This is the beautiful Chinese character for ‘Mindfulness’.
The roof-like part at the top means ‘now’ or ‘this’ – in other words ‘presence’. The bottom portion means ‘heart’. This tells us that the seat of consciousness is not in the head, rather it’s in the heart!
Isn’t it true that we mistake ‘thought’ for consciousness? In fact thoughts are what distract us from being present to and connected with Reality! The proof of this is that when we’re in thought mode then – at best – we are knowing about something. Mindfulness is radically different: it’s not knowing ‘about’ something, rather it’s experiencing it, bonding with it, having a complete, intimate connection with it in a way that we feel at one with it.
Interestingly, in the wisdom of Kabbalah this ‘knowing’ is called Da’at, a term which in Scripture is also a reference to the intimate union between male and female (see Genesis 4:1)