The emancipation of mindfulness from its religious context

Abstract

The present paper argues that if the so-called mindfulness movement is to reach its full potential it needs to emancipate from its religious context and ally itself fully with psychological science. The argument that mindfulness meditation needs a religious context for ethical reasons is untenable. Although mindfulness skills may well be used for un-ethical purposes, this applies equally to both religious (e.g., Buddhist) and secular contexts, and is best handled by an open-minded philosophical-ethical discussion. One problem with present mindfulness-based treatments and mindfulness research is that they are still partly enmeshed with Buddhist conceptualizations of the world, which are thought to represent “seeing things as they are”. If the full potential of mindfulness meditation is to be understood, research methods are needed which focus on the phenomenological practices involved in terms of psychological processes such as the regulation of attention and attitudes.