Mindfulness has been used as an ancient technique of meditation practiced by the followers of Buddhism. In essence, Buddhism offers a training of awareness through the right conduct and internal realizations. Mindfulness is one of the aspects of this training and allows a direct manipulation of one’s awareness. However, one doesn’t need to follow the Buddhist tradition in order to practice mindfulness and in fact, as the Eastern philosophies have spread to the Western culture, training of mindfulness has been widely adopted by people interested in self development. Furthermore, the popularity of this practice also influenced the discipline of psychology causing a development of a form of therapy called “Mindfulness Based …show more content…
However, in reality one doesn’t need to practice meditation in order to exercise mindfulness as we are all able to cultivate mindfulness whenever we engage ourselves fully into any act - be it a simple housework or drawing or anything that requires our full attention. Of course, it is not the mindfulness of the same quality as the one consciously practiced in meditation on a regular basis, but the mechanism is quite …show more content…
Of course not. Without an ability to judge and to separate us and objects clearly we won't understand what it means when such separation is absent. And it is mindfulness that can help us to achieve both types of awareness. It allows us to create a space between the subject who is observing and the object being observed. It also allows us to forget this space and merge ourselves with our actions and objects/subjects we attend to.
Mindfulness is not just about the way we perceive, but also how much present we are. We all at least once experienced a common example of mindlessness: putting an empty cup to a fridge, coming to a room only to find out we have forgotten why we needed to go there on the first place, throwing away something that shouldn't be thrown away. These examples point to a fact that although we can manage to carry on with life automatically, the quality of it would be devastating to ourselves and others.
The cause of common mindlessness lies in a situation where our thoughts are not concentrated on what we are doing right now, but wander around the past and the