~The Heavenly Beat~

The word mindfulness, for instance: anyone who’s naive to hearing it is going to think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s some sort of cognitive manipulation.’ So I like to point out that in all Asian languages (at least I’ve been told this—I don’t know all Asian languages), the word for mind and the word for heart are the same. So when you hear the word mindfulness, if you’re not in some sense automatically hearing the word heartfulness you’re missing the meaning of the word. And mindfulness in any event is not a concept, it’s a way of being. And it’s a way of being awake. It’s not a big deal it’s just that we’re never taught that this is part of the human repertoire. So, what does wakefulness mean? It means resting in a kind of awareness that is so stable that it’s not thrown off by the comings and goings within the field of awareness.