There is no question that meditation is beneficial and can help us learn to induce a peaceful state of mind. Many meditators, however, are taught to try to remain in that meditative state of mind throughout the day. They may be doing themselves a disservice, though. Trying to limit oneself to that meditative state of mind can be like putting one’s conscious awareness into a box.

Zen Buddhists of some schools emphasize the greater importance of ‘mindfulness’ over the meditation. The difference is that mindfulness is the cultivation of the ability to go about your everyday lives in a heightened state of awareness. They say that when you are meditating, you should meditate, but that when you eat, you should just eat.

This is a way of saying that the goal is to live life moment-by-moment. This can be done even under extreme circumstances. In fact, many people have had their first experience of mindfullness when engaged in extreme sports and they have found themselves facing death.

Snowboarding is an extreme sport. In order to tackle near-vertical slopes, the snowboarder must be so skilled that he acts on instinct. A Giro Ski Helmet is going to be of little use to him when he’s plummeting down a mountainside at sixty miles an hour.

Emotions like fear and even rational thought are useless and even reduce your ability to perform when you are racing down a ski slope. When you are trying to outrun an avalanche, this is doubly true. A snowboarder’s experience is a good case in point. When he realized that an avalanche was about to swallow him whole, something happened inside him. His mind became still and calm and it was as if he was a very alert but disinterested observer of all that was going on around him. He even said that he remembered observing his brown boots and wondering why he had bought brown snowboarding boots instead of another color!

Obviously, he came out of his ordeal intact. In fact, he did outrun the avalanche and when he reached safety, he remained in that vividly aware state of mind for some time. He only snapped out of it when he glanced at his digital sport watch and realized with a shock that his entire experience had only lasted a short time. It seemed to have lasted hours!

Meditation alone cannot produce lasting detachment. Mindfulness is achieved through living through all of life’s experiences in a state of detachment. Clinging to any emotion, not matter how ‘blissful, ‘ is somewhat misguided. Enlightenment is not a mood – it is far more than that.