I was always confused about what mindfulness truly meant. So with lots of reading and teaching, this is my understanding of mindfulness and how we can apply it in our life.
Mindfulness is the art of simply being present.
When you drink your tea, you may like to bring your mind back to your body, so that you’ll be completely there, established in the present moment.
And when you drink like that, you drink not only with your body, but you drink also with your mind.
You drink the tea and you are aware that you are drinking the tea. This is the mindfulness of drinking.
And when you drink your tea with mindfulness, you are really there and the tea is clearly there, and at that moment there’s true life.
If your mind is elsewhere, you are not entirely with your tea, you are not there with your soul.
So the act of drinking tea is not life. You’ll behave and operate like a robot a machine. Your mind is not there. Mindful means, you are full of mind.
So when you breathe in and if you know that you are breathing in, that is mindful breathing, and when you breathe mindfully, your mind is back to your body, mind-body together.
You are truly there,
You are truly alive,
You are fully present.
So mindfulness makes you fully alive, fully present.
Mindfulness is the kind of energy that allows you to be in the here and now. So that you can get in touch with the wonders of life that are in and around you.
And if you can get in touch with these wonders of life that are refreshing, healing, nourishing, and you get the nourishment from it, you will get the healing that you need.
So mindfulness is the capacity to be truly there, in the moment, in the now, and in order for you to get in touch with the wonders of life, so that you can truly live your life.
And when you go back to yourself ,you might encounter something that is negative ,like your sorrow or your fear ,anger. And mindfulness help you to have an opportunity to take care of your fear, your anger.
The energy of mindfulness may help you to recognize the presence of your fear, your anger.
The energy of mindfulness generated by your mindful breathing can help you to embrace tenderly the fear the sorrow that is in you ,so that you may get a relief .
So mindfulness can also help you to take care of yourself .
When mindfulness bring your mind back to your body and if encounter some tensions, some pain, then mindfulness will help ,recognize ,embrace tenderly ,these emotions ,these feelings ,these pains so that you will suffer less .
And mindfulness if you practice regularly ,you will be stronger every day and will bring more concentration
And with mindfulness and concentration, you can look deeply at what is there and you can understand deeply the nature of what is there ,maybe your anger your fear .
So mindfulness brings concentration and mindfulness and concentration bring insight that is liberating.