Praktykowanie uważności i kultura ascezy
Practising Mindfulness and the Culture of Temperance

On Józef Czapski

Summary/Abstract: The article takes up the subject of mindfulness and sees it as a broad concept that functions in various spheres of culture and scopes of meanings. The author points at the role that mindfulness performs in the artistic and philosophical tradition, as well as in the contemporary developmental psychology and late capitalism culture, and also analyses the reflections on “practising mindfulness” in Józef Czapski’s and Czesław Miłosz’s creativity. Czapski’s “Dzienniki” (“Diaries”) offers a rich material for reconstructing the mindfulness stance as a key aspect of existence, artistic creativity and metaphysical experience. A special place in Czapski’s notes is occupied by a somatic approach to the activity of the intellect and the will. “Practising mindfulness” combines several spheres of activity: intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and somatic. In the present article, the pragmatic aspect of mindfulness is prominently displayed in setting it within the domain of issues in aesthetics of creation. Discerning mindfulness in the context of “spiritual exercises” tradition leads to the formula of “culture as a monastic rule” (Ludwig Wittgenstein). A source of inspiration for the contemporary reinterpretation of the idea of forming (“Bildung”) or ancient “care of oneself” is Peter Sloterdijk’s publication “Du mußt dein Leben ändern” (“You Must Change Your Life”). The Rilkean topos of transformation which it uses is a key to the concept of man and artist that we can infer from the entire Czapski’s heritage.

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