From the “Zen computer FAQ”:

The route to [...] zen lies in cultivating a quality of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is simply maintaining a heightened presence of mind. Through sheer force of will, we turn our minds into their own disciplinarians, like the teacher in school yelling, “Pay attention!” Zen masters call it “minding mind.” Pay attention to what you’re doing right now; to how you’re doing it; to the ways of nature and your place within it; to your hearts, your body, your intuition, your very breath.

Pay attention, zen says, but do not pay attention–that is, force yourself to pay attention to the point where you forget you’re forcing yourself and simply start paying attention; only then will you know something about zen.

This suddenly makes a lot of sense to me, and conforms to thoughts I’ve had lately. If you recall, I’ve talked about the “inner self”. Well, this “inner self” is probably the concept of a “hightened presense of mind”. Additionally, I thought, it’s too bad that I can’t keep myself in this state for long. What the citation says agrees with my feelings - that one somehow should achieve a state of inherent higher presense, w/o forcing oneself to it.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2004 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Philosophical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.