Patience: Patience is actually a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we recognize the reality that things must unfold on their own schedule and not on the schedule our ego demands. Notice any tendency to “rush through” one moment to get to the next. Notice the feeling of “impatience” with what is here. Practice bringing awareness particularly to the feeling of impatience, especially where it is strongest in the body. Notice what happens when attention is maintained on that point of impatience. When we practice this way, we quickly see that our mind “has a mind of its own”. Habits of thinking and reacting which aim to take us away from impatience can be observed, thus allowing a spacious quality of awareness to begin opening around them. As this happens, we can begin to maintain a steadier and stronger connection to the present.

Beginner's Mind: Because we tend to think about what is here in the present, we assume we “know” all about it. However, the activity of cognition actually acts as a kind of filter between ourselves and the richness of things as they truly are. To practice “beginner's mind” means to allow ourselves to experience the world in each moment as if we were meeting it for the first time. Imagine the wonder of a child as they encounter something for the first time: the first smell of a flower, the first drop of rain, the first taste of orange. All are experienced as direct experience without the intermediate layer of thought or comparison to the past. They are experienced just as they are now, directly, as smell, or touch, or taste, or whatever combination of senses. When practicing mindfulness we can cultivate this quality of direct experience, receiving whatever arises as a unique and precious experience. To do this is to practice “beginner's mind”.

Non-Striving: So much of our life is spent in doing. In meditation, this attitude of doing can be an obstacle because meditation is different from all other forms of human activity - meditation is non-doing. The cultivation of mindfulness involves simply paying attention to whatever is happening. If there is a sense of striving or of trying to change things, notice that. In a deep sense, the practice of mindfulness is about truly relaxing and allowing whatever is happening to happen, while bringing clear and compassionate awareness to the moment. A paradox exists in the meditative domain: the best way to achieve your goals about meditation (e.g. stress reduction, spiritual growth, or personal development) is to back off from striving for results and instead focus carefully on seeing and accepting things as they are, moment to moment.

Acceptance: To cultivate acceptance means to cultivate the willingness to see things exactly as they are in the present. Often acceptance is only reached after we have gone through emotion filled periods of denial, anger, fear, or other strong feelings. Acceptance means seeing things as they are rather than as you think they are how you think they should be. Remember, things can only change in the present. We have to see things as they are and ourselves as we are “truly” in this moment, if we wish to change, heal, or transform our lives or ourselves. Acceptance does not mean you have to like everything or that you have to take a passive attitude toward life. It does not mean you have to be satisfied with things as they are, or that you have to stop trying to change things for the better. As we are speaking of it here, acceptance simply means that you come to a willingness to see things as they are. This attitude sets the stage for acting appropriately in your life, no matter what is happening.

Letting Go: Letting go, or non-attachment, can be cultivated as an attitude. Often, we are cultivating the opposite reaction, clinging, unaware of what we are doing. Frequently, what we cling to most strongly are ideas and views about ourselves, others, and situations. When we start paying attention to our inner experience through meditation, we rapidly discover that there are certain thoughts, feelings, or situations the mind seems to want to hold on to. As we practice mindfulness, we intentionally put aside the tendency to elevate some aspects of our experience and to reject other aspects, and instead just let our experience be what it is, moment by moment. Doing this often means letting things be. Just let them be. Letting go does not mean throwing things away, rather it means letting go of whatever it is, releasing the contraction around it, and allowing it to be. Letting go is actually not such a foreign experience. We do it every night when we go to sleep: we lie down on a padded surface and we let go of our mind and body. When we try to force ourselves to sleep, it doesn't work. We have to let go. In practicing meditation, we practice letting go as a skill in waking situations as well.