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It does not label them or categorize them.
It just observes everything as if it was occurring for the first time.
It is not analysis that is based on reflection and memory.
It is, rather, the direct and immediate experiencing of whatever is happening, without the medium of thought.
It comes before thought in the perceptual process.
It takes place in the here and now.
It is the observance of what is happening right now, in the present.
It stays forever in the present, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time.
If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory.
When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness.
If you then conceptualize the process and say to yourself, Oh, am remembering, that is thinking.
It takes place without reference to self.
With mindfulness one sees all phenomena without references to concepts like me, my, or mine.
Ordinary consciousness would say, have a pain.
Using mindfulness, one would simply note the sensation as a sensation.
One would not tack on that extra concept Mindfulness stops one from adding anything to perception or subtracting anything from it.
One just observes exactly what is therewithout distortion.
It is observing the passing flow of experience.
It is watching things as they are changing.
It is seeing the birth, growth, and maturity of all phenomena.
It is watching phenomena decay and die.
Mindfulness is watching things moment by moment, continuously.
It is observing all phenomenaphysical, mental, or emotionalwhatever is presently taking place in the mind.
One just sits back and watches the show.
Mindfulness is the observance of the basic nature of each passing phenomenon.
It is watching the thing arising and passing away.
It is seeing how that thing makes us feel and how we react to it.
It is observing how it affects others.
In mindfulness, one is an unbiased observer whose sole job is to keep track of the constantly passing show of the universe within.
In mindfulness, one watches the universe within.
The meditator who is developing mindfulness is not concerned with the external universe.
In meditation, one is ones own laboratory.
The universe within has an enormous fund of information containing the reflection of the external world and much more.
An examination of this material leads to total freedom.
If one watches ones emotions or physical sensations, one is feeling them at that very same moment.
The mirror-thought metaphor breaks down here.
Mindfulness is extremely difficult to define in wordsnot because it is complex, but because it is too simple and open.
The same problem crops up in every area of human experience.
The most basic concept is always the most difficult to pin down.
Look at a dictionary and you will see a clear example.
Long words generally have concise definitions, but short basic words like the and be, can have definitions a page long.
And in physics, the most difficult functions to describe are the most basicthose that deal with the most fundamental realities of quantum mechanics.
You can play with word symbols all day long and you will never pin it down completely.
We can never fully express what it is.
However, we can say what it does.
We can use these activities as functional definitions of the term mindfulness reminds us of what we are supposed to be doing, it sees things as they really are, and it sees the true nature of all phenomena.
Lets examine these definitions in greater detail.
Mindfulness reminds you of what you are supposed to be doing In meditation, you put your attention on one item.
When your mind wanders from this focus, it is mindfulness that reminds you that your mind is wandering and what you are supposed to be doing.
It is mindfulness that brings your mind back to the object of meditation.
All of this occurs instantaneously and without internal dialogue.
Repeated practice in meditation establishes this function as a mental habit that then carries over into the rest of your life.
serious meditator pays bare attention to occurrences all the time, day in, day out, whether formally sitting in meditation or not.
This is a very lofty ideal toward which those who meditate may be working for a period of years or even decades.
Our habit of getting stuck in thought is years old, and that habit will hang on in the most tenacious manner.
When mindfulness is present, you will notice when you become stuck in your thought patterns.
It is that very noticing that allows you to back out of the thought process and free yourself from it.
Mindfulness then returns your attention to its proper focus.
If you are meditating at that moment, then your focus will be the formal object of meditation.
If you are not in formal meditation, it will be just a pure application of bare attention itself, just a pure noticing of whatever comes up without getting involvedAh, this comes upand now this, and now thisand now this.
Mindfulness is at one and the same time both bare attention itself and the function of reminding us to pay bare attention if we have ceased to do so.
It reestablishes itself simply by noticing that it has not been present.
As soon as you are noticing that you have not been noticing, then by definition you are noticing and then you are back again to paying bare attention.
Mindfulness creates its own distinct feeling in consciousness.
It has a flavora light, clear, energetic flavor.
Your own practice will show you the difference.
Then you will probably come up with your own words and the words used here will become superfluous.
Mindfulness sees things as they really are Mindfulness adds nothing to perception and it subtracts nothing.
It is bare attention and just looks at whatever comes up.
Conscious thought pastes things over our experience, loads us down with concepts and ideas, immerses us in a churning vortex of plans and worries, fears and fantasies.
When mindful, you dont play that game.
You just notice exactly what arises in the mind, then you notice the next thing.
Mindfulness sees the true nature of all phenomena Mindfulness and only mindfulness can perceive that the three prime characteristics that Buddhism teaches are the deepest truths of existence.
In Pali these three are called anicca , dukkha , and anatta.
These truths are not presented in Buddhist teaching as dogmas demanding blind faith.
Buddhists feel that these truths are universal and self-evident to anyone who cares to investigate in a proper way.
Mindfulness alone has the power to reveal the deepest level of reality available to human observation.
At this level of inspection, one sees the following all conditioned things are inherently transitory every worldly thing is, in the end, unsatisfying and there are really no entities that are unchanging or permanent, only processes.
Mindfulness works like an electron microscope.
That is, it operates on so fine a level that one can actually directly perceive those realities that are at best theoretical constructs to the conscious thought process.
Mindfulness actually sees the impermanent character of every perception.
It sees the transitory and passing nature of everything that is perceived.
It also sees the inherently unsatisfactory nature of all conditioned things.
It sees that there is no point grabbing onto any of these passing shows peace and happiness cannot be found that way.
And finally, mindfulness sees the inherent selflessness of all phenomena.
It sees the way that we have arbitrarily selected a certain bundle of perceptions, chopped them off from the rest of the surging flow of experience, and then conceptualized them as separate, enduring entities.
It does not think about them, it sees them directly.
When it is fully developed, mindfulness sees these three attributes of existence directly, instantaneously, and without the intervening medium of conscious thought.
In fact, even the attributes that we just covered are inherently unified.
They dont really exist as separate items.
They are purely the result of our struggle to take this fundamentally simple process called mindfulness and express it in the cumbersome and inadequate thought symbols of the conscious level.
Mindfulness is a process, but it does not take place in steps.
It is a holistic process that occurs as a unit you notice your own lack of mindfulness and that noticing itself is a result of mindfulness and mindfulness is bare attention and bare attention is noticing things exactly as they are without distortion and the way they are is impermanent , unsatisfactory , and selfless.
It all takes place in the space of a few mind-moments.
This does not mean, however, that you will instantly attain liberation as a result of your first moment of mindfulness.
You reach mindfulness by being ever more mindful.
One other Pali word that is translated into English as mindfulness is appamada, which means non-negligence or absence of madness.
One who attends constantly to what is really going on in the mind achieves the state of ultimate sanity.
The Pali term sati also bears the connotation of remembering.
It is not memory in the sense of ideas and pictures from the past, but rather clear, direct, wordless knowing of what is and what is not, of what is correct and what is incorrect, of what we are doing and how we should go about it.