Linda, I just saw that Samak Sundaravej has refused to resign. I do hope that you stay safe--actually my fantasy is you'll get out without a hitch and the politics will be resolved by the time you return. In any case I send you my warm thoughts.

As evidenced by by long-winded posts, I have a hard time paying attention, my attention tends to attend to too much at once. In terms of definitions, that's an example of what mindfulness is not! While I think that mindfulness is objective and precise, I also think it cannot be named, as per the Tao and Christopher Alexander's quality without a name.

It seems to me that David's ideas of mindfulness are very close to the heart of Schumacher's discussion of Right Livelihood and the foundation of Buddhist Economics. But in my conception of mindfulness it seems that mindfulness is on a different order. What David describes is also closely related to the teaching of analysis in some schools of Buddhism which hold that insight comes from experience, critical investigation, and reasoning Vibhajjavāda and not by faith.

I think Changent is pointing to something very fundamental:

Isn't mindfulness more about simply allowing the awareness of whatever thinking and feeling might be going on?

Allowing awareness seems before intention.

In Miracle of Mindfulness Thich Nhat Hanh discusses being present for the reality now in our everyday lives, eating a tangerine, washing dishes, playing with children. Now I could do with some discipline and breathing (training) which of course I'm too lazy and too easily distracted to do. But the point is not totally lost on me. Eat an orange, don't do as I do and attend to 100 other things as I scarf the sweet and tart sections down my gullet. Thich Nhat Hanh also discusses how our capacity to attend in the present is enhanced by practicing mindfulness practicing "allowing awareness" through meditation and breathing.

My mind wants to name everything. My mind wants to make an intelligible image no matter what. Because I'm like this, I know the pitfalls and I'm often mistaken, beguiled by my own delusions. The middle way requires awareness. As Jill Bolte Taylor discovered through her stroke, the two sides of the brain have strikingly different personalities.Our parallel processor side of the brain isn't so deluded my constructs of our separateness as is our serial processor side.

Our actions have consequences, but mindfulness, it seems to me, isn't so much about anticipating consequences, as it is about practicing awareness. It is from mindfulness that our observations and investigations become more critical, our reasoning more precise, and our experience more satisfying. Mindfulness is different from analysis, but our analysis is better for it.