What is mindfulness?

Last week Vidyadasi led the class and explored what we mean by ‘Mindfulness’ - what qualities are we looking for? In addition to a guided practice and discussion there was time to reflect on some notes & points on the theme of mindfulness: 

Mindfulness is not the same as thinking about something.   It is more like ‘awareness’.

In mindfulness, we are just ‘being’, not ‘doing’.

These things are ‘doing’: planning, worrying, remembering, replaying, ruminating, comparing, going over, wondering, imagining.

Turn off the autopilot.

‘Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying...

Daily quote from 'The Survey': cessation is not the last word

To celebrate 60 years since the publication of ‘The Survey of Buddhism’, here is today’s quote:

Cessation is, however, far from being the last word of Buddhism.  Though indicated mainly by negative expressions, Nirvāna, the goal of the disciple’s career, is not in itself a state of mere non-existence… What the disciple achieves with the breaking of the last link of the chain binding him to phenomenal existence can be described not only as the cessation of ignorance, but also, more positively, as

...

Daily quote from 'The Survey': the secret of bondage is the secret of liberation

To celebrate 60 years since the publication of ‘The Survey of Buddhism’, here is today’s quote:

Far from being due to fate or chance or the fiat of the creator-god, human bondage to phenomenal existence is the product of human volitional action.. The secret of bondage is also the secret of liberation.  By exerting a force strong than that of hate, stronger than desire, stronger even than ignorance, the Wheel of Becoming can be made to revolve in the opposite direction… Ch1.13