It is unfortunate that mindfulness went through its rising popularity, co-optation, and then rejection almost a decade ago. When mindfulness was taken out of its religious context and introduced to the public as a self-help tool, it was easy for corporate leadership to then adopt it as another opportunity for people to better manage themselves and become better workers. Then, naturally, the pushback—articles suggesting it was sinister that we were being encouraged to stop thinking in a time when we were being used.

Of course, mindfulness is not gone, but it comes back to me today as an important tool and as something deeply misunderstood. The benefits of a meditation practice are subtle and hard to name because in part the practice is to thwart our desire for definitions, control, and names—freeing the mind to be more flexible in experiencing, understanding, and responding to the world. But even as I name this benefit, it must be with the caveat that we do not meditate so we can be more flexible. We meditate simply to meditate, and that freedom and flexibility may be a benefit that arises as a result of the practice.

All of that prelude comes to me because now seems like a good time to practice meditation. When there is anger and fear, when there is a fixation on enemies and oppression, our minds become entangled with and subsumed to this world of oppression and enemies. I don’t mean it’s your fault you are oppressed. I mean that we can be so fixated on the first coming toward our face that we don’t notice there’s all this space around the fist that you could use. It is a martial practice to attend to this. Focusing on the specifics of how you are being attacked actually works for your attacker’s favor because you are paying more attention to their tactics than your own opportunities to respond. Of course, it isn’t good to ignore the attack either.

Hence the practice of meditating, of softening. Just sit, and breathe, and notice what is happening within you but let it be there without you needing to fix or manage it. See if you can soften your gaze and expand your senses.