Concentration and Mindfulness

Beydan

It has been a long time since I took Buddhism seriously and have just started trying to get back into the swing of things these past few days. I was going to sleep and realized a question/problem I had a long time ago that I never really bothered to try and ultimately solve.

During daily routine and outside of meditation what are the key differences between mindfulness and concentration?

The major reason for my asking this is that when I actively try to be an active Buddhist and try to be mindful, I slip into the habit of concentrating on what I am doing as if I were meditating. I end up obsessively trying to keep this as a constant state of mind and stress myself out. When I find situations in which it is literally impossible to concentrate like that, I get all confused and wonder what exactly mindfulness is, and what exactly I should be aiming for as a mindset. Surely this isn't the goal, because it is simply far too difficult to keep it up throughout the day without the toll of stress becoming unbearable.

To be honest, there are many reasons why I have given up on trying to be a practicing Buddhist, but the stress resulting from constantly slipping into obsessively trying to concentrate has been a consistent contributing factor.


-Jared

Dakini

Mindfulness is when you develop a sort of mental outside observer, and you observe yourself while you're going about your business. You watch yourself, and check your motivation for doing this or that, or for making decisions, be mindful of what emotions might be coming up, that sort of thing. It's not concentration. But "mindfulness" can also apply to paying attention to what you're doing, not letting the mind wander off. In that sense, it's "focus". Which is different from concentration.

DhammaDhatu

hi Beydan

mindfulness means remembering to keep your mind on whatever task you must do

concentration is when the mind becomes one-pointed or one-focused up that task

however, your problems seem to be concerned with the effort or energy you are applying to your mindfulness & concentration

at the end of the video below, the speaker talks about effort

i would recommend listening to the whole video below a few times

kind regards

DD

Beydan

Thank you for your replies. I will take them into account and try to apply them in my practice now.