Yesterday one of my daughters and I went for a walk in Wolsfeld Woods, land managed by the state of Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources. It’s part of the Scientific and Natural Areas program. Located in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities, it’s one of the best remaining examples of Big Woods forest community in the area, mainly mature maple and basswood forest. It’s a beautiful time of year to be out as the leaves are beginning to change. It’s peak color right now up on the North Shore of Lake Superior, and here in the Twin Cities, we’re still a week or two away.
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The forest sparkled with gold as the dappled sunlight filtered through the light green, yellow, and orange leaves and shone on the occasional treasure on the forest floor. It’s a good time for mushrooms after the drop in temperature and some recent rains, and the forest didn’t disappoint with a variety of fungus for us to marvel at. Golden scalycap mushrooms greeted us around several turns and my daughter, ever watchful, noticed some tiny purple mushrooms on the forest floor.
.
These tiny little purple mushrooms are just the kind of thing we may fail to notice when we walk in the woods with an agenda to reach a certain destination on a schedule or spend the time lost in thought or absorbed in our phones instead of absorbed in our surroundings.
As Heidi Barr put it in a poem, (Times Are Urgent We Must Slow Down, haikus in service to downshifting)
Decrease speed enough
To be able to look down:
Notice fairytales.
Mindfulness Practice:
What becomes real when you’re here
embodied and true?
We can easily miss the miraculous if we aren’t present.
Mindfulness
Much has been made in recent years of the practice of mindfulness. Sometimes wrapped in Buddhist garb or stripped of all historical and cultural elements and packaged as a business-friendly productivity booster, it is a universal spiritual practice. All faith traditions encourage paying attention, taking care, and minding one’s thoughts, words, and actions. This is also true of Daoism. Whatever type of practice we are engaging in as we cultivate the Dao (xiudao 修道), we always endeavor to do so in a mindful manner.
Mindfulness has two dimensions. The first is the one most familiar today.
Presence
Mindfulness is often framed as “a nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment.” Many readers will know it through the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), or through the writings of Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who may be more responsible than anyone else for introducing the miracle of mindfulness to the modern world. His gathas, or “mindfulness verses,” grew out of traditional Zen monastic training in the Middle Ages, a practice also shared by Daoist monastics. These short prayers or poems redirect our awareness from our busy, chattering internal dialogue back to the sacred nature of the here and now, the timeless dimension of the present moment. As one medieval Daoist text has it, “To think of the spiritual and be mindful of the Dao is a remedy.” (思神念道爲一藥)
In The Hundred Remedies of the Tao I wrote,
This remedy lies at the heart of them all. If we turn our minds to the spiritual and remain mindful throughout our day, the Dao will begin to infuse our lives. Our lives will become more joyful, we’ll find an increased sense of gratitude and contentment, and we’ll experience an ease and lightness in all we do.
Now this isn’t to say we won’t have challenging events in our lives. The change won’t necessarily come in the events of our lives, in the things that happen to us, but in how we experience and respond to them. Although we may find that once we begin responding differently to events, it may seem like there is less drama. As we discussed previously, we will still have problems, but we may no longer have a problem with our problems, so to speak.
We may find that instead of a kneejerk type of reaction to things, we are able to experience things with a new sense of spaciousness and tranquility which we may not have been aware of before. We may find that our emotions are less chaotic and reactionary and that we can look at things with more clarity and insight and respond to them more appropriately. In many cases this may mean not responding to them at all. We can simply brush them off and keep moving.
Sishen (思神) means to think of the sacred, the spiritual, or even gods or spirits. Nian (念) can mean to think of, keep in mind, or even to recite or chant, as in chanting the scriptures. In Buddhist usage it most commonly refers to mindfulness and is also used this way in Daoist sources.
Often just bringing ourselves back to the present can be a remedy to what ails us, whether we are ruminating about the past, stressing about the future, or torturing ourselves with endless “what ifs.” Whether we have lost touch with those around us and feel disconnected, or are dwelling on abstract “problems” that don’t actually exist in the here and now, when we remember to think of the spiritual and are mindful of the Dao in our daily lives, many of our perceived problems simply fade into insignificance. We return to our true selves, at least momentarily, and when we continue this practice of returning, moment by moment, day by day, we find ourselves on the path, walking in the footsteps of the sages. That being said, we also have actual problems which need our attention, as individuals, as communities, societies, and nations. But here again, when we are able to bring our full attention and awareness to addressing these problems, seeing them more clearly and responding from a place of compassion and not from egotism or negative emotional states, we can be more effective at returning to harmony.
Remembrance
The second dimension is often forgotten in contemporary iterations of the idea: to remember. What are we to remember? Yes, to remain aware of the present moment, but also to remember the values which inform our practice. This is what actually makes spiritual practice what it is. Mindfulness meditation or any other practice needs to be grounded in the values and worldview of the tradition, or else it is simply a hodgepodge of spiritual hobbies, a collection of “hacks” which do not necessarily lead anywhere. This is the danger of spiritual materialism, of being a spiritual tourist, trying a little of this and a little of that and never really getting anywhere. When we remember the worldview and foundational principles of our chosen path, it grounds us, keeps us honest, and gives us at least a general lay of the land. In Buddhist practice these might be wisdom and compassion, or the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. In Daoist practice they might be the three treasures of Chapter 67 of the Daode jing, compassion, frugality, and humility, along with some of the basic ingredients of the Daoist worldview: yin and yang, the Five Phases, and jing, qi, and shen.
Remembrance also means calling to mind the instructions we have received from our teachers, the understanding we have gleaned from the scriptures, the insights gained in meditation, and any other pointers we have received along the way. The recitation of mantra in Buddhism and Hinduism, and the equivalent Daoist practice of shenzhou (incantation) recitation, can also be part of this recollection.
Mindful Verses: Uniting the Two
Mindful verses bring the two dimensions together. A verse recalls us to the present moment while also reminding us of what matters. Throughout Daoist history there have been many forms of them. Some are sacred in and of themselves, as with shenzhou, where, as with the mantras of Buddhism and Hinduism, the very sound is considered sacred. Others are lines of scripture, or prayers, affirmations, auspicious wishes, and precepts drawn from Daoist ethical texts. Though we often think of precepts as prohibitions, many are prescriptions and exhortations meant to guide us toward positive states of mind, much like the gathas of Thich Nhat Hanh or the Lojong “mind training” teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism.
Mindfulness in the Four Activities
Mindfulness is not confined to the meditation cushion. In fact in a traditional view mindfulness isn’t meditation. Meditation is meditation and mindfulness is mindfulness. They are seperate concepts.Daoist teaching summarizes embodied experience in four activities: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. As the Quanzhen precept text Qinggui xuanmiao (Pure Regulations Mysterious and Wondrous) says, “You should sit like a bronze bell, lay like a bow, walk like a fresh breeze, stand like a verdant pine, speak softly like a sick person or a young girl, and behave like an elegant humble scholar.”
Ma Danyang, one of the early Quanzhen masters, gives us this pithy summary:
A Daoist, whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down should not be absent from the Dao for a moment. If walking, make sure to place your feet on a level road. If standing, make sure to fix your concentration on the great void. If sitting, make sure to adjust your breathing to make it continuous. If lying down, make sure to sink your shen into the deep valley for a long time without interruption, all day long, appearing as though a fool.
Here both dimensions are at work: presence in the body’s posture and breath, remembrance in the teachings that shape how we carry ourselves. If we can mindfully master these four ways of being, we will be well on our way to embodying the Dao in our lives.
-Adapted from An Introduction to Daoism (Shambhala, 2026) and The Hundred Remedies of the Tao (Inner Traditions, 2023)
Book Release
Come help me celebrate the release of my latest book, An Introduction to Daoism. I’ll be joined by Heidi Barr at Magers & Quinn (Minneapolis, MN) on November 24 for a conversation about Daoism, nature, spirituality, and what it means to live the Way. Reserve your spot at the link below. Hope to see you there!
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