Oakville Zen Meditation
Mindfulness is paying attention purposely, moment-to-moment on something such as the body (i.e breathing), a thought, a feeling, someone, or something in the environment without any analysis, judgment, or decision. Simply said mindfulness is practicing pure awareness without thinking. “ You are a mirror reflecting things as they appear moment-to-moment.
There are 2 main approaches in practicing mindfulness:
1 Formal mindfulness-based practices include meditation either sitting or walking, Yoga, and Tai Chi. You will find details on how to practice meditation on various Dharma talks on our website.
2 Informal mindfulness-based practice or mindfulness on-the-go is as important as the formal ones since it is available most of the day making the cumulative effect of mindfulness practice faster. In every moment of every day, we are faced with an endless amount of things we do, observe, and think about. When it happens, and once a while, press the pause button, and be mindful of what you do or feel in that moment. In other words bring your usual wandering restless mind where your body is, what it is doing or thinking.
A few min. each time is enough. It can be repeated as many times as you can during that day.
Here are few examples:
1)Sensorial stimuli such as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smeling. Once a while, take a pause
to one of them and be mindful of what you see, hear, smell, touch, taste w/o any analysis or judgment.
2)Routine daily activities such as:
Eating, drinking, walking, driving, dressing up, gardening, waiting in line, surfing, etc…
While taking a shower, just pay attention to the hot water on your skin, the smell of the soap, etc..
While drinking tea or coffee, pay attention to the smell, color, etc…
While driving, pay attention to the sound of your car for a short moment.
While walking, pay attention one or two min. to each step, one by one, slowly.
Use your non-dominant for a short period of time and be mindful of the task.
Observe in a mindful way a thought or a feeling popping up, and then letting go.
If you are suffering from a transient physical pain, be mindful of it to ease its intensity.
Zen describes mindfulness on-the-go as follows: “ When you chop wood, just chop wood.”
I will stop here since the examples are almost infinite.
By setting up for a few min. our non-analytic awareness to mindfully concentrate on any of these occurrences as they arise, we can naturally infuse mindfulness into our day-to-today activities.
This way, mindfulness becomes a natural part of our life, without the need to always set aside time for formal practice. Being mindful is to press the mute button on your restless noisy mind.
A feeling of quietness will appear.
Remember this:
The practice of mindfulness is cumulative regardless of how you practice it or how long you do.
It means that the more you practice, the faster you will reap many of its beneficial effects such as better mind control, enhancing neuroplasticity towards better concentration, less emotional roller coaster, and finally experiencing pure awareness or consciousness which defines our pure genuine self rather than our mind-made egotistic one. Thanks
