There is Only One Mindfulness: Why Science and Buddhism Need to Work Together

Excerpt

The paper by Monteiro et al. (2015) is to be commended for providing a comprehensive discussion of the compatibility issues arising from the integration of mindfulness—a 2500-year-old Buddhist practice—into research and applied psychological domains. Consistent with the observations of various others (e.g. Dunne 2011; Kang and Whittingham 2010), Monteiro et al. have not only highlighted that there are differences in how Buddhism and contemporary mindfulness interventional approaches interpret and contextualize mindfulness, but there are also differing interpretations of mindfulness within Buddhism. These apparent differences within Buddhism are arguably more noticeable when making comparisons across Buddhist vehicles (i.e. Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana), but to a lesser extent intra-vehicular differences can also be said to exist (i.e. differences between Buddhist traditions of the same vehicle). This commentary investigates the validity of some of these different Buddhist constructions of mindfulness and then discusses how a better understanding of their scriptural and conceptual soundness (or lack thereof) may help to reconcile some of the actual and perceived incompatibility between Buddhist practice and contemporary secular mindfulness-based approaches. …