The Transformative Simplicity of Mindfulness

Let’s forget for a second about all the new studies coming out in recent years that link mindfulness to stress release and other beneficial effects on body and mind. Let’s ignore all the (necessary and important) studies showing how meditation changes the make-up of the brain itself, reduces anxiety, makes states of loving-kindness more easily available in daily life. And let’s also forget about spiritual traditions that link experiences during mindful meditation to tales of unified consciousness, of a divine ground of experience, to the revelations of the prophets.

There is a very simple idea behind mindfulness that is in my mind independent of all its beneficial effects and all potentially metaphysical framings.

Sam Harris likens it to experiencing stress released by reading a book. Getting your well-deserved relaxation might be a nice side effect, but it has almost nothing to do with the content and point of reading a book.

Mindfulness is a fundamental shift in perspective on one’s life and on the nature of reality itself.

The Stories We Tell Us About Ourselves

Photo by Nong Vang on Unsplash

There are two distinct ways in which we live: first, there is what we tell each other and ourselves about what is going on (as I have explored in an AI-related context here). We…