From Discourse to Awareness: Towards a Mindful Rhetorical Psychology of the Person

Journal: Theory & Psychology

Manuscript ID: TAP-09-0116.R1

Manuscript Type: Regular Manuscript

Keywords: Rhetoric, Social Construction, Mindfulness, Buddhism, consciousness

Abstract:

This paper opens up the possibility for a dialogue between rhetorical social psychology and Buddhist thought. It suggests that a mindfulness-based approach may complement the rhetorical study of the person. The rhetorical critique of cognitivism is based on a certain narrow (Western) concept of mind – cognition – that is very different to the ‘mind’ of Buddhist thought. The proposed inclusion of

Buddhist mindfulness into rhetorical studies of consciousness may broaden current debates and practices beyond a sole focus on discourse. This move is in sympathy with, and in response to, the ‘affective turn’ in social psychology and the rest of the social sciences which has lead to renewed interest in, and search for, ways of studying embodied subjectivity, awareness and personal order. Mindfulness practice offers a complementary ‘art of living’ to this work, which discursive and post-discursive approaches appear to lack.

Foundations, Psychology & Buddhism

I follow the call by Brown and Stenner (2010) to reconsider the foundations of critical

psychology following the discursive turn. In Psychology Without Foundations, they

take a step back from the details of recent critical psychological research to consider it

within the context of the continuing ‘crisis’ of social psychology (for example,

between mainstream experimental and qualitative psychologies). They make a

persuasive case for revisiting the foundations of psychology as a trans-discipline, by

engaging with process philosophers of ‘experience’. They argue for a psychology

which does not prematurely seek solid foundations – for example, in discourse or

cognition – proposing that attempts by social psychologists “to fix and provide once-

and-for-all explanations actually impedes rather than enhances our understanding” (p.

2). Instead, they do not call for new foundations, or for abandoning existing

foundations, but for a “creative and reflexive foundationalism”, which is always

changing. They propose the ‘art’ of existence or living should be made the central

object of psychology (see also Brown, 2001). To paraphrase, they ask ‘What forms of

life or being are we to create?’ and ‘How are we to live based on recent theoretical

ideas?’ They suggest this will involve a caring ethical engagement, which is badly

needed in psychology.

In accordance with the spirit of this perspective, I propose a shift in social

psychological research practice from a discursive or cognitive ground to a ‘groundless

ground’ in mindful awareness. Paradoxically, this is achieved here in part through a

rhetorical exploration of how language may be used to cultivate a mindful orientation.

In turn, this orientation involves seeing the ‘mind’ and consciousness as not only

discursive activities, but also as specifically embodied, affective and social activities -

or selfless processes. I explore the following questions: How are we to understand the

embodied and material foundations of our lived experience along with its rhetorical

organisation? How can we cultivate forms of awareness, which get us into contact

with the ‘groundless ground’ of our changing existence? And what would it mean to

make a shift from a focus on discourse to a stance, which also cultivates mindful

awareness in our research practices?

I will respond in three primary ways: paralleling Buddhism and social

construction; presenting a rhetorical analysis of early Buddhist discourses on the

conscious cultivation of mindfulness; and by indicating to the reader of this article

how a mindful orientation might be cultivated during the reading of the paper – which

uses the guidance presented in the Buddhist discourses to approach the very

phenomena under analysis. The paper thereby attempts to produce a reflexive

approach to foundations, akin to that proposed by Brown and Stenner.

Paralleling Buddhism and Social Constructionism

Brown and Stenner’s process philosophy resonates strongly with Buddhist ideas and

the Buddhist-inspired practice of mindfulness, although they do not make these links.

From a Buddhist perspective, attachment to a fixed ground is seen as an existential

dead-end. In Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Batchelor (2010) suggests that to:

steady one’s gaze on the finitude, contingency, and anguish of one’s existence is not easy; it

requires mindfulness and concentration. One needs to make a conscious shift from delight in a

fixed place to awareness of a contingent ground (p. 156).

The parallels do not end here. Indeed, Brown and Stenner’s (2010) aim to

“continuously examine how foundations are constructed and reconstructed as a live

feature of the phenomena we study” (p. 4) seems to the present author like a

suggestion for how mindfulness might be practiced in, or as, social research: by

cultivating the capacity to come into more intimate contact with the shifting

groundlessness of momentary experience, and responding compassionately to the

anguish that awareness of this impermanence can engender both within and beyond

us. Indeed, one book on mindfulness meditation is titled The Art of Living (Hart,

1987).

However, current critical psychologies do not provide much guidance on how to

steady our gaze on change and transformation in the ways suggested by Batchelor.

Indeed, the training of consciousness so familiar to Buddhist practitioners in the

mindfulness (or Insight Meditation) tradition might seem strange and unfamiliar –

even irrelevant – to the majority of social psychologists. Arguably, our premature

grounding in cognition and discourse, as well as our prejudices, may have precluded

engagement with traditions originating in ‘the East’.

Much discursive psychology prioritises discourse: locating and grounding

psychology in the study of language use in talk and texts – increasingly in

conversational materials. By analysing discourse, critical psychologists highlight what

could be termed the interdependent nature of the discursive mind and how it is

dependent upon, and productive of, social action, interaction and contexts of language

use – both conversational and ideological (Billig, 1996; Edwards, 1997; Edwards and

Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996). This work claims that dominant social cognitive

approaches to psychology have looked in the wrong place, when they locate

psychology in hypothetical computational processes in the isolated individual mind,

which cannot be observed. Instead, discursive researchers reject the experimentalism

and individualism of much cognitive psychology, and observe external, outwardly

occurring activities and shared practices in everyday life, rather than putative ‘inner’

states produced within rarified experimental settings.

Long before the rise of discursive psychology, William James (1890)

famously argued that the psychologists of his day overlooked the “free water of

consciousness” (p. 255) or the “subjective stream” (p. 259) of inner states. The same

might be said of today’s discursive psychologists, who tend to adopt a sceptical stance

towards ‘inner states’, such as consciousness. Critics suggest that discursive

psychology represents a ‘dead-end’ in the sense of it being an unbalanced kind of

psychology. Social constructionists were initially criticised for presenting

‘disembodied’ research, which neglects the non-discursive materiality of bodies and

objects (Bayer and Shotter, 1998; Brown, 2001; Burr, 2003; Nightingale and Cromby,

1999). Embodiment, feelings and affectivity – aspects of subjectivity that are partly

‘pre’- or ‘extra’-discursive – are arguably neglected in discursive psychology

(Cromby, 2007; Hollway and Jefferson, 2000).

As Durrheim (2011) notes, discursive psychology adopts a model of the person

as Homo Rhetoricus: as speaker or hearer oriented to stake and interest in interaction.

He argues in the context of studying racism in South Africa that discursive

psychology has privileged discursive action at the expense of other kinds of bodily,

material actions taking place in the world. He suggests that while the move from a

perceptual to discursive model of psychology has been enormously productive, it

risks losing site of the non-discursive. For other critics, discursive constructionists

have tipped the balance too far in favour of what happens ‘between us’ (e.g.

discursively) at the expense of studying what happens ‘within us’ (e.g. psychically or

somatically) – whilst acknowledging that the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ are not discrete

‘locations’.

But there are different varieties or ‘flavours’ of discursive psychology

(McKinlay and McVittie, 2010). Some discursive psychologists do indeed stay

‘ontologically agnostic’ about the existence or otherwise of inner states existing

within the mind or body, preferring not to make claims about ‘inner’ phenomena

existing behind or beyond the ‘rich surface’ of outwardly hearable or observable

language use (e.g. Edwards, 1997, 2006). This perspective has been accused of either

(i) lacking an ‘ontology of subjectivity’ by adopting blank or empty understandings of

what is within people when they interact (Corcoran, 2009; Hollway and Jefferson,

2000); or (ii) implying instrumental agency in the subject position of the ‘discourse

user’ who strategically manages stake and interest in each encounter (Madill and

Doherty, 1994).

By contrast, rhetorical psychologists understand inner states themselves as

partly discursive. The rhetorical psychology of thinking, categorisation and prejudice

(Billig, 1996) can be described as ‘ontologically constructionist’ because inner states

are argued to be constituted through outward practices (Corcoran, 2009). The image

of the thinker as a “conversationalist” locates the psychology of thinking in language

use in spoken interaction, which then becomes internalized (Billig, 2008). The person

both produces, and is produced by, discursive action, common sense and ideology.

This work is partly influenced by the cultural psychology of Bakhtin, Voloshinov and

Vygotsky - especially their ideas of inner speech and internalization. Similarly, in

psychoanalytic discursive psychology - influenced by Wittgenstein’s action view of

language and Freud’s psychoanalysis - even unconscious practices such as repression

are seen as discursively and dialogically constructed, rather than inner processes

(Billig, 1999a). Feelings and emotions, whether conscious or unconscious, are

understood to be discursively constructed in interaction through language use.

This work illustrates how we can treat consciousness and unconsciousness as

discursive activities. But there is a risk of reducing the richness of consciousness to

one modality: words that are being spoken or written and being heard, read and

understood when used for the performance of social action. Indeed, inner life (e.g.

bodily feelings) might be taken off the map of social psychology except insofar as it is

understood as solely discursively produced through words. Topics such as sweating

and pain (Gillies et al., 2004), ageing (Gillies et al., 2005), physical illness (Hollway

and Jefferson, 2005), dizziness (Brown et al., 2009, 2011), ‘Multiple Chemical

Sensitivity’ (Brown, 2001), and silence (Billig, 1999a) are ‘hard cases’ which do not

seem to be (easily) reducible to discourse or language use without undermining their

essentially embodied, material or non-verbal nature. Similarly, consciousness is a

topic, which is difficult to explain purely through discursive theory or discursive

empiricism. In this sense, I wish to present mindfulness practice as one way of

studying the “mind behind the mouth” (Edley, 2003), which is largely neglected by

discursive psychology, but without resorting to cognitivism.

When discursive psychologists do consider the body and embodiment, this is

usually through discourse or conversation analyses, which stress the vocal or spoken

aspects of embodied being (e.g. Wiggins, 2002). While this is useful in pushing the

discursive turn towards the analysis of embodied and gestural actions, analysed at a

between-person level, arguably we need more embodied methodologies, which study

both the internal and external dynamics, which produce embodied experience

(Csordas, 1990). From a mindfulness perspective, discursive approaches are

disembodied in a very particular way, which is difficult to appreciate without

experiential practice of mindfulness. Discursive psychologists do not tend to require

mind-body synchronicity on the part of the investigator, participants or members. One

is not required to cultivate awareness of bodily postures, sensations or feelings in

discursive work. The body and embodiment are understood primarily from a between-

person point of view, i.e. looking externally at bodily practices. By contrast

mindfulness is rooted in an experiential meditative practice in which synchronicity of

mind and body is cultivated internally.

The present approach is sympathetic to the turn to affect,

embodiment/materiality, or spatiality (e.g. Cromby, 2007; Burkitt, 1999; Stam, 1998).

This is often engaged through predominantly theoretical work. However, attempts to

theorise the body, subjectivity and affect might be another dead-end for psychologists,

because such work tends to avoid specifying what we are to do in response to such

critiques. What methodologies are we to adopt in their study? Blackman and Cromby

(2007) encourage “the development of methods and analytic inquiry based upon a

form of sense-making that is embodied rather than cognitively and consciously

understood and articulated” (p. 13). They argue that “the development, adaptation or

adoption of an appropriate method might currently be the primary impediment to

critical psychological investigations of affect and feeling” (p. 17). A number of

methodological interventions have recently been proposed which seek to produce

non-discursive, non-cognitive and embodied forms of knowledge, such as Memory

Work (Gillies et al., 2004), Visual Analysis (Gillies et al., 2005), Free Association

Narrative Interviewing (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000) and Phenomenological

Psychology (Langdridge, 2007). Such research attempts to study non-discursive

aspects of outer social life (e.g. materiality, objects, power) and inner subjective

experience (e.g. bodily sensations, feelings, emotions) along with their discursive

production.

In some discursive empiricism, analysts tend to look at or listen to practices

occurring between people in external interaction, from the point of view of an on-

looking or hearing analyst. A strict analytic separation is sometimes made between

subject (researcher/analyst) and object (discourse/members practice) (although see the

reflexivity of some early discourse work, e.g. Ashmore et al., 1995). Some recent

work in psychosocial, affective and embodied research tries to more thoroughly

collapse solid divisions between researcher and participants, for example by:

investigating the counter-transference relationships between researchers and

participants (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000); or engaging in collective group-level

analyses, producing work in which researcher and participant positions can coincide

within one person (Gillies et al., 2004, 2005). There are similarities here with early

methods of systematic experimental introspection adopted in America and Europe,

which are now being revisited in studies of consciousness (Petitmengin and Bitbol,

2009).

Mindfulness practice also involves taking one’s own subjectivity as the locus

of inquiry, and uses that subjective engagement to pursue embodied investigations.

For example, Bentz and Shapiro’s (1998) mindful inquiry approach to social research

“combines the Buddhist concept of mindfulness with phenomenology, critical theory,

and hermeneutics that puts the inquirer at the center” (p. 171). Stainton-Rogers (2011)

discusses mindfulness as a study skill relevant for critical social psychology (pp.

xxiii-xxv). And Barnes and Moss (2008) discuss the relevance of mindfulness to

qualitative research; paralleling a mindful perspective with the “unmotivated looking”

of conversation analysis. “Offering a light, ‘spacious’ noticing, curious and

appreciative, and not too grasping to make what is passing too fixed and tangible” (p.

19). In the space of mindfulness, one creates a context of “friendly, curious inquiry

free from strong assumptions and preconceptions” (p. 13). This involves opening to

the tangible and intangible aspects of experience with equanimity.

I will invite the reader to sample such an approach, by adopting the position of

both researcher and participant, in a rhetorical exploration of early Buddhist texts.

This is similar to proposals for first-person inquiry in enactive cognitive science

studies of consciousness, but without making the same solid distinctions between

first-person (subjective), second-person (intersubjective) and third-person (objective)

research accounts (Varela, Thompson and Rosch, 1991). A rhetorical perspective on

mindfulness may allow us to complicate such separations.

From the discursive side of the debate, it is easy to assume that any approach,

which stresses the importance of inner life, is equivalent to cognitivism. But

psychosocial, phenomenological and humanistic approaches to social psychology –

among others – all attest to this not being the case. Equally, Buddhism does not adopt

a cognitivist understanding of the mind. But unfortunately, there has been little

engagement between Buddhism, critical psychology, and social constructionist

psychology, despite there being deep similarities and affinities between these

approaches – theoretically, methodologically and ethically.

There is a long history of engagement and mutually enriching dialogue

between Buddhism and psychoanalysis, which predates social constructionism, and

which has not yet been explicitly explored by critical psychologists or psychosocial

researchers (Magid, 2002; Safran, 2003). It is not my intention in this paper to

consider the strikingly overlapping epistemological stances of some Buddhist

traditions and psychoanalysis, especially object relations and relational

psychoanalysis. This would take another paper. But generally, I am concerned that

work in psychosocial studies becomes synonymous with psychoanalysis at the

expense of other commensurate traditions – such as Buddhism.

Recently, social constructionists have explored some of the theoretical

resonances between notions of ‘relationality’, ‘joint action’ and ‘co-action’ and

Buddhist ideas of ‘inter-being’ or ‘dependent origination’; theories which undermine

the existence of abiding independent entities, whether in people, or in natural and

social worlds (Gergen and Hosking, 2006; Gergen, 2009; Kwee, Gergen &

Koshikawa, 2006; Kwee, 2010). The historical Buddha, Siddartha Gotama, was not so

concerned with ontology (what is) as with epistemology (how things come to be),

which parallels a constructionist approach (Gombrich, 1996). Mindfulness practice

can be considered epistemologically pragmatic through its emphasis upon the effects

of particular constructions in terms of the complex web of dependently originated

processes. The main concern becomes whether the constructions constitute or

alleviate anguish. Both critical psychologists and Buddhist practitioners are critical of

essentialist stances, which attempt to identify a core ‘essence’ in objects or

individuals that are isolated and independent from specific conditions.

Whereas discursive constructionists tend to ground themselves in the study of

discourse, Buddhist mindfulness practice is often grounded in the ‘groundlessness’ of

changing bodily sensations and feelings. It thus has parallels with embodied research

(e.g. Finlay, 2006). Moving from discourse to awareness involves coming into

experiential contact with experience behind or beneath language and before it arises.

For example, Pagis (2009, 2010a, 2010b) has conducted participant-ethnography on

the production of intersubjectivity in vipassana meditation silent retreats. Pagis shows

how the kind of vipassana meditation she studied is initially and primarily a form of

embodied reflexivity, quite different to an abstract or discursive reflexivity wherein

one makes oneself a subject or object through language (“I”, “me”, “mine”). Instead,

it is anchored or grounded in the sensed or felt body. Shusterman (2008) similarly

illustrates how mindfulness meditation is about feeling one’s own bodily sensations

from within rather than observing one’s own and other’s bodies from the outside. In

the words of Merleau-Ponty (1945), it involves getting in touch with the ‘lived’ body

of experience, rather than the ‘objective’ body of science.

Mindfulness practice also involves opening up our inquiries to more than just

three senses (i.e. sight, hearing, mental activity), which seem to dominate discursive

turn work, to include other neglected senses (i.e. bodily sensations, feelings, touch,

taste, movement). A mindfulness-based perspective thereby challenges the ocular

metaphor frequently employed in Western culture, as adopted in discursive analyses,

which study what is observable in a transcript or video recording.

In this sense, mindfulness practice has a less ‘identified’ or ‘attached’

relationship to discourse (or talk) than discursive psychology. Indeed, as shall be seen,

the emphasis of mindfulness practice tends to be initially upon non-discursive sensory

awareness of the full range of sensory experience – especially bodily sensations and

feelings experienced from within – without clinging to the contents of experience. But

paradoxically, we need to use language in order to cultivate such a stance internally.

Beyond such general theoretical parallels, there have been few attempts to think

through in detail how a Buddhist approach might resonate with critical psychological

research and practice. Gergen (2009) is critical of individualised meditation practices

which only focus on individual change – presuming social change can arise purely

from individual practice – and argues that we need relational meditation practices,

which cultivate mindful communities. At this stage, these are proposals, which have

yet to be practically developed. In this paper, I consider a rhetorical approach to

mindfulness as a social approach.

To develop this approach further, we need to understand how a Buddhist

approach might complement a rhetorical psychology of the person, and how rhetorical

psychology might in turn help to bring the mindfulness-based approach out of its cul

de sac in experimental cognitivist and neuroimaging research. Might we be able to

synthesise the perceptual and discursive accounts of consciousness through dialogue

between this perspective and rhetorical psychology?

To develop this position, it is important to understand how I am approaching

mindfulness itself. One great challenge is teasing mindfulness apart from the

dominant cognitivist paradigm through which it is commonly engaged.

Mindfulness Practice as a Culture of Awakening

It would be easy to assume that mindfulness is a religious, spiritual or mystical

practice – but it does not need to be seen in this way. I will now discuss background

assumptions to my take on mindfulness as a culture, lest it is understood simply as a

cognitive process or therapeutic technique.

The present paper is grounded mainly in an understanding of mindfulness

practice derived from the contemporary Insight Meditation movement in the West,

including the work of Batchelor (1997, 2010), and the early Buddhist Pali Canon: key

texts in the Theravada school of Buddhism, one of the earliest stratas of Buddhism.

Pali is the ancient Indian language used to record the teachings of Gotama and his

followers over 2,500 years ago. The Pali Canon comprises what Gotama is claimed to

have actually taught, although there are disputes about the historical accuracy of the

written teachings. I adopt a highly selective reading of this canon for the purposes of

developing mindfulness practice as a style of critical psychological experiential

inquiry.

For discursive and rhetorical psychologists, these teachings might be very

interesting, not least because they often take the form of dialogues between Gotama

and a variety of interlocutors. It is in these discourses that teachings on mindfulness

can be found. The word mindfulness is used particularly in the Setting up of the

Foundations of Mindfulness (Analayo, 2003), Mindfulness of Breathing (Rosenberg

and Guy, 1998) and Mindfulness of the Body (Nanamoli & Bodhi, 2005) discourses.

The present discussion will consider these texts from a rhetorical perspective, whilst

acknowledging that there is much debate within the fields of Buddhism, Buddhist

Studies and Psychology about precisely what mindfulness is, and how it is to be

practiced (Williams & Kabat-Zinn, 2011).

The practice of mindfulness has been part of several of the world traditions of

Buddhism since its early origins in ancient India, developed in a variety of ‘Eastern’

cultures, and now recently adopted in ‘the West’ – especially in the United States and

Europe – since the beginnings of the twentieth century. It is part of the extensive

Buddhist meditative tradition. I am using the term ‘mindfulness practice’ instead of

dharma or Buddhist practice because these latter terms can create a lot of confusion

and misunderstanding – particularly the mistaken assumption that what I am

presenting is necessarily a ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ perspective (ala Transpersonal

Psychology or Psychology of Religion and Spirituality).

Instead, I intend ‘mindfulness practice’ to be inspired by dharma or Buddhist

practice understood as a ‘culture of awakening’ rather than as a religion (Batchelor,

1997). This perspective becomes possible through a Modernist or Postmodernist take

on Buddhism suitable for engagement in a changing, globalized world through

complex cultural processes, including detraditionalisation, demythologisation, and

psychologisation (McMahan, 2008). This involves seeing Buddhism as a cultural

practice of awakening. Crucially, this perspective is very different to religious

Buddhism. From the present perspective, Buddhism is a collection of practices, or

things to do, rather than truths to believe. Buddhism becomes a religion the moment

the teachings of the Buddha are taken to be ‘true’ without critical examination and

reflection. Buddhism is a ‘culture’ in the sense of needing to be cultivated or grown,

or brought into being. It is an art of living rather than a dogmatic adherence to

particular beliefs.

By approaching Buddhism as a culture of awakening, we can understand how

the Buddha was engaging in dialogue with his host culture. In Arguing and Thinking,

Billig (1996) points out that theoretical approaches do not develop in isolation, but

rather argumentatively in conflict with other approaches. His antiquarian psychology

turns to ancient Greek philosophy and shows how ideas develop historically in

relation to their cultural and intellectual contexts. We need to understand how

Buddhist ideas similarly developed during the same historical period (5th

century BC).

Gotama was living through times of unprecedented social and cultural change,

mainly involving a movement from a traditional agrarian society to an increasingly

market-based economy and from government by local tribal leaders to centralised

power in the form of monarchies. Such social change may partly explain his focus on

impermanence/change. Arguably his approach provides a highly skillful way of

responding creatively to change and is especially relevant to contemporary periods of

rapid social transformation. Nevertheless, many of his ideas need to be understood in

their specific cultural context, and translated and adapted for contemporary purposes.

Gotama was arguing against the dominant Brahminical belief in an abiding

Self (atman), which is the “pure consciousness that is the core of one’s true being”

and “identical in nature to Brahman (God)” (Batchelor, 2010, p. 275). The

Upanishads (or Vedanta) were literature exploring the ways to achieve unity with

Brahman, for example, through concentration meditation practices designed to lead to

absorption states (jhanas). Instead of seeking absorption with Brahman, and detaching

oneself from sensory consciousness, Gotama’s mindfulness practices were partly

designed to investigate the conditionality of lived experience – in and through the

meditative cultivation of an awareness of co-arising conditions. Instead of there being

an abiding independent substance, which animates all reality, all phenomena are

conditioned and changing. The principle of ‘conditioned arising’ or ‘interdependent

origination’ is one of the Buddha’s original ideas.

When this occurs, that comes to be; from the arising of this, that also arises. And when this no

longer occurs, that comes to an end; from the cessation of this, that also ceases (Olendzki, 2010,

p. 106).

This perspective is not a depiction of linear causal sequences or “chains of events” but

that “multiple factors co-arise in each moment while mutually conditioning one

another” (ibid., p. 110). No isolated independent phenomena can be found. This

undermines the idea of isolated ‘factors’ interacting with one another. In mindfulness

practice, it is argued that we do not find underlying essences, but rather

interdependent processes. This is not the same as saying that ‘everything is

connected’ or ‘interconnected’. As Olendzki astutely points out, the word

interconnected rests upon a “spatial image suggesting a relationship between two or

more things” (p. 105). Instead, conditioned arising is part of the Buddha’s process

philosophy, wherein “the dynamics of the flux are more significant than the

temporary structures taking shape and arising within it” (p. 106).

Meditation means to cultivate (bhavana) particular qualities internally, such as

mindfulness. Crucially, this involves particular uses of language as well as bodily

postures. Mindfulness is a concept used to direct our attentions, moment by moment,

to the conditioned processes of becoming. Our attentions become directed to the

patterning of such processes – especially those, which provide the sense of a

continuously existing, abiding self. Buddhist concepts of emptiness and

selflessness/not-self emphasise our lack of inherent independent being and bring

attention to our responsibility to ourselves, others and othernesses. Even material

objects – such as a piece of paper – are ‘selfless’ in the sense of containing no

isolated, independent core.

This background is essential for understanding how I am approaching the

cultivation of mindfulness through meditation practice.

Mindfulness: From Definition to Practice

I understand mindfulness primarily as a practice to be performed rather than as a

concept to be theorized, or state to be measured. This broadly methodological

approach can be distinguished from scientific and therapeutic approaches.

Much scientific work on mindfulness attempts to study its nature by ‘pinning it

down’ and treating it as an object of study within a hypothetico-deductive positivist

experimental paradigm, involving the manipulation and measurement of factors and

variables (e.g. Baer, 2010). Even enactive or embodied cognition research - which

combines cognitive science, phenomenology and Buddhist theory and practice - is

situated within an experimental (neuroimaging) paradigm (Varela, Thompson &

Rosch, 1991). Within this paradigm, social psychologists will be more familiar with

the experimental social cognitive research by Langer (1989) and colleagues. This is a

non-Buddhist, non-meditative understanding of mindfulness. Here, mindfulness is a

style of information processing involving the creation of new conceptual distinctions

and categories, which are sensitive to the present social context. It is opposed to the

‘mindless’ utilization of concepts from the past. While there are some similarities

between Langer’s mindfulness and early Buddhist mindfulness in terms of how

attention is understood, the concepts are not the same, and should be treated as

distinct (Langer and Moldoveanu, 2000). In particular, I consider an essential aspect

of mindfulness to be the awareness of bodily sensations, which are not addressed in

Langer’s definition. Her definition is also a highly individualized understanding of

mindfulness (Billig, 1999b).

Contemporary therapeutic interventions such as Mindfulness-Based Stress

Reduction and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy adopt the definition of

mindfulness as “awareness of present experience with acceptance” (Kabat-Zinn,

2003) – indirectly influenced by humanistic psychology (Dryden & Still, 2006) – or

as a “meta-cognitive decentering” – drawing upon cognitivist computational theory

(Teasdale, Segal & Williams, 1995). These definitions are intimately connected to the

therapeutic purpose of mindfulness practice in such programmes; they are not

primarily tailored to understanding mindfulness as a style of investigative inquiry,

suitable for critical psychology.

Such psychological definitions of mindfulness risk de-ethicising mindfulness

practice by aligning it with acceptance. There have been calls to re-engage

mindfulness practice with its Buddhist ethical roots (Bodhi, 2011). This is crucial if

we are to engage with mindfulness practice as critical, cultural-historical approach to

social psychological research, which requires a solid ethical grounding. In addition,

there is also a need to recover the recollective dimensions of mindfulness, which

allows mindful awareness to encompass events from the past, and distinguishes the

present perspective from the idiosyncratic take on mindfulness as ‘present moment’

awareness alone. One may mindfully remember or witness an event from the past as

well as the present; acknowledging that there is never a ‘pure’ present moment

outside of historical construction and processes of conditioning.

Most crucially for this paper, such research tends to ignore the active qualities

of language use, and how rhetoric is central to the cultivation of mindfulness. I am

using the term ‘mindfulness’ as an English translation of the Pali word ‘sati’ (Rhys-

Davids, 1890). Sati might be better translated as a kind of ‘awareness’, which is

embodied and feelingful. But even this is vague compared to the specific meanings

given in the Pali canon. It could equally be bodyfulness or heartfulness, because it

does not just concern the mind. In fact the Pali term citta, which is usually translated

as mind, is more accurately rendered ‘heart-mind’. It connotes the affective qualities

of our mental and bodily activities and the intimacy between our usual distinction

between thoughts and feelings. It undermines our assumed rationality by

foregrounding our affective being. And it highlights how the take on the ‘discursive

mind’ (Harre & Gillett, 1994) is overly restrictive because it is grounded in discourse

alone.

A Rhetorical Approach to Mindfulness

Billig (1996) criticises cognitive, ludic and dramaturgical theories of social

psychological life for neglecting its argumentative aspects. He thereby lays the

theoretical foundations for rhetorical and discursive psychological investigations of

topics such as attitudes, categorization, and thinking. But the focus on argumentation

and the two-sidedness of everyday thinking in rhetorical psychology risks

undermining other embodied, sensorial aspects of existence. For example, the

grounding in logos and anti-logos neglects the groundless ground of changing bodily

sensations. By contrast, mindfulness involves opening ourselves up to the rich

diversity of our sensorial lives, which can encompass the contradictions of inner

speech and dialogue, but is not limited to them. Nevertheless, at the same time, there

is a possibility that the non-discursive dimensions of our existence are rhetorically

organized.

Sharf (1995) illustrates this in his critique of the “rhetoric of experience”

displayed within Buddhist religious discourse. While concepts such as mindfulness

are “presumed to designate discrete ‘states of consciousness’ experienced by Buddhist

practitioners in the midst of their meditative practice” (p. 231), the lack of public

consensus between practitioners about their meaning belies the notion that the terms

function representatively. Instead, Sharf argues that they function rhetorically and

ideologically, performing social functions within specific cultural, historical, and

political contexts. As Sharf (2000) acutely points out, as soon as we attempt to define

“experience” we situate it in the public sphere, assuming an “objective or third-person

perspective” (p. 226). At the same time, third-person objective accounts must be

written by living, breathing individuals working in the first-person – or perhaps

collaboratively and inter-subjectively with others in the second-person – who in turn

have their own thoughts, memories, and feelings (Varela & Shear, 1999).

This debate has its roots in Wittgenstein’s (1953) critique of James (1890).

Wittgenstein disputed that the meaning of psychological language (e.g. inner state

words such as ‘anger’) is established directly and introspectively through a

correspondence relationship with the inner states themselves. Instead, an “‘inner

process’ stands in need of outward criteria” (p. 129), to be found primarily in

language use. How are we to step out of this longstanding debate about language and

mind? One way is to consider how rhetoric can be used alongside the adoption of

specific bodily postures to cultivate a mindful perspective, which in turn cannot be

reduced to language. From this perspective, we become interested in how language

can function as an essential part of the experience of mindfulness. This is in line with

James’ pragmatist orientation, Wittgenstein’s action view of language, and the

functionalism of early Buddhism, in which consciousness is seen as an embodied

function, rather than an entity (Scott, 2000; Stanley, 2011).

In general terms, meditation practice is rhetorical in the sense of being

argumentatively directed towards the development or cultivation of a particular way

of being, in opposition to other alternative ways of being. One cultivates

concentration in opposition to distraction, kindness as opposed to hostility, non-

attachment as opposed to clinging. Mindfulness meditation is rhetorical in the sense

that it involves the cultivation of a ‘presence’ of mind (upathana), which is the

opposite of absent-mindedness or distraction (multhassati) (cf. Langer’s 1989

distinction between mindfulness and mindlessness). It is also a specific form of

remembering, rhetorically organized against forgetting. The verb form of ‘sati’ is

‘sarati’ and can be translated as remembering or recollection. In being mindful, we

are reminded to recall “what is otherwise too easily forgotten: the present moment”

(Analayo, 2003, p. 48). Mindfulness involves “recollection of the present, sustained

awareness of what is happening to us and within us on each occasion of experience”

(Bodhi, 2005, p. 262). To be clear: this can involve becoming aware of remembering

an event from the past. It is a lucid awareness of whatever is happening momentarily.

But here it will be considered specifically in terms of its present moment, embodied

and affective dimensions.

Befitting my pragmatic perspective, mindfulness is presented in the early Pali

discourses as something to do, rather than as a concept to grasp after. We are invited

to cultivate a clear comprehension and awareness of our bodies, feelings, mind and

the full range of our sensory contents – according to a specific, applied ethico-moral

framework. Crucially, it is to be practised in a kind and gentle way, which is

affectionate towards whatever comes into awareness. We take an ethical training to

alleviate harm and avoid creating distress, if possible. This is especially important

when working at the boundary between our interior and exterior lives, which includes

our bodies, our ‘heart-minds’ and our interactions with others and ‘othernesses’ in our

surroundings.

Cultivating a Mindful Stance

It is perhaps easier to understand a mindful stance through practice rather than

intellectual thought. According to Batchelor (2010), mindfulness practice involves

creatively responding to four injunctions to act. He offers the memorable acronym

ELSA: Embrace and fully know anguish or suffering (rather than avoiding or

ignoring it); Let go of the craving for things to be otherwise (e.g. by avoiding or

rejecting experience); Stop reacting and experience responsive calm; Act in such a

way as to cultivate a specific ethically-informed way of life. The final injunction

comprises mindfulness practice and opens the practice up to social engagement.

This approach involves seeing mindfulness as an embodied methodology. For

Gotama, mindfulness of the body needs to be developed and cultivated; it cannot be

taken for granted. The meditator is instructed to abide contemplating “the body as a

body ardent, fully aware and mindful” (Nanamoli and Bodhi, 2005, p. 145). How? A

meditator, “gone to the forest or to the root of a tree or an empty hut, sits down;

having folded their legs crosswise; sets their body erect, and establishes mindfulness

in front of them, ever mindful they breathe in, mindful they breath out” (ibid.).

Evidently, the cultivation of mindfulness requires specific social and material

conditions to be in place. To practice this method in contemporary life, after reading

this paragraph, try setting a timer to ring in 10 minutes time. Mindfulness practice

requires a degree of initial solitude, social withdrawal and silence in order for stability

of concentration to develop. If you can, find a quiet, secluded place.

Then, the meditator adopts a particular bodily posture, suitable for their own

body. Bring awareness to your bodily posture. Adopt an open, upright yet comfortable

posture, which is self-supported if possible, either in a chair or sitting on a cushion.

Work gently within the confines of your own bodily abilities. Close or half-close your

eyes and incline your head slightly downwards.

Traditionally, the mindful researcher would begin their mindfulness of the

body by bringing awareness to the sensations of their own breathing. Mindfulness of

breathing is “probably the most widely used method of body contemplation”

(Analayo, 2003). Contemplation of the body is to be practised through mindfulness

and ‘clear comprehension’ of breathing as it occurs.

Notice any obvious places of intentional holding in your body: the base of the

stomach, shoulders, hands, forehead, around the eyes. Release them if you can. Notice

those parts of your body, which are contacting the ‘outside’ world: the sensations of

your skin against clothing; your bottom sitting; your feet on the floor. Notice any

evidence you have that you are alive right now in this moment. When you are ready,

take three deep breaths, expanding your lungs. Feel the movement this creates in your

body. Then, letting the breath breathe itself, see if you can find where you can feel the

movement of the breath most readily.

Rest your attention on these changing sensations, whether at the belly, chest,

or nostrils. Keep your attention there for the remaining time.

Investigating ‘Interiority’ Through Mindfulness

Evidently, while mindfulness initially involves a non-discursive contemplation of the

body, we need to use language as our guide. In cultivating mindfulness, we are using

language as a tool to open ourselves up to the rich diversity of our sensory contact

with the world, becoming more aware of life as it is lived. This includes the full range

of our sensory life, such as bodily sensing, touching, hearing, seeing, smelling,

feeling/emoting, thinking and our intuitive capacities. We become aware of a flowing

stream of life arising and passing away.

The mindfulness meditator begins by bringing awareness to the bare

sensations of the breath as it is felt in the body. One becomes mindful of the

sensations of the air flowing through the nostrils or the kinesthetic rising and falling

of the abdomen. One extends in time the “initial split seconds … before one begins to

recognize, identify, and conceptualize” (Analayo, 2003, p. 59). The actual sensations

of inhalation and exhalation are directly sensed. This is different from thinking about

one’s breathing. Fromm (1960) describes thinking about breathing as “cerebration”

rather than mindfulness: “Once I begin to think about my breathing, I am not aware of

my breathing anymore” (p. 67).

This perspective on breathing is a good illustration of the different vantage

point on experience of Buddhism and discursive psychology. From a mindfulness

perspective, the breath is sensed inwardly. This moment-to-moment sensing is used as

a tool for the cultivation of concentration, synchronicity, and awareness. This has

been termed a ‘bare attention’, in which one focuses on feeling the sensations of

breathing with a “beginner’s mind” (Suzuki, 1970): suspending conceptual or

discursive thinking in favour of unprejudiced, direct perception and sensation. By

contrast, when breathing features in discursive psychological studies, for example

conversation analyses, the auditory sound is transcribed and may feature in analysis

for how it functions as part of the co-ordinated performance of social actions – such

as crying or laughing (Jefferson, 1984). Perhaps this is a difference of perspective:

mindfulness is initially directed within, whereas conversation analysis is directed

without.

But there are possible similarities. As Barnes and Moss (2008) illustrate, the

stance of mindfulness seems a similar orientation to the “unmotivated looking” or

“ethnomethodological indifference” of conversation analysis – in which members’

methods of making sense are explored inductively without praising or blaming them.

As Psathas (1995) explains, the “variety of interactional phenomena available for

study are not selected on the basis of some preformulated theorizing, which may

specific matters of greater or lesser significance” (p. 45). Breath awareness is

practised by bringing a similar kind of non-judgemental watchfulness to the

sensations of the breath. The tendency to change or control the breath is momentarily

suspended. We simply wait and see what arises and passes away. But this is an

actively engaged rather than indifferent stance.1

While mindfulness is often initially cultivated and directed inwardly, in the

sense that the meditator becomes aware of subjectively experienced bodly sensations

from within, it culminates in an extrospective awareness which can encompass our

awareness of our social and natural worlds. Moore (1995) argues that training in Zen

Buddhism involves a “resocialization in which the initiate learns to perceive the social

world in a dereifying manner” (p. 704). Dereification is the “perception of the objects

of the social world as socially relative and as dependent on human perception and

activity” (p. 719). From this perspective, Zen is a form of “radical reflexivity” (p.

721), similar to ethnomethology. Mindfulness practice may therefore have the

potential to challenge ideological discourse, which reifies psychological or social

realities in ways that were critiqued by Gotama.

From Calming to Inquiry

Mindfulness of breathing is presented here as a calming practice which is a precursor

to the inquiries which may lead to experiential insights. It is essentially a training in

attention. One brings the mind back whenever it wanders; what James (1890) termed

‘voluntary sustained attention’. While concentration or unification (samadhi) practice

may lead to experiences of calm (samatha) or eventually absorption in the object of

1 See Moore, 1995 on further similarities between Zen Buddhism and ethnomethodology – including

parallels between Zen Koan practice and Garfinkel’s breaching experiments.

concentration (jhana), this needs to be distinguished from insight meditation

(vipassana) which is a style of experiential inquiry, resulting in intuitive insights

experienced at a bodily level.

One of the aims of calming practice, which includes adopting a stable bodily

posture, is to stablise and centre the mind. With practice this stability will increase

and some subjective ‘space’ maybe experienced between thoughts, sensations,

feelings. When we slow down in this way, we can begin to inquire into the patterning

of subjective experience. The point at which enough stability, concentration and calm

is developed which allows intuitive insights to arise is termed ‘access’ concentration.

We need enough concentration to reach this point in practice, which may occur

quickly or after much practice. Then, we become aware of the moments of sensory

contact, which arguably arise before the activities of rhetorical construction begin.

When beginning meditation, we may notice that our minds are ‘wild’ or

‘drowsy’. If wild, we may notice a torrent of discursive thoughts, taking us away from

our meditation object (i.e. the sensations of breathing). A cascade of judgements,

fantasies, projections, reactions, commentaries, memories, desires, or plans may arise.

This is what James (1890) metaphorically termed the “thought stream” and includes

thoughts and feelings which maybe discursive, visual or difficult to discern. If

drowsy, a kind of heavyness, hazyness or fuzziness may be felt, and bodily sensations

of tiredness maybe more apparent.

Noticing transformation and processes of change and becoming is a key part

of mindfulness practice and allows one’s attention to stay relatively stable whilst

bearing witness to impermanence. By stopping or pausing and ‘swimming against the

stream’ of our reactivity cycles, we are able to suspend or reverse our routine

activities, and witness their coming into being. This allows us to understand the

connection between pre-discursive experience and the arising of rhetorical

constructions.

Mindfulness, Rhetoric and Experience

If we were conducting a traditional rhetorical analysis of Gotama’s guidance for

meditation presented above, we might have brought attention to the use of listing, and

how the three lists of three work to produce the utterance as performing the social

action of instruction. This act would need to be understood in its local strategic, as

well as broader historical, context; perhaps as a meditation instruction opposed to, for

example, absorption meditations. But this strategy would crucially miss the point of

mindfulness itself: that it is to be practiced, rather than intellectually dissected or

analysed.

Through silent meditative practice, one trains in bringing mindful awareness

to the conditioned genesis of phenomena, discursive nor not, in ongoing experience.

Mindfulness practitioners tend to be sceptical of linguistic concepts because their

employment often takes them experientially away from visceral awareness of what is

happening sensorially in the present moment (Suzuki, 1970). This can include

sensations of touch, taste, hearing, smelling and seeing. In Buddhism, the ‘mind’ is

seen as a sixth sense which one should be especially aware of because of its ability to

make things such as thoughts, feelings and sensations seem to be permanent, our own

possessions, or satisfactory – especially through the use of language (Bodhi, 2005).

Mindfulness practitioners often seek to go beyond thinking, language and concepts, or

at least to adopt a more skillful – i.e. non-attached/non-identificatory – relationship to

them, in order to then foster more ethically wholesome ways of speaking and acting.

So, meditation allows us to take our personal inner lives seriously whilst at the

same time not ‘clinging’ to the contents of consciousness. But this is not to say that

mindfulness meditation is language-less or entirely separate from discursive activity.

Its practice is intimately connected to public uses of language. The present

perspective does not advocate a complete detachment from language use, as in some

styles of vipassana (Hart, 1987). Instead, language can be used to guide practices, as

our awareness turns to changing sensations, which arise before rhetorical action.

However, in discursive psychology, descriptions or instructions are studied for

the business they do in interaction, and for the actions and deeds they are used to

perform, rather than their putative correlates in mind or world (Potter, 1996). The

analyst avoids creating an inside/outside split by assuming, for example, that

utterances reflect or report inner states of mind. In mindfulness practice, by loosening

identification with the contents of consciousness, one momentarily suspends the

conditioned assumption that discursive thoughts index reality or self (Epstein, 1996).

Thoughts are seen not as representational, but as active parts of the constitution of

realities. In turn, we can use discursive utterances to direct our attentions in particular

ways, and cultivate a mindful stance towards the arising of discourse.

Buddhism often comprises a scepticism of language which derives from an

understanding that discourse does not represent the self or world, but rather often has

pragmatic effects in terms of how it leads to, or alleviates, anguish. Nevertheless there

are approaches, which understand vipassana as a realist practice allowing us to “see

things as they really are” (Hart, 1987). This is not the approach adopted here. Instead,

we can see language as very useful for mindful practice, and as contingent,

constructed, and constitutive of realities.

Buddhist texts provide many very useful structuring categories and devices,

which are themselves rhetorical, for the investigation of interior and exterior life. To

use a cognitive metaphor, we could understand these as tools for ‘parsing’ experience.

Linguistic tags and labels are used to pull out particular patterns from the stream or

flow of experience, which cannot always be reduced to language.

For example, the meditator contemplates ‘feelings as feelings’. Feelings

(vedana) specifically refer to the hedonic tone, which experientially arises upon

sensory contact with a given object. Let us take the example of physical discomfort or

pain in the body. If experienced with an unpleasant hedonic tone, the meditator may

notice a temptation to make the sensation go away, by for example moving position or

scratching an itch. One may notice a desire to make a rhetorical movement towards or

away from a particular sensation, depending upon its hedonic tone. Bringing

awareness to the sensations themselves interrupts this automatic response and allows

for inquiry to proceed (see Cromby, 2007 for a commensurate approach to feelings).

We can use this method to become aware of the role of bodily sensations in

the arising of discursive thought, or what Billig (1996) calls inner dialogue. Perhaps

when a painful physical sensation arises in the body, the meditator witnesses the

arising of a phrase of inner speech. “This meditation business is a bad idea – it’s

making my body hurt”. By bringing awareness to what prompted the arising of such

inner speech, we would be beginning to adopt a mindful approach to our inner lives –

which at heart is an investigative approach. This requires a degree of calming of our

‘heart-minds.’

As well as becoming aware of how phrases of inner speech are conditioned,

we might also become interested in the activities performed by these phrases. For

example, the above phrase might be performing an evaluative judgement of

experience, along with an associated act of ‘selfing’, by taking the body as a personal

possession (‘my body’). The impression is given that the whole body is hurting. But is

this borne out through experiential inquiry of bodily sensations? Body scanning

techniques may be useful here (see Shusterman, 2008).

In mindfulness meditation we cultivate mindfulness by bringing attention to

the whole range of six internal and external sense spheres or bases. This includes the

body, mind, eyes, ears, nose and tongue. We become aware of phenomena arising at

all of the sense doors. The meditator “investigates and examines that state with

understanding and embarks upon a full enquiry into it” (Nanamoli and Bodhi, 2005).

This means taking a careful approach to the investigation of whatever arises and

passes away and particularly paying attention to the conditions, which internally and

externally give rise to particular phenomena.

According to Gotama, the beginnings of a sense of self is constructed in

experience precisely at the moment when we notice ‘we’ like or dislike something,

and cling to it, taking it as a personal desire for an object. For example, an utterance

in inner speech may arise such as “this is I, me or mine” when mind-consciousness

comes into contact with a bodily pain. If such pain is taken as an unwanted part of the

self, anguish may arise – and we may be prompted to remove the sensation.

Conclusion

I propose that a mindful perspective offers an art of living, containing the seeds of a

psychology that is radically experiential and embodied in practice and which includes,

but is not limited to, the discursive domain. At the same time, rhetorical psychology

may contain implications for Buddhist insight meditation practice, by emphasizing the

rhetorical/social organization of momentary mindful experiences. Thus, it is argued

that the very capacity to remember to be mindful is rhetorically, as well as materially,

organised.

The Buddhist take on ‘consciousness’ as a co-dependently arisen phenomena,

based upon one of the six internal and external sense bases, potentially broadens out

the rhetorical conceptualization of the person. It is proposed that in each moment of

awareness, a sensory organ (e.g. eye) co-arises with a modality of consciousness (e.g.

eye-consciousness), and an object of awareness form (e.g. visual form). This happens

for each other sensory modality: ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. Each moment of

consciousness is dependently arising based upon this tripartite. Thus, social

psychology is not reduced to rhetorical action, and interior life is not reduced to inner

dialogue.

Once we pursue such inquiries, we may find that during sustained mindful

practice, the solid distinctions of within/between, internal/external, public/private, and

discursive/embodied collapse through an awareness of transformation and

intangibility. It might be argued that such a perspective is individualistic, because it

focuses on bodily sensations experienced internally by the solitary meditator. But who

is this meditator? Mindfulness practice encourages us to investigate the notion of a

self who is meditating. The integrity of the subjectivity of the ‘conversationalist’ may

thereby become experientially undermined.

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