A good mindfulness book is like the Art of Tidying for your head, where the mess begins. This one uses 25 works of art as a jumping off place to explore its lessons, which I found incredibly valuable, as the visual helps me remember the point. For example, Andre uses Hieronomus Bosch's "The Conjurer"--a painting of a man staring hard at the magic trick being performed, while his pocket is being picked, and it's clear that everyone else around him has some agenda. A perfect illustration of the difference of "attention" and "awareness." And how we're getting our pockets picked all day long as we focus narrowly on this and that object of attention.
I love the way the author shows us aspects of the paintings often not evident on the surface, like Wyeth's "Christina's World," which is not just a rural idyll--when you look closer, you come to understand you're seeing struggle, and heroism, a paralyzed woman who nevertheless went out every day, crawling because she refused to use a wheelchair or crutches. A lesson in action. Do we go forward in life, even when we are wounded, even when we're grieving?
A big issue right now is how to live when the world seems to be imploding around us. How to live with the weight of grief. Several of these lessons address our ability to feel happiness in the very midst of grief--not one big thing, but corners of happiness which are to be savored--not clung to, because they come and go, but noticed.
Using Turner's "Approach to Venice" as his entry point, Andre says. "Why should happiness always be a matter of being carefree and unaware? Why should it not also be found where it's needed, on the tragic side of life? In mindfulness we train ourselves to notice everything, pains and pleasures alike, and to bear and make space for complicated, subtle, disconcerting experiences. ..." It's that making space which I found the most valuable part of the book. That mindfulness meditation and the mindful mind can't solve our problems or make the bad things in life go away--but what they can do is help us make space for other things besides those tragedies.
It's something I do when I'm taking notes and I run out of space on my paper--I draw a line tightly around what I've written, and notice that there is actually still a lot of space on the page. Mindfulness meditation--or even just considering some of the lessons of mindfulness presented in the book--makes space for more life, more of a range of emotion.
Says Andre: "Mindfulness teaches us simply that, as happiness is inseparable from unhappiness and life is bound to confront us with tragedy and disarray, it's better not to dream of perfect, permanent happiness, but to learn to savor it in snippets. We can make space for it despite our troubles and worries, among them rather than waiting for them to pass.... We must preserve our little moments of happiness, even in adversity--in fact particularly in adversity. It is then that they are at their most touching, magnificent and indispensable."