I am becoming more and more aware that mindfulness throughout the whole day is all important. It is so easy to get trapped in a mindset focused on self and feelings, and that is fatal. Everything that aggrandises the empirical self, that focuses attention on the physical here and now for me, on my feelings, my mood, my desires takes the attention away from mindfulness, from the view sub specie aeternitate, as the old scholastics would say. Mindfulness is focused on ‘betweenness’ (aidagara); on the interrelationship of you and me, of others and me, of the natural world and me, of me with myself. It is not focused me as an individual, substantial, independently existing entity. It is focused rather on the dynamic relationships between the chameleon-like me and others; relationships in response to which I am constantly being changed, moulded, shaped and formed. The empirical me is like a dancing flame, never still, bending and shaping in response to every whisper of wind.
As long as I am locked into the empirical me I am a prisoner. I am soft clay shaped by whatever memories, feelings, emotions emerge into consciousness. Although they are ephemeral and transient, memories and their attendant feelings, often come with an immediacy of impact that is hard to resist. A snatch of music, a scent, a photograph, and a long dead moment in the past becomes vividly alive in the mind. I am overwhelmed with nostalgia, with regrets perhaps and thoughts of, ‘If only…’ The memory usurps the present and dominates the attention. The past, though dead and gone, has become alive again in the present. It is a false and spurious life but the memory which creates it has the power to mould my moods and feelings. I am a prisoner of a past that does not exist. Only by getting out of the empirical me and into the betweenness of me and myself can I see the memories for what they are and become free of their hold on me.
In ordinary day to day encounters one is often so caught up in ones own subjective feelings that the other is only important in so far as he or she has an impact on me and my feelings. They are not in themselves important. Or, the other is so important for me and my feelings that they become all-important and I take second place. Between these two extremes there is a broad middle ground where others are both important in themselves and for me but not so important that my feelings for myself take second place. In all these cases my feelings and my self-interest are the deciding factors. Even in the extreme case where the other is all-important.
The importance of mindfulness, of awareness of betweenness, is that it takes me out of me. It takes me into that empty space which is all important. It provides perspective. If it were not for that emptiness I would not be me. When a baby is born it does not distinguish between itself and its mother. The mother’s breast, her embrace, her voice, her smile are all extensions of the baby’s own body and not distinguished from it. Towards the end of the baby’s first year of life self consciousness has begun to develop. A space develops between the baby and the world it inhabits, between it and its mother. There is baby and not-baby. The baby begins to become aware of the limitations of it’s self. In order for self consciousness to appear there must be consciousness of the other as other. When this happens the subjective ‘I’ becomes aware of an objective ‘me’.
Awareness of betweenness is a realisation that the I-Thou, me-other dichotomy is more apparent than real. There are not two independently existing, self subsisting entities. It is the relationship, which is what betweenness is, which makes both I and Thou.