" I'm still not sure I've got it" - a common phrase we hear when we offer mindfulness courses and perhaps for you as you look at our webpages. There can be a slippery and intangible quality to the paradoxically 'simple' practice of mindfulness.
Barry Mason (a family therapist) whose paper we link to above, points out that as Professionals, as well as people, we can be overly attracted to notions of certainty: it can make us feel safe. Mindfulness - becoming more simply aware of moment by moment experience can expose us to a more uncertain world of fluid and fleeting, changeable, thoughts, feelings and sensations.
And in these webpages although we have used the metaphor of 'the door'- we may well find that whatever single door we go through - we will find a room with a lot more doors. In other words while mindfulness can feel fluid - it can also feel diverse, with lots of threads and connections that might be of interest.
For example: the domains of science, or spirituality, may of course be at times wholly separate, antagonistic even. Yet mindfulness invites the unsettling of fixed boundaries.
So, you can find Buddhist teachers who write about and promote neuroscience, and scientists who embrace spiritual perspectives. Beyond that there are increasingly writers and practitioners developing new threads and connections with (and friendly critics of) mindfulness, for example linking with western philosophical ideas, or promoting a less 'cognitive' and more social and relational approach to mindfulness, or linking mindfulness with other psychotherapeutic traditions (such as psychoanalysis). Here are just a couple of links to some of these people:
Barry Mason (a family therapist) whose paper we link to above, points out that as Professionals, as well as people, we can be overly attracted to notions of certainty: it can make us feel safe. Mindfulness - becoming more simply aware of moment by moment experience can expose us to a more uncertain world of fluid and fleeting, changeable, thoughts, feelings and sensations.
And in these webpages although we have used the metaphor of 'the door'- we may well find that whatever single door we go through - we will find a room with a lot more doors. In other words while mindfulness can feel fluid - it can also feel diverse, with lots of threads and connections that might be of interest.
For example: the domains of science, or spirituality, may of course be at times wholly separate, antagonistic even. Yet mindfulness invites the unsettling of fixed boundaries.
So, you can find Buddhist teachers who write about and promote neuroscience, and scientists who embrace spiritual perspectives. Beyond that there are increasingly writers and practitioners developing new threads and connections with (and friendly critics of) mindfulness, for example linking with western philosophical ideas, or promoting a less 'cognitive' and more social and relational approach to mindfulness, or linking mindfulness with other psychotherapeutic traditions (such as psychoanalysis). Here are just a couple of links to some of these people:
- Stephen Batchelor
- David Loy
modern philosophy, Buddhism and the realities of our
contemporary 'Western' lives, in books such as: 'Money Sex
War Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution'.