mindfulness is actually, a way of connecting with your life
and it's something that doesn't involve a lot of energy,
it involves a kind of the cultivating attention in a particular way,
the way I define it, is paying attention
on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally
and then I like to add sometimes, as if your life depended on it
because it does,
attention is the faculty that allows us to navigate our lives
in one way or another to actually know what's happening
or know that we don't know what's happening and find ways to
be in a wiser relationship to things that are going on in our lives
than being at the mercy, say,
of our own emotional reactions and crazy thoughts and
fears and so forth
so it's paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally
as if your life depended on it
so paying attention to what? you might ask, well
it doesn't actually matter, it's the attending itself that's important
more important than what it is that you're paying attention to
but that said, if you start to pay attention to how much attention we pay to anything
you begin to notice that the mind is all over the place
it never sit still, this idea and that opinion and this reaction, and
we spend a huge amount of time planning and worrying about the future
and a huge amount of time reminiscing about the past and
who did what to whom or why it worked out this way or why it didn't work out this way
and the present moment, which is the only time that we're ever alive in
the only time we could learn anything
express any kind of love or emotion
the only time we could be in our own body
the only time we can see or hear or smell or taste or touch or communicate,
is now
and yet the present moment gets completely squeezed out
by all of our preoccupation with the future and the past
when we start to pay attention to our own mind and our own body
it's like reclaiming your life,
mindfulness is not a technique
although there are many, many different ways to cultivate mindfulness
it's actually a way of being, being embodied
being in some sense, in equilibrium
with the comings and goings of the outer world
and even the comings and goings and the ups and downs
of having a body, which, of course, has its wonders and is also
at sometimes, seriously problematic when we're dealing with
health problems of one kind or another or things can happen to the body
and as long as we have this capacity for awareness
why not develop it? much of the time
if you think about our educational system and how we grow up
we are trained more and more and more to get into thinking
and thinking is wonderful stuff, very powerful,
some of the greatest the achievements of humanity
come out of thought, and out of imagination and out of creativity
but the other piece o f it, thats equally as powerful
as the capacity for thought, is the capacity for awareness
but we get no training in awareness and attention
huge amount of training in thought
so a lot of the time when we need getting to bed at the end of a long day
we can't deal with our thoughts that we can't sleep
they just cant perseverate over and over and over again, the same thoughts
we want to shut them out
the more you try to shut them out, the more they come in ,and pretty soon you don't get to sleep
or you wind up with that basic chronic anxiety or some kinda condition or other
depressive rumination can spiral you into depression
a little bit of sadness and then
that triggers this kinda perseverating constantly, what's wrong with me?
why don't people like me? why didn't she look at me? whatever it is
these are all thoughts, I'm no good, I'm too old
my life is all downhill from here
all of those things, they're only thoughts, but most of the time we think of them as the truth,
so a mindfulness does, in a way, it embraces the actuality of
the mind, the heart, the body and our relationality with the outer world
and gives us new degrees of freedom
to navigate the ups and the downs and the ins and outs of our relationships,
with life, with other people, with our own aspirations and our own fears
and also and most fundamentally with our own body,
now most of us don't want to go anywhere near our own body
except under very specialized circumstances particular times,
it seems like, wow, it's wonderful to have these bodily experiences
but a lot of the time we're just pretty much up here
thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking
and really believing so many of these thoughts as the truth
that we wind up in a very narrow band of what's actually possible for us in terms of our human experience
英文字幕：大西啟介