By Time Is Everything Revealed

My Personal Path to Mindfulness

I was the sort of kid who wanted to be the Indian and not the cowboy (even before I empathized politically and spiritually with that side). I didn't care much for cops and robbers and really would rather have been off inhabiting the persona of Cú Chulainn (one of the greatest Irish heroes from our mythos) or Bruce Lee (whose philosophy would soon impress me as much as his cinematic martial arts). Maybe both of those figures were shaped by a self-perception as an outsider warrior, which necessitated dignity, respect for others, honed skills and discipline. So the play scenarios of my formative years were as much about feeling the power and honing it as asserting power itself. Self-control and self-confidence came when I joined a karate club aged eight. I joined with several school friends and I was perhaps seeking to perfect my inner Bruce Lee, if not my command of martial arts. My school would show martial arts and action hero movies on Fridays as an ongoing fund-raiser, and that sparked in us a desire for these action hero skills.

The karate would eventually bring me into direct contact with the difference between being "mind full" (inner dialogue and the noise of unfocused thoughts) and having or adopting "in the moment clarity" — that which we now call mindfulness. Clearing your mind before a bout, being super alert to the reality of your opponent and focusing attention on their body language and movement patterns meant you could defeat them more quickly, without bruises or humiliation. Decisiveness kept everybody's honor intact. You respected your opponent, so ego was not a factor, and being mindful in the ring was as important as your physical moves. So over the next few years and into my early teens, being mindful in the ring taught me to be mindful in life beyond the ring. And so it came to be that faghann iarraidh iarraidh eile — the seeking for one thing finds another.

That's not even hindsight — that is just how it happened. Events follow events, decisions beget other decisions, life experience leads to more life experience. Picking up this book is perhaps a start, but there is a next step. In fact, picking up this book may be the next step in something that began much earlier. Not everything is linear, and not everything is so apparent. I joined karate to jump around and kick, but it kicked me in the eye with insights into something else. There are so many things that happen in life that lead to a different place than expected. I am sure there is a science behind why people pick up one hobby or interest over another, and I am sure there is a debate as to whether it's because you were wired for it (physical aptitude or mental aptitude) or it wired you (the interest in sports made you fitter and so healthier, or the chess made you good at your eventual business career). Whatever the case, we know mindfulness can rewire you — adjust your thought patterns and the thought-to-feeling relationship — and so control your mood and reactions. We know it can condition your stress reactions and provide self-control and movement out of negativity and ruts.

The karate could have led to me being a sportsperson, but it led somewhere else instead. What I do know is that no experience is wasted. It is all part of the fabric of life, and some experiences may result in rewards years later. We can also use mindfulness to alter our reactions and move beyond the experiences that may affect us in less than positive ways, freeing ourselves from limitations on our full potential.

Looking back, I guess I first encountered mindfulness at quite an early age. It was not yet the globally embraced tool it is today, and it was not even called mindfulness at that time. Between the ages of eight and fourteen it was showing itself to me as I was engaging with it as a martial arts discipline, as a device to get in the zone and out of bouts unharmed. It was not to the front of my brain as a natural part of my everyday experience of life, let alone a spiritual technique or a physiological tool to calm my issues or get through bouts of depression. I had suffered from periods of despondency and depression from early childhood and in keeping with everything else I had experienced spiritual crises early on too — all of which I now see as the mud and sediment required to root the lotus. It would take its time to grow and unfold but the negative experiences did not rot the bud — they just made it flower more beautifully. I was in my twenties before I came to this realization — tá fáth le gach nidh — there is a reason for everything. I am grateful to depression for teaching me resilience, independence and compassion. Nothing in life is wasted.

By my early teens, I had read a couple of books by Bruce Lee and also Morihei Ueshiba (the founder of aikido), I had begun to read Sun Tzu, Lao Tzu and Confucius and I was leaning more into the spiritual side of things. Simultaneously, I had become a vegetarian, more respectful of nature, and had encountered the Krishna consciousness with the Hare Krishna community in Dublin. The martial arts had led to personal discipline, which had led to meditation, and that led to reading more about Zen and other Buddhist philosophies, which had led to exploring the tenets of all religions and a search for more insight. Sati — as "mindfulness" was called — and satori (self-awareness) were just around the corner. I was at that point in life where everything seems to be happening: spiritual yearnings, sexual yearnings, the call to be individual but also to belong. At that age, the big questions arise. Who am I? What am I? Why am I? And at that time I personally didn't find satisfactory answers to those conundrums within the Catholic tradition in which I had been raised — so it was easy for me to drop it and look to other faiths and their texts and systems to get a different perspective. When I wasn't listening to music or thinking about the girl down the road, I read everything I could get my hands on about religion, philosophy and psychology. I had a thirst for knowledge and an interest in the human condition and the divine experience. Eventually, I found the translations of Thomas Cleary and began to really explore Buddhism. All of a sudden, "Who am I?" was replaced with "What is ITLμITL?" and spiritual and metaphysical conundrums became koans for a time.

That is not to say I became a Buddhist, or a Hare Krishna, or a born again anything. I became both faithful and faithless — I felt I didn't need a religious structure to define my spiritual self or my self- expression and I soon realized that the questions "Who am I?" and "What is ITLμITL?" didn't matter — the answer was the same: everything and nothing. I acknowledged that the giving of attention to those sorts of questions could bring about a portion or invocation of sati/mindfulness — that the activated mind in the moment of...