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I have been practicing mindfulness without mental noting and focusing on the sensations, thoughts, etc.

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For me, it's easier to be mindful this way.

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What's your opinion on this?

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How many times do I have to answer this one?

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Nobody wants to note.

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Nobody wants to put words in your head, right?

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Why?

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Why?

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Because it's difficult.

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All I can say is you have to ask yourself, what is the purpose of meditation?

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Is the purpose of meditation to make things easy?

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Or is the purpose in meditation to overcome what is difficult?

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The reason why, from my point of view, people make this observation that it's more difficult to what I call, and my teachers call, recognizing the object for what it is, in terms of using what we might understand as being a mantra,

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is because it forces you to see impermanence, suffering and non-self.

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It forces you to see that things are not as you would like them.

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It forces you to see your mind's inclination to control things without being able to control them.

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Because of the regimented

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nature of the practice, you're not able to have this continuous what you would call mindfulness, what I would just call concentration.

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The word mindfulness is a bit meaningless because it's not even a really good translation of the word sati.

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I just finished

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redoing this talk I gave on the comprehensive practice.

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I had to totally redo it because the video talk was not very good.

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But I had one part

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particularly where I finally put down in writing some of my thoughts on this, that mindfulness is a poor translation for the word sati.

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The word sati means specifically the recognition of something as it is.

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It's caused by something called tira-sanya, which is sanya, the recognition of something.

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This is this, this is that.

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That is tira, which means firm, strong, fortified.

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So the word is fortifying the recognition of the object for what it is.

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That's the meaning of the word sati and that's why we use the noting.

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The problem is it's not how we would like it.

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This breaks up the continuity and breaks up the inclinations of the mind, the stream of habitual clinging to the ideas of self,

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to conceit, to craving.

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The whole idea that something is more easy for me, it surely implies a preference and possibly even a identification with the experience that it's me

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It's me meditating.

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It's me being mindful.

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This is all broken up through the practice of noting.

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And as a result, one feels like one is forcing the experience.

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One feels like the experience is jarring.

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chaotic jarring chaotic and uncontrollable which it is which is the actual reality of it and This sort of practice is forcing you to see it.

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It's not the noting itself.

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That is uncomfortable it's our it's the the discord between the way we would like things to be and the way things really are and

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Once you can come to see things as they are, which is moment to moment experiences that don't carry on from one moment to the next, then noting becomes a very easy thing to do.

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Catching things up in your attention one by one by one becomes...

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natural, because you're finally able to see and accept that that's the way things are, that there are no continuous entities.

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There are only moment-to-moment realities.

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Until that time, what you're expecting to find is something that continues from moment to moment to moment.

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Because the mind doesn't get that, it becomes quite distraught and disturbed by what is actually a simple task of just reminding yourself of the nature of the object.

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And instead of doing that, it controls, it forces, and it feels like this sort of practice is causing it to force, which actually it's not.

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So from my point of view, it's not really mindfulness without the noting.

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Why?

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Because the word mindful actually means to remind yourself.

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The word's not mindful that we use, or mindfulness is not what's important in Satipatthana practice.

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It's recognition and remembrance and reminding yourself of the object for what it is.

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As the Buddha said, gacchanto va gacchamiti bhajanati.

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When walking, one knows, I am walking, gacchami, which is just a Pali word that means walking, in the sense that it's me walking, but without emphasizing the I or the me.

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And so it really is the simplest way to focus one's attention on the object.

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It's also a very traditional way.

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The whole idea of a mantra, the reason I use the word mantra is because actually it's a word that we already know.

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It's a word that we should be very familiar with.

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And the fact that using the mantra on things that are impermanent suffering and non-self forces you to experience impermanent suffering and non-self is a sign that it's working.

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The fact that it's uncomfortable is a sign that it's forcing you out of your comfort zone and forcing you to look at things in a new way.

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from our point of view, forcing you to look at things objectively.

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Now, of course, people disagree with this, and there's many people who would listen to me and just doesn't know what he's talking about.

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But to each their own, and you've asked me, so that's my answer.

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Hopefully it helps.

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If you're interested in this practice, I can only recommend that you go back to the actual noting of the objects.

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If you prefer something more peaceful,

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calming and soothing, then you have to look elsewhere.

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Okay.