and it's something that doesn't involve a lot of energy,

it involves a kind of the cultivating attention in a particular way,

the way I define it, is paying attention

on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally

and then I like to add sometimes, as if your life depended on it

because it does,

attention is the faculty that allows us to navigate our lives

in one way or another to actually know what's happening

or know that we don't know what's happening and find ways to

be in a wiser relationship to things that are going on in our lives

than being at the mercy, say,

of our own emotional reactions and crazy thoughts and

fears and so forth

so it's paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally

as if your life depended on it

so paying attention to what? you might ask, well

it doesn't actually matter, it's the attending itself that's important

more important than what it is that you're paying attention to

but that said, if you start to pay attention to how much attention we pay to anything

you begin to notice that the mind is all over the place

it never sit still, this idea and that opinion and this reaction, and

we spend a huge amount of time planning and worrying about the future

and a huge amount of time reminiscing about the past and

who did what to whom or why it worked out this way or why it didn't work out this way

and the present moment, which is the only time that we're ever alive in

the only time we could learn anything

express any kind of love or emotion

the only time we could be in our own body

the only time we can see or hear or smell or taste or touch or communicate,

is now

and yet the present moment gets completely squeezed out

by all of our preoccupation with the future and the past

when we start to pay attention to our own mind and our own body

it's like reclaiming your life,

mindfulness is not a technique

although there are many, many different ways to cultivate mindfulness

it's actually a way of being, being embodied

being in some sense, in equilibrium

with the comings and goings of the outer world

and even the comings and goings and the ups and downs

of having a body, which, of course, has its wonders and is also

at sometimes, seriously problematic when we're dealing with

health problems of one kind or another or things can happen to the body

and as long as we have this capacity for awareness

why not develop it? much of the time

if you think about our educational system and how we grow up

we are trained more and more and more to get into thinking

and thinking is wonderful stuff, very powerful,

some of the greatest the achievements of humanity

come out of thought, and out of imagination and out of creativity

but the other piece o f it, thats equally as powerful

as the capacity for thought, is the capacity for awareness

but we get no training in awareness and attention

huge amount of training in thought

so a lot of the time when we need getting to bed at the end of a long day

we can't deal with our thoughts that we can't sleep

they just cant perseverate over and over and over again, the same thoughts

we want to shut them out

the more you try to shut them out, the more they come in ,and pretty soon you don't get to sleep

or you wind up with that basic chronic anxiety or some kinda condition or other

depressive rumination can spiral you into depression

a little bit of sadness and then

that triggers this kinda perseverating constantly, what's wrong with me?

why don't people like me? why didn't she look at me? whatever it is

these are all thoughts, I'm no good, I'm too old

my life is all downhill from here

all of those things, they're only thoughts, but most of the time we think of them as the truth,

so a mindfulness does, in a way, it embraces the actuality of

the mind, the heart, the body and our relationality with the outer world

and gives us new degrees of freedom

to navigate the ups and the downs and the ins and outs of our relationships,

with life, with other people, with our own aspirations and our own fears

and also and most fundamentally with our own body,

now most of us don't want to go anywhere near our own body

except under very specialized circumstances particular times,

it seems like, wow, it's wonderful to have these bodily experiences

but a lot of the time we're just pretty much up here

thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking

and really believing so many of these thoughts as the truth

that we wind up in a very narrow band of what's actually possible for us in terms of our human experience

英文字幕：大西啟介