[Buddha-l] mindful/mindfulnes

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 28, 2010, at 10:15 PM, Artur Karp wrote:

> Dear Buddha-l-ers,
> 
> One reads again and again the words: mindful, mindfulness.
> 
> What in fact do you mean, when you use it?

Are you asking how the English words are used outside their use as technical terms in a Buddhist context? Actually, in my experience the 'mindfulness' is almost never used (perhaps because what it denotes hardly exists) in everyday life. One occasionally hears 'mindful' used more or less as synonyms for 'careful', 'attentive' and 'aware' and an antonym of 'negligent' and 'careless'. (I don't know why 'mindful' is not an antonym for 'mindless'. It sounds as though it should be.)

In Canadian English, more than whatever one calls the language we speak in the United States, the verb 'to mind' means to be careful. One of my favorite signs in Toronto is on the platforms of underground trains. There is a small gap between the edge of the platform and the floor of the train, and the sign says 'Mind the gap,' an admirably succinct way of saying 'be careful not to fall between into the narrow space between the train and the platform' (as if anyone larger than a cockroach is large enough to do so). That sign always reminded me that the mind is a gap into which all kinds of things fall if one is not careful. (I have never understood why 'remind' does not mean 'to be careful again' or why 'retire' does not mean to make someone fatigued again. English has never made much sense to me. It is a very poorly organized language.)

> Greetings from coldly rainy Warsaw,

Greetings to you from hot, dry and sunny Albuquerque.

Richard Hayes