What Is Mindfulness?

[Gareth]

Hello all,

Just wondered if I could ask you all for your opinion on something. I am currently re-writing the main articles for the site, for the time being they are going to stay under the current headings, although this may possibly change in the future. The current articles are :

What Is Mindfulness?
Why Every Day?
Why Everyday?
The Benefits Of Mindfulness
How Do I Start?

What Is Mindfulness? is the first one that I am doing, here is the first draft:

Mindfulness is something that you can already do. The average human being has five senses, and mindfulness simply means paying attention to those senses. All you have to do to be mindful is listen to the music, taste the food or notice the sensations of your breathing. If mindfulness is this simple and everyone can do it, then what is the problem?

Because there is a flipside to this coin. The opposite of mindfulness is mindlessness. Mindlessness is just as easy as mindfulness - if not easier. Mindlessness means not paying attention to your senses and being lost in thought. You must have had those journeys where you get to the destination and you can't recall any of the journey whatsoever. That's because you were lost in thought for the whole journey, and you weren't paying attention to the messages sent to you by your senses. Now mindlessness is quite dangerous. Anxiety, depression, fear, doubt generally come from being lost in thought..

The human mind has a tendency to get lost in the future or the past; it’s just the way that the mind is. Mindfulness is a way of teaching ourselves to live more in the moment that we are in, to be present with whatever it is that we are experiencing. Mindfulness is a regular practice that eventually becomes a way of life. One that can bring a great deal of peace to the practitioner.

It's fairly short, but I think that's the way that it ought to be. Mindfulness is a simple concept, best not to over-complicate it. I want the article be something that anyone can understand and relate to. What do you think?

I am going to talk with Fiona soon and ask her to start a Website Feedback section in the forum, that way we can all contribute to to the site. The new look should be coming online soon, we'll get these articles looking better, and then we can start with some promotion of the site.

[FeeHutch]

I think that reads well and agree that it can be short and sweet

Love the idea of dedicated space for feedback too. Once the bank holiday is over we will get together for that chat

[JonW]

What Fee said.
I like JKZ's definition of mindfulness: "“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and
nonjudgmentally.”

[PeterFreeMindfulness]

I think defining mindfulness gets tricky, and finding the balance between brief and detailed... As well as catering for people new to the concept and those with some experience. I like what you've written, the only thing I might add is something about the attitude we bring to mindfulness, so being kind and curious about whatever arises. I've written a bit about it here in the latest post in reference to Shauna Shapiro's view of mindfulness as intention, attention and attitude, http://www.freemindfulness.org/blog. Shauna speaks about her first experiences of meditating in a Thai monastery, and getting more and more angry and frustrated with herself and the world - then after several days speaking to a monk about this. He told her that she wasn't practising mindfulness, she was practising judgement and anger and frustration. Sometimes when we see the definition of JKZ, we can misread it to assume we're not allowed to have judgements and by judging something we're doing it wrong - whereas we're always going to have judgements. Instead of judging the judgements and getting stuck in an endless cycle we can bring a kind curious attitude towards them and anything else that arises.

Maybe having a briefer definition, then a bit of room to explore it in some more detail might work?

[JonW]

Beautifully put, Peter. And thanks to the link to your blog. I'll be following your posts with great interest.
After reading your most recent post I was intending to purchase a Shauna Shapiro book but they're all very pricey on Amazon. I think I'll wait until I spot a bargain edition.

[PeterFreeMindfulness]

Hi JonW,

Thanks for your kind words. If you're interested in Shauna's work, there's a talk you can download here: http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/354/talk/8867/ - I've only started using the Dharma Seed website recently but they have a huge collection of talks from (mostly Buddhist) speakers in areas related to mindfulness and compassion.

Also here's a link to an article she wrote recently, http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/does_mindfulness_make_you_compassionate

[larorra]

I think your ideas are great Gareth. Mindfulness needs to be practiced on a daily basis otherwise we lapse back into bad habits and I have found recently since beginning the 8 week course that I need to do formal meditation, informal is good too but I feel that formal meditation is helping me more. I don't get onto the web-site often enough but there again I am finding new interests lately, am dabbling with painting and watercolours and find it very therapeutic. Don't think I will ever become famous from it but its very enjoyable and I paint mindfully and thats whats important. I used to vegetate in front of the TV most evenings but am finding less interest in TV these days, though I will never give up viewing altogether, do any others in the forum find their habits have changed since mindfulness?

Have a great weekend

[Gareth]

At the lack of any further comments, I have posted this article as is for the time being. We have a new look on the site now, so we need to update it a little bit. New look is coming for the forum soon!

[JonW]

Hi Jackie,
Good luck with the painting.
My habits have changed massively since taking up mindfulness. I no longer watch any TV and my drinking has decreased enormously. Those are the main two changes in habits.