Do I accept ‘mindfulness’ as a virtue as I would for example ‘temperance’? (I do.)
But I find myself disinclined from using the term itself, as being New Age, and from all the other terms that will seem interchangeable with it: ‘consciousness’, ‘awareness’, ‘attentive-ness’, (I’m not sure I’ve ever heard ‘attentiveness’) and such things. Surely there must be an older western word for so fundamental a concept (it must be western because I couldn’t understand it if it were eastern)? (I can’t think of one, there might not surely be one, a so-called western word for what you mean by ‘awareness.’ It may be I will need western and eastern civilization to merge to a greater extent –English and Chinese will need to become indistinguishable– before I can learn to become properly ‘aware.’) Aurelius, who has a New Age feel, might use one.
…Maybe ‘patience’ comes close, but Patience implies an ultimate relief from the conditions of the present, a deliverance, whereas ‘mindfulness’ asks us to consider that there can be no other present, that we should not want such relief (the present is something to be and stay in, not to endure or get through, not to be patient of) [patience implies satisfaction will ultimately be attained, ‘mindfulness’, that it is always present] mindfulness proudly feels cold it doesn’t bear or endure it
(You have a good point.)
…Concentration comes close but in the way of an opposite insofar as they are means of data collection. Concentration like a shovel or telescope, ‘mindfulness’ like an antennae or radar dish.
(I suppose you qualify the way in which they are opposites (“insofar as they are means of data collection”) because you feel that the opposite of concentration, in an absolute sense, is distractedness, not mindfulness. Yet you feel suddenly under-confident that you understand how to speak properly of opposites. The opposite of the north pole is I suppose the South Pole. The opposite of a pole, is I suppose a middle — the equator. Thus the polar opposite of concentration you would say is mindfulness, while the opposite of concentration as such is distractedness? You do feel suddenly uncertain about all this.)
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 