What is mindfulness?

To understand how to practice mindfulness meditation and the benefits of mindfulness, we first need to understand what mindfulness is.

Mindfulness is a meditation technique and it is generally practiced with your eyes open. That’s why it’s so popular in the west these days—they are now studying mindfulness in universities, and many psychologists are promoting mindfulness—because you can keep your eyes open. That means you can still see people, you can still do things, you can still ride your skateboard, you can still surf, you can still cook. It’s very difficult to cook while sitting cross legged with your eyes closed. Not many people have achieved that!

So, mindfulness is a meditation technique, and meditation is one-pointed concentration.

In other meditation techniques like breath meditation or mantra meditation, the practice of concentration is to focus on one point and stay at that point for as long as possible. However, with mindfulness practice, the point of focus is always changing. 

One moment you are washing dishes and you are concentrating on the feel of the water. The next moment you are walking outside and you see some kookaburras. You see their beautiful feathers and then you hear their laughter. You are focusing on different things. When you go indoors again, you notice, “Ah, winter is coming, our floorboards are quite cool under my feet.”

You can call mindfulness conscious living or living with awareness, to bring us to the present moment.

The opposite of that is when you are seeing something, but you are not really seeing it. You are not there. Sometimes it is really cold, but you actually don’t feel the cold until a bit later when you become aware that you are cold. You were cold before you noticed, but you were not aware of it.

So mindfulness is one-pointed concentration—awareness—shifted to many different points. You’re doing everything with awareness.

Practicing mindfulness

So now, let’s take the example of sitting in a chair. How would you sit mindfully? You could feel the physical sensation of your back against the backrest, or you could feel your feet resting on the floor. You could be aware of your body posture. There are many things you could be aware of while sitting there.

That’s important to know. You don’t want to get too creative and make up many different strategies, because it gets too complicated. Then you’ll find you won’t practice mindfulness at all.

Even though mindfulness sounds so simple, it’s actually the hardest practice, because it’s so difficult to actually remember to be mindful. 

So that’s why we have to keep it simple, and you’ve got to practice regularly.

For example, while sitting in a chair, for me it’s very natural to feel my feet on the floor. It’s really easy for me to feel the physical contact, the kinesthetic sensation. So if I was a seeker practicing mindfulness, each time I was sitting I would use the same focus for my awareness—the sensation of my feet on the ground.

Kinesthetics is really great to bring yourself to the present moment, because when you are aware of feeling the physical contact, then you can’t be aware of thoughts.

So, when your awareness is focused on something, like feeling the contact of the feet on the floor, then you can assume you’re in the present moment. You can always equate those two. Don’t go in your mind and try to work it out, “Am I present or not?” Because then suddenly your awareness goes into your thoughts and you’re out of mindfulness. Keep it really simple.

In mindfulness, you can focus on anything. When you’re driving, you might be aware of how the car in front of you is moving. You might be aware of their brake light coming on, or their right-turn indicator. Your point of focus is changing, but it can be anything. When you really see that thing, know you are present. Otherwise your eyes might be looking at the car, but you’re daydreaming somewhere else. Then you won’t really be seeing it.

Mindfulness is a mindset

Practicing mindfulness is more about having the right perspective or mindset. Because you can’t really do mindfulness meditation unless you understand what the present moment is. In other words, unless you know when you’re not thinking and you know how this brings you to the present moment. 

When I was a kid, I’d look at the moon. I’d see it and I’d think it was nice, but I actually didn’t know I was present in that moment. However, if I understand that when I’m looking at the moon and I’m actually seeing it, I must be present, that changes everything.

It’s like looking at a car in front of us when we are driving. We must be actually seeing the car, otherwise we wouldn’t stop when its red brake lights come on. We do so many things each day when we’re actually seeing things, we’re actually present. The problem is we don’t know it, and if you’re present and you don’t know it, it’s like having a million dollars but you don’t know it.

And how it works is that if you’re concentrating on something, or noticing something, then you actually can’t think, because you’re there. 

When you deeply understand that, then everything becomes a practice of mindfulness. There’s nothing that’s not.

Developing the skill of mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness is not easy—you need extra alertness because you can easily forget to concentrate when the point of focus is shifting. Shifting is similar to distraction, and when you shift you can easily forget what you are trying to do. But a good mindfulness practitioner will not forget what they are trying to do.

In every field, the skill level varies between people. Whether your field is kung fu or tennis, some people are at the mastery level and some people are amateurs. When I watched kung fu movies as a kid, my brother and I would have a go at each other—that’s not mastery level.

In the same way, in the field of mindfulness there are all different levels of concentration ability, depending on how much a person has practiced that art.

These things are needed for us to pursue it and to keep practicing, longer and longer, with quality. So, to become good at mindfulness, and to achieve the benefits of mindfulness, is the same.

The benefits of practicing mindfulness

When practiced well, the benefits of mindfulness are the same as the benefits of living in the present moment. It enhances every aspect of our life, from enjoying the food we eat, to avoiding accidents on the road, to developing successful businesses and relationships.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of practicing mindfulness is that the quality of love in our life can grow. We get so many signals that give us reasons to not love another, or to hate another or to get angry at another. When we practice mindfulness, we become mindful of our thoughts. Another way to say that is, we are on guard.

A good security guard will be alert for any potential robberies.

On guard to stop that, control that, ignore that, disbelieve that. That’s mindfulness of our thoughts.

Another method of mindfulness is outer mindfulness, where we guard our actions, our behaviour. We stop those actions that don’t resonate with love, or we try our best to replace them with loving actions.

Mindfulness is that kind of guarding.

We have two dogs at our farm, Baliram and Bhakti, who like to guard the farm 24 hours a day, and they bark to let us know if something is happening. We should be guarding mindfully like that.

Mindfulness is always alert to ignore those things that destroy our goal to love another. As a matter of fact, if you are able to stop all those signals by practicing mindfulness, it will be impossible not to love another, even if they don’t like you. Because love is our nature, just as it is the nature of the sun to shine.

If you have that goal of love and you really want to practice stopping those signals, mindfulness is a great technique to become a better guard. When you get good at mindfulness, you notice immediately when a signal comes to tell you why you should not like a person, and you just ignore it.

To achieve the benefits of mindfulness it takes immense practice and it depends on your goal—how much love you want to have.

Mindfulness vs other meditation techniques

Mindfulness is a very great meditation because of the efficiency of it. We don’t have to close our eyes, so we can meditate for many hours while we are going through our daily life. We don’t have to go to a cave to sit cross-legged in meditation.

However, because of the possibility of distraction that is inherent in mindfulness meditation, it’s a very difficult technique to practice well. As a matter of fact, it’s a very advanced form of meditation.

I wouldn’t advise someone to use mindfulness as their main meditation technique, because once we are distracted we totally forget about doing it. Whereas when we practice a one-pointed meditation technique, like breath meditation, when we shift away it’s easy to notice, “Oh, I’m not focussing on my breath anymore, I will go back to my breath.”

Constantly shifting, shifting, shifting to different points of focus is very difficult, but if you do a lot of one-pointed meditation, there’s nothing wrong with having a go at mindfulness meditation here and there.

My own journey

When I was a seeker, I practiced mindfulness meditation here and there. For example, I might see a car on the road in front of me and I would notice the indicator light flickering on and off, and I would realise, “Ah, I’m seeing that, so I’m mindful, I’m present.” Or sometimes, when I stopped at a traffic light I’d look down and see some weeds growing out of the concrete on the road. I’d notice that, and I’d know, “I’m mindful, I’m here, now, seeing that.”

Have a go, but don’t use mindfulness as your main practice. It’s a great practice when combined with other meditation techniques.

Naturally, you will be aware, you will be present, but that comes from practicing the other meditation techniques initially. Treat mindfulness as just the icing on the cake.

Summary

Mindfulness is an excellent practice to live in the present moment throughout the day, without having to set aside time to sit and meditate.

The benefits of mindfulness are the same as the benefits of living in the present moment. It enhances every aspect of our life as we live with more love and more awareness.

However, it takes a lot of skill to actually remain mindful for many hours. Most people who set out to be mindful through their day will get to the end of the day and realise they were not truly mindful very often at all.

To achieve the benefits of mindfulness, it is really is an advanced meditation technique for those who have already developed strength in controlling the mind.

You might also like