Some Phenomenological Reflections on Meditation, Mindfulness and Concentration

Erol Copelj (Monash University)

     In this talk, I will sketch out a phenomenological description of two sets of deeply interconnected phenomena. Each set has three members: meditation, mindfulness and concentration. I will describe some invariant structures that bind the sets together, as well as some of the differences that keep them apart.
     To set the stage, I will begin by explicating an idea that will be familiar to most phenomenologists; the idea that there is an experience of possibilities. Two kinds of possibilities will play a key role in this talk. The first are ‘our possibilities’, a notion that includes both (a) possible intentional experiences of objects and  (b) projects: the possible states of the world that come into being through human beings, such as the possibility or project of having this abstract written. I contrast our possibilities with what I call ‘thingly possibilities’, the kind of possibilities that are intrinsic to the phenomena themselves. 
     On this basis, in the second part I turn towards the description of the two sets of phenomena mentioned above. Here is a brief summary of the phenomena that constitute set A. Meditation: the practice of tuning-out of the our possibilities and of tuning-in to thingly possibilities. As the experience of falling asleep can give rise to the state of sleep, so the practice of meditation can give rise to mindfulness, the fruit of the practice. Mindfulness: the feeling of being tuned in to thingly possibilities. And finally, concentration: a modification of modification of mindfulness where the ‘horizon’ of thingly possibilities is narrowed down in a certain way . Set B differs from set A in one key feature: the phenomena that constitute it can be described by only taking into account ‘our possibilities’, and projects in particular. Accordingly, meditation in this sense is the practice of tuning-out of absent projects and tuning-in to  present projects. Mindfulness: the feeling of being tuned in to one’s present projects. And concentration is the narrowing down of multiplicity of present projects to single one, into which one becomes absorbed. This last, I suggest, is a beginning of a phenomenological description of an experience usually referred to as ’flow’. 
     I will conclude the talk by briefly touching on some of the wider philosophical implications of these descriptions. Here I will mentioned one. In the secondary Buddhist literature, the issue often comes up of whether Buddhist mindfulness is identical to, or whether it is a kind of, flow experience. Assuming that I am right in above suggestion about what flow is, not only is this not the kind of mindfulness that plays such a key role in the Buddha’s teachings, it is not mindfulness at all. Flow is a kind of concentration. I end the talk by arguing that the right kind of mindfulness, in the Buddhist sense, is the first kind, the feeling of being tuned in to thingly possibilities. To show this, I briefly outline an account of how this kind of mindfulness can develop into the kind of insight that, according to the Buddha, leads to liberation.

Erol Copelj, 
Ph.D Candidate, 
Monash University, 
[email protected]