[John Riley]

People do say the silliest things about mindfulness. Mindfulness, which in my life is meditation and my efforts to perform tasks without being distracted by something else, has nothing in common with taking a pill, nor does it cause one to ignore the revolution or the need for revolution, or any of the other things said about mindfulness by those who don't practice it and are ignorant that they have no idea what mindfulness is. It has nothing to do with over-work, just as it has nothing to do with demons. Gandhi, MLK, Mandela were all very mindful men. It is their mindfulness that allowed them to stay the course. Mindfulness is nothing more than quieting the mind, meeting the noise of distraction with a quiet that over time envelopes the noise of distraction. It is not simply another distraction. That's political think, which is a distraction that comes with the lie it is everything. Meditation, mindfulness, is the way out of the blaring oblivion that is life in the world. If you are able to clear your mind of the noise you will be much more likely to see the need for social change than you were when your head was full of ideas about what constitutes change. It may even make it possible to have a real revolution that isn't just another change of who is in charge. I have long agreed with Pascal that the world could be changed for the better if everyone could sit quietly in a chair all day. Noise isn't change, whether it be the sound of a bullhorn at a rally or the snick of a guillotine blade, or the sly comment of a book reader. It's just noise.