The Importance Of Mindfulness In Buddhist Culture

Mindfulness is a state of moment by moment awareness, achieved by the mind when a person learns to successfully acknowledge their bodily sensations, feelings and thoughts without acting upon, judging or believing them. Much of Buddhist culture is tied in with mindfulness and mental repair as many traditions have strong links to this. When it comes to achieving mindfulness in the Buddhist sense, one must engage with religion as the process is considered to be a highly spiritual one. Although modern, western self help movements are predominantly secular, there is much that these movements can learn from nonwestern cultural traditions of mindfulness and mental repair, both religious and secular. MBSR (Mindfulness-based stress reduction) is one …show more content…
Insight meditation retreats have been known to positively affect the lives of many who choose to participate, Buddhist or not, due to the increase in general awareness. The term ‘insight mediation’ otherwise known as ‘Vipassana’ means ‘seeing clearly or deeply’ when translated, ‘It was rediscovered by Gotama Buddha more than 2500 years ago and was taught by him as a universal remedy for universal ills’ (dhamma.org, 2012) This form of meditation focuses on self observation in an attempt to reach a balanced mind. This is taught as part of an intense ten-day residential course, open to anyone that is interested and willing to participate in the proclaimed, difficult but engaging activity. The mind must first reach a level of calm in order to effectively observe the self, this is then followed by an awareness of one’s breathing and other bodily sensations. When the body is calmer, this is when one can participate in Vipassana which is being aware of bodily sensations and understanding them but not reacting to them. When participants acquire this ability, they are then taught about kindness and goodwill towards everyone. ‘The entire practice is actually a mental training. Just as we use physical exercises to improve our bodily health, Vipassana can be used to develop a healthy mind.’ (dhamma.org, 2012) A lot can be learned from this technique for achieving mindfulness, the course is not a commercial …show more content…
Shifting the belief in sense of self from a western view to a Buddhist perspective, may eliminate this issue all together. With no ‘self’ and no issues surrounding the idea of ‘sense of self’ there can therefore be no self-hatred. This may be completely effective as true faith in this belief would need to be attained but it could be the beginning of minimizing these negative ways of thinking by incorporating this specific, nonwestern perspective into modern self help movements. However, this is not seen as one of the main activities or beliefs one should partake in, in order to achieve mindfulness, ‘Attentional control applied in selective and sustained attention is the central component of mindfulness. (Dusana Dorjee, 2010), this means that one should have the ability to choose what they pay attention to and this skill should be used for focusing on certain topics and activities for a continuous amount of time without distraction. With further ability to filter out any irrelevant or unnecessary stimuli and focus in on one in particular. Many meditation techniques still practiced today are traditions, originating from Buddhism that enable the participant to achieve this attentional control that is sought after. Although stemming from the spiritual roots of Buddhism, meditation is practiced by many around the world,