Mindfulness

"Mindfulness is being aware of what is happening within oneself or to oneself at any given moment of experience.

One's mind is usually focussed outwards in the various projects and undertakings with which one is engaged. From time to time such awareness may arise momentarily, but it quickly gets lost because we don't see any special value or purpose in developing that quality of awareness.

But according to the Buddha, that quality of awareness is the essential foundation or quality of mind that is needed for both concentration and wisdom. To develop that one-pointedness of mind, one must go on attending to a single object with mindfulness again and again. And to see them as they really are, one must examine them with mindfulness.

Mindfulness is that essential mental quality by which we use the beam of awareness to illuminate and to understand our own experience; the bodily and mental experience. This mindfulness must build up momentum through continuous practice. When appropriate strength of mindfulness is developed, it is capable of uncovering the deepest secrets of existence."

Mindfulness is what we need in everyday life, with this quality we will reflect for a moment before we act, and save ourselves from much unwise actions that we will regret later. It also gives us the "circuit-breaker" that stops us from conditioned or reflex responses, much of our responses are based on greed and "self", and hence needs to be reviewed as to its appropriateness. Formal meditation is of course the training ground for the development of high states of mindfulness, BUT it is the everyday - every moment mindfulness that makes a huge difference to our lives and the lives of those that we touch.

"In reference to the seen,.. only the seen,.. to the heard, only the heard,.. to the sensed, only the sensed,.. to the cognized, only the cognized. Then there is no "you" in terms of that... This is the end of stress."