Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

will, because it is in the very nature of the mind to
compare and judge and evaluate. When it occurs, we
don't try to stop it or ignore it, any more than we
would try to stop any other thoughts that might come
through our mind.
The tack we take in meditation is simply to witness
whatever comes up in the mind or the body and to
recognize it without condemning it or pursuing it,
knowing that our judgments are unavoidable and
necessarily limiting thoughts about experience. What
we are interested in in meditation is direct contact
with the experience itself - whether it is of an
inbreath, an outbreath, a sensation or feeling, a
sound, an impulse, a thought, a perception, or a
judgment. And we remain attentive to the possibility
of getting caught up in judging the judging itself, or in
labeling some judgments good and others bad.
While our thinking colors all our experience, more
often than not our thoughts tend to be less than
completely accurate. Usually they are merely
uninformed private opinions, reactions and prejudices
based on limited knowledge and influenced primarily
by our past conditioning. All the same, when not
recognized as such and named, our thinking can
prevent us from seeing clearly in the present
moment. We get caught up in thinking we know what