Va-Va-Voom

The word ‘mindfulness’ is rather a misnomer because it has nothing to do with mind-fullness. As an attitude and a practice, it is about sparseness and simplicity rather than saturation or embellishment. With mindfulness, less is always more. This essence is captured by the tiny, 2,500-year-old, Indian word va, meaning ‘just’, ‘only’ or ‘simply’.

Va is the word used by the historical Buddha (5th Century BCE) to express the quality of bare and unelaborated ‘seeing’ that is characteristic of, and necessary for, mindfulness practice.

Va is the attribute of bringing ‘nothing extra’ to the task in hand. For to just pay attention is to be in direct contact with what is being observed, untainted by mental labelling, judging and subjective bias.

Va implies a more objective stance towards one’s experience. Without all our habitual mental reactions and projections, we can see things as they truly are.

This is the kind of seeing that, in the visual sense, we all do as small children, when we come across an interesting object for the first time. With a mix of infant curiosity and astonishment, we become absorbed in studying it. We have no name for this ‘thing’, and no past or current associations with it. There are no complications to cloud our perception. We see the object in the freshest way possible. To be mindful is, therefore, to have a child’s-eye view of the world: to see things as if for the first time.

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