Mindfulness Beyond Self-Help

Abstract

This paper grounds the popular discussions of mindfulness in the U.S. that frame it as a self-help technique in the primary discourses of the Buddha, and cautions against an appropriation of mindfulness as an individualistic and a pragmatic tool. Specifically, I focus on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (The Foundations of Mindfulness) that is part of the “long collection,” Digha Nikaya (DN), which includes a detailed discussion of the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path that explore the problem of suffering and liberation from suffering in human experience. The noble eightfold path offers a framework for the systematic training of mental faculties through three groups that are interrelated: virtue, concentration, and discernment. Mindfulness is part of the concentration group, which is part of a training that equally emphasizes virtue (moral discipline) and wisdom (discernment). Finally, I discuss communicative and epistemological implications of mindfulness discourses that present ways of knowing and beingin-the-world beyond self-centeredness.