Mindfulness Training as a Secular Form of Spirituality
Mindfulness Training as a Secular Form of Spirituality

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this article is to present mindfulness training as a secular form of spirituality. In the first part of the text, we show the Buddhist sources of mindfulness training. The author of the secular conceptualisation of mindfulness is the American physician Jon Kabat-Zinn (born 1944), who in 1979 opened the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. Kabat-Zinn has practised Buddhist meditation techniques with teachers such as Philip Kapleau, Seung Sahn, Joseph Goldstein, and Jack Kornfield. An example of a secular conceptualisation of Buddhist meditation practice is mindfulness of breathing. In the Buddhist context, the practice of mindfulness of breathing is aimed at freeing oneself from attachments and leading to the experience of insight/awakening. From the perspective of mindfulness training, this meditation has only secular dimensions, related to psychological and existential well-being. In the second part of the article, we show current problems with the secular conceptualisation of mindfulness. The most serious criticism concerns the lack of explicit consideration of an ethical code. A reasonable move may be to adopt the five Buddhist precepts as a basic ethical codex, interpreted, however, in a secular, non-religious way, without any deeper involvement in the Buddhist worldview. The five Buddhist precepts are so universal that they can be adopted in a secular form by both non-religious people and religious people, e.g., Christians.

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