Here’s something to try the next time you walk into your living room: Looking at everything without thinking about it in words. Can you observe without judging? Can you see everything as it really is — the parts you love and the parts you don't?
Mindfulness is the practice of being present, being aware, being focused and intentional in everything we do in our lives, right down to the simplest and most mundane tasks and sensations. The term has been on our lips a lot in recent years, as people living in the West find refuge from their hectic and challenging lives by turning to mindfulness practices developed in the East. Workshops are spreading everywhere from Silicon Valley start-ups to primary school classrooms. Why shouldn't our home be next?
With a new year upon us, we take the opportunity to think about how mindfulness can enhance our domestic life and how it can manifest itself in the home. This is not a frivolous question: The home is our sanctuary and our nest of inspiration. Home is the place where we can begin to practise mindfulness.
We could think of mindfulness as a two-pronged aspiration. First, there is attention — attention to what is going on inside us and around us. Second, we accept what we experience. This “acceptance” means we confront things as they actually exist, even including pain and problems, and don't shy away from thinking about them. Mindfully “accepting” doesn't mean we can't work to change them. Indeed, being mindful may give us the clear-headed strength and courage to make change.
To foster mindfulness in our domestic lives, we try to address both of these aspects of mindfulness. To encourage our ability to focus, our environment should be tidy and harmonious. For those who have ever wondered why Zen temples are so clean-lined and spartan, it’s because the Zen tradition is built around fostering deep and abiding mindfulness. To help achieve these virtues, Zen practice makes use of spaces that minimize distraction and encourage internal harmony and tranquility.
A temptation to procrastinate can take root in a cluttered space, and make us avoid the hard work that goes into achieving something meaningful. Who hasn't been suddenly possessed by the urge to clean when faced with a difficult task? The contemporary American Zen priest Brad Warner recognized the importance of straightening out ourselves before we can straighten out the world when he wrote: “If you want world peace, clean your room.”
Speaking of harmony, the objects we surround ourselves with should harmonize with our values. Our possessions and furnishings ought to have been mindfully cultivated and created themselves, using sustainable practices and environmentally responsible materials. Mindfulness means being honest about what we see in the world, and that entails embracing the responsibilities we have as conscious consumers. Indeed, in English, to be “mindful” can also mean being courteous and responsible. That's the way we source our materials at Artemano. To enjoy the beauty of life at home and be content and present in the moment, should we not be proud of what we own?
What about the second aspect of mindfulness, being at peace with what is, without illusions? This means embracing the authentic character of objects. Mindfulness isn't about craving absolute perfection — indeed, craving of any kind is missing the point — but about accepting what is.
Indeed, we may soon realize that “perfection” is really the beauty we find in imperfection itself. There's an illuminating story involving the late Zen priest Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971), who was instrumental in carrying his discipline from Japan to a new community in San Francisco during the 1950s and 60s. At one of his early workshops at the San Francisco Soto Mission, a student straightened a picture on the wall before sitting to resume meditating. The roshi — as venerated older Zen priests are known — stood up and walked over to the picture. Roshi Suzuki tilted it back to its formerly crooked state and strolled out of the meditation hall without saying a word.
The lesson is that we should use our mindful eye to recognize when something worn or faded or asymmetric is more “perfect” than perfection itself. The Japanese concept of wabi sabi is an attempt to capture this feeling of finding a superior grace in things that have been worn by time and use, or in objects that bear the marks of nature — how the crooked twist of a tree turns into the grain of a table, for example.
We can only see these details when our eyes are open to them. We at Artemano recognize that finding beauty and peace around us can be as simple as descending the stairs and looking at our living space each day with the same attention we would give it if we were seeing it for the first time. The mindful home may be clean-looking and harmonious, but we also learn to cherish the character in a chipped tea bowl, in the gently fraying fabric of an heirloom carpet, in the knicks and knots in the wood of our furnishings. We resolve to see what is, and we find peace and satisfaction in it.
