Mindfulness Revisited: A Buddhist-Based Conceptualization

Mindfulness, right? That’s just rebranded meditation—something Buddhists have done for thousands of years. Waking up at five a.m.? Millions of Muslims do that every day. Chanting aphorisms to yourself? Hindus have done that for millennia. Taking long contemplative walks? Christian pilgrims have been doing that for centuries, too.”

Mindfulness supports the possibility of investigation, and of our asking, in a way, “What is actually so terrible here?” It sees through the construction of a big terrible thing from tiny discrete moments of experience.

mindfulness is essentially about relationality—in other words, how we are in relationship to everything,

Tactic A: Reestablish true mindfulness

basic mindfulness practice as a way of looking that merely fabricates a little less than our habitual ways of looking.

(a) mindfulness reminds us of what we are supposed to be doing, (b) it sees things as they really are, and (c) it sees the true nature of all phenomena.