What Yoda & Star Wars Taught Me About Mindfulness

[mindfulmole]

I recently wrote an article on what Yoda taught people about mindfulness, so maybe you might like it.

Here's a small excerpt:

Mindfulness and Star Wars have more in common than you may think.

Amidst the big battle between good and evil, flashy lightsabers and dubious hairstyles, lies the true wisdom of Jediism -- mindfulness.

If you want to read more, check out the full article here: http://blog.zparkl.com/mindfulness/mindfulness-lessons-by-jedi-master-yoda

[Gareth]

Hi. Nice to meet you mindfulmole.

It's a nice article. It looks familiar to me, I'm sure that I've already linked to it from @mindfuleveryday. I'll give you some more links in any case.

You missed one great Yoda quote.

"Fear is the path to the dark side.
Fear leads to anger,
anger leads to hate,
hate leads to suffering."
~ Yoda
#mindfulness

[fabiG]

Star Wars is awesome! It's incredibly how we can analyze this piece of work and relate it to other literature and other stuff! In my English course I've one written an essay which compared Darth Vader with Macbeth :)

However:

"Fear is the path to the dark side.
Fear leads to anger,
anger leads to hate,
hate leads to suffering."

For me this quote is a bit misleading. It seems like that fear is something that we should not have or is something negative. Is Mindfulness not teaching exactly the opposite? That we should embrace our fears and let them be?

[Gareth]

I don't read it as fear being unacceptable. I read it as merely a statement of fact: fear leads to anger and so on.

It's perfectly reasonable to be afraid. It's what we do with that fear that is important.

[fabiG]

Yep. That's how I read it too.

It's what we do with that fear that is important.

Definitely, nicely put. But are we having a mindful perspective on this? Other people without mindfulness background might interpret it differently, though. They might think that it's bad to have fear. And if they have fear, they feel guilty and beat them up even more...but nevertheless, there are some great quotes from Star Wars concerning mindfulness...