I thought it would be interesting to look at mindfulness as a technique and a practice in terms of how it relates with some very practical elements in our life, which would be diet--what we eat--and sleep, and maybe if we have time a relationship. But one of the elements is that mindfulness is a technique of just observing how we are living, paying attention. And I think it's a tool that can be extremely helpful in any aspect of life. We talked a little bit about it in terms of exercise, how we pay attention to what we're doing. Just the fact of having mindfulness of our own body, bringing mindfulness and our mind to parts of our body makes our body much more vital, full, and healthier. And I think a lot of what happens these days is because we are, maybe for good reason, but we have become very mindless in a lot of activities, and I think one of them is food and eating. According to the Buddha, there was various advice or rules that were made for the monastics and one was sort of not over-eating, only eating three quarters so that there was a quarter of your stomach that was still left unfilled. How to move your body--not too fast, not too slow. There's a lot of just practical advice. How to sleep. And I think that these are very important in terms of just the quality of our life. And these days, of course, there's a lot of diets, a lot of different ideas about food and so forth, so I'm not going to be talking about that, but I'm just approaching it from the point of view of meditation and practice. But something that I've found helpful is that just being...you know, a lot of it is, if we eat mindlessly, we don't appreciate what we eat. We eat quickly; we don't have time to taste what we eat. And a lot of times we're unaware and so we either gain weight or we feel sluggish in energy. Many things occur. So I think mindfulness is a way, without being heavy duty, where we can be aware of how we're living our life. A lot of times, when we're aware of what we're doing, how we're eating, how we're moving through life, not only does it become more full. As we say in Shambhala language we have "lungta", or windhorse, or kind of life force energy where we live a more satisfied life. And a lot of it is just paying attention; I think, paying attention to how we're eating, what we're eating, and then we kind of realize what effect it has on our body. A lot of times when people see something, they think it tastes good, they put it in their body and they have an ill effect. So here's a great lesson in karm :21you eat this, you feel this way. It's just mindfulness, paying attention. And as we begin to do this, I think people realize and I notice a lot of the diets and things that are out there. People ask me about variations of this--it's just if you don't pay attention to it, whatever diet we're going to do, it's eventually not going to work because we're coming back to the same pattern. So it will be, so mindlessly somebody's going to take care of it. Somehow mindfully we have to be aware of it. So, you know, bringing the mind into that is really important. Not only for the quality of the enjoyment of it, but also, really saying when it's enough. And "That's good. I'm fine. I don't need more". One more donut or one more barbequed rib or piece of tofu is not going to make it. It's whatever it is. So paying attention. So I feel like mindfulness in a very practical way helps the quality of our life. Similarly when we're sleeping, I suddenly notice like I'm traveling through various time zones and, you know, you get jetlagged and all these kinds of things, is to work with your mind and a sense of mindfulness. If you can get your mind to relax and to be present wherever we are, in terms of where we are right now and fully embodying that. The quality of sleep becomes better. A lot of times what happens is that with the incessant thinking and worrying, we're unable to sleep; so having a practice of mindfulness, we can begin to relax, realizing that certain things we do not have to think about right now; it's not helpful. Sleep is going to be more important. You know, I think these are elements where the practice of meditation can be incorporated and it can be beneficial. And we see how it is in terms of strengthening the mind, but these are practical applications. So I feel like, you know, whether it's diet or exercise, or sleep, these are, on the one hand, not in a sense the most profound things; yet, they can be very profound. When we get a good night's sleep, when we feel satisfied by a meal, when we have some kind of synchronicity of body, then it can be a very satisfying feeling. And we often refer to these as sort of like elements that make the body and mind feel exhilarated. A lot of times they say, how to take care of the mind, how to take care of your food, how to take care of your exercise, and how to take care of your sleep. If you have these elements, they say these are the ingredients one must have in balance before you actually go on a spiritual journey. And these are like practical things. So if you don't have these balanced, it's very hard to go on a journey. It's sort of like packing your bags; so a lot of times we deal with it. And the other thing is that I really feel like these days you have to take charge or control of your own food and environment because the world out there is just pumping and producing things. And we just can't consume everything that's out there. We have to be sort of discriminating in terms of what is appropriate. And when we know what's good for us, we say, "I don't need that." As good as the advertising may seem on TV, we don't need it. So it's a practice. So I think mindfulness in this way, it's a very simple tool, but it can have very profound results in terms of our whole day. So when we're balancing these very simple elements, bring our mind into it, pay attention to it, I think that's something certainly I've been trying to practice and live by and I've found it very helpful in terms of the challenges of the modern age.
