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A review by o88
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening by Joseph Goldstein
3.0
This wasn’t an easy read (at least for me) as it’s a very nuanced look at mindfulness practice and Buddhist philosophy. His writing at times is abstract so you need to be somewhat familiar with the literature on this subject. I would highly recommend watching lectures and listening to guided meditations by Goldstein (i.e. via YouTube) as your reading so that you absorb the content easier. Also, Goldstein seems to idolize the Buddha which is always a red flag for me so I couldn't help but feel that he was idealizing the practice.
I want to jump right into the concept of ‘no self’. The science seems to agree with the Buddhists that there isn’t a fixed unchanging self that can be found anywhere in our bodies The idea here is that the sense of self is built on misperceptions and is a mental construct (the "I") and that the ultimate reality is that the self doesn't exist. Therefore, the path towards liberation from suffering is the awareness and renunciation of identifying with self. The renunciation part is a bit extreme for me, but there may be some wisdom in this that can help us cultivate some humility in our lives and tame our egos. It's important to note that the self is not something we want to (or can) get rid of and a strong sense of it is useful both to navigate this world and for natural selection purposes (if you believe in this of course). We obviously do have a continuous psychological entity based on autobiographical memory where we cultivate meaning and purpose out of our lives so nothing of value is lost in any of this. I have mixed feelings about the practice of non-attachment to the self. On the one hand, I see the therapeutic benefits which is less neuroticism, but on the other hand so much of our drive and ambition is attached to self so I think it's important to find a middle ground in all of this as we all don't aspire to be a monk (no offence to them). To confess, I'm agnostic on whether the self is actually illusory and I think practicing non-attachment would be a counterintuitive and paradoxical way to go about life. I'll keep an open mind on this subject both in meditation practice and in life to possibly make better sense of the bigger picture, but it's not something i'm going worry about too much as having a subjective self is simply a part of being human--even for the Zen masters (except for those who claim that their enlightened, but i personally think it's a myth). The important thing here is to tame the ego, release negative 'stuff' that pop up, and to cultivate a healthy mental life.
As for mindfulness, I think a better word for it is “watchfulness”. It’s essentially just observing every single minutiae of your experience in the present moment to gain insight while mitigating needless psychological pain. It's almost like trying to live life in an impersonal third person perspective instead of a personal first person perspective to both observe and micromanage the undesirable tendencies in our lives. Obviously this isn't possible all the time as we will find ourselves back in our heads so to speak and we naturally get out of our heads during the course of the day anyway, but it’s an interesting practice as it gets to the very foundations of our conscious experience. The Buddhists (and science these days) believe that consciousness is impersonal and that objects appear in it transiently—thoughts, intentions, feelings, sensations, etc—and if left untamed will essentially drive us crazy so to become mindful you will gain more control of the flow of experience as it occurs. The liberating factor in all of this—enlightenment—is the awareness of an ‘ultimate reality’ where you transcend the ego and realize that life is happening to us all in a single and total experience (non-duality). This a serene state if you ever experience it. Buddhists call it nirvana.
I think my main issue with mindfulness and pursuing ‘enlightenment’ beside the feasibility of long-term practice is it’s philosophy of quietism. At the end of the day it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and natural selection/evolution does not favour submissiveness and complacency. Mindfulness has a way of disarming oneself and may disrupt personal ambition. Mindfulness may be useful in understanding how to ‘tame’ strong feelings that aren’t serving you, but you need to maintain a degree of passion in your life to keep anchored in ‘normal life’ in order to make things happen. I think to claim that all wants and desires would lead to 'suffering' or is 'unsatisfying' is a bit extreme. Two areas of my life: fitness and learning have led to tremendous and lasting change in my life for the better and it started with a desire towards self-improvement. Ultimately, I think a middle ground needs to be found to be assertive but with composure. The philosophy of non-attachment just feels like avoidance with the amygdala pushing the ‘escape’ button in response to stress disguised as mindfulness in pursuit of enlightenment. It's bit too much ebb & flowing, and not enough action.
All criticisms aside, there is lots wisdom to be found in these teachings. I think Goldstein encapsulates why mindfulness and some sort of 'spiritual path' is worth pursuing in a pair of quotes:
"Keep in mind that none of the Buddha's teaching requires blind belief. The invitation is always to 'come and see'--to investigate and examine for ourselves whether the teachings accord with reality and are conducive to our welfare and happiness"
"The right view is especially relevant for those of us who are laypeople, living our lives engaged with the world in a way that brings happiness and ease rather than stress and difficulties"
I've done some investigating and it certainly does help cultivate balance in my life so that i'm not getting sucked in and lost in the world which was essentially my life until I discovered meditation (and books). I find that in addition to 'ease-fulness' it helps facilitate better critical thinking skills as well, as you have the capacity to unplug and can look at things from an eagle eye perspective now. I think the spiritual path at the end of the day is simply to become a wiser, healthier, and peaceful version of oneself so it's certainly worth pursuing in some manner. I don't think Buddhism is for me as the supernatural elements are difficult to ignore and I don't believe spirituality should be about renunciation, but rather it should be a blossoming of one's inner world to live more fully and authentically which I feel is the foundation towards the richness in our cultures, art, and intellectual achievements. The significance we give to our lives with a sense of self to inspire the next generation to get up in the morning and push against all the uncertainties we face as a species and a global community is more valuable than being at ease with oneself which I find to be inherently selfish and counterproductive. Buddhism has a way of tearing things down instead of building things up and often times just feels like a lifestyle oriented around escapism. Again, great insight, but bad philosophy. Elements of the religion have influenced me though as I find my own path. At the end of the day it's like what the Dalai Lama says:
"Don't use Buddhism to become a Buddhist. Use Buddhism to become better at whatever else in your life you are doing already"
Agreed.
Bottom Line:
There are lots of insight and wisdom here along with some nuanced instruction for mindfulness practice, but i didn’t find this book’s philosophical approach to day-to-day life to be practical for me. It seems to be the sort of thing that's most effective in a full immersion environment like a meditation retreat (Goldstein runs Insight Meditation Society and regularly does retreats) or if you can really take time out of a busy schedule to immerse yourself into the practice for a day. More importantly, unless you aspire to be a monk or a nun most of the teachings in this book won't help when life gets busy. I find that mindfulness is only effective when things are already going relatively smoothly. I intend on continuing my practice (and would like to do a retreat at some point), but it won’t ever come at the expense of living my life with some passion and experiencing some of the fun and more exciting stuff life has to offer-for better or worse.
3/5
I want to jump right into the concept of ‘no self’. The science seems to agree with the Buddhists that there isn’t a fixed unchanging self that can be found anywhere in our bodies The idea here is that the sense of self is built on misperceptions and is a mental construct (the "I") and that the ultimate reality is that the self doesn't exist. Therefore, the path towards liberation from suffering is the awareness and renunciation of identifying with self. The renunciation part is a bit extreme for me, but there may be some wisdom in this that can help us cultivate some humility in our lives and tame our egos. It's important to note that the self is not something we want to (or can) get rid of and a strong sense of it is useful both to navigate this world and for natural selection purposes (if you believe in this of course). We obviously do have a continuous psychological entity based on autobiographical memory where we cultivate meaning and purpose out of our lives so nothing of value is lost in any of this. I have mixed feelings about the practice of non-attachment to the self. On the one hand, I see the therapeutic benefits which is less neuroticism, but on the other hand so much of our drive and ambition is attached to self so I think it's important to find a middle ground in all of this as we all don't aspire to be a monk (no offence to them). To confess, I'm agnostic on whether the self is actually illusory and I think practicing non-attachment would be a counterintuitive and paradoxical way to go about life. I'll keep an open mind on this subject both in meditation practice and in life to possibly make better sense of the bigger picture, but it's not something i'm going worry about too much as having a subjective self is simply a part of being human--even for the Zen masters (except for those who claim that their enlightened, but i personally think it's a myth). The important thing here is to tame the ego, release negative 'stuff' that pop up, and to cultivate a healthy mental life.
As for mindfulness, I think a better word for it is “watchfulness”. It’s essentially just observing every single minutiae of your experience in the present moment to gain insight while mitigating needless psychological pain. It's almost like trying to live life in an impersonal third person perspective instead of a personal first person perspective to both observe and micromanage the undesirable tendencies in our lives. Obviously this isn't possible all the time as we will find ourselves back in our heads so to speak and we naturally get out of our heads during the course of the day anyway, but it’s an interesting practice as it gets to the very foundations of our conscious experience. The Buddhists (and science these days) believe that consciousness is impersonal and that objects appear in it transiently—thoughts, intentions, feelings, sensations, etc—and if left untamed will essentially drive us crazy so to become mindful you will gain more control of the flow of experience as it occurs. The liberating factor in all of this—enlightenment—is the awareness of an ‘ultimate reality’ where you transcend the ego and realize that life is happening to us all in a single and total experience (non-duality). This a serene state if you ever experience it. Buddhists call it nirvana.
I think my main issue with mindfulness and pursuing ‘enlightenment’ beside the feasibility of long-term practice is it’s philosophy of quietism. At the end of the day it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there and natural selection/evolution does not favour submissiveness and complacency. Mindfulness has a way of disarming oneself and may disrupt personal ambition. Mindfulness may be useful in understanding how to ‘tame’ strong feelings that aren’t serving you, but you need to maintain a degree of passion in your life to keep anchored in ‘normal life’ in order to make things happen. I think to claim that all wants and desires would lead to 'suffering' or is 'unsatisfying' is a bit extreme. Two areas of my life: fitness and learning have led to tremendous and lasting change in my life for the better and it started with a desire towards self-improvement. Ultimately, I think a middle ground needs to be found to be assertive but with composure. The philosophy of non-attachment just feels like avoidance with the amygdala pushing the ‘escape’ button in response to stress disguised as mindfulness in pursuit of enlightenment. It's bit too much ebb & flowing, and not enough action.
All criticisms aside, there is lots wisdom to be found in these teachings. I think Goldstein encapsulates why mindfulness and some sort of 'spiritual path' is worth pursuing in a pair of quotes:
"Keep in mind that none of the Buddha's teaching requires blind belief. The invitation is always to 'come and see'--to investigate and examine for ourselves whether the teachings accord with reality and are conducive to our welfare and happiness"
"The right view is especially relevant for those of us who are laypeople, living our lives engaged with the world in a way that brings happiness and ease rather than stress and difficulties"
I've done some investigating and it certainly does help cultivate balance in my life so that i'm not getting sucked in and lost in the world which was essentially my life until I discovered meditation (and books). I find that in addition to 'ease-fulness' it helps facilitate better critical thinking skills as well, as you have the capacity to unplug and can look at things from an eagle eye perspective now. I think the spiritual path at the end of the day is simply to become a wiser, healthier, and peaceful version of oneself so it's certainly worth pursuing in some manner. I don't think Buddhism is for me as the supernatural elements are difficult to ignore and I don't believe spirituality should be about renunciation, but rather it should be a blossoming of one's inner world to live more fully and authentically which I feel is the foundation towards the richness in our cultures, art, and intellectual achievements. The significance we give to our lives with a sense of self to inspire the next generation to get up in the morning and push against all the uncertainties we face as a species and a global community is more valuable than being at ease with oneself which I find to be inherently selfish and counterproductive. Buddhism has a way of tearing things down instead of building things up and often times just feels like a lifestyle oriented around escapism. Again, great insight, but bad philosophy. Elements of the religion have influenced me though as I find my own path. At the end of the day it's like what the Dalai Lama says:
"Don't use Buddhism to become a Buddhist. Use Buddhism to become better at whatever else in your life you are doing already"
Agreed.
Bottom Line:
There are lots of insight and wisdom here along with some nuanced instruction for mindfulness practice, but i didn’t find this book’s philosophical approach to day-to-day life to be practical for me. It seems to be the sort of thing that's most effective in a full immersion environment like a meditation retreat (Goldstein runs Insight Meditation Society and regularly does retreats) or if you can really take time out of a busy schedule to immerse yourself into the practice for a day. More importantly, unless you aspire to be a monk or a nun most of the teachings in this book won't help when life gets busy. I find that mindfulness is only effective when things are already going relatively smoothly. I intend on continuing my practice (and would like to do a retreat at some point), but it won’t ever come at the expense of living my life with some passion and experiencing some of the fun and more exciting stuff life has to offer-for better or worse.
3/5