mindfulness

mindfulness, concept originating in Buddhism that refers to sustained awareness of bodily sensations, emotions, and mental states. It is closely associated with meditation, particularly among monastics, and it is the seventh step of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path. In the 20th century Buddhist movements in Asia, and later the United States, emphasized mindfulness as a technique for the general public to maintain present-moment awareness in everyday life. In modern usage mindfulness has been incorporated into psychological and alternative health practices.

Buddhist roots

Central to Buddhist teachings is the Eightfold Path, the primary Buddhist guide to enlightenment. The seventh step of the Eightfold Path, as taught by the Buddha, is “right mindfulness” (Pali: samma-sati; Sanskrit: samyak-smriti). Mindfulness is an English translation of the Pali word sati (from the Sanskrit word smriti), meaning “recollection” or “remembrance.” Right mindfulness means having proper awareness of body, feelings, thoughts, and phenomena.

Buddhist tradition connects mindfulness closely with the practice of Buddhist meditation. Mindfulness meditation traditionally involves two forms of practice: samatha (“calming”) and vipassana (“insight”). Samatha meditation attempts to calm the mind through concentration. Vipassana meditation seeks to attain an understanding of reality according to Buddhist philosophy, with particular emphasis on recognizing dukkha (“suffering”), anicca (“impermanence”), and anatta (“non-self”).

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In mindfulness practice uncomfortable feelings and thoughts are not to be altered or avoided but rather observed with detachment to gain further understanding. By focusing the mind on thoughts and feelings, a meditating person begins to unlearn conventional perspectives and mental attitudes that are the root of suffering.

Throughout much of Buddhist history, and particularly in Theravada Buddhist contexts, mindfulness and its associated meditation methods have been the purview of mendicants (monks and nuns), who used mindfulness meditation to achieve trance states (jhana) leading to nirvana. Mindfulness meditation was not widely practiced by the non-monastic Buddhist laity.

Modern efflorescence

In the 20th century mindfulness shifted from being predominantly for monastics, and in the Western world it even transitioned away from being primarily Buddhist. It was transformed by Buddhist reformers and Western advocates into a practice for improving everyday life.

In the middle of the 20th century, Theravada Buddhist reform movements in Burma (Myanmar) and Sri Lanka heavily emphasized vipassana in Buddhist practice. They especially reinterpreted complex mindfulness practices and redesigned them for lay audiences. One innovation was to reinterpret mindfulness as awareness at each moment, or “bare attention,” a term coined by the German-born Buddhist convert Nyanaponika Thera. Students of these movements later introduced this form of mindfulness to the United States in the 1970s. American transmitters of this practical mindfulness included Jack Kornfield, a clinical psychologist who combined mindfulness with therapy, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, a biologist who developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. Additionally, the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh attracted attention in the United States not only with his opposition to the Vietnam War but also with his notion of Engaged Buddhism, which emphasizes improving human life through political activism and everyday acts of mindfulness.

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Mindfulness went fully mainstream in the United States in the 1980s through the 2000s as its effectiveness and advantages were championed by famous figures such as Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson, television personality Oprah Winfrey—who interviewed Thich Nhat Hanh and Kabat-Zinn—and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Mindfulness is now widely advocated as a component of psychotherapy and as an element of complementary and alternative medicine. Many athletes embrace mindfulness as a way of staying in the zone. Business leaders encourage mindfulness for enhancing productivity. Thich Nhat Hanh appeared at Google’s headquarters in 2011 to discuss mindfulness and health with employees. In the 2000s and 2010s especially, mindfulness started appearing throughout American culture, largely shorn of most Buddhist roots, and was applied to a wide variety of self-help subjects in publications and emblazoned on health food products.

Mindfulness has come a long way from its Buddhist origins in meditation and as a step on the monastic path to nirvana, but it still maintains those meanings for many active Buddhists around the world. It is also important to note that according to scholars of religion, there is no single authentic understanding of mindfulness in Buddhism but rather multiple understandings in different times and places, as evidenced in different Buddhist schools of thought. It is also impossible to know, from a historiographical perspective, precisely what it was that the historical Buddha meant by mindfulness. Therefore, whereas modern mindfulness might diverge from older iterations of the concept and its connotations and practices, this fact does not automatically invalidate it as an outgrowth of the Buddhist tree.