Comment 40 on Mindfulness

Yikes, I've always had a hard time figuring out the boundaries for discussions in personal news threads here. One of my problems is that I tend to click through to personal news rather than to use the RSS feeds. Using the feeds has the advantage of making it possible to respond on ones own personal news page and to maintain a dialog. I don't do that, and I should.

To use RSS go to the page you are interested in, for example people's personal news discussions. At the bottom of the left navigation column is a link to RSS. You can choose the application you want to send the feed to, for example Bloglines or Google Reader.

But while I'm still here trashing the place, let me make one observation about mindfulness: Because it plays such a central role in Buddhism, the word has lots of baggage even for a Western audience.

The Wikipedia article on the Noble Eightfold Path introduces a threefold division of the Noble Eightfold Path: Wisdom, Ethical Conduct, and Concentration. Mindfulness is #7 in the Concentration division and Right Livelihood is #5 in the Ethical Conduct division.

As a typical American, I find an Eastern way of thinking difficult, and the divisions are made even more so by the sense that the development along the Eightfold Path is integral, or simultaneous.

I see much similarity between Linda and David's view of mindfulness, views which I think are quite in line with Buddhist concepts, particularly views about analysis. But that's where the baggage of the word mindfulness gets tricky. People, perhaps especially people in the West, associate mindfulness with meditation. Because Buddhist Economics, at least taking into account Schumacher's brilliant essay, which I think should be taken into account,deals with the Right Livelihood precept, it seems to me to make mindfulness stand for a more integrated construct than Right Mindfulness is an opportunity for confusion.

I'm very interested in this discussion. And I absolutely understand that Linda means what she says about not being rude. So I would be interested, when you have the time, to hear your opinions about how properly to engage in this discussion. I suspect the right way is to have linked discussions in our own personal news spaces, but I'd like to hear opinions about that.