The Benefits of Mindfulness

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This blog exists because I misread a headline in a story on the online version of National Public Radio (NPR). The headline read, “Stressed? Instead of distracting yourself, try paying closer attention.” I read “paying” as “praying,” and thought, “Wow, you don’t see that kind of headline often.”

Anyway, the story was an interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor emeritus of medicine and creator of a stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. According to Wikipedia, Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Buddhist teachers.

From a very early age, he told the interviewer, he was “interested in the whole question of "Who am I? Who are we? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be able to think and feel, and what kind of ways do we have to navigate our own lives, chart our own path….”

Deciding What Matters

Those are questions, in my opinion, that everyone needs to ask, and contemporary culture especially values “navigating our own lives” and “charting our own path” (though few of us actually do so). The ideas emphasize the importance of thinking about what we believe, of examining our lives closely and deciding what matters. It shouldn’t negate what we’ve learned from parents and teachers, just not to accept it uncritically.

Kabat-Zinn is an advocate of “mindfulness,” which he defines as “a form of meditation that really is the cultivation of intimacy with awareness.

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“…We have to learn to enter the domain of awareness,” he said, “because so much of the time, we're living in distraction. And that was true for thousands of years. We didn't have to wait for the iPhone to be distracted. But now we're distracted to an infinitely higher degree than ever before.”

I misread the title of the article, perhaps, because I believe prayer is another way of achieving greater mindfulness, though for many, as I’ve written before, prayer may seem like “talking to ourselves.” Part of that, I believe, is because we look upon prayer as asking for stuff – including good health for ourselves and others, peace in the world, etc. – that we usually don’t get.

For me, prayer is an attempt – not always successful – to bond with God. It may include asking but also includes adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and just plain basking in God’s love. Obviously, this takes faith, and we may not think we have enough for this kind of prayer.

But though we may have faith “the size of a mustard seed,” prayer can help to increase our faith and fortify whatever “amount” of faith we have.

Inevitable

Distractions are also among the greatest obstacles to quality prayer – the noise in the street, the temperature of the room we’re in, my schedule for the day, my aching back, my relationship with my kids, etc., etc. Distractions are inevitable. We simply have to gently nudge ourselves back to prayer.

You can minimize distractions, of course, by choosing the right time and place to pray. If you’re trying to pray with the TV, your phone or laptop on or in the midst of noise and visual stimulation, the quality of your prayer will suffer. And choosing a naturally quiet time in the day is a help.

But the greatest obstacle may be the suspicion that our prayer won’t be answered, that “we won’t get what we want.” I can only answer this objection by using the analogy used often by Jesus: God is a parent who knows what’s best for us and others.  “Ask and you will receive,” but as with a parent, not necessarily in the way we think.

So, what do we really get out of prayer? Often, it’s calm, peace and joy. And for people searching for God, a gradual awakening to God’s presence in our lives, the epitome of mindfulness and awareness.