ABSTRACT
"Mindfulness" is the process of becoming more present with/for others and ourselves, noticing as much as we possibly can in experience from one moment to the next, and working to interact more compassionately. "Mindlessness" involves relating to/in life simplistically. Mindlessness and mindfulness dwell as twin impulses present in communication and communicators. Judgment, stereotypes, and cultural scripts comprise mindlessness. The author aims to compassionately explore what it might look like and mean to relate more mindfully, and to be more mindful persons, even as life sometimes makes this relating and being painful. Buddhists tend to refer to as "monkey brain" or "monkey mind". They steer attention to specific and often limiting ways of interacting and being. Mindfulness lessons instructing people to use our relationship to suffering as the best teacher we have. We think of the ways mindfulness challenges persons to stay with suffering, to not run and hide, as our ways of relating to those experiences.
