One very curious twist of intellectual history is that the Confucians, taking the lead from their treasured classic, the Great Learning, taught that one had to take eight steps to self- cultivation and social harmony. And among these eight steps, the third step “rectification of the mind” is very close to the idea of mindfulness. The Great Learning teaches that the inferior person “hears, but does not listen,” and “sees, but does not watch,” precisely because he or she is not able to control or regulate untamed emotions. Buddha compared out of control emotions to a wild horse. They tend to kidnap us and take us away from a full involvement in the present moment. For example, while reading this page, what percentage of the time were you distracted by thoughts that led you away from this page? What Buddha and Confucius are both telling us is very reminiscent of Martin Seligmans’s three tier theory of happiness, and especially the foundational tier which argues that one of the keys to mental wellness is to “savor” experiences in the present moment. This is exactly what the data generated by recent studies on “mindfulness” seem to indicate. And it is worth bearing in mind that the ability to experience flow, which, as we have seen is a key component of happiness, is closely related to the idea of mindfulness or attentiveness, and vividly illustrated in the classical Daoist stories about the transcendent skills of meat chopper Ting and carpenter P’ien.