Tibetan_Ice Posted August 18, 2016 Gatito, you deleted my post. You seem to think that only your opinion is valid. My opinion is just as valid as yours. We may long for wholeness, suggests Jon Kabat-Zinn, but the truth is that it is already here and already ours. The practice of mindfulness holds the possibility of not just a fleeting sense of contentment, but a true embracing of a deeper unity that envelops and permeates our lives. With Mindfulness for Beginners you are invited to learn how to transform your relationship to the way you think, feel, love, work, and play—and thereby awaken to and embody more completely who you really are. Here, the teacher, scientist, and clinician who first demonstrated the benefits of mindfulness within mainstream Western medicine offers a book that you can use in three unique ways: as a collection of reflections and practices to be opened and explored at random; as an illuminating and engaging start-to-finish read; or as an unfolding “lesson- a-day” primer on mindfulness practice. Beginning and advanced meditators alike will discover in these pages a valuable distillation of the key attitudes and essential practices that Jon Kabat-Zinn has found most useful with his students, including: Why heartfulness is synonymous with true mindfulness The value of coming back to our bodies and to our senses over and over again How our thoughts “self-liberate” when touched by awareness Moving beyond our “story” into direct experience Stabilizing our attention and presence amidst daily activities The three poisons that cause suffering—and their antidotes How mindfulness heals, even after the fact Reclaiming our wholeness, and more The prescription for living a more mindful life seems simple enough: return your awareness again and again to whatever is going on. But if you’ve tried it, you know that here is where all the questions and challenges really begin. Mindfulness for Beginners provides welcome answers, insights, and instruction to help us make that shift, moment by moment, into a more spacious, clear, reliable, and loving connection with ourselves and the world.Includes a complete CD with five guided mindfulness meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn, selected from the audio program that inspired this book. Source A better book for beginners, one which Jon Kabat-Zinn (author of the book previously posted) calls a masterpiece is Mindfulness In Plain English https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-20th-Anniversary-ebook/dp/B003XF1LKW The purpose of meditation is not to concentrate on the breath, without interruption, forever. That by itself would be a useless goal. The purpose of meditation is not to achieve a perfectly still and serene mind. Although a lovely state, it doesn’t lead to liberation by itself. The purpose of meditation is to achieve uninterrupted mindfulness. Mindfulness, and only mindfulness, produces enlightenment. ... When you first become aware of something, there is a fleeting instant of pure awareness just before you conceptualize the thing, before you identify it. That is a state of awareness. Ordinarily, this state is short-lived. It is that flashing split second just as you focus your eyes on the thing, just as you focus your mind on the thing, just before you objectify it, clamp down on it mentally, and segregate it from the rest of existence. It takes place just before you start thinking about it—before your mind says, “Oh, it’s a dog.” That flowing, soft-focused moment of pure awareness is mindfulness. In that brief flashing mind-moment you experience a thing as an un-thing. You experience a softly flowing moment of pure experience that is interlocked with the rest of reality, not separate from it. Mindfulness is very much like what you see with your peripheral vision as opposed to the hard focus of normal or central vision. Yet this moment of soft, unfocused, awareness contains a very deep sort of knowing that is lost as soon as you focus your mind and objectify the object into a thing. In the process of ordinary perception, the mindfulness step is so fleeting as to be unobservable. We have developed the habit of squandering our attention on all the remaining steps,... 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Boy Posted August 18, 2016 Not only mindfulness, but yes I don't see how you could get enlightened without it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gatito Posted August 20, 2016 (edited) Gatito, you deleted my post. You seem to think that only your opinion is valid. My opinion is just as valid as yours. A better book for beginners, one which Jon Kabat-Zinn (author of the book previously posted) calls a masterpiece is Mindfulness In Plain English https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-20th-Anniversary-ebook/dp/B003XF1LKW In fact, I'm not interested in opinions. Edited December 27, 2016 by gatito Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
