Just how does Mindfulness Meditation make us happy?

On a purely biological level, meditation slows down our metabolic rate, so it’s a very peaceful and restful practice. It increases the production of serotonin and endorphins, which our body likes. And the activity of the amygdala is reduced, the part of the brain which is responsible, for amongst other things, emotional reactivity, anxiety and depression. Modern mindfulness explains we 'decrease stress through changing our relationship to our experience', focussing on the present, rather than re-hashing our past or feeling anxiety about our possible future. So that’s all good stuff.

But if I were to hone in on one particular aspect of meditation which I think makes me most happy, it’s that meditation teaches us a “newness of seeing”. Seeing things with a fresh eye, seeing things with a beginner’s mind. A rather large obstacle to happiness, I have always found, is our tendency to live through the filter of ‘knowing’, the tendency to ‘fixed thinking’, in particular the part where our fixed thinking is challenged. When we ‘know’ things, we don’t pay proper attention to it. We don’t really see what we think we already know.

As Shunryu Suzuki said in his book “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind” (one of my favourite books) : “In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.” When we think we know something, when we consider ourselves experienced or an expert, there are not so many opportunities in our mind because it becomes fixed.

Shunryu Suzuki explains further: “People say that practicing [Zen] meditation is difficult, but there is a misunderstanding as to why. It is not difficult because it is hard to sit in the cross-legged position, or to attain enlightenment. It is difficult because it is hard to keep our mind pure and our practice pure in its fundamental sense. In Japan we have the phrase shoshin, which means "beginner's mind."

The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind. Suppose you recite the Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times or more? You might easily lose your original attitude towards it. The same thing will happen in your other [Zen] practices. For a while you will keep your beginner's mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind. “

We really have to stop and think a moment about what Suzuki means by "limitless meaning of original mind". The way I see it, it's the limitless space and possibilities created by the cessation of our 'already knowing'.

This is what Buddhist teaching calls “non-conceptual awareness” - the difference between experiencing something as it is, rather than experiencing it through filters of what we already (think we) know.

Using the natural worlds as an example: If we experience the natural world, like a bird, for instance, with our 'knowing' awareness, we will ‘see’ the small black bird, which we know as a Starling, and see a non-native bird, introduced from Europe, and most often thought of as a pest. But if we really see the bird as a beginner, with no preconceived 'knowing', we might see a small black bird as it really is: with beautiful, luminous blue-black feathers, amber eyes, delicate wiry feet, etc.

Instead of encountering the world through a filter of ideas, in meditation we learn to connect deeply, with the unfiltered present moment, just as it is.

As Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh says: "When we learn to stop and be truly alive in the present moment, (my comment: which is a working definition of mindfulness: seeing without ‘knowing’) we are in touch with what’s going on around us. We aren’t carried away by the past, the future, our thinking, our ideas, emotions, projects, aspirations."

We often think our idea about things is the reality about that thing. This idea we have, these fixed ideas, are especially relevant to ourselves. Starting with our name, our history, our self-images and identities. And those fixed ideas about ourselves are especially noticeable during meditation. We realise how fixated we are on the “Me” because our mind won’t stop thinking about “My stuff”. My yesterdays, my tomorrows, my experiences, fears, worries, my wanting to be somewhere else, my dislikes, my uncomfortableness, how cold my body feels, etc. And then we have “Our Story-lines”. We have these ideas about what we really are, how we see ourselves. They can be negative just as often as they are positive: I am creative. I can’t draw a stick figure. I am kind. I am successful. I am worthless. I am an anxious person, I am not good with people. I am an academic, an artist, an accountant. I have a busy mind. I can’t meditate. I am a calm person. The list is endless. Over time, these ideas of ourselves become more and more fixed, concrete, calcified. Our ideas, our beliefs, our habits, our routine. Our accustomed way of seeing is just one way, but it becomes very hardened, and it then tends to become our only way. We sometimes work really hard and struggle to keep it up! Even if it's unconsciously.

And woe anyone who goes up against that image of our Self! Someone tells us we are not a nice or kind person? Someone thinks we are not successful, not posh, have bad dress sense? Someone who prides himself on being an artist hears someone mention his paintings are rubbish. Good grief! Our ego – our belief in our storyline about our Self - takes a massive knock!

What if suddenly we were none of those things we believe we are?

Master Linji, better known in the West as Rinzai, lived in China during the Tang dynasty – somewhere around the year 810. He shook up the Buddhist world by telling his students to drop their agenda of becoming enlightened, and advised his students to simply be their true, ordinary selves. He coined the phrase “businessless person”, referring to a person who has nothing to do, nowhere to go, his ideal example of what a person could be.

To accomplish true seeing, we have to stop ‘knowing’, and learn to see things as if they are unfamiliar. In other words, we need to make our way of seeing less habitual. Defamiliarise it. Unwrap it from our preconceived knowing, so that we no longer see what we already know or believe.

This practice can create great shedding of heaviness, of stress, creating a feeling of spaciousness, lightness, restfulness, happiness. Giving up of fixed ideas, even just for the duration of a meditation, gives great freedom. If we want to expand into our limitless, original, open mind, we need to let go of almost everything we think we know.

One of the challenges of letting go to this degree is that it can bring us an initial feeling of great insecurity. I can’t remember exactly where I read this, but to quote: “We are so conditioned to navigate with our ‘knowing’, our mental models and intellectual conclusions, that moving beyond them can feel like driving a car while wearing a blindfold.”

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