Hi all. I am a meditation teacher and i came across a clip that said that mindfulness in japanese was a mix of the characters for Awareness and heart/ mind. producing a single symbol. is this true in any way and what would the symbol look like?
I looked around and kanji seems to be pretty confusing!!
Thanks for your help

When I think of mindfulness I think of 留意　or 注意深い.

There's the term 正念. It means to be mindful of Buddha's teachings.

To be mindful could also be よく気を配る、心に留める.

I can't think of one single character.

念 as in 念を入れる has to do with mindfulness, and there's 心/heart in there so that's close... I can't think of something exactly like what you described.

You may be thinking of無?

Amset Wrote:念

I think this is the closest. A combination of 'now' and 'mind' makes a lot of sense in describing mindfulness. Wikipedia seems to agree. Alternatives are サティ from パーリ語 and 気づき.

Thanks for all your suggestions. I managed to get a screenshot of it off a youtube video. If you are interested check out

at 12:26 and let me know if it makes any sense
thanks again

Well that video does show 念, as we guessed. 今 (the top part) doesn't mean awareness in modern Japanese though. Maybe it did historically?

It seems like people are projecting the 'Awareness' meaning on the upper part of the kanji, it just seems to be an ideogrammatic compound of 'now' and 'heart'/'mind': 念, which is somewhat diffferent, but in my opinion, still nice.

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"Now" and awareness/consciousness are the same thing in nondual teachings.

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goldieabroad Wrote:Thanks for all your suggestions. I managed to get a screenshot of it off a youtube video. If you are interested check out

at 12:26 and let me know if it makes any sense
thanks again

Btw, I found something pretty cool on YouTube if anyone wants to share a specific moment in a video you can add a query string like so:

&t=746s

The time is in seconds.

ファブリス Wrote:Btw, I found something pretty cool on YouTube if anyone wants to share a specific moment in a video you can add a query string like so:

&t=746s

The time is in seconds.

You can do this in minutes too; makes it easier to count.

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Doh Thank you.