Buddhism's Relevance: Mindfulness

Most of the students in the MA program here have not really done research papers before.  Therefore, in order to prepare them for writing an MA Thesis, we are doing a class in 'Research Methodology'.  We are doing a group project now, and my group chose the topic "Is Buddhism relevant for today's problems?", which struck me as a topic rife with potential for really lame generalizations.  So I picked something very specific.  The following is not intended even to serve as an adequate introduction to the concept of mindfulness, which has very broad applications in the American context, but mainly just to show that I can make citations. :)

Buddhism's Relevance for Today: Mindfulness

     In 1979, after a flash of insight on a meditation retreat, John Kabat-Zinn started the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center (“Indra's Net,” 226). This clinic has provided help for over ten thousand medical patients suffering from ailments as varied as “heart disease, cancer, HIV, AIDS, chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, high blood pressure, skin problems, chronic anxiety, [and] chronic panic disorder,” teaching them all 'Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction' (MBSR) (230). Clearly, mindfulness is not intended to cure all of those ailments, rather the program is “designed to teach people how to take better care of themselves and how to live more skilfully and more fully as a complement to whatever their medical treatments are” (235). As in Buddhism, the point is not to avoid or stop pain, which is an inevitable part of life, but rather to change our relationship to our pain. The influence of this approach to meditation as 'mindfulness' has grown widely in the subsequent years, being integrated into other forms of therapy such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Dialectical-Behavioral Therapy (DBT), used not just for general improvement of patients' skillful living, but to treat a wide range of specific mental disorders including anxiety disorders and depression (Didonna 10-11). In these applications, we see that mindfulness becomes an integral part of ending certain kinds of suffering that Western medicine has characterized as diseases.

     As formulated by Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is “a particular way of paying attention, one that gives rise to a moment-to-moment, non-judging awareness” (“Indra's Net,” 230). Although Kabat-Zinn takes this definition to cover meditation as taught by the Buddha in the Mahasattipathana Sutta (233), Georges Dreyfus has criticized this definition as not accurately representing the Pali term sati (44-45). Dreyfus argues that mindfulness is not properly limited to the present moment, being instead intimately tied to memory, and furthermore that it contains a judging element in order to distinguish the wholesome states one wishes to encourage from unwholesome states one hopes to diminish (45). Dreyfus stresses the definition of mindfulness as keeping in mind a particular object, and argues that this skill is merely a means to the end of developing the concentration that will lead one to insight and “mature judgments” (51-53). On the one hand, Kabat-Zinn does make a distinction between what he would call 'judgment' and what he would call 'discrimination' (“Indra's Net,” 230), which I think answers Dreyfus' point about recognizing wholesome versus unwholesome states. On the other hand, as Dreyfus acknowledges (42), Kabat-Zinn is more interested in an 'operational' definition of mindfulness as used in a clinical setting, and is quite happy to use the term in a way that “gloss[es] over important elements of Buddhist psychology” that can “be differentiated and clarified later” (Foreward, xxix). Kabat-Zinn cites work on a “collective articulation/definition of mindfulness” reported by Margaret Cullen to the effect that:

Many contemporary Buddhist teachers use the term mindfulness in a more comprehensive way than simply “remembering” or lacking confusion. . . . the components of mindfulness as it is more broadly construed might include not only sati, but also sampajanna (meaning clear comprehension) and appamada, (meaning heedfulness). . . . as both Buddhist and secular mindfulness programs proliferate in the west, this broader use of mindfulness has become a culturally meaningful and accessible “umbrella” term for the vast majority of practitioners unversed in the intricacies of translating Sanskrit or Pali (qtd. in Foreward, xxx).

Let us then put aside any controversy over the historical accuracy of the term and take a brief look at what this understanding of mindfulness provides for patients and practitioners.

     This conception of mindfulness is used in many contexts, but here we will just take one example to examine. Mark Williams, John Teasdale, and Zindel Segal have written for practitioners on using MBCT to treat depression (2002) and along with Kabat-Zinn have presented the same topic for a mass audience as well (2007). In the latter work, they take up Kabat-Zinn's definition of mindfulness as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to things as they are” (47). Without mentioning the Pali terms or even discussing them in an explicitly Buddhist frame of reference, they show how this practice can lead towards an understanding of both anicca (impermanence) and anitta (not-self) in order to combat specific forms of dukkha (suffering) (46,165,99). The authors focus on the feedback between our experience, our interpretations of that experience, our habit of taking those interpretations as facts, and how all of this is reflected in and affected by the body (11-49). The main power of mindfulness in this model is that, as one learns to pay better attention to one's own experience at all levels, one can affect the chain of dependent arising so as to alter its outcome. Or, in the authors' words:

The machinery that sets the cycle of unhappiness in motion may operate so smoothly that we don't even detect its workings, but that does not mean that it is an unstoppable juggernaut. Every link that keeps the machine going – body-thoughts, thoughts-feelings, feelings-body, and so forth – is an opportunity to redirect the sequence. The cycle can be broken simply by bringing mindful awareness to its links and, in particular, to the body (99).

By training their readers in the practice of mindfulness (and encouraging them to participate in courses on MBCT) as a means of seeing these connections and recognizing that the thoughts and feelings involved are 'not us' and that any negativity will inevitably change on its own, the authors present many of the central insights of Buddhism in a language appropriate for contemporary Americans who may not be tempted by what they would otherwise see as 'foreign' or 'religious' ideas. In this way the Dhamma of the Buddha is made approachable and accessible to many who would otherwise not be likely to benefit from it.

Works Cited

Cullen, Margaret. “Mindfulness: A Working Definition.” Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obsatacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion. The Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman. New York: Henry Holt, 2008. 61–63.

Didonna, Fabrizio. Introduction. Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness. Ed. Fabrizio Didonna. New York: Springer, 2009. 1-14.

Dreyfus, Georges. “Is Mindfulness Present-Centered and Non-Judgmental? A Discussion of the Cognitive Dimensions of Mindfulness.” Contemporary Buddhism 12.1 (2011): 41-54.

Kabat-Zinn, John. Forward. Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness. Ed. Fabrizio Didonna. New York: Springer, 2009. xxv-xxxiii.

Kabat-Zinn, John. “Indra's Net at Work: The Mainstreaming of Dharma Practice in Society.” The Psychology of Awakening. Eds. Gay Watson, Stephen Batchelor, and Guy Claxton. York Beach, Maine: Samual Weiser, Inc., 2000. 225-249.

Willams, Mark, John Teasdale, and Zindel Sega. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse. New York: The Guilford Press, 2002.

Willams, Mark, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from ChronicUnhappiness. New York: The Guilford Press, 2007.

Note: In-text citations and the “Works Cited” section are presented in the format of the following source:

Modern Language Association. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7^th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2009.