Loss of Mindfulness

This week has been an unordinary week as my teacher SUT is here to conduct a tour reteat. The concept of the tour retreat is about maintaining natural awareness throughout the day. As we are going out enjoying the sights, there must be a constant reminder to maintain awareness of the 6 sense doors - sight, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting and the mind.

From the teacher's explanation it seem easy but when it comes to practice, its not as easy as I thought. Mindfulness can be lost at the blink of an eye. I notice in myself, I'm less mindful when I'm tired. The teacher gave a very good advice which is when we are tired, its good to be aware of what is happening within us and not to put attention on the outside world so much because this will further draw away or deplete our energy further. We can observe the irritation in the mind, the blame or unhappy thoughts, the discomforts in the body and of course watch this with a gentle attitude. Doing this will prevent a person from acting out from tiredness and it could help a person to gain clarity of mind thus making wise decision and doing wise actions.

During the trip, there was one evening that I felt really tired and I could sense that the scope of the awareness was not wide.... it would like I was in safe mode just being aware of minimal things. I also notice that the mind is rather one track. One funny incident was when I went to collect teacher's clothes to be laundered before I went out with the group for dinner, the mind was tired and after collecting the clothes, I invited the teacher to dinner without the awareness that teacher only eats 2 meals a day. When he looked surprise, I saw the mind feeling irritated as to why the teacher is not making a move. Then when the teacher said that he do not eat dinner, suddenly the mind woke up. It was rather funny to see the mind stuck in a perception and experiencing a suddenly awakening of the mind.