The word for mindfulness in Pali is sati, and one translation of sati is “to remember.”  Due to our conditioning, we  forget.  So we practice together at New York Insight – hearing the teachings, hearing the bell, engaging with each other…  all supports for remembering. Yet, even without external reminders, there can be spontaneous remembering.  Sometimes, when we are lost in thought, contracted, or reactive, for whatever reason (grace perhaps) something says ‘come back.’  It happens because wakefulness is our nature and our practice reminds us that this is so.  The reality, the love, the truth we seek, are who we already are.  But do we really trust that? We are often forgetting and in forgetting, we are suffering, feeling deficient, small and separate. There can be the idea that our awakening is out there, in some other realized being, or some other time or life – it’s down the road — maybe after retirement, after long retreats with  great teachers and trips to Asia.  But we are sure it is not right here, right now?

Our practice is  one of remembering— to be awake right now.   I invite you, right now,  in this moment, to settle back, relax, listen, look and know, not so much with the mind, but with natural awareness of body, heart and mind… and to remember.