Mindfulness is about ‘remembering’ − a practice of coming back to the now

Jeremy David Engels, Penn State, The Conversation on Jan 2, 2025

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To many, New Year’s Day represents the possibility for beginning anew.

Of late, individuals are welcoming the start of another year with a resolution to practice mindfulness, a type of meditation. Many believe mindfulness will help them relax, lessen stress and anxiety, reduce chronic pain and generally improve the quality of their lives – and the research bears this out.

Over the past 40 years, mindfulness has become a popular meditation practice around the world. What began as a Buddhist practice for relieving suffering has been secularized and reframed as a modern science with very little connection to its Buddhist roots.

Based on the extensive research at universities showing meditation’s benefits, mindfulness is now practiced in schools, government offices, professional sports, prisons, police departments, and the military. Popular apps, including Headspace, Calm and Insight Timer, make it easy for anyone to access guided meditations.

Businesses and corporations have taken note and often advise their workers to practice mindfulness to be more productive. Mindfulness has become so business friendly that it has been called a new “capitalist spirituality.”

I am a scholar of mindfulness, communication and ethics, as well as a longtime meditation teacher. For those who are considering practicing mindfulness this year, I want to return to the Buddhist roots of mindfulness in order to highlight one aspect of this practice that might be surprising and counterintuitive: Mindfulness means “remembering.”

According to the Vietnamese Zen master, Buddhist monk, poet and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, mindfulness is “the heart” of the Buddha’s teaching.

He defines mindfulness as a practice of “keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality.” The past is gone, and the future is not yet real. It is only in the present moment that we have any control or freedom.

In the ancient Indian language of Pali, the word now translated into English as “mindfulness” is “sati,” which is closely related to the verb “sarati,” “to remember.” But remembering, in this sense, does not mean dwelling on the past or ruminating over bygone events. It means “remembering to come back to the present moment.”

Our culture, which scholar Jenny Odell calls an “attention economy,” has transformed individual attention into a commodity to be bought and sold.

Much of contemporary life is designed to distract us from what is happening right here and right now. This is especially true of social media, which at its worst is a flood of distracting, disorienting content. Each day presents constant temptations to forget to be present and to lose ourselves in our screens.

Sometimes the hardest thing to remember is to be present. Mindfulness is therefore a practice of remembering to come back home to the now, when there are so many distractions and forces encouraging us to forget.

In Buddhist traditions, mindfulness also means remembering why we practice meditation in the first place.

Originally, mindfulness was one of eight practices that the Buddha described to overcome suffering. Known today as the Noble Eightfold Path, these practices include right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right diligence, right concentration, right mindfulness and right livelihood.

Though mindfulness is traditionally placed seventh in this list, Nhat Hanh suggested that it could be placed first, since mindfulness is required for every step along the path. Taken as a whole, these eight practices are designed to help people face their suffering, transform it and find joy in life.

According to Buddhist teachers, the reason to practice mindfulness is to overcome suffering in ourselves. The point of mindfulness is not to be more productive at work. The point is not just to relax, either. The point is personal transformation. By cultivating deep, unwavering, honest, openhearted attention, it becomes possible to look deeply at our suffering and to identify its causes.

Once the causes and conditions are identified, then we can work to transform them, so that we suffer less. The less we suffer, the easier it is to meet the present moment – and our lives – with open arms and without adding to the suffering in the world.

Perhaps, if we are sufficiently resolved, we can even relieve some of the world’s suffering.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jeremy David Engels, Penn State

Jeremy David Engels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.