Mindfulness, Heedfulness, and Ethics

Abstract

Recent comparisons between Buddhist and modern Western conceptualizations of mindfulness have focused on ethical aspects of mindfulness practice. Unlike Buddhism, where mindfulness practice is integrated with ethical guidelines and precepts, mindfulness as taught in secular psychology promotes a type of mindfulness practice that is not aligned with any particular moral code. The perception that Western psychology lacks ethical characteristics is reinforced by operational definitions of mindfulness that refer to nonjudgmental or nonevaluative awareness. The present discussion argues that nonjudgmental characteristics are not necessarily misaligned with Buddhist practice. Some of the theoretical confusion around the Western conceptualization of mindfulness is related to the fact that ideas have been borrowed from very diverse Buddhist traditions, and the integration of these teachings outside their context has led to certain inconsistencies. Additionally, modern psychology uses only a single term to describe a diverse set of nuances of mindfulness, in contrast to Buddhism, which possesses a very rich jargon. The present discussion proposes the use of heedfulness as a term borrowed from Buddhism to help make some of the necessary distinctions, especially when discussing aspects of mindfulness relating to ethical practice. Unlike mindfulness, which has already found an established meaning as nonjudgmental and present-moment awareness, heedfulness may thus refer to self-regulatory aspects such as monitoring of behavior that is incongruent with the goals and purposes of a person’s mindfulness practice, including explicit or implicit values and moral principles. The adoption of the term heedfulness will contribute to the sophistication of psychological jargon and thus provide more conceptual clarity to assist future mindfulness research.