Welcome. Let's look at what mindfulness and meditation are. My definition of meditation is active, accepting awareness. Let's take a little closer look at what those are. So meditation is active because it involves intention. we're choosing to do this practice.

We're choosing to meditate. If we get distracted, we're choosing to refocus, and start meditating. Again. We have agency and all this, we can be active. We're not at the mercy of whatever is happening in our minds. whatever's happening around us.

That's pretty passive. But we are doing is we're choosing to guard our mind and to meditate. Meditation involves acceptance, it's accepting, because we're not so focused on the outcomes. We're not worried about how it turns out. Great. Often we'd like ourselves to become calmer, more compassionate, more focused for meditating.

That might be our our intention, our purpose for doing it. Like anything else in human life, meditation is unpredictable. We can't control everything about it. So in this way, meditation is a chance to practice accepting how things are living with whatever's happening right now. This alone is life changing. This is a very important part of the Zen approach here.

Lastly, meditation involves awareness, because we're observing, but we're not getting involved. So in our stress proofing course, we'll be looking at a time when stress rose up in us and we felt stressed To look at it closer, what actually happened. And we're going to observe our own feelings as we react to that memory. But we're going to practice not getting involved with it not getting caught up in that story of so and so said that, and that is horrible. And I'm so bad at this. So it was extra horrible.

And I'm never going to amount to anything, I'm going to lose my job, right? It's just a big story. Our minds are full of big stories, big and big dramas, that we actually end up feeding quite often. So practicing meditations a chance to just be aware of the stories in our minds, our habitual excuse me, our habitual reactions to them. And then once we see our habitual reactions, that's when we can start to choose a different response. Choose a response that leads to more happiness for ourselves and for others.

So meditation, in my eyes, my definition it's about being active, being accepting and being aware. What about mindfulness? mindfulness is active accepting awareness, meditation in the present moment. We can't be mindful of the past because it's gone. Try to reach out and touch the past. We can't do it.

Same with the future. It's not here yet. We can only predict. We can only imagine. We can only guess really. So practicing mindfulness is being here right now.

Being in the present moment, whatever your life is right now, being with it, and just accepting it. Not getting too involved in how you wish things were different. Or what you would change. This being here right now living truly right now. Zen master tech, not Han reminds us that, really when we're living in the present moment, that's the only time we're really alive. How alive are we when we're caught up in thinking about the past or wanting the future to be a specific way, and we don't control nearly enough factors to make it that way.

But if we're here right now, living in the moment, being aware of awareness that's actually quite wonderful in itself. And that's mindfulness. So in in in our everyday lives, for example, practicing mindfulness could be walking to the car. Just being aware as you walk, opening the car door right starting the car or making coffee in the morning. Drinking the coffee, having lunch. talking to someone can be mindful, writing things, checking emails, any action we do.

If we do it in an active, accepting way with awareness, then it can be a mindfulness practice can give us a mental health break as well. So this is how these two are different. Mindfulness is actually a type of meditation. But meditation can be about the past, or the present. Mindfulness is really here, right now.