Waking Up by Sam Harrisby Parker on TwosOne can spend long periods of time and contemplative solitude for the purpose of becoming a better person in the world—having better relationships, being more honest and compassionate and, therefore, more helpful to one’s fellow human beings. Being wisely selfish and being selfless can amount to very much the same thingThere is now a little question that how one uses ones attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds – and lives – I was largely shaped by how we use themSpiritual life consists in overcoming the illusion of the self but paying close attention to our experience in the present momentMindfulness is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, what is pleasant or unpleasant.The Buddha described the four foundations of mindfulness, which he taught as “the direct path for the purification of beings, for this some surmounting of sorrow and lamination, for the disappearance of pain and grief, for the attainment of the true way, for the realization of Nirvana.” The four foundations of mindfulness are the body (breathing, changes in posture, activities), feeling (the senses of pleasantness, unpleasantness, and neutrality), the mind (in particular, its mood and attitudes), and the objects of mind (which include the five senses but also other mental states, such as volition, tranquility, rapture, equanimity, and even mindfulness itself)