The steady-growing wave of public interest and psychological research in the subject of mindfulness could not be happening at a more opportune time. It is no secret that today we are more distracted, stressed-out and as evident by the aforementioned, not too adept at managing this imbalance. The result is an influx in the rates of mental and physical ailments we experience and needless to say, it is time we got a handle on things. Taking back control of our health and well-being is as simple as paying attention to it, and a plethora of research endorses this prescription. Mindfulness, however, is more than simply attending to what is occurring in the present moment; moreover, this simplified definition is actually quite deceptive and harmful …show more content…
Two of the oldest languages known to man, Pali and Sanskrit are widely studied because they are the languages of much of the original Buddhist literature. Within the Buddhist perspective, mindfulness or Right Mindfulness (the seventh lesson of the Noble Eightfold Path) emphasizes a close and constant connection between memory and attention (Thera, 1962; Bodhi, 2011; Ruseva, 2017). A crucial aspect in Buddhist practice, while many have argued that mindfulness’ contribution to psychological health in the West would be more fully appreciated through an understanding of its’ conceptualization in Buddhism (Vago & Silbersweig, 2012; Lomas, 2017), there is nothing particularly Buddhist about paying attention. Mindfulness is, as Jon Kabat Zinn described, “truly universal” – being mindful is concerned more with simply the nature of the mind and our capacity for knowing, rather than any specific ideology, philosophy, religious belief system or cultural doctrine (2005). So although it has been systematically articulated and emphasized most in the Buddhist tradition, mindfulness is accessible to everyone; and this secularized wave of understanding became apparent in Western society following Kabat Zinn’s ground-breaking modality, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) – an intervention intended for physical pain and