It has been a hard year for Hong Kong people. The unending displays of power and violence, and the smug faces of those in office, have torn through the appearance of a stable and prosperous city; what was once familiar is familiar no more.
I am a mindfulness teacher, and I am also a Hong Kong person. Whatever you are living through, I am living through it too. Mindfulness (Mindfulness) has grown popular in psychology in recent years, and its stress-relieving effects are backed by scientific research. In a world like this, it can look like a fine way to retreat from it all — to ask nothing of the wider world and simply attend to the breath, the present moment. Wouldn't that be lovely? At least we would no longer have to think about the harm being done to our brothers and sisters. That, too, is why a great many people come to me to learn mindfulness.
Let us set aside, for now, whether mindfulness even has this magical power, and suppose it really could let you tune the world out and hear and ask nothing of it.
The question is: would you be content with that?
2019 was an awakening of civic conscience. The "Hong Kong pigs" — those who once cared little for current affairs — were no longer willing to keep themselves numb. Awake at last, we discovered just how strong the adversary is: so strong that it almost seems better to have stayed asleep. But is staying asleep really better?
Philosophy has a famous thought experiment called the Experience Machine: imagine that scientists of the future have built a remarkable machine. Plug your brain into it, and it stimulates you with electrical currents that supply every sensory signal — sight, sound, and everything else — so that you believe you are living in the world of your dreams (once plugged in, you will no longer know that you are plugged in) — no suffering, everything exactly as you wished. The question is: would you plug yourself into this machine? Most people would not.
Why? Because it isn't real.
And if you, too, would refuse the machine, what does that tell you? That your own suffering and pleasure are not the only things that matter to you. The philosopher Nietzsche called the person who seeks only comfort and avoids pain, who lacks perseverance, struggle and sincerity, "The Last Man," and he regarded such a life as pitiful. So does practising mindfulness aim to turn you into The Last Man? Mindfulness is, in truth, a method for exercising and training the faculty of awareness; it has no fixed end of its own. What matters is how the practitioner chooses to use this tool.
Mindfulness can indeed help with relaxation and stress relief, but I believe that treating mindfulness merely as a safe harbour from the world may not, in the long run, do our psychological wellbeing much good. The real worth of mindfulness lies in its power to help us take hold of the will. In these turbulent times, we want to face fear, temptation and struggle, and it is not easy to hold fast to our original resolve. At this level, mindfulness can lend a hand. Why? Let me share how mindfulness can shift the direction of the will:
From avoiding pain to the capacity to bear it
Set aside Hong Kong's social situation for a moment: life by its very nature contains no small measure of suffering — birth, ageing, sickness and death are unavoidable. Our instinct in the face of pain is avoidance, to keep our distance from whatever causes us pain.
This sounds normal enough, but being too afraid of pain comes at a cost. In psychology there is a phenomenon known as Experiential Avoidance, meaning the tendency to flee from painful thoughts and emotions. When someone's tendency towards experiential avoidance is too strong, they will, in their behaviour, dodge every situation that makes them feel tense, pained or awkward. Yet everyone knows that to grow and to change, unpleasant emotions are an inevitable part of the journey. The frustration of learning something new, the tension of getting to know different people, even the dread of confrontation — all of it is part of the path to change. To keep avoiding negative emotions is only to remain forever inside the Comfort Zone.
So how does mindfulness lend a hand? Practising mindfulness can help you take hold of the capacity to bear pain — especially the suffering we endure for what we hold dear. Specifically, in mindfulness practice we learn to observe painful emotions from a Non-Judgemental stance, and to accept them as an inevitable part of life. With a mindful frame of mind, the pain may not lessen; what lessens is the dread of the pain. And when a regime already rules through fear, managing fear is exactly what we need.
From being led by your thoughts to taking hold of your own agency
Going a step further, mindfulness helps us take hold of the will's freedom. What does this mean? The psychologist Viktor Frankl put it precisely:
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.In our response lies our growth and freedom."
"Between the stimulus of our environment and our response, there is a space. In that space we have the power to choose our response to the environment. In that chosen response lie our growth and our freedom."
* The origin of this quotation is disputed. It first appeared in Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but Covey stated that he was quoting a second book, and later said he had forgotten which one. In fact a number of writers have expressed similar ideas, including Viktor Frankl and other psychologists and philosophers. One possible interpretation is this: the spirit of the line comes from Frankl or others, and Covey, having read and absorbed it, wrote it out in his own words — but because so much time had passed, he believed he had read it back from a second book. See:https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/18/ response/
What does this mean? I wonder whether it has ever occurred to you: we can do what we want to do, yet we cannot want what we want. Just as I like eating durian — I can go and eat it, but can I control whether or not I like eating durian? From a psychological standpoint, a person's preferences, personality and ways of thinking are deeply shaped by two major factors — genes and the family environment of one's early years — and both of these lie beyond our power to control.
So what can we control? Not what thoughts arise, but how we respond once they do. In other words, after a thought appears, we do not in fact have to act on it. Take an example: one day you might suddenly have a strong urge to eat crisps, but because you are on a diet, you resist the thought of "eating crisps." This ability to keep a thought from leading you by the nose is precisely the foundation of the will's freedom.
Simple to say, but not so easy to put into practice. This is because we have a whole series of automatic reactions; without realising it, we act according to our surroundings, and these instinctive responses often fail to match our long-term values. Take the simplest case: faced with difficulty, our natural response is to retreat. Practising mindfulness helps us notice these thoughts that control us, take a step back, and look afresh at our own actions.
How do you begin to learn mindfulness?
Doing mindfulness is, in fact, not hard at all. What is harder is building a systematic practice plan, understanding where mindfulness comes from and how it works, and persevering with the practice. This is not something to be achieved by reading a single article or doing a single exercise.
For beginners, you might first try our 【Mindfulness Test Tool】 to gauge your own mindfulness tendencies and gather some relevant resources.
Beyond that, if you want to learn mindfulness in earnest, I generally suggest two approaches: first, find a good introductory book to read; second, follow along with a group that practises mindfulness.
An introductory book on mindfulness: Mental Training — A Science-Backed Approach to Mastering the Mind Through Mindfulness
All right, this book is in fact one I wrote myself. An author is never objective about his own book, but let me at least talk about my writing principles: this is an introductory book on mindfulness. What makes a good introductory book? In my view, its arguments must be well-grounded and well-evidenced, drawing fully on scientific research; it must be systematic and complete, clear and easy to follow, so the reader grasps the essence of mindfulness; and it must be genuinely practicable, with instructions to follow so the reader can practise it first-hand. In writing it, I worked very hard to make Mental Training — A Science-Backed Approach to Mastering the Mind Through Mindfulness meet these conditions.
Mindfulness as mental training has, over the past several decades, earned a great deal of scientific recognition for its help with managing emotions such as anxiety. I hoped this book would not be a patchwork of loose ideas, but would hold to a certain academic standard and reflect what psychology has found in its research on mindfulness. Of course, being grounded in this place matters too, and this is also the greatest value of reading a book on mindfulness published in Hong Kong: as a Hong Kong person, I know the struggles of Hong Kong people, and I have tried to explore these themes in the book as well. And most important of all, the book comes with a little six-week mindfulness course, complete with practice audio recordings and exercises for daily life. I strongly recommend that readers work through one chapter a week and practise as the book sets out. Once the six weeks have passed, you will have grasped the foundations of mindfulness and felt for yourself the good it brings.
Mindfulness courses / activity groups
To be honest, the author can hardly help being a little biased here, because TreeholeHK is itself a group that promotes mindfulness. The direction of our activities leans towards exploring the reasoning behind things, so when we learn mindfulness we often touch on psychology and philosophy, approaching mindfulness from a non-religious angle. TreeholeHK regularly runs the Mindfulness Foundation Course (MFC), designed precisely for friends who wish to learn mindfulness.
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