A Genealogy of Mindfulness

Abstract

This chapter traces the genealogy of mindfulness from its origin in the early collections of the Buddha’s teachings to contemporary mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). Mindfulness in the early teachings is understood as remembering the present, while in the twentieth-century Nyanaponika Thera presented mindfulness as bare attention. We examine some issues that have arisen from the adaptation of mindfulness from its original context, where it functions within its own sophisticated theoretical framework, to modernity, where its practice takes place within a secular and scientific culture entirely different from its original environment. We attempt to show that the Buddha’s “dharma” is an empirical project that, in its focus on the practical task of easing human suffering, bears a striking resemblance to modern secular MBIs. We then introduce our own approach to the application of mindfulness, in which we apply the Buddha’s original concept of mindfulness to its new secular and scientific context.