CHAPTER THREE
MEDITATION FOR MINDFULNESS
The Meaning of Mindfulness
Concentration, and what is often referred to as mindfulness – which means an alert awareness of what is going on around one and inside one’s own head – go very much together. Exercises in mindfulness help concentration, while the development of concentration in turn helps the development of mindfulness – and both help the memory, since children are much more likely to remember the things to which they have paid proper attention. There are a number of very enjoyable exercises that assist in the growth of mindfulness, and which therefore serve as an excellent preparation for the more intensive exercises in concentration that come later. In the present chapter, we give some of those most likely to appeal to children. But first, it is useful to help children recognize how fragmentary their memories are.
Exploring Memory
Much of the time children (and perhaps even more adults) fail to remember things because their minds are not focused upon what they are doing. It is important for children to become aware of this. Increased powers of attention, as we have already stressed, lead to greater effectiveness in learning and in most of the other things in which children engage, from sports to hobbies.
But there is another reason why an awareness of how poor our memories are is important to children, and it has to do once more with self-understanding. From an early age, children develop a belief that memory provides a complete record of our lives from day to day. This belief remains with us throughout life. We feel that our memories are our identity; that we are, in a sense, our memories. However, memory is an incredibly fragmentary thing. We remember – or we can access from our memories – only a minute fraction of all the things that happen to us.
This is no bad thing in a way. There is no point in remembering even the most trivial events. But children need to be made aware of how their memories work if they are not only to improve their recall of the important things, but also to understand that their real nature consists of more than just a series of disjointed fragments of past events.
MEDITATION 1: The Holes in Memory
This is a very simple and often very amusing exercise, and yet it can very quickly reveal to children the enormous gaps in their ability to remember the past. Introduce the exercise in the following way.
• I’d like you to think back to a day when you were enjoying yourself. Maybe it was a birthday, or a time when you were on holiday. Try to remember exactly how you felt when you woke in the morning, and what you did during the day. Go through as many details as you can – the things you said, the things people said to you, the clothes you wore, the objects you touched, the things you saw. Go right through to bedtime, and remember how you felt when the day was over.
The children should do the exercise in silence and with their eyes closed. Let it run for as long as you think the children are enjoying it. Many children will want to share their memories, and when they have done so, draw the attention of the group not to the things remembered, but to the things forgotten. What were the children doing in between the exciting events they have just been relating? Can they recall what they said, or what they were feeling? Make sure that they do not feel troubled by their inability to remember these less exciting details. The purpose of the exercise is to recognize this inability.
Follow-up
As a very short follow-up exercise, either at the same time or on a subsequent occasion, the children can be asked to recall what they were doing on the same day the previous week, or even on the previous day. Allow them to recognize that although they were awake for maybe two-thirds of the twenty-four hours, their memories of what happened may add up to only a few minutes. Point out that this is true for most days of their lives. Most of the pages of memory, and therefore of life, are blank when we turn back and try to look at them, so ‘we’ must be much more than our collection of memories.
If the children want to pursue things further, they can make a list of the things they remember from, for example, last year, and you can discuss with them why certain things are remembered, while all the rest are forgotten. Usually the events that are remembered have exciting or alarming associations, or were unusual in some way. Realizing this helps the children to see that, because of these emotional or novel qualities, special attention was given at the time to these experiences.
After trying this exercise, a lively class of nine-year-olds decided to try to improve their memories by keeping daily diaries of all the interesting things that happened to them. A few weeks later they suddenly agreed to collect all the diaries, shuffle them, and give them out at random. Each child then read aloud extracts from the diary he or she had been given in order to see how many of the class were able to recognize their own experiences. Once again, the children were surprised at how unreliable their memories sometimes proved to be.
EXERCISE 1: Kim’s Game
Once the children have recognized the gaps in their memories, you can go on to the first memory exercise. This is known as ‘Kim’s Game’ because of its appearance in Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim, the story of a young boy brought up in India who accompanies a Tibetan lama in his search for the fabled River of Immortality. Kim is taught many lessons in mind training during the course of the book, but this particular game is the most appropriate for the development of mindfulness. Although particularly suitable for use with younger children, who often learn best through play and through games, older children also enjoy and benefit greatly from it, as do many adolescents and even adults.
I [David] remember being taught Kim’s Game years ago, soon after joining the Scout movement as a boy of eleven, and to this day I can recall the profound effect it had upon me. If I close my eyes, I can still see before me the tray with its many objects used in the game, and still relive the pleasurable effort to place each object into a slot in my memory. Kim’s Game certainly sharpened both my awareness and my desire to look closely at things.
Kim’s Game is an open-ended exercise, the difficulty of which can be varied, depending upon the age and the ability of the children. It is also profoundly simple to set up, fun to play, and capable of reaching deep into the way in which children look at the world. Each child will need a paper and pencil. (If very young children find difficulty in writing, they can play verbally instead.) You will need a timer or clock, a tray, and a range of everyday objects, as different from each other as possible. Examples of the kind of things you can use are given below:
• Pencil, ruler, thimble, spoon, cup, apple, eraser, elastic band, paper clip, die, salt cellar, key, coin, button, scissors, ink bottle, screwdriver, pen, mobile phone, handkerchief, magnifying glass, ornament, diary, badge, necklace, marble, pine cone, letter, matchbox, flower, photograph, toothpaste, clothes brush, ribbon, fork, can opener, glove, knitting needle, stone, paintbrush, beads, eggcup, train ticket.
The list is virtually endless. Place the chosen objects on a tray, allowing sufficient space between each object for it to be clearly seen. Then leave the tray out of sight of the children while you explain the rules of the game. The children will be allowed to look at the tray for a given length of time. Then you will remove it and they will all be asked to write down (or remember and tell you) as many as possible of the objects they have just seen. They must not touch or move any of the objects, or talk to each other while the game is in progress. Stress that although it is a game, there are no winners and losers. You are only interested in each child enjoying the experience and doing his or her best.
There is no set time limit for studying the tray. In addition to the age and the ability of the children, much depends on the number and nature of the objects on the tray. The more objects and the more unusual they are, the longer the time needed. A good idea is to have one or two trial runs with children who are from a different group, but who are of approximately the same age and ability. Note how long you need to give them before they can get a reasonable number of objects correct, then give around seventy-five per cent of this time to the group with whom you are actually working. There is no set time limit for writing down either. The best rule of thumb is to watch the group and call a halt when everyone appears to be running out of ideas.
You will notice that after a few attempts at Kim’s Game, the children improve rapidly. Some children work out a system (a so-called mnemonic device) of their own in order to aid their memories. For example, they may group all domestic objects together in their minds, and visualize them in the kitchen at home. Then they may group school objects such as pens and rulers together, and visualize them on their desk at school. Objects like ornaments and books they may visualize in their lounge at home, items of clothing in a cupboard, and beads and jewellery in one of the bedrooms. Other children may work on pure memory alone. The technique they use is not important. The purpose of the game is to train awareness. And provided the children are focusing on the objects in front of them, it matters little how they actually commit them to memory.
As the children improve at Kim’s Game, it can be made correspondingly harder. Rudyard Kipling’s young hero became remarkably proficient at it. However, it should never become anything other than fun for the children. If they begin to find it boring, discontinue it and move on. It will have served its purpose.
The purpose of the next two exercises, which follow on appropriately from Kim’s Game, is to prompt children to realize how unmindful they are in normal daily life. Both exercises are particularly effective in bringing this realization home to them. If you are working with adolescents and have decided not to use Kim’s Game with them, these two exercises are a good place at which to start.
EXERCISE 2: Mindfulness at Home
Children of all ages find this short exercise intriguing. Ask them to draw from memory the layout of their homes. In spite of the fact that their homes form the background to their lives, many children find it difficult to get the layout just right. An additional, or alternative exercise, would be to ask them to draw a map of the streets in their neighbourhood (with names), or even of their journey to school.
The difficulties frequently posed by these tasks help demonstrate to children the extent to which their minds are tuned to what we have called ‘automatic pilot’. We often use terms like ‘spatial awareness’ or even ‘spatial intelligence ‘in an attempt to explain why some children are much better at tasks like this than others. But the truth is that some children, like some adults, go through life with much more awareness than others. Many of the apparent differences between individuals arise not from differences in ability but from differences in the way in which ability is used.
This exercise can be repeated at a later date in order to note how much the children have improved. The next exercise is equally enjoyable – and equally revealing.
EXERCISE 3: Mindfulness in Daily Life
Provide the group with pencils and a plentiful supply of paper. Then ask them to draw in succession and from memory a number of everyday objects. You can choose the objects yourself, but the following list will give you some ideas.
• Lamp post, letter box, telephone, tree, bird, traffic bol-lard, road signs, chair, motor car, rose, shoe, bowl, table, vacuum cleaner, scissors, computer keyboard, doll, open book, step ladders, human face, school desk, football, comb, spectacles, memory stick.
Many of these objects are seen over and over again in the course of the average day, yet how accurately can the children reproduce them when asked to do so? The exercise isn’t a test of skill at drawing, though inevitably children with proven artistic ability are likely to be more visually aware than most. It is a test of how much children notice as they go about their lives, of how mindful they are. Everyone has the ability to draw, and most children take great pleasure in doing so. The difference between those who do it well and those who do it less well is largely that the former take in more of what they see.
At the end of the drawing exercise, ask the children to select an ordinary household item from the list of objects they have just been trying to reproduce, and to take a good look at it when they get home. Ask them to study it from all angles, and to look at it several times before the next meditation session. Ask them not to try drawing it during this interim time (some of them will still do so, of course, but this does not really matter), but then to have another go at it when the next session takes place.
Their second attempts will usually be much more accurate than their first, but improvements in drawing skills are not the main point of the exercise. It is equally important that children be asked to discuss the reasons for these improvements. Help them to understand that the improvements do not arise merely from seeing the objects concerned. After all, they’ve been ‘seen’ on an almost daily basis over a long period of time, so frequency is not the secret. It isn’t quantity of seeing that counts, it is quality.
And what is quality of seeing? And how does it differ from quantity of seeing? What is the difference between the way in which the children have now learned to take in the experience of seeing from the way in which they took it in before this learning took place? As with all question and answer work with children, don’t be too ready to offer your own explanations. Allow the children to reflect and articulate for themselves. Something has happened between the first and the second attempt at the drawings. What is it, and why has it happened? And how can the children ensure that it goes on happening, not just with the objects they have been drawing, but with everything else they see around them?
A single experience of this quality of seeing can bring about a lasting change in the way in which children interact visually with the world. Once the children have been introduced to the art of seeing, with this exercise and with the exercise that follows on page 42, they will recognize how much they normally miss of the wonder and beauty of the world, and how for most of the time they take for granted the marvellous gift of sight instead of using it and appreciating it to its fullest extent.
A similar exercise can be carried out with recordings of common sounds, testing this time for the extent to which the children are mindful of aural experiences.
Robert, a ten-year-old who was experiencing some difficulty with much of his schoolwork, was particularly interested in each of the previous memory exercises, and proved highly successful at them, demonstrating yet again that many children’s talents are often overlooked. His delight in his success was a pleasure to see, and there was a marked subsequent improvement in the confidence and commitment that he brought to bear upon the rest of his work.
The Familiar Made Unfamiliar
An exercise used by art teachers to help develop a more complete and integrated way of looking at the world is to invite the children to draw familiar objects from an unfamiliar perspective. From childhood onwards we become so used to the appearance of objects that we frequently stop really seeing them. Not only does this create a sameness (and even a dreary staleness) about the way in which we see the world, it prevents us appreciating the unexpected beauty of form which many objects possess when we see them from unexpected angles.
At the philosophical level which some older children like to explore, seeing objects from a new angle raises questions as to their intrinsic nature. Much of our understanding of the world is based upon visual experience. Change that experience by altering the way in which things appear to us, and we recognize how subjective and ultimately ‘illusory’ our view of the world actually is. How different our concept of a commonplace object like a bottle is when it is turned on its side, and we view it only from the base. How different things look when they are upside down. How strange houses look when seen in an aerial photograph. How difficult it is to recognize someone’s face when they are standing on their head. Come to that, how different the world looks when we stand on our own heads.
EXERCISE 4: Standing the World on its Head
Most children enjoy those puzzle pictures which present familiar objects from odd angles and ask you to identify them, so these ideas will not be entirely new to them. Provide the children with a photograph or painting of a familiar scene or a familiar object, turn it upside down, and ask them to draw it from this angle. Seeing and reproducing the picture in this unusual way will enable the children to relate to it as a series of interconnecting shapes, many of them with an intricacy and a beauty of form and line which are a pleasure to draw.
Ask the children not to turn their pictures the right way up until they are completed. When this is eventually done, the children will be interested to realize that not only have they had a new and captivating visual experience, but also they will often have produced far better drawings than they would had they reproduced the picture the usual way up. By getting away from concepts of how things should look, they will have simply drawn what is actually there, with far more lifelike results.
Form and Space
The next exercise completes the opening cycle of helping children to see the world more clearly, and to become more mindful of what they see. It also helps prepare them for the realization of the interdependency of all the objects around them, and of the fact that this inter-dependency extends to themselves as well. This realization is central to many of the meditation exercises that follow in subsequent chapters, and is indeed one of the most important insights into the ultimate nature of things that meditation can bring.
The visual world is made up of two classes of phenomena – material objects and empty space. Typically, we think of the world as defined by the first of these, yet in fact the second plays an equally important role. To demonstrate this, show the children a cup. Does its ‘cupness’ reside in the outer material form, or in the empty space which this form encloses? Help the children to appreciate that without both the form and the space, we would have no cup. Not only would we have no functional cup (you cannot pour liquid into it if there is no space to contain it), we would have no visual cup, as the form which encloses the empty space is itself defined by the space which surrounds it.
The final exercise of this chapter is suitable for all ages, and helps children to recognize that the visual world is in fact a pattern of interlocking shapes, some of them composed of form and others composed of space. Once this realization takes place, the world is likely to be seen in a much more holistic and ultimately satisfying way. Teachers of drawing have long regarded this and similar exercises as essential in helping students view and conceptualize the world as a total visual experience.
The children will each need paper and pencil for this exercise, and you will need to provide something for them to draw. It is better to use a scene (e.g. part of a room or a garden, or a view from a window) rather than just a few objects, as the more surfaces where form and space interlock with each other the better.
Ask the children to study the scene carefully, and explain that instead of drawing the outlines of the forms in front of them, they are to draw the outlines of the empty spaces between these forms. A little explanation and even a brief demonstration may be needed before they understand what you want them to do, but once they do understand, most children find it an intriguing challenge.
Allow the group as much time as they need for the drawing. When they have finished, you will probably be agreeably surprised by the quality of their work. By drawing spaces, which are essentially abstract in outline, the children will get away from their natural preoccupation with how the various solid objects in front of them ‘ought’ to look. Once they start thinking about this ‘ought’, their minds inevitably become caught up in conception (in ideas about objects) rather than in perception (in direct experience of how objects look). Drawing requires sensitivity to what is actually there, to the arrangement of pure shapes that make up our visual environment. By drawing these pure shapes, the children will find that, as if by magic, objects begin to appear on the paper in front of them.
Try this exercise yourself before giving it to the children. If you are not already an experienced artist, notice how your ability to draw becomes immediately enhanced. I [David] first tried it over a sustained two-week period some years ago, while camping in France and spending most of my time observing nature. Not only did my drawing improve, but at some point during the two weeks I experienced a sudden transformation in the way in which I saw the world. It was no longer composed of two opposites, form and emptiness, but of an enchanting pattern in which all phenomena were joined together in a dance of light and movement, shape and colour. The trees against the skyline seemed in love with the space around them, and were held by space in an embrace of joy. My own body was even part of this pattern, linked to space and through that space to the green and golden world of high summer. This feeling brought with it a wonderful sense of participating in a unity which not only created and sustained me, but which encompassed infinite dimensions of being.
Experiences of this kind typically come more easily to children than to adults. Children may not be able to articulate them, but the importance lies in the experience itself, rather than what they find to say about it. In work of this kind, never demand a verbal response from children if they find it difficult to give one. Children are usually anxious to please, and in the face of such a demand may fall back upon repeating the words of others, or saying what they believe you want to hear. Once inappropriate words are used to define an experience in this way, children tend to remember the words rather than the experience, and thus lose the essence of it.
In addition, by over-emphasizing words, we give children the impression that unless something can be talked about, it either does not exist or is of no importance. In fact many of the most profound experiences in life, from enjoying a sunset to gaining deep philosophical insights, cannot accurately be expressed in words. Much the same applies to music and painting, which have a language of their own. You either understand the language or you don’t. Asking the musician or the artist to explain their creations in words is to miss the point behind their inspiration.
Rediscovering Mindfulness
How often do we tell children to concentrate, or blame them for lack of concentration? Yet we do nothing to help them develop the ability to concentrate. It is a strange anomaly that children are all too frequently criticized for failing to show the behaviours that we most signally fail to teach them. How often are children blamed for not paying attention! ‘Attention’ thus becomes something of a dirty word for them, yet another of the sticks with which the adult world can beat them.
The exercises in this chapter are invaluable in teaching mindfulness skills – or rather in allowing our innate ability for mindfulness to manifest itself. Our survival as a species over the millennia has depended upon the ability to be mindful of what is going on around us, whether in hunting, in remaining alert for signs of danger, or in listening to the vital teachings of elders, each word of which had to be retained in the memory in the days before writing. Mindfulness is a natural and an enjoyable skill. It only needs the space in which to flourish. We surround children with so many distractions in our modern, artificial world, that it is we who come between them and their natural abilities to stay focused upon real life. The above exercises help us to go some way towards repairing the damage.