Mindfulness in Daily Life
By Myoshin Diane Benjamin
January 6, 2023
When I was a composer receiving choral commissions, I would take the text for my next piece, write it out on a piece of paper, and keep it close to me throughout the day – on the rack of my piano when I practiced, on my desk at work, on the dashboard of my car. Over time, the text would wiggle its way into my consciousness and eventually emerge as music. I came to deeply trust this process, which happened largely beneath the surface.
This is similar to how I propose that we practice mindfulness. Rather than seeing mindfulness practice as an addition to our self-improvement list, I hope we can set an intention, keep it close, and let it ripen and flower. When we place mindfulness into our evaluative, binary thought patterns, it becomes brittle and rigid. Over time, this kind of practice is hard to sustain. Instead, we can trust our mind’s natural capacity for awareness. We can encourage conditions in our lives that remind us of our intention and provide opportunities throughout each day for practice. Then, as we receive the fruits of mindfulness, it encourages us to renew our practice over and over again.
As Thich Nhat Hanh says in the introduction to the book, Happiness, “With mindfulness, we can preserve an inner joy so that we can better handle the challenges in our lives. We can create a foundation of freedom, peace, and love within ourselves.”
Myoshin Diane Benjamin (she/her) is a lay dharma teacher, a path that reflects her deep interest and engagement in the ways that Buddhist practice both permeates everyday work and family life, and supports engagement in social change. Myoshin began practicing Buddhism in 1996 and received dharma transmission in 2022 from Sosan Flynn. She taught for over a decade in the children’s program at Clouds in Water, and has practiced at Hokyoji and Ryumonji monasteries and attended numerous retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh and his community. She has worked for many years in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, and is also a musician. Additionally, she is fully certified to teach the Realization Process.