Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the key practice in Buddhism. It is the practice of mindfulness that brings everything else together. What we are aiming for is an inter-connected mindfulness. We need to be aware of ourselves; our thoughts, emotions, words and actions. We need to be aware of other people in the same way. We need to be aware of our environment, the objects, space, light and colour around us. We need to be aware of reality; of impermanence, of the unsatisfactoriness of worldly things, of the higher truth represented by the Buddha. But our awareness in all these areas, all these dimensions, needs to be interconnected. We need to be aware of how everything affects everything else, how everything is always part of the conditions for something else. How does our environment affect us? How do we affect our environment? What effect do other people have on us and, even more importantly, what effect do we have on other people? In what way does Reality impact on us, on our environment, on other people? What is the effect of the potential for Awakening on our lives? Asking ourselves questions and reflecting in this way we can develop an inter-connected awareness, which is an essential basis for Awakening.

When we take our awareness deeper into ourselves and further out in to the world around us, the promise is that we will experience great beauty and access to energy that is always flowing out into generous activity. This interconnected awareness is alive, rich and abundant. In symbolic terms it is golden yellow, a sun that gives warmth and nourishment everywhere equally and encourages us to grow and to emerge from the solid resistant earth of our mundane egoistic selves.