Mindfulness is all the rage. Corporations like Goldman Sachs and Monsanto teach it to employees. The meditation apps Calm and Headspace have both been valued at $250 million. Forbes recently profiled six “tech entrepreneurs” who “want to bring mindfulness to your sex life.”

But what exactly is it?—many people continue to ask.

To meditation teacher Hugh Byrne, it’s seeing whatever is arising in our experience like clouds moving through the sky—including sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, sounds, the breath. They come and go.

To scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn, it’s “going beyond or behind our thinking,” like standing behind a waterfall. “We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent [of thoughts.]”

To Zen Buddhist teacher angel Kyodo willliams, it’s like sifting through “that drawer that collects everything in your house. We have no real way of being able to discern what is mine, what is yours, what are we holding collectively, what have I inherited, what have I taken on as a measure of protection, of a way to cope at some point in my life or past lives, that I no longer need? [Mindfulness] lets us begin to do that.”

To the Tibetan Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, it’s like inviting guests into your home. He tells a story of being a sick teenager on a bus. “I [meditated,] bringing my awareness to the sensations around my stomach, its bloating, and the nausea. I was playing host to these sensations, as well as to feelings of aversion, resistance, and reaction. The more I allowed these guests to inhabit my body, the calmer I became.”

To some Mahayana Buddhists, it’s also known as “Buddha nature,” which is like “a treasure hidden beneath the house of a poor family. The treasure is silent and so cannot announce its presence, yet when it is discovered poverty is dispelled.”

To the ancient Zen master Dogen, it’s a mirror: “The real way circulates everywhere; how could it require practice or enlightenment? The essential teaching is fully available; how could effort be necessary? Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust; why take steps to polish it? Nothing is separate from this very place; why journey away?”

I like to think of it as seeing a movie in a theater. Most of the time—when we’re not mindful—we’re sitting in the front row, engrossed in what’s on the screen (our thoughts). There’s no space, no gap between our thoughts and consciousness, the thinker of those thoughts. Mindfulness is walking to the back of the theater and realized that here’s a screen and an audience.

What emerges from these metaphors is a (somewhat) simple definition: mindfulness is being aware of what’s happening in the present moment, including thoughts, in a non-judgmental way.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

One spring afternoon in 2014, I drove through rural Maryland’s rolling hills five miles under the speed limit. My auburn Subaru hatchback felt like a bowling ball beneath me, heavy on the pavement. Dogwood trees dangled fragrant white flowers along the roadside. Bumble bees hovered in the surrounding soy bean fields.

Though 28 years old, I felt 15 again, new to driving, but confident instead of anxious. There was nowhere else to be but gliding down an unfamiliar two-lane road. And I wasn’t anywhere else—I was fully and completely present, awake to my senses.

No, I wasn’t high. I’d just meditated—a lot. An hour before, a bell had rung to end two-and-a-half days of no talking, no internet, no social media, no books — nothing but eating, sleeping, and meditating.

Before that long weekend, called a “retreat” in meditation circles, I’d never felt the need to face what was going on inside of me. If I was unhappy, which I often was in those days, the problem was outside, in my “lifestyle”—and so was the solution.

I went on diets, changed jobs, saved money, went back to school, slept more, you name it. Nothing seemed to perk me up for more than a few days or weeks.

Contentment, like I felt on that drive, was even more elusive, as though what I truly wanted was perpetually off in a future I couldn’t even describe. When I was really feeling down, I’d smoke some pot, crack open a beer, and light up a cigarette, often alone.

That first retreat was a mind-bender, to say the least.

In the middle of all the silence, I saw how often my thoughts wandered away from the present moment—pretty much all the time.

While doing walking meditation in the woods near the retreat center, I saw how rarely I felt happy, content, satisfied, even just okay.

As I stood in line for lunch, I saw how much I judged other people because of their shoes, how they walked, what they ate, i.e., everything but who they really are.

During meditation periods, I saw how much I judged myself for not showing up on time, meditating the “right” way, paying attention, feeling back pain, i.e., everything but who I really am.

In other words, I began to notice how often my mind was on autopilot and how little control I had over what was going on inside of it.

That’s what meditation does: it creates a tiny gap between thoughts and the thinker of those thoughts, a.k.a., consciousness. This gap—called “mindfulness”—is the seed of a truly revolutionary inner freedom.

To be sure, meditation is not a replacement for therapy. Every single one of us has emotional wounds that need unpacking with professional help, someone who can hear our pain and suffering without taking it personally.

Meditation can’t do that. It can help you see how you’ve developed habits and behaviors to escape having to deal with your wounds. But it can’t fully heal those wounds.

Yet, that first retreat set me off on a search for healing. I caught a glimpse of a much bigger, fuller, and more dynamic life, and I committed to cleaning up what was in the way of living it. (I’ve still got a long way to go.)

After that weekend, meditation became not only a daily habit but also a daily obligation. An obligation to never forget what I felt on that drive, what Zen Buddhists call “beginner’s mind,” and to do what it takes every day to remember.

Want to be more mindful?

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

This sounds weird, but being mindful is like standing at a distance from the mind as it thinks.

From a distance, thoughts appear as phenomena rather than our entire experience, how we normally experience them. They’re like an itch or the hum of the trash truck idling outside—just what’s happening right now. They come and go, with little rhyme or reason.

They aren’t necessarily the truth, and often aren’t. They’re reactions, judgments, preferences, memories, worries, etc.

Some of my thoughts sound like my mom’s voice. Others, like my dad’s. Others, like the voices of close friends. Others are based on stories I’ve heard, memories of TV shows I’ve seen, headlines I’ve read, etc.

The question, then—and this is what I’m grappling with recently—is, who is thinking these thoughts? More to the point: who am I when I’m not believing my thoughts—when I’m just watching them?

Who am I when I’m not looking forward to a cup of coffee? (I recently kicked a caffeine addiction.)

Who am I when I’m not drinking beer on a Friday night?

Who am I when I’m not headed somewhere else?

Who am I when I’m not judging my friends?

Who am I when I’m not judging my parents?

Who am I when I’m not trying to make people like me?

Who am I when I’m not a writer or meditation teacher?

Who am I when I’m not checking Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter for notifications?

Who am I when I’m not holding on to the privilege of being a white, college-educated, heterosexual man?

Who am I when I’m listening to the cicada sounds at night?

Who am I when I’m sitting and enjoying the presence of my great aunt Marian?

Those are my questions—yours are different, but probably only a little.

I don’t need a solid answer. I know that I’m like everything and everyone else: always changing, conditional. I know that expecting solidity is what hurts.

But asking these questions better pay off because I’m banking on them leading somewhere. I can’t go back to knowing now. I’ve seen enough to know that not knowing is where life is.

This, from the twentieth-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke, gives me hope:

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Want to be more mindful?

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | RSS | More