From Zoketsu Norman Fischer’s Abbot’s Journal where he reflects on mindfulness in the context of a retreat with international managers last August.
“With mindfulness there are three points:
“First the difference between mindfulness and self-consciousness. Mindfulness is exactly not self-consciousness, it’s establishing a wide field of awareness (wider than “self” would allow) in which inner experiences and outer experiences (and there is no important difference between these) can both be contextualized into a larger sphere. When we can do this, through careful, subtle [meditation] training … and extending that to the whole of life, we can be quite aware of what goes on within us–more aware, with fewer constraints–without being limited by it; and we can connect more warmly with others through the recognition that our feelings are simply human feelings, what everyone feels, that they don’t belong exclusively to us.
“Second, that Dogen’s meditation instruction* “think not thinking” is a kind of thinking. An open, creative, intuitive sort of thinking, without goal or purpose, and therefore more likely to get us outside the pattern of our usual thought, more likely to be creative. (The group’s CEO saw this point immediately: he said that he always got his best ideas and best solutions to problems when he was jogging or bicycling or trimming the hedges).
“Third, that with mindfulness comes eventually connection to life’s deepest suffering, and deepest truths, and therefore profound sympathy with others, and compassion.”
* Dogen is revered as the founder of the Soto branch of Zen Buddhism and for bringing Zen (ch’an) from China to Japan in the 1200’s.
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