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Mindfulness: Way of life or endless practice?
dantepw
Veteran
Hi everyone! 
My question is simple: Do you practice mindfulness or do you live mindfulness?
Thank you! 
!
1
Comments
Practice for sure. Still lots of clinging going on in my world. Especially at the moment with a lot of external things happening in my life.
So, lets suppose everything external was doing really fine and internally too. What would be the motivations to practice mindfulness?
Is it like the pursuit of happiness or prevention to dukkah?
@dantepw
Those nano moments of practicing mindfulness are the only moments possible to live it.
If you practice mindfulness for what you can gain from that practice, your motivation is as conditional as your self view is.
If you practice mindfulness for what all gain from it, your motivation is as unconditioned as selflessness is.
Usually the motivation for a mindfulness practitioner is a slow transition over time from self orientation towards selflessness.
I think mindfulness is a practice. It is somewhat contrived with technique but that is ok.
Whilst mindfulness is withholding that energy and simply being.
When I started it was really hard, now it comes spontaneously. In moments. Then I have the choice, either to be mindful or let energy go to thought.
Mostly I choose to be aware.
For be the goal is to become mindful as a state of being. Always.
When in meditation I relentlessly establish mindfulness and try to increase it in my sitting if I feel that it is slacking, but in everyday life I might be mindful for a few minutes or more, maybe a few times a day. I don't feel like I can gain much benefit from using mindfulness in everyday life, other then when in meditation.
Need to develop habit of being observer than to react to achieve mindfulness. I am trying it regularly but not practicing meditation frequently.
That is exactly the point, @bookworm . What are the benefits of being mindful every second (when you are in a good mood, etc)?
I'm still trying to integrate the fact that a single sneeze can blow "mindfulness" to smithereens... but that's just me.
I know right, I always wondered how I could keep mindfulness while sneezing.
You set out practicing mindfulness, to end up living mindfully.
I don't think mindfulness means unwavering concentration.
I don't know about that but in the anapanasati sutta it says when unremitting mindfulness is established then the mindfulness enlightenment factor is aroused.
maybe it's multiple words translated as mindfulness @bookworm. The mahamudra teaching has a concept of eVAM which means the mind not only focus but also diffuse outward into space. I am still learning. For meditation I have been taught that the method is to notice when you come back to intention to meditate. And it is specifically said in my instruction booklet that you shouldn't view drifting off as a failure.
And which of these should we focus more?
... or indeed drifting on as a success.
Being attentive, being aware, being awake, being mindful is a natural being. How can you practice being natural?
We can be mindful of how the busy mind/emotion/body/life obscures our pristine state. Can clutter, including mindfulness be dropped . . .
How do we drop it?
Living mindfully and practicing mindfulness are both means to develop skillfulness and right view. Developing skillfulness and right view is walking the path I believe. So to practice it or live it really depends on how far along the path one wants to be.
@dantepw looking at the graphic of Mind Full or mindful I disagree in the notion of the graphic because mindfulness is mindful of whatever is there rather than having a preference of fewer thoughts.
You have two types of ways we look at the world. One way is our spotlight consciousness, this is our focussing on a single point.
The other is our flood light consciousness. This is what is aware of everything else. We just never pay attention to it.
I'm talking about remaining as the floodlight consciousness. Not paying attention to anything but still aware.
I also like to watch thoughts. Purely because this helps me see what I am not.
Mindfulness is part of spiritual practice - though a very important part, but it is not the complete spiritual practice. So if we broaden the question to - is practice endless? Zen teachings seems to say that the bad news is that the practice is endless and the good news is that there is no being, who needs to do this endless practice. So the practice is done, not with the idea that practice has to be done to progress on the spiritual path, but practice is done for the sake of practice, as there is nothing else happening but practice or life.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Tee hee
The mind has no independent origination, it is empty of inherent independent qualities. However . . .
awareness or mindfulness can be cultivated through formal sitting and other attention based training/practice.
What then is the empty mind aware of?
@dantepw we live in a conventional world governed by conventional rules ...Cushion time mindfulness slows everything down and to an extent it would be impractical to attempt to live the cushion life mindfulness in the conventional world setting (unless that is, one is living full time in a nunnery or monastery)...
For me personally, adapting mindfulness for everyday living is just a matter of being aware of being aware which enables one to nip things in the bud before they get out of hand and run amok...
This involves monitoring ones thoughts and feelings on a regular bases and I do mean regular....I'm fortunate in that I have time for the cushion every morning (which sets the day in motion) and again in the afternoon/evening...I see this as charging up the batteries so that they are 'Ever Ready' (excuse the pun
) both during the day and the night...
I think after a while it becomes a 'habit' of sorts, where one (awareness) checks in with the self (the five aggregates) just to make sure the Teflon coating is not wearing off....
So in a nutshell I would have to say (in my case-and no doubt others too) to practice mindfulness is to live mindfully and to live mindfully is to practice mindfulness...
And most importantly "DON"T GO BEATING YOURSELF UP IF YOU SLIP UP OCCASIONALLY !" show your self some compassion...
You practice being aware until it is no longer a practice but a state of being. You stop becoming something and realise being.
@lobster that is pretty much what I thought: how do you practice being natural?Hahaha
But considering our many years conditioning this is in fact a practice... And as @misecmisc1 said, well, there wont be anyone doing the practice anyway (non-literally speaking, hehe).
@Jeffrey regarding to the image I never actually thought about that, man! And personally speaking this is a relief that being mind-full doesn't necessarily mean i am not being mindful.
So mindfulness is simply being aware, recognize what is happening with no judging or trying to change and, most important, no reacting as well, right?
I wouls like to thank everyone for sharing your thoughts!
Mindfulness comes to me more often when I am not strategically attempting to practice it. The more I concentrate constantly on trying to be mindful, the more mindful I am of my failure to do so. When I let it go and just absorb life around me, it comes naturally. Whenever I am outside of mindfulness, it is almost always my resisting...pushing against it on purpose.
@Jeffrey I heard a nice story about mindfulness.
There was a very rich lady and, before leaving for a couple days, she asked her security guard to be mindful of thieves.
When she came back, there wasn't anything inside of her house, everything was gone! And she complained to the security guard.
Maybe that is what the picture says, it might not be good enough to be mindful in some cases. Just like Ajahm Brahm says, we should be kindful (kind + mindful) and then we could enjoy the benefits of mindfulness (which should be called kindfulness, haha)
Of course it's just a speculation!
I think the lady was using the term differently from the guard and it is a flawed example because the guard would have understood not to take the term as meditation rather take it as guarding the valuables.