Mindfulness is attentiveness, moment to moment. What's happening right now and what's coming up in me in response to what's happening right now. Importantly, this is in the service of being able to choose wisely so that I avoid complicating my own life and the lives of others.
Interpretation
Mindfulness involves being present and aware of the current moment to make wise choices.
This quote by Sylvia Boorstein emphasizes the importance of mindfulness as a practice of being fully aware of our thoughts, feelings, and surroundings in the present moment. By understanding our reactions and the current circumstances, we can make choices that simplify our lives rather than complicate them, ultimately leading to greater wisdom in our interactions with ourselves and others.
In practice
In a workshop on stress management, this quote could illustrate the importance of being mindful to handle challenges effectively.
Heir to your own karma doesn't mean 'You get what you deserve.' I think it means 'You get what you get.' Bad things happen to good people. My happiness depending on my action means, to me, that it depends on my action of choosing compassion--for myself as well as for everyone else--rather than contention. [p.61]
If you take a deep breath and look around, 'Look what's happening to me!' can become 'Look what's happening!' And what's happening? The incredible drama of life is happening. And we're in it!
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn't more complicated that that. It is opening to or recieving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.
The path of compassion leads to the development of insight. But it doesn't work to say, "Ready, set, go! Be compassionate!" Beginning any practice depends on intention. Intention depends on intuiting-at least a little bit-the suffering inherent in the human condition and the pain we feel, and cause, when we act out of confusion. It also depends on trusting-at least a little bit-in the possibility of a contented, satisfied mind.
Suffering is the demand that experience be different from what it is.
If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can mange complicated, even difficult, times with grace.
As you get older, you want less from the world; you just want to experience it. Any barriers to feeling emotions get dismantled. And ordinary things become beautifully poetic.
One should follow a man of wisdom who rebukes one for one's faults, as one would follow a guide to some buried treasure. To one who follows such a wise man, it will be an advantage and not a disadvantage.
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly ... very slowly.
As they who make Good luck a god count all unlucky men.
Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.
...to many it is not knowledge but the quest for knowledge that gives greater interest to thought-to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.
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