Mindfulness Revisited: A Buddhist-Based Conceptualization

The word ‘mindfulness’ refers to a psychological trait or quality of consciousness, while ‘mindful’ refers to a psychological state or process of being aware. Mindfulness as a type of meditation originated in Buddhist India around 500 BCE. The term is a translation of the Pali word sati and the Sanskrit word smrti, which means ‘to remember’.

Mind in the West is commonly equated with thoughts themselves, but in Buddhist contemplative science it is that spacious awareness in which thoughts arise, capable of reflecting on itself (meta-cognitive awareness) and recognizing the true nature of things (meta-cognitive insight).

Popular and scientific definitions of mindfulness neglect its traditional aim of insight, focusing instead on simple mindfulness understood as: “clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of percep-tion” (Nyanaponika Thera, 1972, p. 5);