What Is Mindfulness?

TL;DR — A meditation teacher’s 76-page attempt to define mindful awareness precisely, built around the noting practice.

Shinzen Young’s own long essay (version 1.5, 2013–2016), from his website. Sections cover useful distinctions, noting as a representative practice, a working definition of mindful awareness, a test of whether the definition holds, and how mindfulness reduces suffering.

What it is: a practitioner’s framework, not a research review. It is unusual for how hard it tries to define the term. Young’s site lists more of his papers.

Where this came from

• r/obscurePDFs post, March 2019 — “2013-2016: What is Mindfulness? Shinzen Young [76 pages]”. Routing record: The obscurePDFs Subreddit

76 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.