Seeing oneself through the mirror of mindfulness

Understanding oneself means to understand the behavior of one’s mind. Dhamma is an exercise in itself. That exercise is seeing oneself by oneself. For example, a man can look in a mirror and notice that he has dark shadows on his unshaven face, or a woman might notice that her makeup is not in proper order. A mirror can be used to assess our physical appearance, but mindfulness is how we assess our thoughts.

Everyone has heard the word ‘mindfulness’, yet there is a fundamental level of misunderstanding about what it really means. Understanding actually means realizing the essence of the word mindfulness through the experience itself.

Let us now look at the mind. Generally, the mind changes from one thought to another. An analogy would be a monkey that jumps from tree to tree. Thoughts just occur and race without rhyme or reason. Mindfulness helps one to capture the right perspective at the very moment of a thought’s emergence in the mind. What we are doing here is perceiving the rising thought at the very moment of its appearance. Are you used to noticing your thoughts at that moment? If not, you have not cultivated mindfulness. Mindfulness is something to be practiced.

Bhante Pannasiri