In many Asian languages, the word for “mind” and the word for “heart” is the same word. So when you hear the word “mindfulness,” you have to hear the word “heartfulness” simultaneously to understand or feel what mindfulness really is.
That is why mindfulness is sometimes described as an affectionate attention and why I encourage you to approach the practice with a very light touch, bringing an attitude of gentleness and compassion to yourself at every turn.
Mindfulness is not some kind of cold, hard, clinical, or analytical witnessing, nor is it a pushing through to some special, more desirable state of mind, nor a sorting through the detritus and debris of the mind to discover the gold underneath. You can feel the forcing, doing, striving elements in this way of thinking about meditation and its potential benefits. It may help to remind ourselves over and over again that meditation is not about doing! It is about being, as in human being. It is about the attending itself, pure and simple.
As the Heart Sutra, a great text within the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, reminds us, there is “no place to go, nothing to do, nothing to attain.”