Checking a weather app before you go outside is one thing, but checking Instagram for the sixth time in a day is obviously a kind of thoughtless pleasure-hunting that we wouldn’t bother with if we were finding contentment in ordinary moments.

Mindfulness meditation is essentially when you are taking a bit of time to sit down and notice what it is like, in detail, to be a human being sitting there. The experience is more important than what it should be or what you want it to be.

Developing mindfulness means practicing a kind of unconditional courage. You are always willing to experience reality exactly as it is, when it arrives.

They have to be practiced, as part of being mindful. Because we naturally are reactive creatures. And there’s no safer and easier time to do that than when you’re sitting on a cushion in your home for a few minutes.