The process I describe seamlessly combines the cognitive, the social and the emotional with
ethical values in a way that – at least at first sight – is quite alien to our usual view of things: the
cognitive, the socioemotional and the ethical are trained and exercised together, one reinforcing
the other, in a literally embodied act in which we pay attention mentally, physically, emotionally and
intentionally to what arises from moment to moment in the field of possible perception within our
bodies
While we are learning powers of attention and concentration, we also are
simultaneously cultivating our powers of courage, kindness and patience. Our very bodies and
minds teach ourselves these things without any preaching, lecturing or other intervention: it’s all
happening within our own personal experience. We learn a new construction of experience and
reality that almost completely derives from intimate subjective investigation of what we are able to
perceive.
For want of a better word, we call this process mindfulness. …And there the confusion begins.
This approach is directly derived from Buddhist psychology and meditation practice and has been
labeled as mindfulness practice. In the late 1970s, Jon Kabat-Zinn ingeniously developed,
packaged and implemented a program of mindfulness-based intervention for patients with chronic
disorders, which he called mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)
In so doing, he put this
kind of introspective psychology on the map in the West, although many teachers of insight
meditation and Zen had long been paving the way.
In the last 10 years, things have really taken off with mindfulness in medicine and psychology. The
practice of mindfulness, just over this short period, has been applied to almost every imaginable
problem and disorder, from rehabilitation of imprisoned offenders to major depression to physical
disorders like cancer and multiple sclerosis
Some scientists see hope for mindfulness in
having a direct effect upon the progress of individual physical diseases, whereas others believe it
can primarily be used to help people who suffer the existential consequences of serious disease or
other dire vagaries of the human condition, in order that they may begin to create new
perspectives and bring new meaning into lives that seem out of control. The rapid development of
technologies that permit us to examine what is happening from moment to moment in the brain
also allows some degree of verifiable and objective scientific confirmation that mindfulness really
does have specific effects upon how minds work
Whatever the potential benefits and physiological mechanisms, this new impetus means that it has
now become legitimate for physicians and psychologists to study and talk about subjective
experience and begin to investigate qualities like kindness and compassion.
However
, it also
means that physicians, psychologists and researchers must try to make sense of mindfulness,
when they often may have very little or no practical experience with it, and they may often believe
that “mindfulness” can be understood and dealt with just like every other concept that has come
along in their studies and careers: a popular new concept is thought to be quickly understood and
is then integrated into a research plan. Hypotheses are subsequently formulated and tested among
a group of research participants.
One very interesting thing about mindfulness, on the other hand, is that it very clearly works in an
opposite direction: first, it’s not a theory that requires testing with a group of research participants,
but rather a systematic approach to investigate experience in a very personal, individual manner.
The practice of mindfulness first examines what’s going on without much of any real theoretical
basis; the very primary process is intentional, intimate contact with whatever perceptible
experience one can be aware of in the present moment. Then based upon that cumulative, highly
personal, experience, the mind and body attempt to make sense of what has been attended to.
200
