’ Many of us have made our world so familiar that we do not see it any more. It is an interesting question to ask yourself at night: what did I really see this day? You could be surprised at what you did not see. Maybe your eyes were unconditioned reflexes operating automatically all day without any real mindfulness or recognition; while you looked

You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice.

experience everyday life from the perspective, essentially, of an alien. Here's how he described the ideal alien-level mind-set he sought to inhabit: “I’ve never seen the world before.” This, Bellow explained, allowed him to regard everything he encountered as if it were a thrilling discovery, a pure revelation, “a beautiful, marvelous gift. Enchan

It seems rarely to occur to us, or rather we are encouraged to forget that much of the joy and satisfaction we might find in this world may stem from our purposeful involvement in the sorts of tasks we are told to see as mundane, trivial, and inconvenient.

The less I’m trying to get something out of an experience, the more I find I can get into it, and the more I can be present for other people involved in it. This is not to say that life becomes a matter of unbroken good cheer; after all, it’s sad that a beautiful moment arises then vanishes. But it’s the flavor of sadness conveyed by the Japanese p