Emperors Clothes Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a word. It is currently a very popular word. As the other papers in this volume amply document, mindfulness has become a magnet for research in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, and it is a hot topic in clinical psychology. Many Buddhist groups have joined in the enthusiasm, taking the research to be proof that " meditation works " (" Shambhala Sun, " 2012) and/or that society is undergoing a " mindfulness revolution " (Boyce, 2011). With enthusiasm, however, can come confusion. Having a word may make us think there is a " thing " that is the word's meaning; having definitions for the word (even if they are multiple and divergent) may lull us into thinking we (or someone) knows that meaning; having trainings with that word in the title, reassures the researcher that the thing the word means is now at hand; and once researchers can design measurement instruments that vary with the training, the whole process may become sacrosanct and largely closed to further questioning. It is time to reopen all of this to scrutiny. Why are people not already mindful? Might Buddhism, the origin of mindfulness practices, have anything illuminating to reveal about its Western uses? Where does mindfulness fit into Buddhist training of attention or of other virtues? What specific practices are taught in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR, Kabat-Zinn, 1990) and similar trainings, and what clues do we have about how the people who go through 40