When drinking tea, I drink tea. [1] When coding, I code. When listening to music, I listen to music. When sitting on a plane, I sit on a plane. Resist the urge to distract yourself and see what happens.[2] [1] There is the story of the Zen student whose teacher taught him "When drinking tea, just drink tea." The same student later discovered his teacher drinking tea and reading the newspaper. When confronted the teac…
When you're drinking tea you're allowing the hot water to distract you from the ingredients of the tea, you should really just chew the herbs. All experience is blended, it's good to enjoy what you're doing fully but that doesn't preclude adding additional things to the experience. Sometimes the addition of those things allow you to have a fresh look at the situation you're in. Just sit on the grass, sit on the grass and read a book, sit on the grass and listen to music. You could mark two of those situations as distracts or redefine them as unique blended experiences to enjoy. I prefer the latter. Mindfulness practice is valuable though, I just think blended experiences like blended foods are equally valuable. I'd rather have a sandwich then separately eat bread, lettuce, cheese, tomato and mustard.