How Seven Awakening factors Work...

Someone asked me this question in an email: Is it possible to be mindful with a mental activity? 
Following is my answer: 

Hi Dear Lucca,

I too enjoyed the last meditation session with you all.
Yes, it is possible to be mindful on the mental activity that you are involved with. At this point, literally, you will not be meditating! You will be absorbed to your mental activity. This lessens the irri

tation of having other objects distracting the mind. Therefore, knowingly, if you are aware of what is happening in your mind right at that moment, you are practicing mindfulness. Even though it doesn't seem like meditation, it is a part of your job that it eventually becomes a meditation. For example, you need to be fully absorbed when you are solving some maths problems. So this intention has become your object by the time. Therefore, it is your meditation. What happens here is, after a while, your mind starts to relax and stop reacting. Even to notice this, you need to have the right amount of mindfulness. It is a matter of being aware of what is arising and what is ceasing. So, if tension arises, you are aware of it. If happiness arises, you are aware of it. All these are mental plays. But mindfulness never happen in an array of consecutive pattern. It also arises when u are keeping alert on it. So, the more you are aware of it, the more relaxed the mind will be.
If I take another example, a writer of a particular book has to focus on his theme. If he fails to do so, his outcome will be a bad one. But no writer becomes enlightened in the world. This is why you should not stop the practice until u can see a progress in your method. Eventually your mind will reap the good results.

Below is how the Buddhist practice of mindfulness help you towards the path conducive to Nirvana (Nibbana).
There are seven bojjhaṅgas (factors of enlightenment) that have to be developed to reach the final goal of full liberation. They are:
1. sati (right amount of mindfulness);
2. dhamma-vicaya (right amount of investigation of what is arising and ceasing in the mind);

3. viriya (right anount of effort);
4. pīti (right amount of rapture);

5. passaddhi ( right amount of tranquility or stillness of the mind);

6. samādhi (right amount of concentration, absorption which means 1st Jhanato the 4th Jhāna) and

7. upekkhā (equanimity).

So, equanimity happens when the right amount of concentration is reaped, concentration happens when right amount of stillness has happened, stillness happenes when the rapture is grown enough, rapture happens when the energy is reaped, energy arises when the awareness or the investigation about the mind objects is well practiced, this investigation happens as a result of mindfulness (sati).
These teachings are very much prevalent in early teachings of the Buddha. If you need, I will make this discussion to be the next topic of my talk.

Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to write me. This was a beautiful question.

in Dhamma,

Kusala Bhante