, the feeling of
awkwardness, foolishness, irritation with
self and the universe.
It was not hard to imagine her
instinctive thoughts. Should she try to
bend down, still holding her parcels, to
pick up the box from the ground? A risky
and potentially very inelegant operation.
Should she place all her bags on the
ground and recover the dropped item
and then try to pick them all up again?
This would not be easy to do from a
bending position. These and other
options raced through her – or at least
my mind – in a few moments of rapid
response. What would happen?
If this were an episode of House of
Cards it would end here, leaving us in
suspense. But the dramas, small and
great, of life are not interrupted by
commercials or credits. And the
unexpected happens even more
unexpectedly than on screen.
From nowhere an angel appeared.
Perhaps, like me, it had been watching
the traffic and noticed a flashpoint of
human need. It looked like a man and, in
a very human way, retrieved the dropped
item and placed it safely on top of one of
the bags she was holding. It was a
curiously intimate gesture.When we are
in need the barriers of fear and greed
come down and a relationship of trust
emerges at the level of a common
humanity. Such moments are sadly
fleeting but glorious. She thanked him
with a heartfelt look. He disappeared
into the angelic realm of altruistic
benevolence.
Meanwhile I was merely an observer.
Aware but unengaged. Of course often
people are not even aware of the needs of
others around them. Someone in a
caring profession told me recently that
he was reluctant to meditate because it
would expose him to too much feeling
for those he was caring for. Better to be a
detached, professional caregiver.
Such an attitude drives many of our
bureaucratic systems today and, even as
they fail through a lack of humanity and
common sense, we still prefer this
objective mechanical model to the
presumed sloppiness of the emotional
and the “subjective”.
So, awareness is better than the
complete lack of caring perception of
others that results from self-absorption.
But awareness is not enough. When
necessary we have to cross the street to
develop our awareness into attention.
This attentive level of consciousness is
truly human. Awareness is barely levelone
humanity. Attention is the fruit of a
personal connection, developing the
potential for relationship. Sympathy is
raised to empathy and empathy to
compassion and compassion to love in
an action that respects the other and
expresses one’s true and deepest self.
Awareness, attention, action in love. We
cannot interrupt the sequence without
freezing our humanity or falsifying the
integrity of others. This is why the
current interest in “mindfulness” is a
great opportunity for those who can
connect the dots. Many Buddhist
commentators point out that secularised
“mindfulness” (samma sati in Pali)
should not be isolated from the full
meaning of the Buddha’s teaching
surrounding it. If it is, the danger is that
we become merely privately mindful,
aware only of ourselves as observers.
Mindfulness, like faith, without good
works is a spiritually dead thing. It
stimulates perception “in the flesh” but
leaves the spirit dormant. I would love to
hear reports of priests talking of this
from pulpits, or of episcopal letters
pointing out what is happening in
worldly spirituality away from the pulpit
and the kind of language most people are
talking around these things. What an
opportunity to explore the meaning of
the “mind of Christ” that is in us. Maybe
there’s an angel waiting in the wings.
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