07/06/2026
Beautiful
Usually in the Tibetan tradition they emphasise becoming conscious of the thoughts. However, the Buddha even 2,500 years ago compared our minds to a waterfall so what would he say of nowadays! Perhaps it is easier to start the practice of Mindfulness the traditional way that the Buddha explained, which was to begin with the body, since that is more material and apparent than the mind. So the Buddha said, “When you are sitting, you know you are sitting. When you are standing, you know you are standing. When you are walking, you know you are walking. When you are lying down, you know you are lying down.” It is that simple. But the fact of the matter is that normally when we are sitting we are usually thinking of a thousand things, and the one thing we are not conscious of is the fact that we are sitting—unless we get uncomfortable; then we move around. When we are walking, our minds are filled with thoughts of the past or the future but we are not conscious that we are walking.
So therefore, in the Zen tradition there is a lot of emphasis on sweeping and on doing ordinary things with clarity. The whole point of performing actions in this formal way is just to reconnect the awareness with what is actually happening in that moment. Because that is all there is and the rest is just mental interpretation. We are so carried along by our thoughts and our dreams and our judgements and our commentaries, we are not even conscious of how little we are actually connected with what is happening. If something happens and then a while later everybody gives their version of what occurred, it’s very often as if they’re all describing different events! But of course one knows that one’s own version is the real one!
- Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
(From a teaching on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness: Mindfulness of the Body, now available in the Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo Archive)
Photo: Wat Chaiwatthanaram, Ayutthaya, Thailand. 2010.
