Abstract
The practice of mindfulness is an experience that from a certain perspective is inexpressible. You gain a tacit knowledge of it that is yours alone; you “know more than [you] can tell,” as Michael Polanyi (1966) phrases it. Yet, from a different perspective, the practice is also a product of all the communications that you have around your experience. Your explicit knowledge, what you can tell, is co-created in relationship with all of those with whom you share your experience now or in the future, from your mindfulness teachers and fellow students, to your colleagues and supervisors in working with mindfulness-based interventions, to the clients or patients that you teach. This co-creation takes place most obviously in verbal language. You learn from a talk or a book by a teacher, a conversation with a colleague, or a dialog with a client. But the nonverbal dimensions are also important. There is much to be learned from a teacher’s posture, gestures, tone of voice, and rate of speech, or from the way a colleague meets your eyes, or from the quality of the pause before a supervisor responds in a tense moment. So, within such relationships, within your own small community, there is an evolving discourse, through which you learn to better understand and, thereby, better express your tacit knowledge of mindfulness practice. Further, it is within such a community and its discourse that you are learning, or will learn, to teach mindfulness as a professional.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Baer, R. (2006). Mindfulness-based treatment approaches: Clinician’s guide to evidence base and applications. Boston: Elsevier Academic Press.
Barks, C. (1995). The essential Rumi. San Francisco, CA: Harper.
Batchelor, S. (1994). The awakening of the west. Berkeley, CA: Parallax.
Bell, S. (2002). Scandals in emerging Western Buddhism. In C. S. Prebish & M. Baumann (Eds.), Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Benson, H. (1975). The relaxation response. New York: Morrow.
Bevis, W. W. (1988). Mind of winter: Wallace Stevens, meditation, and literature. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Brooks, V. W. (1936). The flowering of New England, 1815-1865. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
Brooks, V. W. (1962). Fenollosa and his circle, with other essays in biography. New York: Dutton.
Cage, J. (1966). Silence: Lectures and writings. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Carrington, P. (1998/1975). The book of meditation: The complete guide to modern meditation. Boston: Element. (Rev. ed. of: Freedom in meditation. East Millstone, NJ: Pace Educational Systems, 1975).
Clark, T. (1980). The great Naropa poetry wars. Santa Barbara, CA: Cadmus Editions.
Coleman, W. (2001). The new Buddhism: The western transformation of an ancient tradition. Oxford: New York.
Cupitt, D. (1999). The new religion of life in everyday speech. London: SCM Press.
Didonna, F. (2009). Clinical handbook of mindfulness (p. 523). New York: Springer.
Downing, M. (2001). Shoes outside the door: Desire, devotion, and excess at San Francisco Zen Center. Washington, DC: Counterpoint.
Dryden, W., & Still, A. (2006). Historical aspects of mindfulness and self-acceptance in psychotherapy. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 24(1), 3-28.
Duckworth, W. (1999). Talking music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and five generations of American experimental composers. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.
Fields, R. (1991). The changing of the guard: Western Buddhism in the eighties. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 1(2), 43-49.
Fromm, E., Suzuki, D.T., & DeMartino, R. (1960/1970). Zen Buddhism & psychoanalysis. New York: Harper & Row.
Fronsdal, G. (2002). Virtues without rules: Ethics in the insight meditation movement. In C. S. Prebish & M. Baumann (Eds.), Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Furlong, M. (1986). Genuine fake: A biography of Alan Watts. London: Heinemann.
Hayes, S. C., Follette, V. M., & Linehan, M. M. (2004). Mindfulness and acceptance: Expanding the cognitive-behavioral tradition. New York: Guilford.
Hayward, J. (2008). Warrior-king of Shambhala: Remembering Chogyam Trungpa. Boston: Wisdom.
Hodder, A. D. (1993). “Ex Oriente Lux”: Thoreau’s ecstasies and the Hindu texts. The Harvard Theological Review, 86(4), 403-438.
Johnston, H. (1988). The marketing social movement: A case study of the rapid growth of TM. In J. T. Richardson (Ed.), Money and power in the new religions. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Kantner, P. (1967). Won’t you try/Saturday afternoon [Recorded by Jefferson Airplane]. On After bathing at Baxter’s [LP]. New York: RCA Victor.
Mahesh Yogi, M. (1968/1963). Transcendental meditation. New York: New American Library.
McMahan, D. L. (2002). Repackaging Zen for the West. In C. S. Prebish & M. Baumann (Eds.), Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Merton, T. (1968). Zen and the birds of appetite. New York: New Directions.
Morita, S. (1998; Japanese publication 1928). Morita therapy and the true nature of anxiety based disorders (Shinkeishitsu); translated by Akihisa Kondo; edited by Peg LeVine. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Mott, M. (1984). The seven mountains of Thomas Merton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Mukpo, D. J. (2006). Dragon thunder: My life with Chogyam Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala.
Nattier, J. (1998). Who is a Buddhist? Charting the landscape of Buddhist America. In C. S. Prebish & K. K. Tanaka (Eds.), The faces of Buddhism in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Pennington, M. B. (1980). Centering prayer: Renewing an ancient Christian prayer tradition. New York: Image Books.
Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Obadia, L. (2002). Buddha in the promised land: Outlines of the Buddhist settlement in Israel. In C. S. Prebish & M. Baumann (Eds.), Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia (pp. 177-190). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Prebish, C. S. (1999). Luminous passage: The practice and study of Buddhism in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Queen, C. S. (2002). Engaged Buddhism: Agnosticism, interdependence, globalization. In C. S. Prebish & M. Baumann (Eds.), Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Reynolds, D. K. (1980). The quiet therapies: Japanese pathways to personal growth. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Reynolds, D. K. (1993). Plunging through the clouds: Constructive living currents. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Rohr, R. (1999). Everything belongs: The gift of contemplative prayer. New York: Crossroad.
Sanders, E. (1977). The Party: A chronological perspective on a confrontation at a Buddhist seminary.
Schwartz, T. (1995). What really matters: Searching for wisdom in America. New York: Bantam.
Seager, R. H. (2002). American Buddhism in the making. In C. S. Prebish & M. Baumann (Eds.), Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Seeman, W., Nidich, S., & Banta, T. (1972). Influence of transcendental meditation on a measure of self-actualization. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 19, 184-187.
Stevens, W. (1971). The palm at the end of the mind; selected poems and a play. New York: Knopf.
Suzuki, D. T. (1957). Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Suzuki, S. (1970). Zen mind, beginner’s mind. New York: Weatherhill.
Trungpa, C. (1973). Cutting through spiritual materialism. Berkeley, CA: Shambhala.
Tweed, T. (1992). The American encounter with Buddhism, 1844-1912: Victorian culture and the limits of dissent. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Vanier, J. (2005). Befriending the stranger. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.
Versluis, A. (1993). American transcendentalism and Asian religions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wallace, R. K. (1970). Physiological effects of transcendental meditation. Science, 167, 1751-1754.
Watts, A. (1972). In my own way, an autobiography. New York: Vintage.
Metcalf, F. A. (2002). The encounter of Buddhism and psychology. In C. S. Prebish & M. Baumann (Eds.), Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Prebish, C. S., & Baumann, M. (Eds.). (2002). Westward dharma: Buddhism beyond Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Watts, A. (1951). The wisdom of insecurity. New York: Pantheon.
Watts, A. (1960). This is it: And other essays on Zen and spiritual experience. New York: Pantheon.
Watts, A. (1961). Psychotherapy east and west. New York: Pantheon.
Watts, A. (1962). Joyous cosmology: Adventures in the chemistry of consciousness. New York: Pantheon.
Wuthnow, R. (1998). After heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McCown, D., Reibel, D., Micozzi, M.S. (2010). A History Exercise to Locate “Mindfulness” Now. In: Teaching Mindfulness. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09484-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09484-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-09483-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-09484-7
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)