Spacious Awareness in Mahāyāna Buddhism and Its Role in the Modern Mindfulness Movement
This paper investigates a particular understanding of "awareness" in Mahāyāna Buddhism and its relevance for secular mindfulness. We will focus on the Zen and Mahāmudrā traditions which share a view of awareness as an innate wakefulness, described using metaphors of space, light and clarit...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge
[2017]
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| In: |
Contemporary buddhism
Year: 2017, Volume: 18, Issue: 2, Pages: 455-480 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | This paper investigates a particular understanding of "awareness" in Mahāyāna Buddhism and its relevance for secular mindfulness. We will focus on the Zen and Mahāmudrā traditions which share a view of awareness as an innate wakefulness, described using metaphors of space, light and clarity. These traditions encourage practices in which the meditator rests in this spacious "non-dual" awareness: Zen's "just sitting" and Mahāmudrā's "open presence". We explore the role of this approach within secular mindfulness, in particular Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). We see how Jon Kabat-Zinn brought influences from Zen into the creation of MBSR, in his approach of "non-doing", and in the practice of "choiceless awareness", akin to Zen's "just sitting". We then examine how "open presence" meditation is developed in the Tibetan Mahāmudrā tradition, using a sixteenth-century text Mahāmudrā: The Moonlight as our focal point. Turning to interviews with leading UK mindfulness teachers with Tibetan Buddhist training, we explore how this understanding of awareness can infuse meditation with a sense of "space", and how that manifests in their teaching. We argue that a willingness to explore the "space of awareness" can help mindfulness to offer a transformative path beyond stress reduction and therapy. |
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| ISSN: | 1476-7953 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Contemporary buddhism
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/14639947.2017.1379937 |