Mindfulness in Modernity

 I listened to a presentation on mindfulness tonight, and it was quite interesting to ponder. It described how modern mindfulness movement has gone away from the original Buddhist notion of mindfulness (satti), especially in overemphasizing 'bare awareness' or attention without the other aspects of Buddhist teachings, such as ethics and wisdom. Reflecting on it, I do believe it's true that most people who learn about mindfulness in a modern context probably don't venture very far into other Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths. This is the case because there is a general fear that presenting Buddhist teachings might come across as too 'religious' for a secular culture. What we have as a result is a kind of diluted version of mindfulness which does not stress the underlying reasons for mindfulness itself.
   To the credit of the pioneers of the mindfulness movement like Jon Kabat-Zinn, I do believe that mindfulness as a movement has done a lot of things to help people, particularly those who are dealing with chronic pain. As I mentioned in the class today, not a lot of people who have pain are willing to listen to a long lecture about why the pain got there in the first place, what is suffering, etc. Sometimes the meditative practices that are introduced to people are designed first and foremost to help them deal with the conditions they happen to have in that moment as well as accept their body and conditions as they are. Kabat-Zinn rarely if ever talks about concepts like 'karma' in his presentation of mindfulness, but he does introduce the idea of how chronic pain sufferers can come to accept their total selves, pain and all, without making the mistake of identifying a sense of self with that pain.
   I tend to feel that there are more concepts discussed in the mindfulness movement than what the critics may imagine. Yes, bare awareness is stressed as an essential component to the practice; however, other concepts do need to scaffold that awareness, such as unconditional acceptance, non-striving, abiding within/embracing the current state of mind and body. And while these aren't necessarily uniquely Buddhist concepts, they nonetheless create the tenor for people to practice facing their situations with a compassionate frame of mind, rather than discriminating or categorizing their experiences in order to distance from them. I think these are the positive aspects of the mindfulness movement: not so much the techniques as it is the atmosphere of compassion and acceptance that it has fostered in people.