A Practical Guide to Mindfulness (Tessa Watt) / quote 1 of 9
The Buddhist roots of mindfulness
The practice of mindfulness goes back thousands of years. Many spiritual traditions have encouraged presence in the moment as a way to be in touch with our inner selves, or the divine. Buddhism has made mindfulness a core part of its teachings, more so than any other tradition. Buddhist thinkers have taken great interest over the centuries in the way the human mind works, developing methods of training the mind to be more present, focused and aware. The practical techniques used in current mindfulness training come largely from the Buddhist tradition of meditation, along with elements drawn from the more body-oriented Indian discipline of hatha yoga. Since the 1960s, the political situation in Asian countries like Vietnam and Tibet has sent Buddhist teachers into exile in the West, where they’ve taken up the challenge of teaching new audiences. Meditation practices which were traditionally done by monks in a forest or monastery have been adapted for busy Westerners with jobs and families. Influential Buddhist teachers have included the Japanese Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, the visionary Tibetan Chögyam Trungpa, and of course the well known Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet.