When Awareness Becomes Natural : A Guide to Cultivating Mindfulness in Daily Life

A funny and engaging guide to finding awareness in daily activities beyond sitting meditation—from a rising leader in the Insight Meditation community
 
Meditation is great, but it's not what Buddhist practice is all about. Deep insight and liberation from suffering can be found in any ordinary activity—from sorting the laundry to data entry—as long as we approach them with the necessary awareness. Such is the teaching of Buddhist monk Sayadaw U Tejaniya, who himself learned to cultivate awareness in the raucous years he spent in the Burmese textile business before taking his final monastic ordination at the age of thirty-six.
 
In this refreshingly modern guide, Sayadaw U Tejaniya teaches us how to bring awareness to all activities. By training ourselves to be aware of the clinging and aversion that arise in any situation, calm and deep insight will naturally follow. “The object of attention is not really important,” he teaches, but “the observing mind that is working in the background. If the observing is done with the right attitude, any object is the right object.” The flame of wisdom can be kindled in the midst of any life, even one that might seem too full of personal and professional commitments to allow for it.

SAYADAW U TEJANIYA is a Burmese monk in the lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw who teaches meditation at Shwe Oo Min Dhamma Sukha Forest Meditation Center in Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar. He's unique among the more high-profile monastic teachers of his tradition in that, though he began practice under his teacher at age thirteen, he didn't enter monastic life till he was nearly forty--after an active career in his family's textile business. His teaching emphasizes the application of awareness to every aspect of life, de-emphasizing the centrality of practice forms--even as he teaches them rigorously--and his style is relaxed, funny, and informed by his intimate knowledge of the workaday world. He has taught in Australia, China, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Indonesia, Israel, New Zealand, Poland, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States.