Mindfulness and dog pee
I continue to notice little changes that I attribute to my meditation practice. Good ones. My current practice revolves around mindfulness, the attempt to just be aware of and notice thoughts as they happen. When you get into semantics, this is usually considered at least a notch or two down from concentration, where you intend to more absolutely control what goes on in your head. Mindfulness doesn’t attempt to do anything other than return the focus of the mind back to what’s going on in the present, right here, right now, and for a chronic overthinker for myself it’s a really liberating process. It’s a little weird – Zen masters like Nishijima and even Brad Warner have written anti-mindfulness rants, so there’s something about the notion that’s anti-Buddhist to some Buddhists. But my favorite guides to mindfulness are from different sects and it would be difficult to describe zazen without introducing some element of mindfulness, so your karma-mileage may vary. In any event, the word “mindful” has become loaded in a Zen context, and I’m just a guy trying some things out to see what works. Continue reading