Author Topic: mindfulness  (Read 3866 times)

stugandolf

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mindfulness
« on: February 04, 2014, 10:57:38 PM »
Ubiquitous mindfulness is unavoidable.  There is even a magazine named Mindful or Mindfulness, I was not mindful about this.  Then, today, I experienced http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/04/this-is-proof-that-mindfu_n_4697734.html
So I wonder if mindfulness or mindful might be interesting or something to be feared!?  Ok I read Bhante G's tome, Thich Nhat Hanh's tome and even sort of mentioned mindfulness to Jeffrey in Sedona...  What do all you intuit? Stu

Alexander

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Re: mindfulness
« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2014, 12:18:17 AM »
I think that in the Middle Ages, prayer was understood as quiet time to be alone, but in 2014, our concept of "prayer" is that it's a religious activity - i.e., it's something you do that piles on more stress, rather than taking stress away. So, I think the attraction a lot of people in the West have to meditation and mindfulness, is that these are examples of quiet time which we've lost in the European world.

Of course, all these "meditators" will not arrive at the fruits of the contemplative life. A meditation here or there isn't going to be therapeutic. But, meditation, if integrated into our minute-by-minute existence, does indeed transform us veritably. So, these things being popular is benign, and it opens a door for some people to use.
https://alexanderlorincz.com/

"I saw all things gathered in one volume by love - what, in the universe, seemed separate, scattered." (Canto 33)

Jhanananda

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Re: mindfulness
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2014, 01:46:05 AM »
The Time magazine article, which the Huffington post article was responding to was The Mindful Revolution.

Mindfulness is a common translation of the Pali term 'sati' which is the term used for the 7th fold of the Noble Eightfold Path.  I am not very clear on what Christianity thought prayer and meditation were centuries ago, but aglorincz might be right.  Clearly, the concept of meditation and mindfulness has a wide interpretation today within Buddhism, and most interpretations fall far off the mark from what the Pali Canon has to say about it.  It has also become clear to me that no school of meditation today has any idea what was originally understood as the practice of meditation, and what it leads to.

If anyone wants to know what was originally meant as the practice of meditation in both Hinduism and Buddhism, then they need only read the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and several suttas in the Pali canon, most notably the Anapanasati Sutta (MN 118)

Please note, I got back from a 4 hour driving trip to collect about 50 gallons of waste vegetable oil to turn into diesel fuel, and started reading the new messages here since I had last been here, and realized that it would useful to others if I did some house keeping, so I moved a bunch of threads into what I believe are more appropriate places here. 

Also, since Michel has been investigating key concepts in Buddhist philosophy, which Stu's inquiry here is one, and mainstream Buddhism has one interpretation of them, and Ecstatic Buddhism is going to have another, then I moved all of those threads under the category of Ecstatic Buddhism.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2014, 11:52:33 AM by Jhanananda »
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