Bill Cooper MSW, LICSW - Mindfulness Group

A student asked a Zen teacher "What is nirvana?" The teacher replied, "Seeing one thing through to the end." To Shine One Corner of the World: Moments with Shunryu Suzuki, p. 4
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is releasing ourselves from the addiction of our thoughts. Much of the time we do not realize the process by which we are attached to our own thinking. This lack of awareness results in thinking a thought then reacting to it in an automatic manner. For instance, the thought enters our mind, "I'd like to have some pancakes," and within minutes we're eating them, with little or no awareness of the process of our actions. Or we think, "She just doesn't want to understand me," so we begin an argument. Or we think, "It's terrible that I'm not a better partner," and we believe it.
When we learn mindfulness-which means we gradually learn to bring our awareness to the present moment, despite all the other activities our thinking wants us to do-we can finally get a different sense of our lives. In these moments we are no longer fused with the messages of our brains, and by extension the messages of our employer, parents, culture, friends, enemies, or even lovers. There is something deeper within us that yearns to be felt-mindfulness allows us to contact this and to learn from the experience.