Abstract
This article discusses contributions of Eastern philosophical traditions, in particular, Buddhism and its concept of mindfulness—to the field of psychology. Psychology has long dealt with the concept of mindfulness to understand the results of meditation in several contexts, such as psychotherapy and education. The works of Thich Nhat Hanh on meditation and mindfulness represent one of the theoretical pillars of this discussion. Recent research on mindfulness in the field of scientific psychology provides additional links for this collaborative effort between religious tradition and science. Research on this theme inevitably leads to considerations of the ethical, moral, environmental, ecological, emotional, and spiritual dimensions involved in Buddhist traditions and in different psychological theories. These traditions and theories converge to benefit persons undergoing situations of psychological and spiritual suffering. This article concludes by sharing new possibilities of comprehending the concept and practice of mindfulness, based on writings from the Buddhist tradition that focus on its phenomenon from a broader and deeper viewpoint.
The gentle spring rain permeates the soil of my soul. A seed that has lain deeply in the earth for many years just smiles.
The predominance of reason and logic over the domain of belief and faith began with the decline of Middle Age views, but it was only in the 19th century that it became established as the scientific model we are familiar with (Harrison, 2007). Historical accounts point to a transition in the focus of researchers, who migrated from natural history inquiries, by means of a philosophy of nature, to the experience of an empirical and measurable scientific method mutually recognized among their peers. Only in the past two centuries has the scientific Zeitgeist found a fertile ground where it could effectively thrive.
The history of religions is linked to the development of our species. Despite its various features, religious thought has been tied to the human ontogenesis since early times, when cave men buried their dead in ceremonies characterized by rites that always referred to a divinity dimension. The experience of being alive was marked by the unexpected and by an inevitable becoming. The Homo sapiens rapidly invented rituals and beliefs capable of comforting human challenges and existential anxieties and also capable of enabling the human race to cope with the unknown and to provide meaning both to phenomena and mystery. Religion has played the role of satiating the need to grasp the world and ourselves and became a key element in metaphysical and psychological models. Religious messages include knowledge about a possible cosmogenesis and an ontogenesis of man. No religious model lacks an account of whence we came, who we are, and where we are going. These issues in time became an object of philosophy and later on, of science. As different knowledge developed in relation to similar objects, comparisons between different ideas emerged spontaneously and so did conflicts.
Harrison (2007) said the controversy between science and religion is much more recent than one could imagine and dates back to the 19th century. Up to two centuries ago, science had not culturally realized the status that characterizes it in the present. Religion abandoned the generic notion of “sets of propositional beliefs that could be impartially compared and judged” (Harrison, 2017: 2) according to systematic intellectual criteria for the approval of doctrines. The Century of Lights introduced reason in religious thought and shifted the focus from the experience and testimony of faith to the elucidation of dogmas. These two conceptual categories have different historical trajectories, along with their particular connotations and meanings, which make it difficult to imagine the existence of a perennial conflict between science and religion. To uphold such conflict would demand, above all, an understanding of which science and which religion one is talking about since in their condition of phenomena, these constructs became content, form, and essence in the course of human history. They will certainly continue their transformation processes in the future.
Buddhism is a religious and philosophical model that emerged in Asia, and its history is also marked by multiple interpretations. Its model was introduced to the West during the Victorian Era, concomitantly with the emergence of modern science. An iconic figure such as Theosophist Helena Blavatsky affirmed that Buddhism is more scientific and philosophically pure than any other religious alternative (Harrison, 2007: 16). By affirming similar principles to those of science, including the fact that it did not oppose the Theory of Evolution—which was a new emergent concept in European 19th century—Buddhism with its scientific rationalist teachings captivated adaptation in the academic milieu. Such adherence allowed it to begin dialoguing with the established science, as we see in the works of Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh.
In the 20th century, the philosophical and religious traditions passed the baton to the scientific traditions in regard to the production of “real and/or reliable” knowledge. Scientists became the new gods of knowledge and deliberated on the ways of the natural world, of human life, and its sociohistorical contexts. In the past century, the supremacy of science seriously encumbered and even practically cut off the dialogue between science and religion. Yet, some researchers have paved the way so that religious practices from distinct spiritual traditions can be experienced, tested, and evaluated by the scientific field. Psychology has played a leading role in this process (Grossman and Van Dam, 2011; Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Sisk, 2008).
From the philosophical religious traditions that attracted the attention of psychology, we highlight Buddhism and its concept of mindfulness. The Buddhist tradition upholds philosophical principles that ascribe to human beings a Buddha condition. From the Buddhist perspective, there is not an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God. The condition of becoming a God, or a Buddha, is a real possibility for all human beings. There are paths that lead to such a state of enlightenment, and these paths can be experienced by each and every one who may wish to tread them. The state of “Buddha” must not be understood as an individualized experience but as a preexisting condition in all human beings. Once experienced, it cries out to be shared with others, that is, to inspire one’s neighbor to attain the same condition (Gyatso, 1992; Nhat Hanh, 2001).
The mindfulness construct is extremely relevant in this regard not only because it is an intrinsic practice and process in the Buddhist pursuit of spiritual enlightenment but, especially due to the use that Western psychology has been making of its concept. Grossman and Van Dam (2011) said: Mindfulness is the translation of the Pali term sati, which also conveys the meaning “to remember” possibly as to remember to maintain awareness. The term Sati is, perhaps, best translated “to be mindful” in stark contrast to the use of the Word “mindfulness” which is, of course, a noun and easily implies a fixed trait (p. 221).
Grossman and Van Dam (2011) point at a predominant trend in the West to restrict the concept of mindfulness, along with possible consequences of such reduction for psychological research. Thich Nhat Hanh (1991) proposed a notion of Engaged Buddhism that emphasizes a relational dimension of life in which subject, society, and nature are one. To live in contact with oneself in a fully mindful way is to live with the others and “in the world.” Thich Nhat Hanh (1992a) stated: “the miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment” (p. 7). For Buddhism, there is no separation between “I” and “the other,” as all things are impermanent. All, in this sense, are circumstantial. A state of oneness perception is experienced via meditation practice which can lead an individual to the experience of mindfulness.
A state of mindfulness is a consequence of practice and of developmental processes that lead its practitioners to transformation in the biological, emotional, cognitive, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of their lives. The mindfulness experience implies deep transformations in all human instances and in the sociocultural and ecological dimensions of life. Individuals who change their way of seeing and perceiving the world around them effects both their immediate and distant reality. This broad dimension of the mindfulness concept cannot be overlooked as tradition meets science.
Mindfulness, human development, and education
In the field of Developmental and Educational Psychology, mindfulness is understood as a state in which an individual develops full perception of the present moment, a focused attention, and an attitude of experiencing the here and now beyond the individual ego and its judgments, thus allowing the blossoming of full consciousness in connected with nature. From an educational perspective, mindfulness can be viewed as a reeducation of the habitual internal posture, in which one exercises actions in connection with the sensorial and perceptive functions that lead to expanded states of consciousness. Mindfulness practice is associated with contemplative states, the proper functioning of human cognitive functions, and socio-affective exchanges and is prized as an asset in the construction of social skills (Schonert-Reichl and Roeser, 2016).
The contemplative state of children can not be limited to corporeal and mental practices disconnected from their contexts of interpersonal relations. These practices lead to interactive experiences capable of shaping mental and behavioral standards that play a decisive role in one’s entire life trajectory as a bilateral construction among all involved systems (Aspesi and Fleith, 2006). An important and new field of knowledge is emerging in education and human development based on the practice of and research on mindfulness. This new field is calling attention to the search for deeper existential meanings that permeate human development and education, while pointing at new perspectives for the 21st century (Davidson et al., 2012). It describes and investigates contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga, and other experiences with a focus on full attention involving the body, brain, mind, interpersonal relations, and interactions with nature. Based on this focus, it describes how an individual appears in different stages of his or her development in terms of evolutionary tasks, health, well-being, learning, social relationships, and relations with nature. It explains the effects of contemplative practices in the course of human development by neuropsychological, psychological, and social processes. Last, it uses descriptive and explanatory findings about human development in the context of a person’s family, school, and community, in connection with nature and culture, and according to the particular needs of one’s historical time.
This new field of research and knowledge focuses on contemplative practices and sets a premium on the promotion of childhood and adolescence, since it considers these to be priority stages of human development. Family and school are also considered to be essential contexts for dealing with environmental, political, and social challenges and for tackling the virtual assault of digital technologies, which have invaded virtually all spaces in which significant social and affective exchanges take place. Parental and educational strategies need to be geared toward the development of qualities such as resilience, self-regulation, responsiveness, compassion, and connection with nature (Nhat Hanh, 2001; Schonert-Reichl and Roeser, 2016).
The sensorial and perceptual activities that provide a basis for each person’s complex cognitive development, and the development of neural plasticity, must be brought out based on simple elements from nature. These experiences begin with a baby’s contact with his or her caretakers and with the child’s own body, to expand outwards based on contact with the ground, the soil, the trees, the air, and the sky. They begin to form on a tangible, small-scale basis to evolve and discover the seeds, the spaces, and the potentials that inhabit these spaces. Children unfold toward the leaves, flowers, and other elements and living environments, both small and large, which may resonate in the construction of internal images, promoting and sustaining the formation of a child’s selfhood, imagination and creativity in consonance with a sense of respect for life and for the surrounding environments (Piorski, 2016).
Contemplative activities during childhood and adolescence cultivate habits and mental dispositions with positive effects and in the long term for society. For these demonstrated reasons, the practice of mindfulness has been introduced in educational and public settings that can be used as a network in support of communities, such as parks, schools, or health clubs. Studies on how contemplative practices improve attention, emotional response, and social adjustment among children and adolescents have just been initiated. A systematic record of these experiences and their effects in the development of children, families, and communities in different contexts is a necessity (Greenberg and Harris, 2012).
To illustrate the experiences involving a full attention approach in the educational and psychological field, we will describe an experience that took place for 2 years in a public park in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, with the participation of one of the authors of this article (CdC Aspesi). This park has native trees of the Brazilian Cerrado biome (Tabebuia trees or, in Portuguese, Ipês), of the Atlantic Forest (Brazilian firetree, or Guapiruvu), and of the Amazon Forest (Pau de Balsa). It has a multisport court, a playground with children’s playthings, a tennis court, a soccer field, and a workout area for senior citizens, with an approximate total area of 280 meter × 140 meter. This park is visited by people of all age groups, from newborns to elders, and most of them live in its nearby communities.
Once a month, an event entitled “Histórias no Parque” (“Histories at the Park”) took place under the large trees of the park. This not-for-profit initiative offers yoga lessons for children and their families, storytelling and musical activities for children, and the participants themselves bring and share a community breakfast. The aims of these activities are (1) to develop the contemplative capacity of children and of families (states of mindfulness); (2) to promote the sense of community, belongingness, and responsibility with shared spaces; (3) to promote free playing among children and their experiencing of freedom and safety in a broad space; (4) to provide interactions with nature and encourage children to develop an identity of linkage with the trees and organic elements that stimulates the imagination of playful fantasies, such as flowers, rocks, branches, sand, and so on; (5) to encourage family promenades in healthy, consumerism-free settings; (6) to encourage pleasant moments of quality interactions and full attention among family members, with a low use of digital technologies; (7) to reduce the levels of anxiety in the community, while enabling a support network about healthy alternatives for the rearing of children in the face of current local and world difficulties; (8) to enable personal and cultural references based on literature, music, and folklore, strengthening the understanding of one’s personal identity; and (9) to motivate the attention of children as they listen to the narration of stories and practice mindfulness.
The results of this experience have been spontaneously described in social networks such as Facebook and Instagram and in webpages sharing personal accounts of physical, mental, and social experiences of well-being, happiness, contentment, and a sense of integration with oneself and one’s community during the “Histórias no Parque” encounters.
Mindfulness and psychotherapy
The investigation of the human subjective experience by generations of Buddhist meditators, and by the science of psychology, points toward a fully positive view of human nature. In these traditions, the human mind is seen as a field for potential clarity and wisdom. In psychology, this notion acquires distinct representations, and it even disappears in some theoretical models that consider the mind/consciousness as a phenomenon that cannot be empirically verified.
A key starting point is that of a condition of ignorance, which condemns the individual to an unceasing search for happiness through the desire for pleasure objects, in a search that is unfruitful and recurrent. In the Buddhist traditions, blind desire sets man apart from the knowledge of the states of mind that can place us in contact with our potential for clarity. Trapped in a wheel of frustrations, man then intensifies a search only to render human life into a sequence of desire–pleasure–frustration–desire. Such cyclic conditions are defined by the word samsara or the state of mind that ignores its true self and becomes the seat of a propensity to relapse into blind conditioning and habits. Happiness, from this perspective, is understood as an awakening, that is, as the ability to experience insights into the unconditioned nature of consciousness (Thich Nhat Hanh, 1992b).
The separation between the fields of science and religion along with the relative ignorance of the phenomena resulting from a deepening of meditation, especially in the knowledge amassed by Eastern philosophies, have left aside an entire range of human experiences that are accounted for in the Buddhist tradition. In Buddhism, mindfulness is the entrance or door to expanded states of perception and consciousness. Curious as it may seem, this state described as merely the “entrance door” has become a powerful instrument for treating the most widely recognized afflictions of contemporary societies, such as anxiety, depression, and anguish.
The empirical confirmation of the physiological effects of meditation became a password for its increasingly wider use in the West, initially in the health field (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). The concomitant discovery that the state of unattached observation that follows meditation can be used advantageously in psychotherapeutic practices inspired the emergence of schools of thought within the approaches with an empirical inspiration centered on this aspect of meditation. Gestalt therapy has been a precursor approach in terms of explicitly prizing the experience of being present in the “here and now.” The Gestalt approach obtained a certain measure of inspiration from Zen Buddhism, and between the 1950s and 1970s, it placed a theoretical and technical emphasis on the concept of awareness, in reference to a phenomenology of “being in the world here and now.” Its phenomenological and existential orientation allowed it to assimilate Buddhist findings based on subjective and personal experiments and to anticipate empirical confirmations similar to those of ancient meditation masters.
An interesting shift of theoretical emphasis took place in Gestalt therapy as its approach further developed. Some Gestalt authors noticed that their intrapsychic emphasis, associated with the concept of awareness, was not enough for success in psychotherapy, and Gestalt therapy turned to an appreciation of the value of dialoguing, with a view to the quality of relations. As it was led by therapists who focused on awareness, a reinforcement of the individualist orientation in the predominant culture took place. The inspiration that addressed such emphasis finally emerged with the dialogical philosophy and I-THOU notion proposed by Israeli thinker Martin Buber (Hycner and Jacobs, 1995).
The evolutional path of Gestalt therapy recalls the history of Buddhism itself. Its first trend—the Theravadin (elders)—emphasized a personal trajectory of meditation and individual liberation. Its second trend—the Mahayana branch—was one of compassionate empathy. Mahayana Buddhism incorporates self-responsibility and the meditation practices of the elders, but now with a focus on the suffering of one’s neighbor. Thus, by incorporating love and compassion with the practice of meditation, the Buddhist model becomes more explicitly and diligently aimed at a systemic paradigm. The Mahayana addition emphasizes a set of values in connection with meditation, in which love and compassion are followed by detachment, simplicity, humility, noncompetitiveness, and the abstention from the exercise of power over others (Thich Nhat Hanh, 1991, 2001).
The centrality of the ethical dimension in connection with meditation is so far-reaching that the purity of each practitioner’s mind becomes the largest stumbling block on the way toward evolution from mindfulness (sati or samatha) to insight (vipasyana) (Thrangu Rimpoche, 1998). The more selfishly driven a practitioner is, the harder it becomes to control one’s own mind, since his or her desires and fears are more intensely present in it. The ethical dimension is not only a realm of social refuge against the effects of ignorance and egotism, but it also is a source of support to practice. The quality of a person’s relations is inseparable from his or her meditation.
Mindfulness has become a powerful addition to the therapeutic instruments of psychology. In all probability, it emerged to occupy an important place, which shall still be attentively examined by other approaches that do not yet use it. Early presentations on mindfulness by Kabat-Zinn (1994) made a clear reference to their original context. But as a practice taken from a specific setting and used by another paradigm, in spite of the advantages that its new use has or may have in terms of promoting mental health, it has become obvious that some aspects of this appropriation require further scrutiny and criticism (Grossman and Van Dam, 2011).
In this regard, Grossman and Van Dam (2011) described how one may preserve a predominant paradigm without tackling the challenges implicit to newly appropriated contents. For instance, the renunciation of the pleasures that result from human desire is a central aspect of Buddhist thought, but nothing contrasts as much with such renunciation than the way of life of Western societies, in which a hyper-stimulation of desire occurs through the consumer society’s messages. Thus, even when mindfulness is associated with well-being divested from external stimuli and is presented as merely a health practice, one still omits the contradictions proposed by Buddhist philosophy regarding the relations between happiness and consumption. Thus, an uncritical appropriation of mindfulness would still run the risk of preserving some central beliefs of our culture and consolidate a human ideal based on the search for material success, personal assertion, a way of life centered on desire and consumerism, and a notion of happiness associated with immediate pleasure, with its resulting notion of suffering focused on specific and nonuniversal causes.
Since mindfulness is an organic part of an understanding about how to live the human life, the attitude of selecting some of its aspects such as attention, presence, concentration, and breathing and then applying them to interventions that are coherent with a reductionist paradigm, as if they were a specific remedy for a specific disease, is not only problematic from the epistemological standpoint (Grossman and Van Dam, 2011) but also deprives us from some deep implications for a better understanding of the potentials of human consciousness.
In the psychotherapeutic universe, relief from suffering through the practice of mindfulness is a result of an individual’s ability to observe his or her own mental flow in a detached way. The ability to relativize one’s excessive clinging to specific thoughts can change the disturbing feelings that accompany them, thus alleviating suffering and enabling the attainment of therapeutic aims. But when a detached perception of things is deepened and coupled with reflections regarding happiness and the potentials of consciousness, one may radically change the relation with his or her own desires. This is the point when the therapist’s contradiction emerges: What, then is the therapist’s commitment? Is it to fix a dysfunction and return an individual to normality, or is it to accompany one’s patient in a radical questioning on the dysfunction of normality itself?
This question leads us to reflect on some serious implications for the consumer’s role of a person seeking therapeutic help. Therapists seem not to be in a condition to avoid a political choice which would not actually frighten Buddhist meditators, but could confront the beliefs of therapists. This question can lead to existential inquiries such as “who I am?,” which may reach beyond the paradigmatic boundaries of some approaches upon which the psychotherapeutic practice is structured. To what extent would a practitioner of these approaches regarded as legitimate representatives of the scientific, neuropsychological, and materialistic perspectives feel at ease to integrate the roots of the Buddhist views regarding the nature of the mind into their practice? Perhaps, such attempts to integrate them would produce unbearable inner tensions in their theoretical nuclei and indicate that one’s alleged scientific neutrality is, in fact, a political choice.
In this sense, the convenience of selecting techniques that are dissociated from an accompanying view of human nature can lead therapeutic practice to relatively superficial consequences, despite the coherence between these techniques and the aims they seek to attain. However, we must admit that by fostering mindfulness only up to its first stage, we may be overlooking the most important results this practice can offer: namely, a path in a gradually mature level of experience to the relevant existential questions of life. The changes that such a path would demand in terms of therapeutic training still seem to exceed the scope of the leading recognized models, since what is at stake, in essence, is which notion of human being one is validating.
An important distinction between the organic role of mindfulness in Buddhist practice and the use of mindfulness as a therapeutic instrument is the notion of inner peace. From the Buddhist perspective, mindfulness (samatha) must be deepened in a high degree. Its practice can be taken to a point lasting many hours and evolve to states of insight (vipasyana) that lead to great inner peace and wisdom (Thrangu Rimpoche, 1998). Peace and wisdom actually deserve to be included in the therapeutic projects of those approaches interested in mindfulness, or would such inclusion be an excessive transgression of the limits between science and religion?
The notion of ego is another crucial issue. The ego sense is rarely questioned in the therapeutic field. Questions in this regard are usually directed at the functionality and efficiency of the way individuals experience their identity. The attempt to refine this sense of identity, divesting it from dysfunctional beliefs about oneself, and consequently increasing its functionally, is certainly a laudable aim. However, a different perspective emerges from a cardinal motivation behind the Buddhist view, namely to think more about the well-being of others than of one’s own well-being. This motivation opens a field for empathetic and deeply compassionate experiences, in such a way that deepening into meditation with a view to the happiness of others enables the experience of love (Thich Nhat Hanh, 1976, 1992a).
Psychologists must seriously reflect whether the “aseptic” use, so to speak, of a technique to increase therapeutic efficiency, without upsetting the internal coherence of the paradigm that employs such techniques, is actually perpetuating a macro and universal dimension of psychic suffering in order to preserve one’s theoretical foundations. Are we finally reaching a new chapter in the history of the dichotomy between religion and science? Maybe it is possible to bring such a dichotomy to a new level and transform it into a dialogue in which not only mutual respect but also mutual cooperation can be attained.
The Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh dispenses with dogmas centered on beliefs, maybe he can become a key interlocutor in this new stage. Buddhism has distinguished itself in many countries for its respect for local cultures and its integration of these local cultures and its views. Unfortunately, the exact opposite might be taking place among us in the West, namely an appropriation in favor of a mentality in crisis, which seeks its cure with an important Buddhist instrument, but only as long as it will not be more than another instrument.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflict of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.