Mindfulness

Gregg Chadwick
Siddhartha
8"x6" oil on linen 2005

David Ian Miller:
Let's begin with a basic question: What is mindfulness and why is it important?
Mindfulness is an innate human capacity to deliberately pay full attention to where we are, to our actual experience, and to learn from it.

Jack Kornfield:
Much of our day we spend on automatic pilot. People know the experience of driving somewhere, pulling up to the curb and all of a sudden realizing, "Wow, I was hardly aware I was even driving. How did I get here?" When we pay attention, it is gracious, which means that there is space for our joys and sorrows, our pain and losses, all to be held in a peaceful way.

David Ian Miller:
And the path toward mindfulness is meditation?

Jack Kornfield:
Meditation is one good way to learn mindfulness. There are many good ways. To be really good at something, you need to be mindful. A very good chef has to be mindful of the ingredients and the knife and the taste that's actually there in that particular dish. So it's a skill that's a part of human development in many areas.

From a conversation in the San Francisco Chronicle.