My relationship with mindfulness began two decades ago while living in Shikoku, Japan. My experience of this rural part of Japan was one of opposing, often extremely contradictory, forces. On the one hand, there was a buzzing, electric, fast-paced reality. Technology I'd never seen before; vending machines, selling cans of hot coffee, flashing pastel neon lights, gadgets designed to make the easy things in life more manageable, flashing casinos, kitsch, oversized, plastic trinkets & buzzing shopping malls. All of which seemed to collide and fuse in a glaring haze of flashing neon. Yet, on the other hand, it appeared to overlay something deep, enduring, simple and timeless. 

As I journeyed further into Shikoku, I learnt it was a land of temples, mountains, mist, and monks who wandered the landscape in brilliant white. I woke each morning, feeling the soles of my feet against the cool tatami flooring. The smell of incense from a cemetery built into the bottom of the vast, majestic mountain. I watched silently as people tended to their ancestors. There was something profound and still in the morning air as if held by the landscape.

The longer I spent in Shikoku, the more I noticed how everyone else noticed. I noticed the passing of the seasons, the revering and savouring of the parts of nature with the shortest life span, the cherry blossoms, and the fireflies that whizzed and sparkled gleefully in the dark night sky. I noticed the delicate, slow tending to the gardens, which looked like meditation. 

- Even tea! ~ especially tea! Making it and drinking it became a moment to step into 'being'.  

My formal mindfulness practice began some years later in the UK. Still, I learnt how to stop, pause, and experience my life in Shikoku, if only for fleeting moments.  

I practice because, as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, 'your life depends on it'—indeed, it does.

Author, N. Wright