Last year the Zen philosopher Seth Zuihō Segall invited me to speak to a course on seven universal virtues, on the topic of self-discipline or temperance. I want to return here to the point that I think was most important in that talk: there’s an apparent contradiction between the virtues of self-discipline and mindfulness (at least in the modern form of mindfulness) – but it is only apparent.

Specifically: self-discipline is all about delaying gratification – focusing on a future benefit that makes it worth avoiding the thing that seems appealing in the present. Whereas mindfulness – at least in its modern forms, which have more historic precedent than is sometimes supposed – is all about a focus on the present moment, letting the past and the future fall away. Aren’t these two supposed virtues then in contradiction with each other: the one telling you to focus on the future over the present, the other telling you to focus on the present over the future?

They aren’t. They actually support each other very well.

Seth had introduced a classic example of self-discipline: the marshmallow experiments of psychologist Walter Mischel at Stanford. The idea was that if a child could delay her consumption of a marshmallow by ten minutes, she’d be rewarded with a second marshmallow (or an even more appealing candy). The child’s self-discipline, in this case, is the ability to avoid indulging one’s present desire for the immediate marshmallow, in order to get a greater future reward of two marshmallows. Might it not be, then, that modern mindfulness’s focus on the present encourages a lack of self-discipline – encourages one to focus on the present marshmallow now and ignore the second marshmallow later?

The answer is no, and here’s why. The present moment at issue – the moment that determines self-discipline – is not the happy moment where the child is presently eating the marshmallow. If now is the moment when you are actually eating the marshmallow, then you do well do mindfully focus on the pleasure of the sweet taste. But by the time that moment happens, the crucial decision – the one constitutive of self-discipline – has already been made.

Rather, the really important present moment, for the purpose of self-discipline, is the one before you reach out to grab the marshmallow. That’s the moment where you’re implicitly making a decision whether to take the marshmallow or wait for an even better one. And the key thing is that in that present moment you do not have the marshmallow; the moment in which you would have the marshmallow, is itself in the future. It’s a nearer future than the one where you get a second marshmallow by waiting, but it’s still the future, not the present. If you reach for the marshmallow now, you will enjoy the marshmallow after the three seconds it takes to get the marshmallow from the table to your mouth, but that is not the same thing as enjoying the marshmallow now, in the present. When you make the decision whether or not to grab the marshmallow that is presently available to you, that present moment is one in which you are not tasting any marshmallow at all.

And what that means, in turn, is that mindfulness can actually be a big help for deferring gratification to the future! Here’s why: if you are fully, mindfully in the present moment, at that time when you have a marshmallow in front of you but haven’t reached for it, then you can remain in that moment, experiencing it as it is, noticing your breathing in that moment, noticing the feeling of the chair beneath you, and focusing on that present moment rather than on the immediate-future moment where you’d have the marshmallow. And by focusing on the present instead of on that immediate future, you make your more distant future better: right now you’re focusing neither on the one marshmallow three seconds in the future or on the promise of the two marshmallows ten minutes in the future, but this very moment, right now.

This point is aligned, in turn, with Buddhist non-self more generally. One of the main arguments in Śāntideva’s famous defence of altruism asks, roughly, “If I do not protect another from suffering because her suffering doesn’t hurt me, the sufferings of my future self aren’t mine either. Why do I protect against those?” (Bodhicaryāvatāra VIII.97) What’s notable about this argument isn’t just the altruistic conclusion; it’s the premise, which breaks down the connection between present self and future self. Śāntideva’s big point is that even our long-distance future self, the one we might protect by brushing our teeth or saving for retirement, isn’t really us, the “us” that’s making the decision to do those things now. But it applies just as much to the immediate future: the self who will eat the marshmallow in three seconds is not the same self that makes the decision to reach out and eat the marshmallow now. That self can instead simply abide in the marshmallowless present moment, and be left better off for it.

I will be travelling and taking a break from blogging on August 9; Love of All Wisdom will return on August 16.