Stress reduction, helping with depression, coping with illness and adversity, improved relational skills, and an ability to make better, less bias-prone decisions—all of these benefits can flow from mindfulness training. But they might all be seen like by-products of travelling along a path to deeper awakening, which flows from the recognition that nothing in life, including ourselves, is stuck in the way we habitually think.
In mindfulness practice, we train in letting go of our stories about stress and pain, learn that thoughts are not facts, and watch sensations change from moment to moment. We notice that experience is fluid, and can be perceived without taking it so personally. We learn that pain, stress, thoughts and everything else that occurs in the mind and body are not “me.”
Why “Me” Always ChangesSo what kind of “me” is there? When we ask ourselves this question, most of us will come up with a list of identities—perhaps a name, a profession, a family role, a nationality. Already there are problems with this—as Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, your name is “just a sound that your parents gave to you when you were born.” It may be applied consistently, for convenience,…
