Mindfulness Research
Deliberate mindfulness has two main styles of practice: shamatha, translated as "calm abiding" and vipassana, translated as "insight meditation". It is now accepted in the field of mindfulness research to refer to calm abiding as focused attention (FA) and the insight meditation practice as open monitoring (OM). Recently, a third type of mindfulness, nondual awareness (NDA), has been included in mindfulness research studies. Here are three descriptions that might be helpful to understand the difference in these three stages of mindfulness. Focused attention (FA) is like looking down from a tower to the river of your breath. Open monitoring (OM) is like looking from an open sky to thoughts, feelings, and sensations as separate objects, like clouds and birds, coming and going. Nondual awareness (NDA) is like being the entire ocean of awareness that is also arising as the unique wave of your body while feeling an interconnected flow with everything. ...