Delving Deeper: The Roots of Mindfulness Practice
"Practices of reflection, contemplation, meditation, and awareness have long been studied and developed within spiritually oriented communities, including those belonging to the world's many religious traditions. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and others have, in various times and places, generated practical methods for cultivating mindful states of consciousness.
"For example:
• "Hindu-oriented yogas, which for millennia have influenced the development of a wide variety of personal and relational characteristics — including physical strength, mastery of physiological processes, inner peace, knowledge, and devotion — continue to be practiced and refined today.
• "Buddhist forms of meditation like Vipassana (in recent times also known as Insight or Mindfulness meditation) and Zen focus on the direct apprehension of experiences and reactions as they occur in this present moment of awareness. Buddhist practices also frequently prescribe different forms of sitting and walking that can give one, among other things, insight into the nature of reality and existence.
• "Jewish Kabbalah invites mystical contemplation of sacred verses, words, letters, ciphers, and miraculous works that opens practitioners to a more profound understanding of, and relationship with, God and creation.
• "Since the Middle Ages, Christians have approached mindfulness through practices of solitude, prayer, fasting, and contemplation within and beyond communal monasteries and cloistered communities.
• "Sufism, a form of spirituality that emerged from Islam (but is not universally accepted by all strains of Muslim tradition), is generally concerned with direct experience of the Divine through specific dispositions and pietism to spark the development of a variety of new movements (e.g., Transcendentalism, Christian Science, New Thought, and Universalism) that were interested in the personal exploration and developmental processes of mind, perception, and reality."
