Norman Wells traces how a Buddhist meditation technique is currently gaining a new lease of life and subjects it to biblical critique
The profile of mindfulness has enjoyed a meteoric rise over recent times.
It features with increasing regularity in newspaper and magazine articles and in the media. It is credited with increasing levels of concentration and productivity and with reducing the recurrence of depression. Where it is practised in schools, the behaviour of children reportedly improves and pupils experience lower levels of anxiety and distress.
According to Headspace, the multi-million dollar business which promotes mindfulness through online courses and an app, the technique holds the key to ‘a happier, healthier, more enjoyable life’ for everyone.
But what is mindfulness and what are Christians to make of it? Should we wholeheartedly embrace it, cautiously welcome it, or give it a wide berth? How should we respond if it is introduced into the schools and colleges that our children attend? Or if it is offered by our employers? Does it have a place in our churches? Is it just a fad? Or is it a false religion with a scientific veneer?
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is variously defined, but it is essentially a meditation technique aimed at focusing the mind on the present moment. According to a Guardian feature writer, it ‘aims to achieve a relaxed, non-judgmental awareness of your thoughts, feelings and sensations’.
Freedom from judgment features prominently in the thinking of mindfulness advocates. Meditation teacher, Sharon Salzburg, for example, writes: ‘Mindfulness isn’t just about knowing that you’re hearing something, seeing something, or even observing that you’re having a particular feeling. It’s about doing so in a certain way – with balance and equanimity, and without judgment.’
In his meditation manual, Mindfulness in Plain English, Henepola Gunaratana explains how mindfulness involves the suspension of the critical faculties: ‘Mindfulness is nonjudgmental observation. It is that ability of the mind to observe without criticism. With this ability, one sees things without condemnation or judgment. One is surprised by nothing. One simply takes a balanced interest in things exactly as they are in their natural states. One does not decide and does not judge. One just observes.’
The roots of mindfulness
Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhist thought and practice. The seventh component of the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism is termed ‘right mindfulness’. The Buddha’s original discourse on mindfulness is considered his most important sutta. It stresses that mindfulness begins with an exclusive focus on breathing patterns and proceeds from there to note other physical and mental phenomena.
Henepola Gunaratana notes that: ‘Buddhism as a whole is quite different from the theological religions with which Westerners are most familiar. It is a direct entrance to a spiritual or divine realm without addressing deities or other ‘agents’. Its flavour is intensely clinical, much more akin to what we would call psychology than to what we would usually call religion.’
Secularisation of a Buddhist idea
Over the past 30–40 years, mindfulness has begun to gain currency outside Buddhist circles. In the Western world it has been popularised by the mindfulness practitioner and advocate Jon Kabat-Zinn. He has developed a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme based on Buddhist principles and has also founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Professor Kabat-Zinn has authored several books on mindfulness which have been published in over 35 languages and through his work mindfulness has entered the mainstream in fields as varied as medicine, psychology, healthcare, neuroscience, education, business, the prison system and professional sport.
Kabat-Zinn has also served as a board member of the Mind and Life Institute which, under the chairmanship of the Dalai Lama, is dedicated to building a scientific understanding of the mind in order to reduce suffering and promote well-being. The institute seeks to bridge the divide between science on the one hand and contemplative practices and introspective methods on the other.
Although Kabat-Zinn acknowledges that his mindfulness programme is ‘without question’ founded on Buddhist principles, he has sought to present it in a more secular and scientific way in order to gain acceptance within the medical mainstream.
Is it consistent with Scripture?
In view of the fact that the roots of mindfulness lie in ancient religious philosophies and practices which are antithetical to a Christian worldview, we might well anticipate that its therapeutic use will not stand up to biblical scrutiny. As Douglas Groothuis has warned: ‘If any holistic practice has a questionable or non-Christian origin, it must be carefully evaluated to see if it inextricably involves unbiblical assumptions and/or practices. If so, it must be avoided.’
Mindfulness fails in at least three respects:
• It allows no place for objective, absolute truth
Mindfulness allows no space for making judgments of any kind. Such passivity chimes with the spirit of an age which values things for how they make us feel regardless of whether they are true. However, it runs contrary to the character of a Creator and Judge who is righteous and true, and who has defined what is good and evil in his holy law. God has placed a conscience within each one of us to give us the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. But mindfulness silences the voice of conscience – the faculty that is designed to bear witness to God’s moral standards and to serve as a restraint against sin.
• It facilitates a postmodern ‘spiritual journey’
According to one academic who describes himself as ‘a psychologist in the Reformed theological tradition’: ‘For postmoderns truth is not anchored in a tradition believed to be the one and only way. Rather than seeking a dogmatic orthodoxy, postmoderns describe themselves as pursuing a ‘spiritual journey’, searching for shelter under a ‘sacred canopy’… Mindfulness works because it facilitates the spiritual journey.’
The writer is positive about mindfulness, and concludes by encouraging his readers to ‘embrace and celebrate these gifts of healing and life-enhancement’. However, in these few words he demonstrates that the philosophy behind mindfulness is far removed from biblical Christianity which is centred on a Saviour who is ‘the way, the truth and the life’.
The fundamental need of postmodern people is not to pursue some ill-defined ‘spiritual journey’ leading to an uncertain destination, nor is it some type of ‘formative structure’ to help order their chaotic lives. It is rather the truth which will set them free (John 8:32). Those who are tempted to employ mindfulness as an evangelistic tool will be vulnerable to every wind of doctrine and inevitably find themselves straying from the faith once delivered to the saints.
• It seeks a sense of peace and wholeness without reference to the God of peace
From beginning to end, the Bible teaches that man, by nature, is at enmity with God and that all his ills flow from his alienation from his Creator. Our restlessness, uneasy conscience and sense of guilt all flow from our sinfulness before a holy God. They cannot be resolved by therapy; the only way of peace is through the blood of Christ’s cross (Colossians 1.20).
True peace is to be found not by looking within, or by focusing on our breathing patterns, but by looking to the Lord (Isaiah 26:3-4). As those who have been reconciled to God through the death of his Son, it is only as we let our requests be known to God that we shall know the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guarding our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4.6-7).
In short, mindfulness is an exercise in god-lessness. In mindfulness there is no acknowledgement of the Creator, no recognition of a fallen, sinful nature, no embrace of the Redeemer, no presence of the Holy Spirit, and no hope of a glorious new creation. There is within it no place for self-examination, for conviction of sin, for repentance, or for forgiveness and reconciliation to God. It is without God and therefore without hope.
