Ethics, obstacles and commodification in mindfulness practice, training and science
Speaker: Paul Grossman, PhD
Format: Audio & Slides

As 'mindfulness' reaches ever broader acceptance in society and science, opportunities abound to reorient and recalibrate our knowledge of the human psyche, behavior and actions in the world: On the one hand, a powerful approach to phenomenological investigation has been rediscovered, often capable of enriching the experience and understanding of our inner lives and our outer worlds. On the other hand, this approach—the practice of mindfulness—engenders ways of thinking that deviate radically from those of the recent past, such as the recognition of a profoundly interwoven relationship between the cognitive and the ethical, or stark insights into the limitations of positivist scientific traditions and methods in psychology. Nevertheless, potential for such innovations of thinking and being in the world relies upon the extent to which facilitators of mindfulness-based programs and scientists examining mindfulness remain cognizant of the ethical and soteriological foundations of the Buddhist percept, so as not to denature or reify mindfulness to make it fit into staid academic or marketplace models, methods and theories (i.e. reducing mindfulness to cognitive dimensions or to neurobiological substrates; conceiving of mindfulness programs as medical or psychotherapeutic instruments of cure).