Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening

by Joseph Goldstein

It’s important to realize that this tool of mental noting is simply a skillful means for helping us to be mindful — it is not the essence of the practice itself, which is simply to be aware. There are many Buddhist traditions that do not use this technique. But it is worth experimenting with, even for short periods of time, to see whether it is indeed helpful for your practice or not. We should also understand its limitations. Noting is not used as an intellectual reflection and should be kept to a single, silent word. David Kalupahana, a renowned Buddhist scholar, wrote, “Concepts used for Satipaṭṭhāna are to be pursued only to the point where they produce knowledge, and not beyond, for conceptions carried beyond their limits can lead to substantialist metaphysics.”3 Taking concepts too far simply solidifies our view of reality, and we get boxed in by mental constructs of our own making. As mindfulness gets stronger, we might become aware of too many things to label, with objects changing so quickly that there’s not even time to note. In this situation, we are noticing more than we note, and the labels themselves start to fall away. When awareness is well established and mindfulness is happening by itself—what we could call effortless effort — then we can simply rest in the continuity of bare knowing. Ryokan, a nineteenth-century Zen master, poet, and wandering monk, expressed it this way: “Know your mind just as it is.”