How to adopt continual present moment awareness throughout the day

Bunks

Some suggestions:

1. Note all movements (walking, lifting arm, etc) and feelings (anger, calm, fear, etc)
2. Use a mantra on every breath e.g. Buddho, Buddho.
3. Note the posture when sitting, standing, walking and laying down.
4. Set a timer to stop and come back to the breath regardless of what one is doing.

Any other ideas?

how

Despite what my ego/ selfish self or identity tries to tell me, a practice outside of this present moment is little more than a mind game. To the degree that one attends fully to this present nano moment is the same degree to which our practice judgements become meaningless.

Jeroen

Mantra’s more often than not are a form of self-hypnosis, so not necessarily more awareness. Noting is good, but you drift off and lose concentration.

• Slow down everything you do, it helps you to stay conscious
• Stay centred, when you are drawn out of your center a unaware series of actions often follow
• Beware of internal phrases like “just quickly do x” or bouts of enthusiasm

lobster

Good thread @Bunks 💗

• pain grab, you can use a pebble, fingernail into the thumb, a sort of concentrated nudge. Don't use a whip, that is flagellation and spiritual and 'normal' perversion. 🤪
• a similar idea is clenching a muscle, such as the sphincter or any that you can contract and hold and return to the present by relaxing.
• return to an internal inspiring visual, a yidam in vajrayana or the woke Buddha, an inspiring monk etc. That is a kind of remembrance or attention nudge.
• look for a meaning, for example you might see a circle and think of nothing 😇

All these techniques or mud freezing as @how describes, may degenerate into mud swirling BUT they are techniques of polishing a rock that is already a mirror …

lobster

I have found these are the most useful:

Set a timer to stop and come back to the breath regardless of what one is doing.

• Slow down everything you do, it helps you to stay conscious

However here is one from a desert mystic I met:

Sweep away your thoughts.

and also:

• awareness scan to body, thoughts, the sense gates @how often mentions and @Shoshin describes as mindfulness (practical duality)
• attention, attention, attention
• return to practice, remembering
• improved posturing

yagr

@lobster said:
I have found these are the most useful:

Set a timer to stop and come back to the breath regardless of what one is doing.

I usually set the snooze on my phone for every thirty minutes throughout the day, though the length of the snooze can fluctuate. Then I use a gatha that Thich Nhat Hahn offered in the book How to Walk that takes me one minute to recite matching it to the breath.

Another technique I use is to close off a sense gate - vision is an easy example. I close my eyes and in that instant...

Words are harder to come by toward the end of that sentence. Perhaps it is something better tried than expressed so I'll stop trying.

Shoshin1

How to adopt continual present moment awareness throughout the day
Any other ideas?

As @how has already mentioned...

and by keeping in mind the following...

"Every moment is a moment of events and no moment passes by without an event...One can not notice a moment without noticing events taking place in that moment...Therefore the 'moment' one tries to pay bare attention to, is the 'present moment..."

The present moment is shy and won't make it presence known/felt if "I" attempt to seek it out....

The other day whist out walking I spied a Tui in a bush nearby ...I wanted to capture the moment, so with my phone camera at the ready I approached the bush, but every time I thought "Ah I have a good shot now" the Tui would move out of sight...Just like the present moment....

lobster

@Shoshin1 Whatever you think, that is you?

Ay caramba!
Don't think of a lobster!
Tsk, tsk. There you are.

Who would have thought …

What else can we not think of?