Dear efendi:

I am not a Buddhist either but I am very passionate about the principle of living according to reality, of stripping off delusion, fantasy, what you call “fabrication” from what is real, and seeing reality for its bare minimum. I practice this daily.
I believe this is the way to sane living and mental well being.

As to your last two lines. Again, I am not a Buddhist and I do not try to fit my thinking to any dogma, any “should be”, and so, I am not religious. i do not belong to any religion or any institution, not by choice. From this point of view, looking at your two lines: I believe it is unwise to not learn from the past. It is very important to learn from the past. This is why we think, naturally about the past- we are meant to improve on it. Lots of people obsess about the past, not learning from it, but being tormented by it- that is not healthy. Regarding not caring about the future: I don’t think it is possible or desirable. It is unhealthy to.. again, obsess about the future, being so anxious that one is paralyzed by fear. But it is wise to prepare for a better future, make the future an improved past, so to speak.

Regarding “comfort zone”- if the comfort is based on fabrication/ delusion/ distorted thinking, then that kind of comfort will be short lived and damaging in the long run. If comfort is based on reality, that kind of comfort is worth pursuing.

anita

Dear efendi:

We can live in the moment when we do activities that require our full attention, activities that are not automatic for us (like driving a car), such as learning a new skill, and even watching a suspense movie, a passive activity.

Living meditation, or Mindfulness, is about performing the automatic activities with attention to what we are doing. For example, washing dishes, paying attention to the sound the dishes and the water make, the feel of the soap and the warm water on our hands.

So two things: there are activities, as you know, that by their nature require our attention. And then Mindfulness can be practiced for activities we do automatically, activities that don’t require our attention.

As in meditation, in the practice of mindfulness, your mind will drift to the past and future automatically. The practice is about bringing your attention gently to the present moment, to the experience of the present moment with your five senses, again and again. It is important not to see focus on the present as performance and judge your success or failure, but to accept that the mind will drift, as is its nature, and then patiently and gently bring the focus back to the present.

anita