Let's put more morality into mindfulness
Mario Di Pietro
This intervention aims to highlight some aspects concerning the inclusion of mindfulness in psychotherapeutic practice. First of all, it is pointed out that the use of mindfulness in psychotherapy is not something so innovative. For several decades, mindfulness has been an important element of various psychotherapeutic approaches, including behavior therapy, deemed to be «first generation». Furthermore, mindfulness is only one of the eight components that make up the path offered by the Buddhist discipline to overcome suffering. So, despite the proliferation of writings on the applications of mindfulness in the clinical setting, the concept of mindfulness that is presented is rather limited and does not reflect the complexity that this practice has in Buddhism and its connection with morality. This may also have hindered the use of its full potential in clinical practice. Finally, we want to point out how the commercialization to which mindfulness has gone is something extraneous to the spirit of mindfulness itself. This commercial drift has been facilitated by the fact that in the West morality has not been given that centrality it has in the Buddhist discipline from which the practice of mindfulness has been extrapolated.
Keywords
Mindfulness, Morality, Ethics, Buddhism, Meditation, Dharma, Psychotherapy.
