What "mindfulness" is not

Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

I'm ready. What do I DO?

If we were simply to be aware, that would be good. But we will not stay there because we will naturally go from what we're aware of to how we relate to it. When we fall into these customary habits of relating, judging, evaluating, measuring, and reckoning, we are far from being mindful. Rather, stay with the object, and don't go anywhere with it. Do not allow it to take us anywhere. Do not wander or wonder, think or figure. Just watch. Just be. And let it be. Keep watching, and nothing more. It will reveal itself. All we need to do is remain present, wakeful, open, radically accepting of what is, and vigilant (in the sense of staying awake for a vigil). Mindfulness is this bare awareness. It is not at all like our ordinary "awareness." But after a time, our ordinary awareness will become this way -- unentangled, undeluded, unswayed, undeceived. The habits of our greed, hatred, and delusion (passion, aversion, and ignorance) will not overtake us. And everything will be perfect just as it is.

At the heart of Buddhist meditation

Heart of Meditation (Nyanaponika+Boorstein)

Nowadays, pop psychologists use and abuse the word "mindfulness" (a handy translation of sati by a Western Theravada Buddhist monk Ven. Nyanaponika Thera, where previously it had been "vigilance" or "wakefulness"), having it mean simply "awareness."

A better translation would be "bare awareness," full wakefulness with detachment, dispassion, non-entanglement in all that is being perceived.

Mindfulness is NOT about thinking, evaluating, judging, measuring, or conjecturing about the field of perception. It is simply being aware of it -- as if for the first time, given that we judge and measure, evaluate and establish preferences the whole rest of the time.

• [But thinking is good, right? Yes, it's good in waking life. It's good like talking is good. What's better than talking? Listening is better. Listening is about receptivity, whereas talking and thinking are active and attempting to explain what we ourselves do not yet understand. So watch rather than describe, listen rather than talk or forming vrittis (modifications and streams of mind, disturbances of consciousness, vibrations, distortions of clear seeing). To be mindful (full of presence of mind) is not to be thoughtful (full of thought). This will become sati-sampajjana or "watchful and clearly comprehending."]

When we can see in this way, we are free from it, in it, in the midst of it, standing right before it. It is no kind of escapism, but rather being fully with it, letting it be, radically accepting of it, not fixing it, not judging it, not ignoring it, not pushing it away. Instead, we are being with it, not sucked in by it, and seeing its true nature as it reveals itself under our withering watchfulness of it. What is "it"? All that is, all that is going on, all the contents of experience.

The Buddha divided all these contents into four categories of body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects.