Mindfulness: Powerful Ideas

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Mindfulness Quote from Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs

Much of the way I work and think comes from mindfulness, Zen, and Buddhist thought. Without mindfulness as part of an ongoing life, the challenges of living in mindlessness seem overwhelming.  This is a quote from Steve Hagen, a Minneapolis author who studies with Dainin Katagiri Roshi at the Minnesota Zen Center –

How can we see the world as it comes to be in each moment rather than as what we think, hope, or fear it is?

How can we base our actions on Reality rather than on the longing and loathing or our hearts and minds?

How can we live lives that are wise, compassionate, and in tune with Reality?

What is the experience of being awake?

(Asked of Buddha)

… After he responded to such questions, however, the Buddha asked people not to mindlessly accept his words but to investigate for themselves the immediate experience of the Mine. “Be a light unto yourselves,” he told his listeners. “Don’t look for refuge to anyone besides yourselves.“  Over and over, he urged people: “Purify your own minds.” (Bold highlights mine.)

Mindfulness is the cultivation of an ordinary mind and brain.  Hagen went on to say that it was not the purpose to get rid of thinking or to clear your mind of any unwanted cognition or feeliongs because that tended to take you away from the grace of being human.  The idea is not to “set yourself apart from others,” but to be ordinary.  To cultivate ordinary mind.

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