{"id":789,"date":"2009-01-17T01:27:12","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T17:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/?p=789"},"modified":"2009-01-17T14:33:14","modified_gmt":"2009-01-17T06:33:14","slug":"mindfulness-clear-complete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/2009\/01\/mindfulness-clear-complete\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindfulness : Clear & Complete"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Customer:<\/strong> Two cold barley (drinks).
\nStaff:<\/strong> Barley – hot or cold?
\n<\/span>Customer:<\/strong><\/span> Cold.
\n<\/span>Staff:<\/strong><\/span> One?
\n<\/span>Customer:<\/strong><\/span> Two.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had the above dialogue thrice already, with the same service staff, at the same eating place, on different occasions. It’s rather amazing to me how she never seems to learn that I always give a short but clear and complete order, while it is her mindfulness that is unclear and incomplete. All she had to do was to pay a little more attention. It’s as if her mindfulness is selective, focusing only on the word ‘barley’ while not registering the other two words. Lacking mindfulness, she doesn’t realise this, and the same dialogue is thus ‘reborn’ repeatedly.<\/p>\n

I’ve encountered quite a few other service staff who exhibit the same problem. It seems to arise from their unmindful attachment to how an order should be given and received – even when situations are otherwise. They want to hear what is the item ordered first, before hearing how the item should be (e.g. hot or cold) or how many of it are wanted (e.g. one or two). As such, they tend to listen only for the name of the item first, while mentally blocking out any other information, even if it’s useful.<\/p>\n

This is essentially not a complaint about bad service – but more of a ‘cautionary tale’ of how our minds are able to habitually filter out relevant information at times. What’s scary is that this can happen ‘unknowingly’. It’s also amazing to me how some long-time Buddhists are able to continually ignore important though slightly more ‘inconvenient’ aspects of the Dharma in practice, be it intentionally or unmindfully. Surely, we are sometimes similar – because if our mindfulness is already perfectly clear and complete, we would be perfectly enlightened already!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Customer: Two cold barley (drinks). Staff: Barley – hot or cold? Customer: Cold. Staff: One? Customer: Two. I had the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[89],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mix","tag-mindfulness","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}