Mindfulness: the strange similarity between Alzheimer's and Zen Buddhism

This is pieced together from an article in the LA Times magazine..

"Alzheimer's is a detaching disease. It detaches people from their memories, their selves. We can look at that as tragic and awful, or we can change the frame. Consider Zen Buddhism, which is all about clearing your mind, detaching from your thoughts, grounding yourself in the moment. Well, that's Alzheimer's. There is a story about a monk who spends part of each day raking the sand in a Zen garden. It is a simple, repetitive act and he does it in the same way every day. He loses himself in it. He lives in the moment. And we respect that. We see this man as enlightened. Just suppose we look at a person with Alzheimer's the same way. Those with Alzheimer's often perform simple repetitive acts. They can spend hours folding and refolding a napkin. They exist in that moment, that simple moment of folding a napkin. You can look at that and say "How Tragic" or you can look at that and recognize that they find pleasure and comfort in that simple act, that they are doing a chore mindfully. We have something to learn from people with Alzheimer's. Our extreme talkatively and excessive cognition limit our understanding of the world. Maybe people with Alzheimer's who have lost coherent speech and linear thought can take us to a place where emotion and feeling take precedence.ˇ