Mindfulness and mindful living

At a recent meeting of the Ethical Society of Austin, the platform focused on mindfulness.  Our guest speaker, Dr. David Zuniga, a practicing psychologist/ordained Buddhist priest, shared the concept of mindfulness from several perspectives, spoke of its origins and gradual expansion in American society, and touched on several practical benefits of mindfulness.  After explaining various techniques for engaging in mindfulness, Dr. Zuniga led the group in a practical exercise in mindfulness.

I was still confused.

I have heard of "mindfulness" before.  Who hasn't?  In the last few years, the word is everywhere.  I have even incorporated the term into my vocabulary.  After hearing Dr. Zuniga's presentation, however, I began to wonder if I hadn't missed something important about the word.

A quick search shows me that my suspicion of error has some validity.  Two definitions are offered:

1. the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something. . . .
2. a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

I have been using--and understanding--"mindfulness" in the everyday, ordinary sense of conscious awareness, thinking that living mindfully would entail making an effort to actively see and then seek understanding of the people and events around me.  I would have taken my sense of the word from the adjectival form, mindful, itself a synonym for a nice array of words for paying attention (aware) with a touch of wariness (chary).  Adding "ness" on the end, would just make the term an abstraction of the activities described by mindful and, perhaps, take us back to the root word "mind," with its heavy emphasis on the brain and mentation.

One might even take in the elements of the root that are verbs:  "I don't mind the weather when I have a cozy fire;" "Don't mind what other people say;" "Mind the gap."  In this sense, we are looking at an element of "caring" as well as of "paying attention."

Since I am more familiar with these aspects of the word, I am more at ease thinking of them in terms of how we might apply this version of mindfulness to living an ethical life.  I will have to study a bit more to become comfortable with the second definition and how it might be applied to my life at a later time.  In the meantime, I want to look at "living mindfully" as living with attention to detail and context and meaning.  I would take it beyond the present moment to incorporate past as well as future.  Notwithstanding the mental/thought elements associated with the term, I would also extend the concept to action.

For example, I am thinking that living mindfully would include shopping mindfully, driving mindfully, treating others mindfully, and so on.  Mindfulness in this sense is quite congruent with the commitments we make in Ethical Culture.  I will be exploring some of these aspects of living mindfully in later posts.