As you read these words, what is passing through your mind? Do you feel your body making contact with the chair in which you sit? To where is your attention going? Is it fully here, on this page, or is more of it on your hunger or the air’s temperature?

Mindfulness is a basic awareness that’s available to everyone at any moment. Mindfulness is about being aware of your mind in this moment, with a gentle acceptance of wherever that is.

If we are caught up in a feeling or distracted by thoughts in this moment, we are not fully aware of or present in this moment—mindlessness. We are also being mindless if we are aware of this moment, but unwilling to be present in it—for some reason this moment seems undesirable or unacceptable.