The Rise of Mindfulness Meditation
The practice of mindfulness, popularized perhaps most famously by Thich Nhat Hanh, is today even more on the rise. Significant themes of the popularity of this practice have to do with it being divorced from the tradition of Buddhism and its relationship with scientific study and health benefits. Two recent websites dedicated to mindfulness practice and research are interesting examples of the popularity and ideas surrounding mindfulness.
Mindful: Living with Awareness and CompassionWebsitepromote the specific practice of mindfulness without Buddhism. The website explicitly states to check out their magazines, Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma, if looking for a more Buddhist context. This idea of separate teachings/practices for those interested in Buddhism, is not new. I have seen this in my research of international meditation centers. For example, the Buddhist Meditation Institute at Wat Luang Por Sot is planning to have two websites: one for people interested in Buddhism, and one for people only interested in meditation. As well the Middle Way retreat run out of Wat Dhammakaya used to have two kinds of retreats: one for people interested in Buddhism and one for people only interested in meditation. Another example of this from Tibetan Buddhism is Chogyam Trungpas separation of teachings into two distinct groupings. Although today the two have merged he originally set up Vajradhatu for those interested in T! ibetan B uddhism and Shambhala Training as a secular, non-Buddhist meditative practice. Therefore this is a trend that many have picked up on. This trend is the need for dual advertisements for two different audiences. This way the product, in this case, meditation, reaches the largest number of people without offending anyone but also creates changes in each program or publications message in significant ways.
With the rise of mindfulness meditation this separation is even more apparent. Because mindfulness practice mostly involves some kind of daily life activity, the act of formal sitting is sometimes not even necessary. In this way one does not have to create a separate time and space for meditative practice. The supplemental magazine to Shambhalas Mindful website, called Mindful makes clear that the practices and techniques you will learn about in our pages are for everybody. No religion, belief, or political inclination is required. Theres no need to sign on anyones dotted line. Everyone is born with mindfulness, awareness, and compassion (3).This booklet is a one-time free compilation with articles and tips about how to apply mindfulness to life situations like eating, relationships, financial management, time management, and being more effective in work. The website, however, updates news about mindfulness daily from teachers new books and ideas to new ways mindfulness is being used in daily life in societies around the world. It offers mindfulness-based approaches to many aspects of modern life as well as offers a chance for social networking with other mindfulness practitioners. These endeavors of Shambhala Publications, including the one-time magazine supplement, website, and recentTheMindfulne! ss Revol ution book, are entirely practical about mindfulness.
The second example of the rise of mindfulness meditation is the Mindfulness Research GuideWebsite(MRG). The founder of this site, David Black, hopes for this website to be a comprehensive research guide and electronic source that provides information on the scientific study of mindfulness. Black has undertaken this task in order to keep researchers and practitioners up to date on current research and to have a centralized location specifically for mindfulness studies. Resources include publications broken down by month and year and any research that uses empirical measurement tools for mindfulness. This list is divided by five different sets of measurement tools and lists articles that contain research on each. There is also a list of research centers that have mindfulness studies as part of their central mission.
The definition of mindfulness that Black is working with mentions Buddhism:
What we currently term mindfulness in the area of contemplative science, and the corresponding techniques of its cultivation, stem from Eastern introspective psychological practices, specifically Buddhist psychology, which made reference to the concept over 2,500 years ago . . . As the concept of mindfulness was gradually introduced into the realm of Western science, many thought mindfulness and its associated meditation practices meditation is one method used to develop mindfulness were esoteric, bound to religious beliefs, and a capacity attainable only by certain people. However, several decades of research methodology and scientific discovery have defrayed these myths; mindfulness is now widely considered to be an inherent quality of human consciousness.
This site specifically links mindfulness with the empirical scientific study o! f its ef fects. Both of these sites promote mindfulness as divorced from Buddhism. The Buddha is given credit for founding mindfulness but that is, for the most part, the only mention of Buddhism. As well mindfulness does not seem to be related to liberation or Enlightenment in the Buddhist sense. The point of the practice and benefits are completely mundane. These ideas about mindfulness in daily life and without Buddhism are clear about their definitions, how to practice, and the benefits of practice. Taking the Buddhism out of mindfulness means the practice can be studied in a scientific way and mundane benefits can be tested and hypothesized about.
