ABSTRACT
Buddha became known for championing mindfulness, to this day a poorly understood meditative technique of moment-to-moment awareness. Historically, D. W. Winnicott and Buddha were reformers who grew up on the periphery of entrenched orthodoxies but who reconfigured them based on their own profoundly personal experiences. Both believed that the wiring for change was built-in, but that something was needed from the environment to activate it. In developing his ideas, Winnicott unwittingly laid the groundwork for a psychodynamic understanding of Buddhist thought. Child-parent themes lie mostly dormant in the original Buddhist teachings, despite the fact that the Buddha's mother is said to have died when he was just one week old. In Buddhist terms, the exuberance of the children on the seashore is a reflection of the orgasmic bliss of the enlightened mind. The culture of Buddhism and the culture of psychoanalysis, both concerned with healing the mind through self-observation, grew up outside of each other's purview.
