The short version: mindfulness is Buddhist in origin and modern in form. The word translates the Pali sati, and the early discourses make the “four establishments of mindfulness” a central practice.[1] But sati meant something closer to keeping the teaching in mind than to non-judgmental awareness, and it sat inside a monastic path aimed at ending rebirth. The mindfulness taught in hospitals and apps descends mainly from a twentieth-century Burmese movement that brought meditation to lay people, and from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s 1979 course at a Massachusetts hospital, which removed Buddhist doctrine on purpose.[2][3] Both sides of today’s argument appeal to a “traditional” practice that was itself largely recent.
The evidence for where mindfulness comes from
What sati meant in the early texts
The Pali canon defines the faculty of mindfulness not as present-moment awareness but as a kind of memory. Saṃyutta Nikāya 48.9:
idha, bhikkhave, ariyasāvako satimā hoti paramena satinepakkena samannāgato cirakatampi cirabhāsitampi saritā anussaritā.
“It’s when a noble disciple is mindful. They have utmost mindfulness and alertness, and can remember and recall what was said and done long ago.” (Bhikkhu Sujato’s translation.)[4]
What it proves. That sati, related to the Sanskrit smṛti, “memory,” kept a sense of remembering and bearing in mind. Rupert Gethin argues that in the early texts it means holding the object of attention, and the teaching about it, steadily in mind, a sense that the modern definition of non-judgmental, present-centred awareness only partly captures.[5] The English word “mindfulness” was chosen for it by T. W. Rhys Davids in 1881.[5] Majority
The four establishments of mindfulness
The main early discourse on the practice, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya 10, with a longer version as Dīgha Nikāya 22), opens:
ekāyano ayaṃ, bhikkhave, maggo sattānaṃ visuddhiyā, sokaparidevānaṃ samatikkamāya, dukkhadomanassānaṃ atthaṅgamāya, ñāyassa adhigamāya, nibbānassa sacchikiriyāya, yadidaṃ cattāro satipaṭṭhānā.
In Bhikkhu Sujato’s translation: “Mendicants, the four kinds of mindfulness meditation are the path to convergence. They are in order to purify sentient beings, to get past sorrow and crying, to make an end of pain and sadness, to discover the system, and to realize extinguishment.”[1]
The four are contemplation of the body, of feelings, of the mind and of dhammas, the categories of the teaching. The body section includes the breath and posture, but also reflecting on the body as a bag of impurities and imagining one’s own body as a corpse in a charnel ground, bloated, eaten by animals, reduced to bones.[1]
What it proves. That early mindfulness practice had a stated goal, nirvana, and a doctrinal content: seeing the body and mind as impermanent, unsatisfactory and not-self. Breath awareness is in the text; so are corpses and the four noble truths. The secular versions keep the first and drop the others. Consensus
The Burmese revolution in lay meditation
For most of Buddhist history intensive meditation was the work of a minority of monks; lay people practised giving, precepts and ritual. That changed in colonial Burma. After the British removed the last Burmese king in 1885, the monk Ledi Sayadaw (1846–1923) argued that lay people could and should practise insight meditation themselves, and wrote simple manuals to teach them.[2] In the next generation Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–82) developed a method of noting each bodily and mental event and ran a Rangoon centre where thousands of lay people did intensive retreats from 1949.[6] Through Mahasi, the lay teacher U Ba Khin and their Western students, this movement became the main source of the “insight meditation” taught in the West after the 1970s (§12).[2][7] Majority
The hospital clinic
Jon Kabat-Zinn, a molecular biologist who practised Zen and insight meditation, opened the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979 and taught an eight-week course to patients with chronic pain and illness, later called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).[3][8] His best-known definition:
“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”[9]
What it proves. That the modern definition was written for a secular, clinical audience. Kabat-Zinn has said that he deliberately removed Buddhist vocabulary so the method could enter hospitals, while holding that the dharma remained in it unnamed.[8] In 2002 Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and John Teasdale combined MBSR with cognitive therapy as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for people with recurrent depression.[10] Consensus
Does it work?
Clinical research is a separate question from history, but it explains why mindfulness spread. A 2014 review of 47 randomised trials in JAMA Internal Medicine found moderate evidence that mindfulness programmes reduce anxiety, depression and pain, only low-strength evidence for effects on stress, and no evidence that they work better than other active treatments such as exercise or medication.[11] For MBCT, a 2016 analysis of individual patient data from nine trials found that 38 percent of those who received it relapsed into depression within 60 weeks, against 49 percent of those who did not.[12] The evidence is strongest for preventing depressive relapse, and much weaker for many of the claims made in workplace and app marketing. Majority
A short timeline
| Date | What happens | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| c. 400–200 BCE | Satipaṭṭhāna teaching in the early discourses; sati as one factor of the path[1][4] | Majority |
| 1881 | T. W. Rhys Davids translates sati as “mindfulness”[5] | Consensus |
| c. 1900–1923 | Ledi Sayadaw’s manuals bring insight meditation to Burmese lay people[2] | Majority |
| 1949 | Mahasi Sayadaw’s lay meditation centre opens in Rangoon[6] | Consensus |
| 1979 | Kabat-Zinn opens the Stress Reduction Clinic (MBSR)[3] | Consensus |
| 1994 | Kabat-Zinn’s popular definition of mindfulness[9] | Consensus |
| 2002 | Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for recurrent depression[10] | Consensus |
| 2014–2016 | Major reviews: moderate effects; relapse prevention best supported[11][12] | Majority |
| 2019 | Ronald Purser’s McMindfulness critique[13] | Consensus |
What scholars disagree about
Translation or loss? Supporters argue that MBSR does what Buddhists have always done, adapting the teaching to its audience, and that its clinical results speak for themselves.[8] Critics answer that removing ethics, the analysis of craving and the goal of liberation turns a path into a stress-management tool. Ronald Purser’s McMindfulness argues that corporate and state programmes teach people to adjust to stressful conditions rather than question them.[13] Contested
Was non-judgmental awareness ever Buddhist? Robert Sharf points out that Buddhist traditions themselves argued over whether bare, non-evaluative awareness is the goal or a mistake. Classical Theravāda analysis treats right mindfulness as wholesome and discerning, while some Chan and Tibetan teachings were attacked within their own traditions for valuing a mind without judgment. The modern definition picks one side of an old Buddhist debate.[14] Contested
Whose tradition? Historians add that the “authentic Buddhist meditation” invoked by both sides is itself largely the product of the Burmese reform and of what David McMahan calls Buddhist modernism, which presents Buddhism as rational, psychological and compatible with science.[7][2] Majority
Common misconceptions
- “Mindfulness is ancient Buddhist meditation, unchanged.” Its present form comes from the twentieth century, from Burmese lay movements and American clinics.[2][3]
- “Most Buddhists have always meditated.” For most of history most Buddhists were lay people who did not meditate intensively; mass lay meditation is modern.[2]
- “Sati means non-judgmental awareness.” Its oldest sense is closer to keeping in mind and recollecting.[4][5]
- “Science has proved mindfulness cures stress.” The best evidence shows modest effects, comparable to other active treatments, and a clearer benefit for preventing depressive relapse.[11][12]
Why it matters
Mindfulness is probably the Buddhist-derived practice best known outside Asia, and its history shows how a religion changes when it travels: a monastic technique aimed at ending rebirth became a lay practice in colonial Burma and then a clinical method in the United States. That is the series’ larger argument in miniature. The practice is old in its materials and new in its form.
For the modern Burmese movement, see Chapter 12: Colonial Encounter and Buddhist Modernism; for mindfulness, the West and its critics, see Chapter 13: Global and Contemporary Buddhism.
References
- ^ a b c d MN 10 — Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya). c. 400–200 BCE. Pali. The four establishments of mindfulness: body, feelings, mind and dhammas, presented as the direct path to purification and nirvana; includes breath, posture, the body's impurity and charnel-ground contemplations. read the text
- ^ a b c d e f g Erik Braun The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw. University of Chicago Press, 2013. How lay meditation became a mass practice in colonial Burma.
- ^ a b c d Jon Kabat-Zinn Full Catastrophe Living. Delacorte, 1990. The MBSR course in book form, from its founder.
- ^ a b c SN 48.9 — Paṭhamavibhaṅga Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya). c. 400–200 BCE. Pali. Defines the faculty of mindfulness as being able to remember and recall what was said and done long ago: sati as keeping in mind. read the text
- ^ a b c d Rupert Gethin "On Some Definitions of Mindfulness". Contemporary Buddhism 12(1): 263–279, 2011. doi What sati meant in Pali texts and how far modern definitions depart from it.
- ^ a b Ingrid Jordt Burma's Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power. Ohio University Press, 2007. The Mahasi movement and its place in Burmese society.
- ^ a b David L. McMahan The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford University Press, 2008. The standard account of modern Buddhism as detraditionalised, demythologised and psychologised.
- ^ a b c Jeff Wilson Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture. Oxford University Press, 2014. How mindfulness was adapted, marketed and medicalised in the United States.
- ^ a b Wherever You Go, There You Are — Jon Kabat-Zinn. 1994. English. Defines mindfulness as "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally" — the definition of the secular movement.
- ^ a b Zindel V. Segal, J. Mark G. Williams & John D. Teasdale Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression. Guilford Press, 2002. The manual that turned MBSR into a therapy for recurrent depression.
- ^ a b c Madhav Goyal et al. "Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis". JAMA Internal Medicine 174(3): 357–368, 2014. open access 47 randomised trials: moderate evidence for effects on anxiety, depression and pain; no advantage over other active treatments.
- ^ a b c Willem Kuyken et al. "Efficacy of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy in Prevention of Depressive Relapse: An Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis". JAMA Psychiatry 73(6), 2016. doi Nine trials: relapse within 60 weeks in 38 percent with MBCT against 49 percent without.
- ^ a b Ronald E. Purser McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. Repeater Books, 2019. The best-known critique of secular mindfulness.
- ^ Robert H. Sharf "Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters)". Transcultural Psychiatry 52(4): 470–484, 2015. doi Shows that Buddhist traditions themselves argued over non-judgmental awareness, and traces modern mindfulness to the Burmese reform.