Mindfulness: Traditional and Utilitarian
This chapter distinguishes modern, utilitarian mindfulness from original, Buddhist mindfulness. It clarifies some of the cultural factors that have shaped the transition from the original to the contemporary approaches. It analyses and critiques some of t
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Mindfulness: Traditional and Utilitarian David Brazier
The Changing Meaning of a Word The term mindfulness, as currently in use, derives from translations of Buddhist texts. The choice of the word “mindfulness” to translate the Sanskrit smŗtí (Pali sati) and mindful for the corresponding adjective smŗitimant seemed appropriate at the time of the first translations approximately a hundred years ago. Subsequent conceptual development and usage in Western psychology and popular culture have, however, distorted this meaning considerably. Now, therefore, we can distinguish Buddhist mindfulness (smŗití) from the contemporary utilitarian mindfulness. What has become the standard definition of the latter is that it is a form of deliberate non-judgemental attention to phenomena occurring in the here and now. In the Latin languages, this has been translated as “pleine conscience,” “consciencia plena,” etc., which, in English, comes out as “full consciousness.” This latter rendering seems even further from the original Buddhist meaning if we take “consciousness,” as we usually do, as indicating those mental functions that are not unconscious. I propose to unpack some of the difficulties that arise directly from the modern definition in
D. Brazier (&) Instituto Terapia Zen International; Head of the Order of Amida Buddha, Cher, France e-mail: [email protected]
contrast to the original. By this means, I intend to bring out the fuller significance, usefulness, and problems associated with the different usages and also, in passing, make some comments upon the spirit of our times. Let us begin with the word mindful in the English language. Here, fundamentally, mindfulness refers to the state or act of keeping something in mind. Near synonyms are “to beware,” “to consider,” “to remember,” “to call to mind,” “to heed,” “to be cognisant of.” Thus, one might say, “mindful of the danger posed by the enemy, the general sent for reinforcements,” or “although surrounded by filth, he was always mindful of what his mother had taught him about hygiene.” We can see from these ordinary usages that being mindful generally implies keeping something in mind in a way that generates a degree of tension that tends toward an action of some kind. There is clearly a significant difference of nuance between this original meaning and that adopted in current psychological discourse. The significant dimensions of difference are, firstly, that traditionally mindfulness was a form of memory, bringing something from the past into the present, rather than an immediate grasp of what presents in the present; secondly, that traditionally mindfulness was commonly connected with the maintenance of values or standards of some kind, or with wariness—that it was something to take into account that shaped or contrasted with the facts given by the immediate
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 R.E. Purser et al. (eds.), Handbook of Mindfulness, Mindfulness in Behavioral Health, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44019-4_5
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situation, whereas in the contempo
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