the simplest connection
First: a few items of housekeeping, or, preamble.
While I’m going to be unpacking and discussing Buddhist teachings, there’s no dogma here and no belief system required. I myself am only Buddhish :) and people debate whether Buddhism is a religion at all (versus a philosophy). Regardless, no quiz at the end.
My work has been primarily in the theater, so I’m going to use theatrical language when I talk about the work (“onstage,” etc). But acting is acting, so if you’re a film actor, please read “on set” or “when the camera’s rolling” or whatever works for you instead. Similarly, if you’re a musician or other type of performer, please insert the applicable language.
At this point in my journey I work in the realistic school of acting. I’ll be referencing my process as I go, but it’s not meant to suggest it’s the only way to have a creative process. It’s just the one I’m most intimately familiar with.
And with that out of the way… let’s get started!
The simplest, most obvious way that mindfulness practice speaks to our work onstage is presence. We often say that the meditation cushion is like the gym for our minds: we go there to strengthen, so that when we get back into our daily lives, we’re stronger, more conditioned, more ready to meet what comes our way. So our time on the cushion, coming back to our breath over and over and over again, trains us to be present. Or in theater-speak, in the moment. So that when we get onstage, hopefully, we’re more able to access our presence and ability to Be Here Now.
But how? How do we actually be in the moment onstage? There are so many platitudes thrown at us: Just let go! Get into the flow. Be a vessel. Let go of your technique and leap. Live at your edge! Become one with the music. Let the character speak through you.
All of these are well and good, and I’ll probably even be exploring some of them more in this space (ahem, letting go), but they don’t necessarily get us any closer to actually knowing what to do. We’re back to our moon analogy: these are words that teachers are using to try to show us what the moon is. But we have to experience it for ourselves.
Let’s start by getting a little deeper into what “mindfulness” even means.
Shamatha, a Sanskrit word meaning “calm abiding,” is a fundamental Buddhist technique. It is often translated as “mindfulness” and is perhaps the most basic form of meditation. We are placing our mind, our attention, onto a particular object: most often (at least in the West) the breath, but we can also be mindful of our bodies, our feelings, our thoughts. By training our minds onto one object for an extended period of time, we are able to develop a more calm state, a more peaceful mind, the ability to relax and focus. We begin to teach the “monkey mind” how to be still.
Shamatha is considered a precursor to vipassana (sometimes vipashyana), or what is called insight or “awareness” meditation. The mind that is calm is able to develop insight about itself, about the nature of reality. It’s able to contemplate and analyze, and it’s also able to let go and simply rest in not-doing. Resting in awareness of the present moment, of our environment, of the movement and flow of energy.
So we have shamatha - mindfulness - and vipassana - awareness. Mindfulness and awareness. And we can toggle back and forth between the two, or more accurately we can dial up one and down the other. We can really focus our minds almost entirely on our breath and close down our field of awareness - or we can dial the other way and place only 25% attention on the breath and let ourselves bob along in 75% open awareness.
You can try this in your own seated meditation. After a few minutes, perhaps you increase your focus on the breath. Your awareness of your environment begins to close in or tune out. We sometimes call this “close technique". Then, after a few minutes tasting that experience, go the other way. Let go of the intense focus on the breath and rest in open awareness. Notice the different sensations or reactions each brings up.
Instead of mindfulness, we could also use the word focus. The metaphor is often given for driving a car. We’re focused on the road in front of us, our foot on the gas or brake, and whether we need to turn or change lanes - while at the same time we are aware of the weather conditions, the cars around us, the song on the radio and the kids fighting in the backseat.
Onstage (I promised I’d get there!), we are focused on the imaginary world we’re creating. Living in another reality, as another person, takes incredible focus and concentration. So when I’m onstage, my mind is completely focused on the character’s circumstances, perhaps on the conventions of another period in history, or a specific aspect of the character that I really want to highlight, or a state they’re in for this particular scene. At the same time, I have my field of awareness - the stage, the set, the other actors, the orchestra, the theater, that person coughing in the second row.
And, just like on the cushion, we can dial between our focus and awareness. Even when I’m feeling most private onstage, my awareness is turned way down and I’m really focused on the character - let’s say 90% focus - I am still aware of the whole play, the other actors, still aware that I’m Katie, creating the other reality I’m living in. At the other end of the spectrum might be a period of 90% awareness and only 10% focus. I might be waiting for an entrance, listening to the music, the counterpoint, tuning in to the energy of the other actors and the way the story is being told tonight. Or perhaps my role, in this moment, doesn’t require such intense focus, and I can more easily dance along with the whole.
[Note: there are also nights where I’m hyper-aware of the audience… and the critics… and what they must be thinking… and how that vocal passage just came out… and that is not the kind of awareness I’m talking about. That’s called self-consciousness, or even anxiety. Awareness in the Buddhist context is said to be warm, luminous, clear… not any words I’d use to describe those experiences!]
I think as artists this framing can be so useful. At the end of a rehearsal in class, the first thing my teacher will often ask each actor is “Do you know what you wanted to focus on?” It’s a sobering moment to realize perhaps we don’t. So often we get onstage with some idea of how the “scene” is “supposed” to go, and we’re relying on a nebulous idea of whether we reached a certain emotional “place” or our sense of whether it “felt good” or was “in the flow”. Or we’ve put so much pressure on getting that one high note perfect that we spend the whole time focusing on that and missing the rest of it.
But the character isn’t doing a scene - they’re just living life, being present to their situation and dealing with things as they arise. If we want to get authentically present on the cushion, we come back to the object of our attention (often the breath), back to what’s happening now, whether it’s boredom or bliss. We let go of our mental chatter and stories and see what happens in the next now. If we want to get authentically present onstage, we do the same: come back to the object of our focus (the character, the circumstances, the world of the play in which we’re living), let go of our ideas of what’s supposed to happen next, and see what arises. If we’re lucky, it might surprise us. We might even shoot the moon.