Written by Jen Liu

“Mindfulness is a choice that we have to make repeatedly. It requires our intentional, wakeful participation to be able to inhabit the present moment over and over, despite the mind's natural tendency toward discursiveness. In this way, mindfulness is more like tending to a fire with care and attentiveness than it is like flicking on a light switch.”

On the journey of learning about meditation and Buddhism, we encounter the word "mindfulness" over and over. But what does it really mean?

Mindfulness isn't just a buzzword to be used interchangeably with calmness, wisdom, or conscientiousness, though it can certainly involve those qualities. Traditionally, mindfulness is considered as the ability to sync body and mind to be aware and present with whatever is arising in the moment, without judgment or attachment. As we practice this during meditation or in carrying out everyday tasks, we are simultaneously training ourselves to be able to respond rather than react to stimuli, by way of the simple choice to repeatedly direct our awareness back to the object of our mindfulness with clarity and precision.

We can also think of mindfulness as trying to see reality as it truly exists, with as little radio interference as possible from our mental and emotional projections. For example, if we experience a pang of hunger during meditation, we can observe and be with that sensation without automatically letting it proliferate into countless other thoughts. Whereas we might normally spiral out into a rambling internal monologue — "What should I make for dinner tonight? Oh man, I would love a burger right now. Burgers are so good…" — we can instead try to remain as close as possible to the pure experience of hunger, perhaps not even associating it with the idea of hunger that we know so well, but just being aware and curious about the sensation of our stomach grumbling, and so on.

Ultimately, mindfulness is a choice that we have to make repeatedly. It requires our intentional, wakeful participation to be able to inhabit the present moment over and over, despite the mind's natural tendency toward discursiveness. In this way, mindfulness is more like tending to a fire with care and attentiveness than it is like flicking on a light switch. Even after decades of practice, it is unrealistic (and besides the point) to expect to attain a permanent state of mindfulness.

But like any muscle-building activity, consistent practice lays the groundwork for mindfulness to feel more accessible. As the mind becomes habituated toward new organizational patterns and its baseline level of awareness begins to shift, the ability to be mindful becomes increasingly familiar. As we progress along the path, we may even find ourselves readily choosing to respond to situations with mindfulness just as easily as we once may have reacted to them with less skillful means.