The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the optimal interaction between attention and peripheral awareness.

“eight worldly dharmas.” Here’s an easy formula to help you remember them: gain-loss, pleasure-pain, fame-obscurity, and praise-blame.

For example, if your partner had a bad day at work and complains about the food you made, it takes mindfulness to maintain an objective awareness that recognizes the real cause of the complaint. But when strong emotions take hold, all your energy pours into hyperfocused attention as you go into fight-or-flight mode. Your awareness fails, and attent

Being fully present means being aware of it, but not engaging in its content.

When you have cultivated mindfulness, life becomes richer, more vivid, more satisfying, and you don’t take everything that happens so personally. Attention plays a more appropriate role within the greater context of a broad and powerful awareness. You’re fully present, happier, and at ease, because you’re not so easily caught up in the stories and

Also, brief episodes of śamatha can occur long before you become an adept practitioner. Insight can happen at any time as well. This means a temporary convergence of śamatha and vipassanā is possible, and can lead to Awakening at any Stage. In this sense, Awakening is somewhat unpredictable, almost like an accident. Although the possibility of Awak

Once you’ve succeeded in counting to five or ten, keep observing the breath sensations, but stop counting. Counting quickly becomes automatic, and you can still forget the breath and have your mind wander while continuing to count.

Any of these is a potential distraction, but an actual distraction is one that competes with the meditation object for your attention.

It doesn’t matter that your mind wandered. What’s important is that you realized it. To become annoyed or self-critical in the “aha!” moment will slow down your progress. You can’t scold the mind into changing,