Abuse of the Buddhist term "mindfulness"

(Natasha Yehenara) Psychology's corporate takeover of Buddhist mindfulness (sati)

• "Mindfulness" defined by Ven. Analayo Bhikkhu
• The field of psychology appropriated (hijacked) the Buddhist term "mindfulness" (originally sati but now just "awareness" or "paying attention")
• Anyone who thinks it was a commonplace practice in ancient India during the time of the Buddha should look up the Hindu definition of sati, which reveals it used to mean throwing a wife on the pyre when her husband died 😲
• The great work of Jon Kabbat-Zin to help therapists led to the unexpected disconnection of the practice with anything, as if it could be a standalone endeavor
• "Bare attention" is a component of sati, but it must be coupled with dispassionate (unbiased) looking on, free of greed, hatred, and delusion (wanting, aversion, and confusion)
• What is one to be mindful of to advance to insight, realization, and awakening? The Buddha pointed at four things: body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects. What does this mean? Psychology cannot tell us, but the Dhamma can
• Who needs Dhamma when we have a corporate bottom line to advance, productivity to raise, and mental health symptoms to abate?
• Why call it "mindfulness," Psychology? Why not pick a new name for what you've turned this into?

Ego (buddhism podcast) The Buddha didn't teach us only to be "present." He taught us to remember (recollection, memory, bearing in mind, the faculty of sati)

On the road to Berkeley like Benji (The Graduate)

Personally, in college at UC Berkeley many years ago, I took a "Buddhist Psychology" course in the department and was so excited to finally be able to learn what "cognition" meant and what the Buddha had to say about all these psychological things. Our assigned textbook, written by a psychologist, was called Mindfulness. "All right," I thought, "I'm finally going to advance in my practice and being in college is going to help me. Imagine my surprise when, as I read, I did not recognize what was being called "mindfulness." It did not align with all the translated ancient texts I had read and was continuing to read from the Buddhist Publication Society and the Pali Text Society. A few years in the future I would even visit BPS Editor Bhikkhu Bodhi in Kandy, Sri Lanka, to ask him about all this.

The Art and Science of Mindfulness

Not yet having him as a direct resource, except through his translations and BPS newsletter messages, I asked my professor in class about how I was left perplexed by reading our textbook. She looked at me and shrugged, "Of course! This "mindfulness" isn't the Buddha's mindfulness. It is psychology's," she explained. I looked around and many students were nodding their heads in agreement. "There are two mindfulnesses?!" I balked. "There are now" was the implicit answer. "Does Berkeley know about this? Why is this class called Buddhist psychology if all we're going to talk about is Western psychology?" She winked because she was subverting the system and introducing Buddhist ideas back into class, but we had to know that the new mindfulness had been taken, changed, and applied in rigorous scientific ways to the behavioral sciences, therapy, counseling, and the mental health field. Sure, it wasn't the Buddha's mindfulness, but that's because it had to be stripped of all spirituality and/or religiosity to get by the gatekeepers of the university system. What a gyp.

• The Art and Science of Mindfulness: Integrating Mindfulness Into Psychology and the Helping Professions (Shauna L, Shapiro, Linda E. Carlson
• Amazon.com: psychology mindfulness textbooks