The Buddha’s Words — Mindfulness

What it means to live forever, in a Buddhist sense

If you were truly aware of your mind, you’d be aware that you don’t exist

Mindfulness is the core of Buddhist thought. As mentioned, Buddhism is a map, not a mandate. You don’t have to accept any of these things. In fact, it’s immaterial if you do. You have to experience it.

In the last chapter we discussed some of the treasure on the map — freedom from suffering, hatred, clarity of thought. Now we’ll start discussing how to get there. Spoiler alert, it’s a simple answer that you don’t want to hear.

AW Adikaram calls this chapter of his Dhammapada NON-INTOXICATION, but to a Buddha, we’re always drunk. Drunk on sensation, on food, on self, on wealth, on grievance, on Twitter; whatever substance we use to distract ourself from the nothingness (and everythingness) of life. I think a better translation is MINDFULNESS, a word you might know.

Far from a life-hack for tech-bros, mindfulness is the central Buddhist act, which looks a lot like doing nothing. As Oasis said, be here now. It’s so simple that it’s basically impossible.

Live Forever

21. Mindfulness is the way to…