"Buddhist teachings remind us that we will never achieve real or lasting satisfaction by adopting a different, better way of thinking or acting. The effort to find happiness in this way may bring relief from the more extreme forms of anxiety to which the personality is subject, but it is nonetheless based on an endlessly replicating fantasy charged by an unquenchable, obsessive thirst that serves only to perpetuate the ego’s compulsive activity and its attendant suffering. This is the very definition of bondage to karma, the engine of a chronic existential disease. The insatiable yearning to analyze and discriminate, judge and choose — and thereby to control or shape the self in the image of its constantly shifting desires — is the elemental force of dukkha in its most basic form. It is the inescapable plight of the self.

This brings us to the central concern of Theravada Buddhism, and to mindfulness meditation as the primary means for stepping away from the whole project of searching for happiness by judging and choosing, rejecting some things while accepting others.

As practiced in the traditional Buddhist context, mindfulness is not a powerful, spiritualized form of psychotherapy, a device for fine-tuning the ego — much less a strategy for achieving “complete and invulnerable self-sufficiency.”

[...] mindfulness is not about becoming a happier, better person. It’s not about “happiness” at all — at least not if “happiness” is understood as the fulfillment of desire. Mindfulness is, rather, about wisdom rooted in insight, renunciation, and unqualified self-surrender."

Are You Looking to Buddhism When You Should Be Looking to Therapy? - C. W. Huntington, Jr - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Spring 2018

"The body is not self. If it were, it would not get sick. You could tell your body: be like this or don't be like that. But because the body is not self, it does get sick. You can't tell it: be like this or don't be like that. He points out that the same is true for feelings, perceptions, inclinations and consciousness. You cannot determine in advance how you will feel, what you will perceive, how you will be inclined to act, or what you will be conscious of. You do not choose to feel happy rather than sad, to perceive a world that delights rather than disturbs you, to always incline to a calm rather than an agitated response, to be unconscious rather than conscious of something distressing. In others words, you are not in charge of what is going on within your own experience.

The liberating insight he [Buddha] proposes is not the realization that there is no self but the realization that I am not the same as or reducible to any or all of the five bundles (aggregates) that constitute me.

Gotama understood awakening as the result of directly knowing how experience comes about.

The key to freeing oneself from the repetitive cycles of reactivity and beholding nirvana is attention. When attention becomes embodied through contemplation of the transient, tragic, impersonal and empty nature of the bundles, our relationship to experience begins to shift in disconcerting ways. The practice of embodied attention challenges our habitual perceptions of self and world as permanent, satisfatory and intrinsically ours. By stabilizing attention through mindfulness and concentration, we begin to see for ourselves how pleasurable and painful feelings trigger habitual patterns of reactivity and craving. These two insights not only undermine our inclinations to hold on to what we like and to push away what we fear but open up the possibility of thinking, speaking and acting otherwise.

'Seeing things this way', says Gotama at the conclusion of his discourse on not-self, 'the attentive noble disciple disengages from form, disengages from feelings, disengages from perceptions, disengages from inclinations, disengages from consciousness. By disengaging, reactivity fades; non-reactive, he is freed; the knowledge arises: 'I am freed.'' This is the experience of nirvana as immediate and clearly visible; it is at this crucial point that one sees for oneself how one is free not to react to life but to respond to it from a perspective that is no longer conditioned by such inclinations." 

After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a secular age

"We do face the more challenging problem of how first to uncover the socially constructed prejudices we all harbor and then to transform them, not at this level of intellectual argument but at the deeper level of changing emotional and behavioral responses. It is not about changing views (the aggregate of perception), but of reconstructing patterns of habitual reaction (the aggregate of formations). Fortunately, the Buddha bequeathed to us a powerful tool for doing this: mindfulness.

Psychology has demonstrated clearly that some of what we do is conscious and some is unconscious. That is to say, we are consciously aware of a narrow band of our experience as it unfolds, but most of what happens is formulated out of view and emerges apparently on its own from the mysterious depths of the psyche to surge into behavior unhindered by awareness. Our views and reactions are formed as they appear, based on patterns laid down in the past, and consciousness is more a matter of observing what is already unfolding than of deciding what will take place.

Mindfulness practice involves training the ability to observe what is happening within us in the present moment with an attitude of patience, kindness, and equanimity. As different bodily sensations or feeling tones or thoughts arise into conscious awareness, we “watch along with” (anupassati) them, or “gaze evenly upon” (upekkhati) them, or are simply “aware of” (pajanati) and “fully experience” (patisamvedati) them. If we get angry at what we see, or if any sort of response rooted in attraction or aversion occurs, then we are thrust out of mindful awareness and get carried away ..."

Shining a light - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Fall 2015

"Rather than frantically looking for loopholes in the teachings, isn't it wiser to accept that mindfulness won't make the plum any sweeter or the kettle any brighter? But here's the hopeful part - the more we practice mindfulness, the less we'll care about sweetness or brightness."

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"Mindfulness practice does lead to happiness, but not because the stuff of the mundane now - its sights, sounds, and the consciousness that knows them -  turns out to be better than we'd thought. Despite the myth, bare attention doesn't expose some hidden core of radiance in the empty vibrations; no such core exists."

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"The Buddha clearly stated the reason for practicing mindfulness: to uncover and eliminate the cause of suffering. That cause is desire. When its cause is absent, suffering cannot arise. At that point, the sutras tell us, one knows a happiness with no hint of anxiety to mar it. But that isn't because sights and sounds magically become permanent, lovely, and the property of Self. Rather, these impressions temporarily cease and consciousness touches a supramundane object called "nibbana," the unconditioned element. Although a mental object, nibbana, the "highest bliss," is not a formation at all; it is unformed and permanent. So the present moment is worthwhile because only in it can we experience nibbana - complete freedom from suffering.

Yet can't sense-impressions be pleasurable? Yes, but pleasure isn't the unending source of happiness we take it to be. In daily life we perceive beautiful sensations as solid and relatively lasting, when in fact they're only unstable vibrations that fall away the instant they form. Like cotton candy that dissolves before you can sink your teeth into it, pleasure doesn't endure long enough to sustain happiness. " 

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"Take the sunset: What happens when we see it? Ultimately, we don't. When the eye contacts a visual form, we merely see color, not a three-dimensional thing. In fact, the tint, along with the consciousness seeing it, dies out in a split-second, but we fail to catch the dissolve. Why? Because delusion blurs the separate moments of perception together, making experience look seamless. After the color sparks out, subsequent moments of consciousness replay the image from memory, dubbing it "sunset." This process takes only a fraction of a second. Nevertheless, by the time we name it, the original image is already gone. "Sunset" is a concept perceived through the mind-door, not the eye. We mistake this product of mental construction for something irreducibly real. Without the tool of mindfulness the trick is too fast to see, like trying to catch the separate frames of a running film."

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"Mindfully noting mental and physical phenomena, we learn that they arise only to pass away. In the deepest sense, we cannot manipulate or actually own them. These traits are unwelcome-unsatisfactory. So the more mindfulness one has, the clearer dukkha becomes." 

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"The more mindfulness we have, the less compelling sense-objects seem, until at last we lose all desire for them." 

What's so great about now? - Tricycle:  The Buddhist Review - Winter 2006

"Mindfulness involves conscious effort; it is something you can practice. But it is moving toward real awareness, which is utterly without effort."

Breath by breath: the liberating practice of insight meditation

"Mindfulness is often likened to a mirror; it simply reflects what is there. It is not a process of thinking; it is preconceptual, before thought. One can be mindful of thought. There is all the difference in the world between thinking and knowing that thought is happening.

Mindfulness has no goal other than the seeing itself.

It is a form of participation - you are fully living out your life, but you are awake in the midst of it.

Thinking often comes between us and our experience. Inasmuch as it does, we are not intimate with that moment. We are not mindful."

Breath by breath: the liberating practice of insight meditation

"The point is to leave the mental realm, where most of our unhappiness takes root and grows, and enter into the nonconceptual experience of the present moment, which is purely physical."

Beyond happiness

"Mindfulness is the energy that allow us to recognize our habit energy and prevent it from dominating us."

The heart of Buddha's teaching

"Stop trying to be mindful and relax into the awareness that existed before thought, and not the mindfulness that existed driven by thought."

Stepping out of self-deception - p. 164

"[Mindfulness] is simply the practice of bringing ourselves fully into the present moment and continuing to bring ourselves back to it whenever we notice we've drifted away.

All of our training relies on these two practices: mindfulness and awareness. Awareness is our consciousness of being in the present. Mindfulness means "to remember" or "not to forget" to watch the mind and see when it drifts away from the present.

Of the two, mindfulness is usually emphasized more because it's responsible for maintaining the continuity of our awareness. Mindfulness means to remember again and again." 

Rebel Buddha - p. 69

"Mindfulness is attention to experience as it is happening - that is, in the present moment.  p. 9

Can you separate your conceptual framework from your experience? If you can, what would you see?  p. 9

Mindfulness is a tool we can use to examine conceptual frameworks, to lessen the influence of preconceptions and to experience "what is" by choice rather through drugs or neurological damage.  p. 10

Minfulness is the art of observing your physical, emotional and mental experiences with deliberate, open and curious attention.  p. 11

By practicing present-time awareness, even in the midst of a difficult situation, you can become aware of your impulses (your reactive patterns), stop, perhaps take a breath, and respond skillfully in a way that does not lead to more harm.  p. 15


Mindfulness is an accepting and kind attitude toward yourself and your present-moment experience.  p. 16


When you are aware of the present moment in a kind and curious way, accepting it as it is, then you have the direct experience of mindfulness.  p. 16


Judgments arise unbidden in our minds, so we don't need to judge our judgements! Instead, recognize them for what they are: thoughts passing through your mind.  p. 16

It is simple to be mindful, but remembering to be mindful can be very difficult.  p. 17 


With mindfulness, we simply notice. We become aware.  p. 20


In meditation we use an anchor to keep our minds from being tossed and turned by the ocean of thoughts, stimuli, sensations, sounds and emotions. In the mindfulness practice taught in this book, we use the breath as our anchor, although it is possible to use other anchors, such as sounds or bodily sensations. Other meditation practices use an image, a candle flame, another body part or mantra (a repeating word).  p. 45


The key to mindfulness in breathing practice is feeling the breath.  p. 47


When you have ideas about pain, you may be so caught in the ideas that you miss the reality of the experience (and this is true in general of bringing mindfulness to any experience).  p. 87


Mindfulness is about being present in a curious manner with whatever emotion arises - good or bad.  p. 97


The mindful approach to emotions is neither expressive nor repressive per se; the mindful approach is to recognize your emotions, feel them fully, and then let them go so that they don't control you or lead you to act in ways that are harmful to others.  p. 111

To learn working mindfully with emotions, RAIN:  p. 112

- Recognition: in the midst of an emotion, you may find that by identifying and labeling it you are not so overwhelmed by it.

- Acceptance: from the perspective of mindfulness, whatever you are experiencing is okay.

- Investigation: to investigate an emotion is to feel it in your body, discovering how it manifests itself.

- Non-identification: it means not taking your emotions so personally, having some space around them. With it, you have come to the point with your emotions where they have stopped being your emotions that are causing you so much suffering and become instead the emotions - that is, something that is passing through you ("energy in motion").

The mindful approach: don't get on the train [of thoughts].  p. 184"

Fully present: the science, art and practice of mindfulness

"When true mindfulness arises, one feels as if one is stepping back and observing what is happening in experience, rather than being embedded in it. This does not mean separation or detachement, but is rather a sense of not being hooked by a desirable object or not pushing away a repugnant object. There in the middle, equidistant from each extreme, one encounters a sense of freedom that allows for greater intimacy with experience."

Unlimiting mind - p. 172 

"Mindfulness practice offers the restraint necessary to overcome the tug of desire upon the senses. As we notice the mind wandering off to explore a gratifying train of thought, or as we notice the body’s urging to nudge ourselves into a more comfortable position, we gently abandon the impulse and return attention to the primary object of awareness. We do this again and again, until the mind becomes content with being fully present with what is manifesting here and now in the field of experience, rather than rushing off for some other form of stimulation. As the mind settles down it becomes considerably more powerful, and thus more empowered.


With the senses no longer struggling to reach pleasing forms and no longer regarding unpleasing forms as repulsive, the mind is able to see more clearly what is actually arising and falling away."

The ties that unbind - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review - Summer 2007

"O fato de não estarmos conscientes das atividades da mente é o que Buda designa como ignorância. Assim, ignorância é tudo o que escapa à nossa plena atenção ou vigilância. Somente através da prática da plena atenção, podemos compreender o que é  a mente e a sua natureza. No contemplar o surgir, desenvolver e desaparecer dos pensamentos tornamo-nos conscientes deles e, vendo-os como são, sua influência dominadora sobre nós torna-se cada vez mais fraca, até nos libertarmos, aos poucos, dos grilhões que nos prendem à roda da existência contínua."

Budismo: psicologia do autoconhecimento - p. 223

"Tudo o que aparece, desaparece; firmai-vos na plena atenção."

Budismo: psicologia do autoconhecimento - p. 227