“Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins
.Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out,
Touch in,
Let go.”
The invitation of this poem speaks to how simple and profound mindfulness meditation practice can be. And, it's made even more special, when we remember that everything can be an object of meditation and nothing is excluded from the practice. This lets us continually broaden our perspectives through our direct experience.
The four areas of mindfulness guide us to pay attention to what appears in our experience and clearly see what it is like.
Mindfulness of the Body is where we are aware of sensations arising in the body. Many of us have experience of at least part of this as we pay attention to the breath during meditation.
Mindfulness of Feeling Tone is where we are aware of knowing whether an experience is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. It is very helpful to notice these feeling tones as they arise because we can remember to refrain from adding commentary and stories on top of what's simply happening.
Mindfulness of qualities of Mind is where we know when the mind is being greedy or not, angry or not, deluded or not, and clear or not.
Mindfulness of Categories of Experience (Dhammas) is the awareness of all things that appear and run around in our minds. This is where mindfulness helps us to pay particular attention to clinging and letting go as we face the impermanent realty of all experience.