Where are your thoughts now? Are they lawning uncontrolled over the synapse highway, once in yesterday, then again in the morning? Do not worry, everything’s normal with you. But the attraction of the moment holds the real ease of being. Speed down, mindfulness up, serotonous: Mindfulness is the trend of the hour.
Of luck and misfortune
It is not long since I sat at the end of the world on a deserted island. The smartphone has remained a conscious decision all the time. Two weeks, cut off from the outside world. At the beginning it was connected with the constant feeling of missing something else. After a few days, the time for this is set to become a viscous current. And suddenly an old, distant acquaintance pushes into the foreground: the moment.
From childhood, we know this state but all: Recessed into the game is the time completely no matter what counts is the here and now. Once grown, our life suddenly drives us before us. We rush from one appointment to the next, let us stress, never stop – and wonder how time passes. We give up our dreams, lose our focus and realize either late or never what we have missed. This is where Mindfulness starts.
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness means paying tribute to the moment in the greatest mindfulness. Targeted, non-judgmental attention to thoughts, feelings, body and environment. And not at all, but now.
First of all, this focus on the moment is a conscious action. Consciousness and mindfulness do not mean the same thing. You can be aware of a property or an action without giving your mindfulness. For example in the case of food, which is fundamentally a conscious action. Mindful food intake, however, means eating slowly, tasting every taste, and not wasting any thought on other things.
Mindfulness also includes not judging one’s own thoughts and emotions, assigning them no right or wrong.
A trend of none is
The basic idea of mindfulness is the source of Buddhism. Mindfulness is thus much older than the scientific exploration of the concept. The basic idea of any meditation in the Buddhist context is mindfulness.
The oldest Buddhist meditation form, called Vipassana, is traced back to Buddha himself. The Pali canon includes the main sources of Vipassana and is the foundation of Theravāda Buddhism. In this canon we find the Satipatthāna-Sutta, Buddha’s Speech of the Presentations of Mindfulness.
