One clear definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, founder of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program: “Mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way- on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”

Personally, my favorite definition is by my primary Mindfulness teacher, Shinzen Young: 

“Mindfulness is a set of attentional skills, which can be cultivated with systematic practice. These skills (described below) are: Concentration, Sensory Clarity, and Equanimity.”

The Three Attentional Skills of Mindfulness

Concentration:

Concentration is one’s ability to focus on what is deemed relevant (and to let go of what is deemed irrelevant).

This is the fundamental skill of attention. Without the ability to direct and maintain attention learning would be impossible, regardless of the subject. Fortunately, medicine has discovered the reason that most children and adults in the modern era find it challenging to concentrate- we’ve all had previously undiagnosed Ritalin deficiencies. I’m joking ( 1 ).

( 1 ) I’m not anti-medication. I know friends, colleagues and patients who have truly benefitted from Central Nervous Stimulant medication such as Ritalin. My gripe is that modern society often reinforces scattering of attention and that medications are sometimes prescribed while the root causes of the problem aren't treated.

Why do we find it hard to concentrate, then? That’s a topic for another article, but suffice it to say that in our rapid-fire, sound-bite, multi-tasking, hyper-connected, over-stimulated, and under-exercised society, concentration can be extremely challenging for anyone. On top of that, almost nowhere is it taught that Concentration is a skill that can be developed with practice! We tell children: “Pay attention!” and “Focus!” while keeping them cooped up inside all day, and then never even bother to teach them HOW!  

I recall Jon Kabat-Zinn’s presentation at a conference on Mindfulness in Education, where he quoted Shinzen: “Any other skill you wish to attain depends on your ability to focus. Likewise, the success of any endeavor you undertake depends at least somewhat on your ability to focus. Yet concentration skill, which logically speaking, should be the leitmotiv in all education from grade school onward, is seldom even mentioned, let alone systematically taught. No wonder things get so screwed up!”

So let me repeat the good news: Concentration is a skill that can be developed with practice!

Not only that, the training isn’t rocket science.

Let’s take as an example a basic breath meditation. I sit down and say to myself- “For the next 20 minutes, I’m going to train my ability to concentrate. And for practice, I’ll use my breath as the object of focus. Barring an actual emergency, (in which case I’ll attend to that emergency appropriately) I’m going to keep my attention on my breath. If my attention wanders off my breath, I will gently, but intently, bring the attention back to the breath.”

What most people find when they first start to meditate is that it’s not so easy! The mind wanders to plans, fantasies, memories, emotions, to hearing, to other body sensations- countless distractions! But the instructions are simple- “Keep the attention on the breath, and if the attention wanders off the breath, as soon as you notice that, let go of that distraction, and bring the attention back to the breath.” With time and practice, you’d expect that a person would be able to maintain the attention on the breath for longer and longer periods of time (on average), and the time spent lost in distraction would be less and less. Just like working out at the gym helps a person develop strength that they can apply to sports, yard work, and other life situations, the strength of concentration that a person develops during formal meditation practice allows him or her to focus attention on whatever he/she deems important- the professor’s lecture, the coach’s instructions, the book, the basketball hoop, the goal, whatever, making it that much more likely that he/she will learn the topic, or succeed in whatever the endeavor. ( 2 )

( 2 ) Some schools consider Concentration to be a separate skill of attention, a pre-requisite of sorts. In the past, Shinzen used to list this skill separately as well, but for the past few years has listed it as the first fundamental attentional skill of mindfulness.)

Sensory Clarity:

Sensory Clarity is the ability to be precise about exactly what is occurring in one’s own sensory experience.

To develop Sensory Clarity, we use our concentration to pay attention to what is going on in our senses. Most of us learn about Five Senses in elementary school- Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Feeling. That’s a good start, and because these senses are familiar, I usually begin my presentations on sensory clarity with examples of them.

Photo Credit Hans Braxmeir

For instance, let’s take the experience of eating a gourmet meal. With our eyes we observe the presentation of the dish- the colors and visual textures, with our nose the aromas, with our tongues and mouths the tastes and tactile textures of the food. Paying attention to the sights, textures, aromas, and flavors of a gourmet meal can increase our delight and satisfaction from the meal, but even a simple meal attended to in this way can be incredibly interesting and fulfilling. One of the first mindfulness exercises we do in the MBSR course is to eat a raisin mindfully, and it’s common to hear people report things like “I never realized how much flavor one raisin could have.” Although it takes effort to eat in this way, (because it’s often not our habit), it’s much more fulfilling. Specifically more fulfilling than sitting on the couch with a bag of chips, zoning out watching whatever's on ESPN while simultaneously surfing Youtube on the laptop and playing poker on the iPhone. (Cough, ahem, I mean, um, I imagine that's the case, um...)

For certain professions, a well-trained palate is crucial. Chefs, wine sommeliers, coffee roasters, perfume designers… any worth their salt have diligently worked to increase their sensory clarity (although they might not have realized that is what they were doing, and probably didn’t use the term "sensory clarity".) In other professions, a high degree of sensory clarity of other senses is more important- for example visual/spacial resolution for a painter or graphic designer, or an architect or radiologist. For a musician or audio engineer- obviously auditory resolution is imperative. And while some degree of natural talent plays a role, systematic training is essential.

( 3 ) While my primary focus in teaching and practicing mindfulness is the elimination of stress and suffering, I need to remind myself, to paraphrase CS Lewis, that the things that make life worth living for are not to be valued less than those things that make life possible.  Otherwise I can get a bit stodgy.

“All this is nice,” I might say to myself. “Sure, I can see how increased sensor clarity could help me enjoy pleasant activities more.  If I had the time- I’d love to have a chef’s palate, a painter’s eye, a maestro’s ear. But right now I’ve got a ton of stuff on my plate- stress at work and home, anxiety, pain… how can sensory clarity help me with these?” ( 3 )

Great question!  In order to answer that, I need to first introduce a few concepts:

The first concept to consider “Thought” as sense phenomena. Just as the eye receives and transmits external sights, and the ear registers external sounds, the mind perceives thoughts- consisting of mental images and mental talk (and/or mental tunes/music etc., which you can relate to if you’ve ever heard a song on the radio and had it in your head all day!)  Sometimes people are astonished to discover that thoughts can be both auditory and visual, but even the late great Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, mentions that this needed to be pointed out to him.  Quoted in What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character, p. 54: “When I was a kid growing up in Far Rockaway, I had a friend named Bernie Walker. We both had “labs” at home, and we would do various “experiments.” One time, we were discussing something- we must have been eleven or twelve at the time- and I said, “But thinking is nothing but talking to yourself inside.” “Oh yeah?” Bernie said. “Do you know the crazy shape of the crankshaft in a car?” “Yeah, what of it?” “Good. Now, tell me: how did you describe it when you were talking to yourself?” So I learned from Bernie that thoughts can be visual as well as verbal.”

The second concept to consider is that “Emotion” can be broken down into its component parts: thoughts, and certain “flavors” of body sensation. Let’s take for example the emotion of anger. How would I know if I’m feeling angry? If I’m mindful, I might recognize some of the following: that my breathing has become shallow, my heart rate has increased, my jaw is clenched, the muscles around my eyes are tense, there’s a tingling sensation in my arms, and a hot “angry-flavor” of sensation that is most pronounced in my upper chest and neck. In addition, I might have certain thoughts such as “That Jerk!” (Although in all honesty, if I was really angry with someone I’d probably use a stronger word than “jerk!”) Now- if you’re reading this and found that funny, you might notice a smile right now, and a subtle humor/amusement flavor in the face and chest. That’s how you would know that you’re feeling amused. If you didn’t find that at all funny, maybe you’re feeling annoyed or impatient, thinking- “Get on with it, Carbone!” Maybe now you’re feeling amused? Or bored? How do you know? ( 4 )

( 4 ) Knowing that emotions involve TANGIBLE BODY SENSATIONS that have certain “flavors” is one of the most powerful distinctions I have ever learned.

Now, to summarize our human experience, if we take the 5 Classical senses that we learned about in elementary school, add “Thinking” as the sixth sense, and recognize that “Emotion” can be considered to be a combination of “Thinking” and “Feeling”, it turns out that no matter how complicated our lives might seem,

EVERY SINGLE EXPERIENCE WE WILL EVER HAVE, FOR OUR ENTIRE LIVES, WILL CONSIST OF SOME COMBINATION OF ONLY SIX TOTAL COMPONENT PARTS!  

And as I will describe below, there is enormous freedom, power, and creativity that exists when we can consciously aware of that.

Reducing Suffering: Applying Sensory Clarity to Thoughts and Body Sensations.

Let’s take the following example:

Say I’m out for a jog, trying to get in shape for a 5K road race I’ve signed up for. The local women’s college track team runs by, and I suck in my belly and straighten my form as they run by, but unfortunately in my distraction I don’t see the banana peel on the sidewalk, and slip on it- twisting my ankle and scraping my knee. 

And say as a result of the above there’s the following: 5 units of pain in the ankle, 5 units of pain in the knee, and 5 units of embarrassment.  ( 5 )

( 5 ) As an aside, I recognize that the idea of “units” of discomfort seems arbitrary. There are some studies that aim to quantify pain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, in clinical practice I don’t know of any pain measuring tools being used in hospitals or clinics other than common subjective pain scales.  ( 6 ) One obviously flaw to this equation would be if all units of discomfort were 1 in this example- perfect clarity: 1+1+1= 3, no clarity 1x1x1=1, which would suggest having no sensory clarity would be preferable to having perfect sensory clarity, which isn’t the case. Also, there’s a much greater factor that isn’t included, which is the degree to which a person has equanimity with each of the components of the experience, which we'll describe in more detail in the section below. 

Not a pleasant experience. But how unpleasant? That depends:

If I had perfect sensory clarity, aware of exactly what’s present in the body, I can add up the units: 5+5+5= 15 units of discomfort.

How about if I have very little sensory clarity? In that case the components of the experience can get mixed together, and cross multiply: 5x5x5= 125 units of discomfort.

The equation I’ve used here has flaws, but it’s a rough approximation used to make the example. If we follow the logic of this equation though, and were to use this equation as the only factor, there could be close to a ten-fold swing in the perception of suffering, depending on the person’s level of sensory clarity. ( 6 )

Let me give an actual, personal example of sensory clarity as a modality for reducing suffering: One night a few years ago at my Aikido class, I failed to get out of my own way while throwing my training partner, and when he fell his knee banged on my great toe. I “sustained a subungual hematoma”, which is a fancy way of saying that blood started to pool under my toenail, slowly pressing the toenail up off the nailbed.  A few hours later that evening, lying in bed and trying unsuccessfully to sleep, I realized “Hey, I’m suffering!”  And I remembered with chagrin that I actually teach people to use mindfulness to decrease their suffering! So I began to practice a mindfulness meditation called the body scan, starting by placing my attention on the most obvious place- my big toe.

The toe hurt, but not quite as much as I thought, when I really paid attention to it. It was a pretty stable “burning” kind of pain in the great toe, but mostly localized to the area below the toenail, with just a little bit of spread into the rest of the big toe. Again, not pleasant, but not overwhelming, and not where the suffering seemed to be coming from. I continued to scan my attention upward, and I noted some mild tension in places- legs, belly, chest, but nothing too uncomfortable. Finally I brought attention up to my face. I. Was. Astonished.  My face was filled with sensations of fear, sadness and embarrassment. There was tension in my whole face but especially in the eyes- which felt like I was trying to hold back tears. The vast majority of the suffering I was experiencing was coming from sensations I wasn’t even aware of! After completing the body scan, my sense of suffering was vastly reduced, and I was finally able to fall asleep.

Skill 3) Equanimity:

Equanimity is the ability to allow sensory experience to come and go without push and pull.

This is the big one. In my opinion, for reducing stress and suffering, this is the most important skill a person can learn. The best explanation for why this is the case is this equation that Shinzen Young coined:

S=PxR

That is: Suffering = Pain x Resistance

Shinzen coined the equation years ago, and makes it clear that “Pain” includes discomforts that we wouldn’t necessarily identify as pain per se- such as itches, mild aches, agitation, irritation, too hot, too cold, as well as any uncomfortable emotions such as sadness, embarrassment etc.  Resistance in this equation is the opposite of Equanimity. And we don’t need to be mathematical geniuses to see that for any given Pain, the lower the Resistance, the lower the Suffering! And, if Resistance is Zero (i.e. person has perfect equanimity with the pain) then the pain will not cause suffering!  So, if pain is 5 and resistance is 2, 5x2 = 10 degrees of suffering.  If pain is 5 and resistance is 1, 5x1 = 5.  And, if pain is 5, and resistance is 0, 5x0 = 0!

That Suffering is not the same thing is Pain is something we don’t usually consider in modern society, but there are common examples that show that we do recognize this: e.g. the legal term “pain and suffering”.

 I want to give a personal example which was one of the most important experiences of my life: I was three days into a demanding retreat, sitting still in formal meditation for many hours each day. After a couple of days, the cushions weren’t comfortable, in fact I was really hurting- my knee, my hip, my rear end, my back would all take turns grabbing my attention with various aches and pains. Then I remembered Shinzen’s equation, S=PxR. I thought, “Hmm- I’m suffering right now! If Shinzen’s equation is accurate- there must be resistance somewhere. Where is it?” With real curiosity I started searching for the resistance, starting with the most obvious place at the time- my right knee, which was throbbing and burning. I was surprised to find no resistance in the knee, and kept searching! I scanned out from there, down the right leg into the shin and foot, “Nope, no resistance here.” Then up into my upper leg and hip, “Not here either.” Then scanning the attention into the abdomen, and right up in the right upper quadrant of my abdomen, just below my ribs- there it was- Resistance!

As soon as I noticed it, it disappeared, and instantaneously, the suffering disappeared, and in this case the pain actually disappeared too!  This was my first tangible, personal experience with this equation, and the rest of the retreat, and my life, has never been the same. I definitely still enjoy my creature comforts, and am not against using more conventional methods of relieving discomfort- (If it’s cold I have nothing against wearing a hat, and if I were to have a root canal I’m saying “Yes, please” to medications.) But to know that even with pains or discomforts that can’t (or shouldn’t) be remedied by conventional measures there’s always a way to reduce or eliminate the suffering!

(In this particular example, as I infused my body with clarity and equanimity, both the suffering and pain disappeared.  Which reminds me of the what Jung said – “That which we resist, persists”.  However, I’ve had other instances where the suffering disappeared as soon as the resistance did, but the pain seemed to be as solid as ever. That was an empowering experience too, recognizing that there was pain without suffering as a result of it, not experiencing it as any problem whatsoever.)

To summarize, one way to define Mindfulness is that it is a threefold attentional skill set – consisting of Concentration, Sensory Clarity, and Equanimity.  These skills can be increased with systematic practice.  And, it's worth the effort, because increasing these skills can markedly decrease stress and suffering while increasing joy and fulfillment!

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