Mindfulness (living in the now)
Would you like to decrease your anxiety?
Would you like to decrease your depression?
Would you like to decrease your irritability and moodiness?
Would you like to improve your learning ability and memory?
Would you like to increase your happiness?
Would you like to increase your emotional stability?
Would you like to increase your ability to effectively manage problems?
Would you like to improve your self-esteem?
Would you like to improve your breathing?
Would you like to lower your heart rate?
Would you like to improve your immune function?
Would you like to reduce your physical stress responses?
Would you like better sleep?
Mindfulness is about learning to
train your attention to the
present moment without dwelling on what has happened
in the past or
worrying about what will happen in the future.
Mindfulness (also translated as awareness) is a
spiritual or psychological faculty that, according to the teaching of the
Buddha, is considered to be of great importance in the path to enlightenment .
It is one of the seven factors of enlightenment. "Correct" or "right"
mindfulness is the seventh element of the noble eightfold path.
Mindfulness meditation can also be traced back to the earlier Upanishads, part
of Hindu scripture.
Enlightenment is a state of being in which greed, hatred and
delusion have been overcome, abandoned and are absent from the mind.
Mindfulness, which, among other things, is an attentive awareness of the reality
of things (especially of the present moment) is an antidote to delusion and is
considered as such a 'power'. This faculty becomes a power in particular when it
is coupled with clear comprehension of whatever is taking
place.
The Buddha
advocated that one should establish mindfulness in one's day-to-day life
maintaining as much as possible a calm awareness of one's body, feelings, mind,
and dhammas. The practice of mindfulness supports analysis resulting in the
arising of wisdom A key innovative teaching of the Buddha was that mediative
stabilisation must be combined with liberating
discernment.
The
Satipatthana Sutta is an early text dealing with
mindfulness.
Mindfulness
practice, inherited from the Buddhist tradition, is being employed in Western
psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions, including
obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and in the prevention of relapse
in depression and drug addiction.
Ten Forms.
The Agamas of early Buddhism
discuss ten forms of mindfulness. The Ekottara Agama has:
mindfulness of the
Buddha
mindfulness of the
Dharma
mindfulness of the
Samgha
mindfulness of
giving
mindfulness of the
heavens
mindfulness of stopping and
resting
mindfulness of
discipline
mindfulness of
breathing
mindfulness of the
body
mindfulness of
death
According to Nan
Harijan, the Ekottara Āgama emphasizes mindfulness of breathing more than
any of the other methods, and provides the most specific teachings on this one
form of mindfulness.
Continuous
practice
In addition to various forms of
meditation based around specific sessions, there are mindfulness training
exercises that develop awareness throughout the day using designated
environmental cues. The aim is to make mindfulness essentially continuous.
Examples of such cues are the hourly chimes of clocks, red lights at traffic
junctions and crossing the threshold of doors. The mindfulness itself can take
the form of nothing more than taking three successive breaths while remembering
they are a conscious experience of body activity within mind. This approach is
particularly helpful when it is difficult to establish a regular meditation
practice.
Zen
criticism
Some Zen teachers emphasize the
potential dangers of misunderstanding "mindfulness".
Gudo Wafu Nishijima criticizes the use of the term of mindfulness and
idealistic interpretations of the practice from the Zen
standpoint:
However recently many so-called
Buddhist teachers insist the importance of 'mindfulness.' But such a kind of
attitudes might be insistence that Buddhism might be a kind of idealistic
philosophy. Therefore actually speaking I am much afraid that Buddhism is
misunderstood as if it was a kind of idealistic philosophy. However we should
never forget that Buddhism is not an idealistic philosophy, and so if someone in
Buddhism reveres mindfulness, we should clearly recognize that he or she can
never be a Buddhist at all.
Muho Noelke, the abbot of
Antaiji, explains the pitfalls of consciously seeking
mindfulness.
We should always try to be active
coming out of Samadhi. For this, we have to forget things like "I should be
mindful of this or that". If you are mindful, you are already creating a
separation ("I - am - mindful - of - ...."). Don't be mindful, please! When you
walk, just walk. Let the walk walk. Let the talk talk (Dogen Zenji says: "When
we open our mouths, it is filled with Dharma"). Let the eating eat, the sitting
sit, the work work. Let sleep sleep.
Scientific
research
Mindfulness
(psychology).
Mindfulness practice, inherited
from the Buddhist tradition, is increasingly being employed in Western
psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions. Scientific
research into mindfulness generally falls under the umbrella of positive
psychology. Research has been ongoing over the last twenty or thirty years, with
a surge of interest over the last decade in particular. In 2011, NIH's National
Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) released finding of a
study where in magnetic resonance images of the brains of 16 participants 2
weeks before and after mindfulness meditation practitioners, joined the
meditation program were taken by researchers from Massachusetts General
Hospital, Bender Institute of Neuroimaging in Germany, and the University of
Massachusetts Medical School. It concluded that "..these findings may
represent an underlying brain mechanism associated with mindfulness-based
improvements in mental health." A January 2011 study in the journal Psychiatry
Research: Neuroimaging, based on anatomical magnetic resonance images (MRI) of
Mindfulness based Stress Reduction (MBSR) participants, suggested that
"participation in MBSR is associated with changes in gray matter concentration
in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation,
self-referential processing, and perspective taking."
Would you like to decrease your depression?
Would you like to decrease your irritability and moodiness?
Would you like to improve your learning ability and memory?
Would you like to increase your happiness?
Would you like to increase your emotional stability?
Would you like to increase your ability to effectively manage problems?
Would you like to improve your self-esteem?
Would you like to improve your breathing?
Would you like to lower your heart rate?
Would you like to improve your immune function?
Would you like to reduce your physical stress responses?
Would you like better sleep?
Mindfulness is about learning to
train your attention to the
present moment without dwelling on what has happened
in the past or
worrying about what will happen in the future.
Mindfulness (also translated as awareness) is a
spiritual or psychological faculty that, according to the teaching of the
Buddha, is considered to be of great importance in the path to enlightenment .
It is one of the seven factors of enlightenment. "Correct" or "right"
mindfulness is the seventh element of the noble eightfold path.
Mindfulness meditation can also be traced back to the earlier Upanishads, part
of Hindu scripture.
Enlightenment is a state of being in which greed, hatred and
delusion have been overcome, abandoned and are absent from the mind.
Mindfulness, which, among other things, is an attentive awareness of the reality
of things (especially of the present moment) is an antidote to delusion and is
considered as such a 'power'. This faculty becomes a power in particular when it
is coupled with clear comprehension of whatever is taking
place.
The Buddha
advocated that one should establish mindfulness in one's day-to-day life
maintaining as much as possible a calm awareness of one's body, feelings, mind,
and dhammas. The practice of mindfulness supports analysis resulting in the
arising of wisdom A key innovative teaching of the Buddha was that mediative
stabilisation must be combined with liberating
discernment.
The
Satipatthana Sutta is an early text dealing with
mindfulness.
Mindfulness
practice, inherited from the Buddhist tradition, is being employed in Western
psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions, including
obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and in the prevention of relapse
in depression and drug addiction.
Ten Forms.
The Agamas of early Buddhism
discuss ten forms of mindfulness. The Ekottara Agama has:
mindfulness of the
Buddha
mindfulness of the
Dharma
mindfulness of the
Samgha
mindfulness of
giving
mindfulness of the
heavens
mindfulness of stopping and
resting
mindfulness of
discipline
mindfulness of
breathing
mindfulness of the
body
mindfulness of
death
According to Nan
Harijan, the Ekottara Āgama emphasizes mindfulness of breathing more than
any of the other methods, and provides the most specific teachings on this one
form of mindfulness.
Continuous
practice
In addition to various forms of
meditation based around specific sessions, there are mindfulness training
exercises that develop awareness throughout the day using designated
environmental cues. The aim is to make mindfulness essentially continuous.
Examples of such cues are the hourly chimes of clocks, red lights at traffic
junctions and crossing the threshold of doors. The mindfulness itself can take
the form of nothing more than taking three successive breaths while remembering
they are a conscious experience of body activity within mind. This approach is
particularly helpful when it is difficult to establish a regular meditation
practice.
Zen
criticism
Some Zen teachers emphasize the
potential dangers of misunderstanding "mindfulness".
Gudo Wafu Nishijima criticizes the use of the term of mindfulness and
idealistic interpretations of the practice from the Zen
standpoint:
However recently many so-called
Buddhist teachers insist the importance of 'mindfulness.' But such a kind of
attitudes might be insistence that Buddhism might be a kind of idealistic
philosophy. Therefore actually speaking I am much afraid that Buddhism is
misunderstood as if it was a kind of idealistic philosophy. However we should
never forget that Buddhism is not an idealistic philosophy, and so if someone in
Buddhism reveres mindfulness, we should clearly recognize that he or she can
never be a Buddhist at all.
Muho Noelke, the abbot of
Antaiji, explains the pitfalls of consciously seeking
mindfulness.
We should always try to be active
coming out of Samadhi. For this, we have to forget things like "I should be
mindful of this or that". If you are mindful, you are already creating a
separation ("I - am - mindful - of - ...."). Don't be mindful, please! When you
walk, just walk. Let the walk walk. Let the talk talk (Dogen Zenji says: "When
we open our mouths, it is filled with Dharma"). Let the eating eat, the sitting
sit, the work work. Let sleep sleep.
Scientific
research
Mindfulness
(psychology).
Mindfulness practice, inherited
from the Buddhist tradition, is increasingly being employed in Western
psychology to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions. Scientific
research into mindfulness generally falls under the umbrella of positive
psychology. Research has been ongoing over the last twenty or thirty years, with
a surge of interest over the last decade in particular. In 2011, NIH's National
Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) released finding of a
study where in magnetic resonance images of the brains of 16 participants 2
weeks before and after mindfulness meditation practitioners, joined the
meditation program were taken by researchers from Massachusetts General
Hospital, Bender Institute of Neuroimaging in Germany, and the University of
Massachusetts Medical School. It concluded that "..these findings may
represent an underlying brain mechanism associated with mindfulness-based
improvements in mental health." A January 2011 study in the journal Psychiatry
Research: Neuroimaging, based on anatomical magnetic resonance images (MRI) of
Mindfulness based Stress Reduction (MBSR) participants, suggested that
"participation in MBSR is associated with changes in gray matter concentration
in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation,
self-referential processing, and perspective taking."
