The growing impact of mindfulness in contemporary society is evidenced by an increasing number of publications on the subject and its ever increasing presence on media platforms. Mindfulness articles grew from a “negligible” number in 1980 to approximately 1,203 articles in 2019 alone (American Mindfulness Research Association, 2019). A recent search on Google of the term “mindfulness” generated 266,000,000 items (December 6, 2020). At the same time, its popularity has given rise to questions about the practice of mindfulness in secular settings, including the following:

1. the place and role given to the Buddha’s teachings (Dhamma) in the current articulation and delivery of mindfulness;
2. the commoditization and commercialization of mindfulness;
3. the scientific rigor and quality of, and the methodologies used in, mindfulness research;
4. the training and quality of the teachers and instructors; and
5. the adverse effects reported in some studies of meditation and mindfulness practices.

Why have these questions, this disquiet, arisen? Is the love affair with mindfulness over, or has the practice of mindfulness matured and come of age? Is the general public getting disillusioned about mindfulness, or are they seeking a better understanding of the practice? Can mindfulness be efficaciously employed in settings beyond its traditional contexts, and in contemporary settings, beyond its primary use with mental and physical health, and stress reduction? Many of these questions and concerns are similarly raised and addressed by the contributors in this special issue.

I was given a wonderful opportunity to explore these issues when the Editor in Chief Scott D. Churchill invited me to be the guest editor of this special issue on mindfulness for The Humanistic Psychologist. We requested for it to become a special “double-sized issue” in order to have the space to adequately explore the issues outlined above, and we were informed that this would be the first time that the American Psychological Association (APA), as publisher of the journal, has agreed to a “double-sized” issue. I invited one of the contributors, Seth Zuihō Segall, to coguest edit this special issue. With his extensive experience and knowledge of mindfulness and the Dhamma in Eastern and Western contexts, psychology, and spiritual practice, Seth’s generosity with his time, expertise, and judicious feedback was invaluable.

While I am grateful for this singular opportunity to contribute, I am also mindful of the weighty responsibility for such a consequential project. I deliberated for a long time on how the special issue could provide a platform for a meaningful and timely discourse on mindfulness, for example:

1. How can we better understand the practice of mindfulness in contemporary settings?
2. What has given rise to the increasing popularity, and in recent times, to some of the concerns surrounding the practice?
3. How can the Dhamma and the Buddhist roots of mindfulness practice be better brought to light, understood, and integrated into the contemporary practice of mindfulness?
4. What are some of the important differences between the mindfulness practices in Buddhist and contemporary settings?
5. How can mindfulness contribute and serve society in meaningful ways in the future?

These reflections and questions were uppermost in my mind in the extensive discussions I held with Chief Reverend Dhammaratana informally, and recently in an interview in Malaysia in 2019. Chief Reverend Dhammaratana has been the Chief High Priest of Malaysia since 2006, and the chief resident abbot of the Buddhist Maha Vihara (temple), one the most important Theravada Buddhist centers in Kuala Lumpur. In this section I refer to Chief Reverend Dhammaratana simply as “Chief” (an affectionate and customary address by all who know him). Chief is a mentor and a source of inspiration. This special issue is published with thanks to him.

Chief is the cochairman of the Inter-Faith Group. In 1994, he founded the Ti-Ratana Welfare Society, and today the society is one of the biggest, independent, voluntary NGOs in Malaysia. The society runs three children homes, homes for the elderly, shelters for women, a home for the disabled, and free mobile health care clinics for people in rural communities (Ti-Ratana Welfare Society, n.d.). Given his longstanding vocation as a Buddhist monk, his leadership in the Malaysian and International Buddhist communities, and his services to the public, my talks with Chief proved to be invaluable.

I discussed with Chief the practice of meditation and mindfulness in Buddhist and secular settings, and how this practice can be better employed to reflect the Buddha’s original teachings and to reduce human suffering. The main takeaway message I understood from Chief was that the Buddha emphasizes the importance of practicing virtues and positive Dhamma practices such as the “three pillars”—generosity (dana), morality and ethics (sila). and mental cultivation and development involving meditation and mindfulness (bhavana) holistically:

Mindfulness is actually a Buddhist way of being and doing. We have to practice generosity, morality, mental cultivation and development concurrently. This is mindfulness. In order to reduce our craving, the simple way is to practice generosity (dana) and slowly we will be able to understand and reduce all cravings. Craving is [psychological, biological and emotional]. Not only do we crave material things, but also mental things. So that’s where sila [ethics and morality] comes in. If we discipline ourselves by practicing ethics and morality, many negative things can be reduced. (Reverend Dhammaratana, personal communication, July 25, 2018)

According to Chief, unfortunately, many contemporary practitioners and teachers, especially in Western societies, have tended to focus primarily on meditation and mindfulness practices at the expense of engaging in other aspects of the Buddha’s teachings. He stressed that in order to be a mindful practitioner, these supportive Dhamma practices (e.g., the three pillars) and the Buddha’s teachings which promote positive values such as respect, appreciation, and gratitude must be cultivated and developed daily—“Often we’re told to remember to be grateful for blessings or good fortune. But Buddhism teaches us to be grateful, period. Gratitude is to be cultivated as a habit or attitude of mind not dependent on conditions” (Dhammaratana, 2019).

I could hardly contain my excitement, as “the penny dropped.” I gained the understanding and insight that some of the concerns and disquiet surrounding the practice of mindfulness have arisen because mindfulness is currently presented as a “stand-alone” technique and practice, rather than as a foundation for skillful living. My discussions with Chief on how to practice mindfulness, compassion, gratitude, ethics and so forth, which Chief embodied so wonderfully in his own life as “compassion in action” and his sagacity, was for me, without exaggeration, deeply meaningful, timely and largely informed the framework and approach adopted in this special issue.

The discussions with Chief pointed to a way to frame the approach for this special issue. I felt that it would be invaluable to revisit the practice of mindfulness in Buddhist and contemporary settings with various contributors in order to elicit a more nuanced understanding of these practices, and to re-envision the role of mindfulness going forward. This was the rationale for the title for this issue.

This special issue is for the most part conceptual and philosophical, meaning that it does not focus on exploring studies, research, surveys, and questionnaires, and so forth. Many reviews of these studies and research have already been published. Neither does it explore the history of mindfulness in the field of research, medicine, and society. Instead, its purpose is to show how mindfulness contributes to an attitude and promotes a pathway for a compassionate and harmonious life.

A summary of the approach for the issue which I shared with the contributors is set out below (B. Khong, personal communication, January 23, 2019):

Growing interest in mindfulness and the Buddha’s teachings (Dhamma), has catalyzed a number of concerns and questions which I hope that the contributors to this special issue can help to unpack. In my view, the current practice of mindfulness appeared to have become decontextualized from its Buddhist foundations, focusing primarily on mindfulness (rather than right mindfulness). As a result, the profundity of the Dhamma practice has been narrowed down to a predominantly Western scientific-based model and used as a kind of therapeutic technique concerned primarily with the reduction of the individual’s physical, emotional, and mental health suffering. The Buddha’s teachings on right mindfulness is intended to do more than just ameliorate mental health issues. Buddha “taught an attitude, not an affiliation.” (Khong, 2003)

According to Grossman (2011):

The Buddhist construct of mindfulness is the result of a 2,500 year development of a phenomenological approach oriented towards a gradual understanding of direct experience. Western psychologist-defined versions are less than 10 year-old attempts to objectify and quantify mindfulness. (p. 1035)

Cintita (2020) notes that mindfulness is often “taught in modern Buddhism as the core of the Dharma, or even as the entirety of the Dharma, but in fact often dislodged from the Dharma, as an entirely secular practice” (p. 8). Many of the conceptual foundations for the articles in this special issue are informed by the Buddha’s teachings (Dhamma) such as “The Eightfold Path,” “the three pillars” and the training of “meritorious deeds,” I provide below a brief explanation of the term “Dhamma” and the various Buddhist concepts. All the Buddhist concepts used in this introduction are Pali terms and italicized, except the word, Dhamma (Pali) or Dharma (Sanskrit) due to its frequent usage.

This special issue provides a wonderful opportunity for a much needed conversation about this important area of work. There are several distinctive, and for an academic journal, innovative features in the issue. The first is the number of contributions from the sangha (a Buddhist term normally used to refer to the community of monks and nuns), many of whom are scholar monks and chief abbots of International Buddhist centers. As far as I am aware, this is the first academic publication, where monks are invited as guests to “sit at the table” in concert with other contributors from a range of disciplines. The sangha members bring with them a wealth of understanding and practical experience of mindfulness and the Dhamma in their own lives, and in their service to others. Their pastoral authority in these areas, their wisdom and clarity of mind, simplicity of expression and scriptural-based explanations of the Buddha’s teachings afford “fresh eyes” and perspectives to mindfulness and Dhamma practices. I have learned and benefited tremendously from their contributions, and I hope that readers will do so as well.

Second, in order to appreciate the use of mindfulness beyond the prevailing domains of mental health, medicine, and stress reduction, another distinguished contributor, Chris Ruane, a former United Kingdom parliamentarian was invited to the table. Ruane, who was primarily responsible for introducing mindfulness in the United Kingdom parliament and was instrumental in the publication of the Mindful Nation Report (2015), adds another pair of fresh eyes and perspective to the use of mindfulness—in the political and national spheres.

Another distinguishing feature of this issue is that it is cross-disciplinary with the contributors coming from a variety of fields—psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, politics, medicine, the Buddhist monastic community, academia, research, education, palliative and pastoral care, and cancer care, and teaching mindfulness and the Dhamma in a variety of contexts and at various tertiary institutions. All the contributors have had extensive training, experience, and competencies in their fields and many of the contributors are currently engaged in more than one field concurrently. The reach of the issue in geographical terms is wide ranging, with the guest editors and the authors coming from Australia, Germany, Malaysia, United Kingdom, and United States.

Fourth, in their articles, the majority of the contributors sought to explicate the practice of mindfulness holistically—the Buddhist origins and foundations that inform and ground the practice, the employment of mindfulness (and the Dhamma) in their work, their creative use of various mindfulness exercises to reach the population that they are working with, and sharing some common-sense examples and anecdotes from their own experiences. Most of the authors have attempted to incorporate all dimensions of mindfulness in their writing with different authors making one dimension more thematic than the other dimensions.

The final outstanding feature of the issue is that at the core of each contribution is the authors’ passion and heart in their work. I encouraged them “to write from the heart” and to share their insights, personal experiences, and anecdotes with the readers. The authors took the recommendations on board. The reference to the heart is not intended to suggest sentimentality, nostalgia, or a sense of egotism arising from their years of practice in their chosen fields. Rather the heart speaks to the authenticity of the authors. Each of them has written a personal, heartfelt piece. The meaningfulness of their contributions lies not only in the innovative ways they have tried to help the people they work with, but in some cases, the ways they have worked with themselves. For some of the authors, their passion and commitment are reflected in their admissions of personal struggles, self-examination, and a sense of humility in trying to understand their motivation for engaging in this kind of work, and a continual reexamination of the work that they actually doing. This openness is in keeping with the spirit of the Dhamma about cultivating “a beginner’s mind.”

It was explained to all the contributors that while the themes of the three pillars and the Dhamma provide the backdrop to this issue, their contributions do not have to be based on these themes exclusively. The special issue is divided broadly into three main sections. These sections are not hierarchical, but rather are intended to give the articles within each section, and in the whole issue, a thematic unity and cohesiveness.

All the contributors were invited to speak about their understanding of mindfulness and the Dhamma, to revisit their original visions and missions, and to share their experiences with putting “compassion in action.” They were also invited to discuss their concerns about the current practice of mindfulness, to reflect on how and where they think that mindfulness is heading, and finally to share their vision of the role of mindfulness for the future.