{"id":654,"date":"2020-01-04T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/?p=654"},"modified":"2022-11-24T23:37:52","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T05:37:52","slug":"january-4-mindfulness-kind-interested-relaxed-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/january-4-mindfulness-kind-interested-relaxed-attention\/","title":{"rendered":"January 4 &#8211; Mindfulness: kind, interested, relaxed attention"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Continuing with Sally Armstrong\u2019s talk, &#8220;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"The roles of mindfulness, metta and equanimity in our practice (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/sr.dharmaseed.org\/teacher\/153\/talk\/50002\/\" target=\"_blank\">The roles of mindfulness, metta and equanimity in our practice<\/a>&#8220;, and her discussion on mindfulness&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sally shares various definitions of mindfulness, but I really resonate with the definition that Jeanne Corrigal offers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Mindfulness is paying attention, with open, curious interest, to what is happening within and around us, with the intention of responding wisely to our experience.  <\/p><cite>~ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeannecorrigal.com\/about-mindfulness.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Jeanne Corrigal (opens in a new tab)\">Jeanne Corrigal<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeanne&#8217;s definition brings in many of the points that Sally highlights in her talk. Sally mentions, &#8220;We want to be in the present moment, but we need to know what for.&#8221; Sally also describes this as &#8220;an inner knowing and an outer connectedness to what&#8217;s happening in the world&#8221; &#8211; an engaged practice. Sally describes the aspect of &#8220;wise mindfulness&#8221; as &#8220;onward-leading&#8221; &#8211; in the direction to the increase in  skillful qualities like kindness and wisdom, and decrease in unskillful qualities, like greed and ill-will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sally sums up the qualities of mindful attention with these three words:<br><strong>kind<\/strong>, <strong>interested<\/strong>, <strong>relaxed<\/strong>. I like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Guided meditation<\/em>: Mark Coleman recently published a book, <em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" label=\"From Suffering to Peace: The True Promise of Mindfulness (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newworldlibrary.com\/Psychology\/FROM-SUFFERING-TO-PEACE\" target=\"_blank\">From Suffering to Peace: The True Promise of Mindfulness<\/a><\/em>, in which he expands on many of the points Sally raises. Here is a guided meditation he recently offered, based on his book. It&#8217;s about 27 minutes:<br><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"https:\/\/www.dharmaseed.org\/teacher\/115\/talk\/59241\/ (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dharmaseed.org\/teacher\/115\/talk\/59241\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.dharmaseed.org\/teacher\/115\/talk\/59241\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Reflection<\/em>: Sally mentions that as we pay attention in this kind, interested, and relaxed way, we start to see more clearly &#8211; our conditioning, reactivity, habits of mind. Among other things, she mentions we may start to see assumptions we might have about ourselves &#8211; what we can and cannot do &#8211; and the practice can help us break through limiting delusions. For example, one story I internalized over the years was &#8220;I can&#8217;t cook&#8221; &#8211; and it&#8217;s taken time and practice to open to finding the joy and satisfaction that can come with trying new recipes. What sort of stories are you starting to see through?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Feel free to share your reflections or comments below, or by <a href=\"mailto:andrea@grzesina.net\">email<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With warm wishes,<br>\nAndrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Friends, Continuing with Sally Armstrong\u2019s talk, &#8220;The roles of mindfulness, metta and equanimity in our practice&#8220;, and her discussion on mindfulness&#8230; Sally shares various definitions of mindfulness, but I really resonate with the definition that Jeanne Corrigal offers: Mindfulness is paying attention, with open, curious interest, to what is happening within and around us, with the intention\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/january-4-mindfulness-kind-interested-relaxed-attention\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[199],"tags":[32,36,96,113],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2020","tag-jeanne-corrigal","tag-mark-coleman","tag-mindfulness","tag-sally-armstrong"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1493,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/1493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}