Mindfulness Practice Progression

Thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life next…

Checking out my mindfulness songs and thinking about the talk-with-music thing, and also my personal practice and how that feeds my teachings / presentations / music..

In the past, sometimes the practice of mindfulness seemed like such a simple thing (i.e., be aware; let go) that I wondered how turning people on to it could turn into a mission and a career. But it really can be thought of as a progression of practice.

Shinzen Young, in his book, “The Science of Enlightenment”, expresses this idea in his account of his time at a Zen monastery in Japan. He hadn’t realized the purpose of being assigned to menial tasks at his previous monastery until a Zen master told him that bringing the mind back to the tasks was the practice and therefore the reason for doing them. So, later in the book, he laid out a progression of mindfulness practice, getting more challenging as you go along – from awareness of the breath to “menial” tasks, to more complicated actions like driving, to arts or sports activities, to having conversations with others, etc.

Looking at my own practice as this kind of progression, I can see that I’ve been practicing the breathing, “menial” tasks, more complicated tasks, art (music) and sports (working out) activities; and practice – conscious practice – in conversations with others looks like the next step. With the ultimate purpose being living all of life in mindfulness!

In terms of teaching / presenting this stuff, I’m doing basically an intro talk with music right now. This can expand to a series of talks (videos, books, workshops, etc.) on each of those phases in the progression of practice, and then putting it together into just being mindful, all the time!

A long practice, mission, and career ahead!