I’M

MINDFUL,
NOW
WHAT?
Moving Beyond Mindfulness to
Meet the Modern World

ANDREW HOLECEK

BOULDER, COLORADO

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 Contents

INTRODUCTION . . . 1
How to Read This Book . . . 3

CHAPTER 1: MINDFULNESS AND THE FOUNDATIONS . . . 7

Shadow Sides . . . 11
The Wonder of It All . . . 12
The Challenge of It All . . . 12
Training or Discovery? . . . 14
Successful Meditation . . . 16

CHAPTER 2: INSIGHT MEDITATION . . . 19

The Promise and Peril of Absorption . . . 21
My Story . . . 23
Analytic Meditation . . . 25
Open Questioning . . . 30
Returning to Insight . . . 32
Meditation Isn’t a Tranquilizer . . . 33
The Map Is Not the Territory . . . 35

CHAPTER 3: OPENING YOUR HEART . . . 37

Mettā Meditation . . . 37
Meditation Snacks . . . 39
One-­Breath Meditation Session . . . 40
Open Heart . . . 41
Tonglen . . . 42

CHAPTER 4: THE BODY . . . 47

Waking Down . . . 49
Integral Meditation . . . 52

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 Avoid the Catastrophe . . . 54
Anti-­Complaint Meditation . . . 54
Move It . . . 57

CHAPTER 5: OUTSIDE SUPPORT . . . 61

Therapy . . . 63
Spiritual Materialism . . . 66
The Unconscious Mind . . . 67
Community . . . 71

CHAPTER 6: OPEN AWARENESS . . . 73

Headroom . . . 75
Instruction . . . 76
Nondualistic Thought . . . 81
Empowerment . . . 82
The Fruition . . . 83

CHAPTER 7: THE REVERSE MEDITATIONS . . . 87

Why Reverse? . . . 88
The Body Revisited . . . 90
The Instruction . . . 90
Next Steps . . . 92
Not-­Two . . . 94
The Perfect Experience . . . 96
To Finish . . . 97
Familiarity Breeds Equanimity . . . 98
My Practice . . . 99

CHAPTER 8: THE NOCTURNAL MEDITATIONS . . . 101

Liminal Dreaming . . . 102
Liminal Insight . . . 105

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 The Practice of Liminal Dreaming . . . 107
Lucid Dreaming . . . 109
The Benefits . . . 113
The Practice of Lucid Dreaming . . . 115
Dream Yoga . . . 117
Light Popping Up . . . 118
The Spiritual Benefits of Dream Yoga . . . 121
Sleep Yoga and Bardo Yoga . . . 123

CHAPTER 9: THE WONDERS OF THE MIND . . . 127

The Mechanics of Happiness . . . 130
Coincidental Happiness . . . 131
Bottom-­Line Mind . . . 132
One Mind . . . 134

NOTES . . . 137

INDEX . . . 169

ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . 175

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 Introduction
The mindfulness revolution is in full swing. Countless people—­
from scientists, scholars, and mental health workers to the average
practitioner—­are touting its benefits. I am one of those people. For
over forty-­five years I have practiced mindfulness meditation and reaped
its extraordinary rewards.1 I begin and end every day with meditation,
engage in annual retreats, and teach it around the world. Twenty years
ago my passion for this ancient art led me into a traditional Tibetan
Buddhist three-­year retreat, which remains the most transformative
event of my life.
This wasn’t the normal three-­year retreat designed for monastics but
a creative five-­year program developed for the modern Westerner that
alternated one year in secluded retreat with one year back in the world. It
was a brilliant way to mix meditation with life and stretch the meditative
mind into post-­retreat. But this was not an easy five years. The blistering
discipline put the five years of my doctoral studies to shame. During the
years of strict retreat, I practiced meditation fourteen hours a day and
even slept sitting up in the traditional meditation box. This innovative
container, what I came to call “ego’s coffin,” is an effective support for
the practice of the nocturnal meditations (described in chapter 8). The
retreat provided the systematic training, crafted over thousands of years
by some of the world’s greatest contemplatives, to enter a kind of life-
time retreat in the midst of daily life.
It was like going to a meditation university. I took extended “courses”
in dozens of meditations that allowed me to discover dimensions of mind
and heart I had no idea even existed. The off years were just as fruitful
because they gave me the opportunity to stabilize and incorporate the
practices and prepare for the upcoming year. The time off also showed
me the limitations of retreat, the many “near enemies” of deep medita-
tive practice, and how easy it is to slide into “spiritual bypassing.” This
term was coined by the psychologist John Welwood and refers to how
readily we can use meditation and spirituality to bypass the challenges

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 of everyday life.2 If we’re not careful, meditation can easily turn into a
subtle cop-­out.
I left the retreat center, called Sopa Chöling (literally translated as
“dharma place of patience” or “dharma place of forbearance”), with tears
of gratitude for the magnitude of what I had been given.3 As my good
fortune became evident while still in retreat, I found myself saying, There
should be thousands of people in line to do this training! A three-year retreat
is traditionally done in silence, sequestered from the world, and con-
trolled by dozens of monastic vows. Shaving my head and donning robes,
I surrendered to the time-­honored discipline. Retreatants are rightly
advised to stay quiet about what happens in retreat and practice humility.
Intensive meditation is a private affair, to be kept within the family. As
they caution in the Taoist tradition, “He who knows does not speak; he
who speaks does not know.”
While I deeply respect this traditional approach and have honored
this unspoken contract for the past twenty years, I also believe it is pos-
sible to share some of this meditative technology with a world that is
being conquered by materialism and consumerism. Otherwise, what’s
the point of meditative practice? To self-­improve out of reality? To follow
your bliss into heavenly states while the rest of the world goes to hell?
If we can’t take these remarkable meditative tools and apply them to a
world in such desperate need, meditation becomes an insidious form of
escape and a nasty case of spiritual bypassing. It becomes increasingly
irrelevant in a world that is on fire.
A three-year retreat is secretive in nature but not in spirit. The spirit
of engaging in this intensive training is to step out and help the world.
You step back to work on yourself before you step forward to benefit
others. I’m acutely aware of the slippery slope of even talking this way,
and that by professing my homage to traditional codes of silence and the
need for humility I’m sneaking in self-­aggrandizement and proclaiming
authority. So while I honor the traditions and respect the code of silence,
I must acknowledge that we live in untraditional times. If contemplatives
don’t step forward to share the inner technologies that can change the
world, the traditions, like civilization itself, may go extinct.4 This sharing

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 is already happening. Some of the meditations offered in this book are
tiptoeing into the public domain, but I know of no single volume that
brings them all together while providing a constructive critique of the
mindfulness revolution.
The tipping point for me came when I finally grasped the inconve-
nient truth that this planet, and everyone who inhabits it, is in serious
trouble.5 If we don’t wake up individually, and then collectively, Homo
sapiens will become one of the 95 percent of species that has historically
gone extinct. It’s often said that the biggest problem in this modern age
is that we have unrivaled technologies with untold power but a level
of awareness that is not correlative to that power. The technologies are
then used to harm others and abuse the planet, which is tantamount to
suicide. The counteracting meditative technologies offered in the pages
ahead are designed to nurture that correlative awareness so we can use
conventional technology with an intelligence equal to its power.
Our charter in this book is, therefore, threefold: to celebrate the
power of mindfulness and point out its limitations; to introduce you to
the meditations that build upon mindfulness and address the question,
“Now what?”; and to do all of this in the service of helping others and the
fragile planet we share.

HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

Over the past ten years I have written seven books, all of which
circumambulate the central theme of meditation.6 There’s an
introduction to meditation, a volume about the promise and peril
of deep spiritual practice, a book about working with physical and
emotional pain, three books on meditations you can do while you sleep
and dream, and a book about meditations that prepare you for death.
The purpose of the book you currently hold in your hands is not to give
you an exhaustive look at all these practices but to provide a survey of
what is possible in the world of meditation and introduce you to the
wonders of your own mind.
Even though it’s a survey, this book does not skim. The endnotes
provide additional depth for the deep divers. If you’re new to meditation,

Introduction 3

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 I recommend you skip these references for now and return to them on a
second reading. The heart of this book is about going further and deeper,
so each reader will have to find their comfort levels with how far they
want to go.
To honor the depth and nuance of mindfulness itself, we’ll start by
looking at the terminology commonly used and make sure we’re all on
the same page. What exactly is mindfulness, awareness, and insight medi-
tation, for example? Different people use the same words, thinking they
always refer to the same thing. But these are multivalent terms, and
confusion is rampant. If you find yourself getting bogged down in this
(or any) section, just skim it.
While you can learn a fair amount from a book, if you’re new to
meditation it helps to have a meditation instructor. Can you really
learn how to play golf or the piano from a book? I will, therefore, list
in the endnotes some of the communities that engage in these mentor-­
student practices as part of their curriculum. This part of the book will
fall short, of course, and I apologize to the many capable organizations
and individuals that are omitted.7
While I remain an open student of all the wisdom streams, I study
and practice mostly in the Buddhist tradition. When people ask me what
tradition I follow, I often say I’m a “curioust.” I’m deeply curious about
the human condition, the nature of the mind, and any method that
allows me to explore it. Remember that the Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist,
just as Christ wasn’t a Christian or Muhammad a Muslim. These were
intensely curious individuals who looked deeply within themselves and
came back to share what they discovered. No one has exclusive rights on
the mind or a patent on truth.
I have taken refuge as a Buddhist because of the adage “Chase two
rabbits, catch none.” At a certain point it helps to commit. Buddhism
speaks to me, but it may not speak to you. I could strip all the practices
in this book down to their clinical essence, as some skillful researchers
and spiritual teachers have done in their presentations of meditation or
spirituality.8 This might invite a broader audience, those who are allergic
to any “ism” or those who are more spiritual than religious.9 As viable

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 as that paring down may be, it borders on being disingenuous. My bias
is to honor the traditions from which these practices arose and then
culturally translate them into the modern world. Just as there are literal
translators who strive to convert one language to another, cultural trans-
lators work to convert a body of teachings from one culture to another,
or from one time period into another. This form of translation is an
essential part of our journey.
I have personally engaged in each of the practices in this book for
decades, so I will draw on that experience, conjoined with my study of
the literature and the teachings I have received from meditation masters
who have accomplished these practices. While my approach is mostly
based on the Buddhist tradition, it is also integral in spirit and, therefore,
casts a wide net.
I have neither the capacity nor the hubris to study and practice the
meditations from countless other wisdom traditions, then somehow
condense them into bite-­size chunks for everybody. However, I do think
an open-­minded reader will be able to work with these meditations and,
when necessary, adapt them to their own idiosyncrasies. In the end, any
form of learning and transformation involves translation at multiple lev-
els. You are the final translator. You are the one who has to bring these
teachings into your mind and heart, into a vocabulary that speaks to you,
and then into your life.

Introduction 5

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 CHAPTER 1

Mindfulness and the Foundations

Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen;

simply wait. Do not even wait; be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked;
it has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

—­Franz Kafka

W hen people think of meditation, they tend to only focus on

mindfulness. In reality, meditation is a catch-­all term for a vari-
ety of practices, much like sports refers to dozens of physical activities.
As we expand our horizons beyond mindfulness, it’s important that we
enhance our understanding of meditation altogether. As we journey into
other practices, we’ll transcend but include mindfulness. In other words,
mindfulness is the infrastructure of meditation upon which many of the
practices in this book are established. Without a basis of mindfulness,
every other practice will be built on shaky ground. So while the practices
herein go beyond mindfulness, they always include it. It’s like growing
from age eighteen to age nineteen. You don’t get rid of what you experi-
enced at eighteen; you transcend but include it.
In nearly half a century of practicing meditation, I have discovered
that each succeeding practice I learn has strengthened and augmented
the preceding practice. For example, when I was studying physics, I was
pleasantly surprised to see how my study of linear algebra and differential
equations helped me understand basic algebra, and how Calculus III

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 helped me incorporate Calculus II, which helped me digest Calculus
I. Similarly, the following meditations not only transcend and include
mindfulness but they also stabilize and enhance it. Learning other forms
of meditation will help you develop your mindfulness, and ironically, by
“leaving” mindfulness, you will find more of it, and you will find it more
valuable, more applicable, more profound.
Before we transcend mindfulness, let’s make sure we understand it.
The English term mindfulness was first used by Thomas Williams Rhys
Davids in 1881 as a translation of the Pali word sati. Common render-
ings of sati are “attention,” “retention,” “awareness,” and “discernment.”1
In Sanskrit this word translates to smŗti, which means “memory” and
refers to the ability to remain focused on something without distraction
or forgetfulness. This is closely allied to the Tibetan rendition trenpa, “to
recollect.” The scholars Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
write that mindfulness “contributes to control of the mind by eliminat-
ing distraction and helping the meditator gain mastery of his thought
processes. . . . The emphasis on mindfulness is one of the most distinc-
tive features of Buddhist meditation theory.”2
Many people think that mindfulness came from Buddhism, but
it predates the Buddha by at least a thousand years. It arose from the
ancient mists of Indian history and took shape in Hinduism, which goes
back some four thousand years. There is no discernable origin or founder
of Hinduism and therefore no way to pinpoint the exact birth of mind-
fulness. What is clear is that the Buddha did not invent it. He inherited
mindfulness from ancient Indian thought.
In the modern West, mindfulness gained traction with the innovative
work of Jon Kabat-­Zinn, who skillfully introduced it to countless people
with his Mindfulness-­Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs. His
definition of mindfulness remains a workable one: “The awareness that
emerges through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment,
and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience.”3 The noted trans-
lator of Tibetan sacred texts Larry Mermelstein writes that

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 mindfulness means “to remember, to bring to mind.” In
meditation it has the important applied meaning of “to
be present.” To be present means that you can actually
remember that you are here, right now. And what are we
with right here, now, all the time? Our mind. And if our
mind is fully present, then we are “mindful.” The func-
tion of mindfulness can be defined as the ability to hold
the mind to an object, whether that object is your breath,
your sense perceptions, or the arising, abiding, and ceas-
ing of your thoughts.4

Mindfulness is often used synonymously with the word awareness,

but while intimately connected, they are not quite the same. Awareness
watches over mindfulness to ensure it remains present. When we get
distracted from the object of mindfulness—­whether it’s our breath, a
candle, a mantra, or any other hitching post—­and drift into mindless-
ness, it’s awareness that detects this straying and alerts the mind to come
back to being mindful. Mindfulness and awareness work hand in hand
in the contemplative traditions to keep the mind in the present moment
and bring it back when it strays.5 In the Tibetan tradition, they are so
intimately wedded that they’re often condensed into one term: tren-­shé
(mindfulness-­awareness).
Mindfulness-­awareness is like puppy training, and our approach to
the practice should be in that playful and loving spirit. Instructing your
puppy mind to “Stay . . . stay” is akin to mindfulness. When it disobeys
and starts to stray, awareness notices that movement and returns the
pup back to its stationary position. When the puppy strays, you don’t
chastise it. You gently but precisely bring it back to its training position.
In short, mindfulness is a polysemous term with many definitions,
not only between traditions but even within them. For example, the
Tibetan Buddhist use can be different from that of Zen or Theravada
Buddhism. The plot thickens when scientists step in and translate the
term in scientific language.6

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 The nuances get technical, and scholars continue to debate
mindfulness and its precise meaning (using their favorite ancient
texts as support), not only within Buddhism but between the many
contemplative traditions altogether.7 Let’s keep things simple and
rest on the general spirit of the aforementioned definitions, and this
final one from B. Alan Wallace, a noted authority on attention and
mindfulness from the Indic and Tibetan traditions: “Mindfulness
is defined as the mental faculty of maintaining attention, without
forgetfulness or distraction, on a familiar object.”
While mindfulness is used in many religious and spiritual tradi-
tions, it is not itself religious or spiritual. It’s a technique, dare we say a
“technology,” for taming the mind.8 Anybody with a mind can practice
mindfulness, and no tradition can claim it as its own. Can anybody
claim exclusive rights to attention, mental discipline, or even caring?
These are universal principles available to all.
The Buddhist tradition makes the important distinction between
Right Mindfulness (samma sati, as represented in the seventh factor of
the Eightfold Noble Path), and Wrong Mindfulness (miccha sati). The
attention of a sniper is not of the same quality as the mindfulness of a
surgeon or a saint. Right Mindfulness is guided by wholesome inten-
tions, ethical principles, and discipline. The Buddhist scholar Andrew
Olendzki writes, “Mindfulness is an inherently wholesome or healthy
mental factor, so it cannot function at any moment when the mind is
under the influence of greed or hatred, even in the mildest versions of
favoring or opposing. Anytime you want or don’t want things to be a
certain way, the mind is not being mindful.”9
Right Mindfulness is sometimes translated as “correct mindfulness,”
and “correct” means understanding how inextricably connected mind-
fulness is to other healthy aspects of the mind. It is difficult to tease out
a single definition of mindfulness because a correct definition has to
include the retinue that always accompanies mindfulness. Mindfulness
is like one instrument in a well-­tuned ensemble. It never plays alone.
Buddhist psychology, or Abhidharma, states that when mindfulness
is present, a number of other factors naturally come into play. So “correct

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 mindfulness” is more than the solo practice of bare attention. The scholar
Sarah Shaw says that the other “instruments” in the orchestration of
mindfulness include an ethical quality, a regard for consequences, self-­
respect, a sense of balance, and confidence.10
Countless books continue to proclaim the benefits of mindfulness,
and over seventeen thousand scientific articles have been published.11 It
is beyond our scope to list the many physical, psychological, and spiri-
tual benefits of mindfulness. The suggested readings in the endnotes will
direct you to a number of these sources.

SHADOW SIDES
While the actual practice of mindfulness works, the growing mindful-
ness revolution, like any movement, has drawbacks. Wherever you find
light, you will find shadows. And the brighter the light, the sharper the
shadow. Our charter in this book concerns the limitations of mindful-
ness as an actual practice and with the shadow side of the mindfulness
revolution. But we have to acknowledge some of the other social and
cultural shadows.12 As with the term mindfulness itself, there are many
other players in this mindful orchestra. The philosopher David R. Loy
and the professor Ronald Purser point out just a few:

Uncoupling mindfulness from its ethical and religious

Buddhist context is understandable as an expedient move
to make such training a viable product on the open
market. But the rush to secularize and commodify mind-
fulness into a marketable technique may be leading to an
unfortunate denaturing of this ancient practice, which
was intended for far more than relieving a headache,
reducing blood pressure, or helping executives become
better focused and more productive. While a stripped-­
down, secularized technique—­what some critics are now
calling “McMindfulness”—­may make it more palatable to
the corporate world, decontextualizing mindfulness from
its original liberative and transformative purpose, as well

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