I've written previously on mindfulness. In those posts the focus was more about what not to do and what isn't particularly helpful while being light on what someone can do to develop mindfulness. I've also stressed how I'm a fellow traveler on this path and not a guru of some sort. So take what I write with a few grains of salt and let me know sometime how you're doing.
Mindfulness isn't some blissed-out, warm and fuzzy, detached state of being. Quite the opposite. It's a state that is very much involved with what's going on around you. I remember Roshi commenting how some of his senior monks might have a strong meditation practice while sitting for hours in the Zendo, but lose it when they were tasked with leaving the monastery to run some errand in the city (LA). To be sure, a Zen monastery is an exquisitely tuned environment for developing mindfulness. This is where I did much of the work to that end in my own practice. But even that has limits unless one commits to a life-long monastic life.
The last dokusan I had with Roshi was a curious one. Beyond just the limitation of his poor English and my poor Japanese, I didn't understand his message. I had cleared a number of koans over the past several years (in the way one clears a kidney stone), but this one seemed to kick me back to the beginning of my practice. In fact, it felt like I was being kick out of the monastery, not so much a koan as it was a command or direction. "Move. Move more." How am I to do that while sitting on my butt for hours and days at a time?
It took a few months, but the message eventually arrived - swift as an arrow flying through molasses. Enough sitting. Time to get my butt off the zafu and move about in the world. Time to put my meditation practice into motion. The next steps, quite literally, became very clear and I started my Aikido practice shortly thereafter, which was to continue for the next 25 years. I hung 'em up at a rank of Sandan (3rd Dan). A student doesn't get to this rank without learning something about mindfulness.
If mindfulness isn't some zone-out state of being, neither is it a single skill or behavior. Working to develop such a state will reveal many skills that help support mindfulness and behaviors that need to be adjusted or changed. Behaviors related to diet, for example, can have a significant impact on a meditation or mindfulness practice. Garbage processed food leads to an unhappy GI tract and poor sleep. Hard to sit still when your guts are going 100 MPH and your brain slogs along at a snail's pace. Learning a few basic cooking skills and simplifying your diet can have a significant impact on developing and holding a mindful state.
The two skills I recommend be at the top of any list are focus and awareness. Years of practicing Aikido sharpened these skill much more efficiently than years of sitting in the Zendo would have. I believe this was Roshi's last "koan" for me. I'm pretty certain that Roshi understood that for this clumsy student - who dances like he took lessons from an icy sidewalk - the way forward was to put his practice into motion.
As you might imagine, getting good at any martial art involves both a strong ability to focus and expanded awareness of the world around the student. There's no substitute for practice in the dojo. Even so, there are many things a person can do to develop focus and awareness of surroundings without ever stepping foot on a dojo mat. An extremely effective approach to this is to learn how to juggle. It's low cost and immediately available, especially in the era of Google and YouTube. Even better, it offers direct and immediate feedback for how you're doing and progressing. This is something no smartphone app can ever deliver.
When you can juggle, you'll have a direct experience of simultaneous focus and expanded awareness. More importantly, you'll be strengthening your understanding of how each of these things are separate and that you can control them. Now THAT'S mindfulness.
Photo by Seb Atkinson on Unsplash