Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness is the practice of gently focusing your awareness on the present moment on purpose, openly accepting your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations without judgment or resistance.

1，No Analysis, No Judgement

You may focus on your breath when you practice mindfulness. Just observe the sensation of your breath- air flowing in and out of the nose, without labeling them as good or bad, no judgment.

 2，Concentration

Practicing mindfulness requires to focus your attention on a particular object, such as your breath, your body, the sounds from the environment, or something around you. Your mind will tend to wander soon, try to gently bring it back to the object. No matter how distracted your mind is, continue to bring it back to the object. Through constant practice—by focusing on your object and bringing the mind back when it strays—you will develop the habit of maintaining that object in your mind field for longer and longer periods of time- the concentration.

3，Just Observing

When you focus on the object, you've got to be relaxing, not through holding the object, but letting every thought go until there is no thought, or you can't recognize the object, or you're observing something blank. The point is: not chasing the result of no-thought, but letting thoughts go.

 4， Entering a meditative state (Samadhi)

When you maintain in the state of pure observer, try to be more relaxing and more focusing, then at one moment you may enter the meditative state, it's named Samadhi in Sanskrit. It's a state beyond physical and mental awareness. There are nine levels of meditative state, and each level has the detailed spec for verification. To enter each higher level of meditation, you need to let all the previous experience go and be more focusing.

 

Mindfulness Practice for Daily Life

We can practice mindfulness in daily life on two levels:

1，Being Aware

No matter what are you donging, you need to be aware of your every movement, and be clear about it at every moment- where you start and where you end.

For example, when you are walking, be aware of your body posture, the state of your muscles for walking, and the steps of your feet landing on the ground. At the same time, be aware that how your breath is coordinated, and how the surrounding environment changes with your moving. To observe walking in this way, you will find there are too many details(you never paid attention to them before) to be aware of them all. You need to be deeply focusing to allow your consciousness to see all of the details.

Or when you wash dishes, you need to be aware of how the water flows through the dishes and your hands, how you hold the dishes, wipe them, and how you put them down. Because you are fully focusing on it, the entire dishwashing process will become quiet, without the sound of dishes colliding.

2，Practicing Meditation at any time

Except for the situation that you are communicating with others, or there are things you need think about how to deal with, you can practice meditation while you are doing anything, even if it's only for one second.

For example, in the supermarket, when you‘re’ taking goods from the shelf to the cart, you can instantly enter the state of no-thought, or even enter a meditative state. Or when you look up at the sky, you can practice turning "looking" into "observing", and turning the "I" into the "observer".

For higher-lever practice, I will talk about them in advanced chapters.