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... is absence of confusion or non-forgetfulness. It is manifested as guardianship, or as a state of confronting an objective field” (Bodhi 2000a, p.86). This definition of mindfulness, a familiar definition within Theravada Buddhism, appears late in Buddhist history after centuries of commentarial interpretation specific to Theravada Buddhism. Yet this fact alone need not automatically preclude this definition from being an authentic reflection of the Buddha’s own conception of mindfulness. In order to understand the context of mindfulness, it is necessary to access the earliest Buddhist texts. Kuan (2008)) identifies at least four definitions of mindfulness in the earliest stratum of precommentarial Buddhist texts, a collection known as the Pali Nikayas and their counterparts preserved in Chinese translation, known as the Agamas. These texts were composed several centuries after the Buddha’s time and reflect sectarian interpretive bias and inevitable historical baggage. Be that as it may, they represent the earliest historical sources of our modern understanding of the Buddha’s teachings. From the Pali Nikayas and the Agamas, Kuan (2008)) identifies mindfulness as “simple awareness” (p.41), a ...

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...entrally related to, and include the practice of, mindfulness, as noted by many scholars and practitioners from varying traditions, including Theravadin, Japanese, and Chinese Zen (e.g., Bodhi, 2005; =-=Kuan, 2008-=-; Sanharakshita, 2004; Sheng-Yen, 2001; Suzuki, 2011). LKM has been described by Salzberg (1995) as a path of deep spiritual transformation. She wrote: The path begins with cultivating appreciation of...

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...reas of human functionality: emotional, cognitive, behavioral and interpersonal (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007). The important role mindfulness plays in health and well-being gives rise to the question: how does it work? The substantial growth of scientific investigations on mindfulness has been observed from several decades, but as a psychological or spiritual phenomenon it has been well-known and practiced for more than two thousand years, particularly in Eastern cultures. Mindfulness is one of the pillars of the Buddhist tradition and its philosophical and religious interpretation is vast (Kuan, 2008). The abundance of meanings related originally to the term ‘mindfulness’ makes its psychological definition very difficult to pin down. Up until now, there are two main approaches which have suggested a slightly different understanding of mindfulness: the clinical psychology approach (see Baer, 2003 as an example) and the self-determination theory approach (SDT, see Brown & Ryan, 2003 as an example). The first trial to define core aspects of mindfulness without referring to a religious context was run by Jon Kabat-Zinn (1982), and it is the most popular and prominent of the existing definition...

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... true: in practicing mindfulness one has more opportunities to deploy and build bravery. Zest corresponds closely to the Buddhist concept of viriya, which might be translated as enthusiasm or energy (=-=Kuan, 2008-=-). Mindfulness meditation involves a careful balance of effort to avoid the extremes of either lethargy or agitation. Excessive lethargy calls for more enthusiasm. In the Christian contemplative tradi...

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...t of the path to enlightenment, linked to compassion, altruism, and a pro-socialsmindset, and it is most often translated to mean “simple awareness”, a moment-to-momentsapplication of bare attention (=-=Kuan, 2008-=-; p. 41).sFor example, Zen Buddhist monk and prolificswriter, Thich Nhat Hanh, defines mindfulness as keeping one’s consciousness alive to thespresent reality (1976).sBuddhist monk and teacher of West...

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..., 2011b; Olendzki, 2010). Mindfulness of body is thesfirst of four foundations of mindfulness; the others are mindfulness of feelings,smindfulness of consciousness, and mindfulness of mental objects (=-=Kuan, 2008-=-; Olendzki,s2010).sAccording to Buddhist scholar Andrew Olendzki (2010), the first foundation ofsmindfulness can be described as ―systematic training in attending to the senses‖ (p. 89).sMindfulness o...