William James, one of the founding fathers of the tradition, could have been talking about mindfulness when he wrote that, “the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui [master of himself] if he have it not.”5 Unfortunately, James was less

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Franz Kafka also understood that joy can come to us if we simply rest in our experience. “You do not need to leave your room,” he suggested. “Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at

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