Throughout these posts, I will be exploring themes and narratives commonly found in mindfulness discourse.   My focus will be what is written or said in the name of mindfulness, regardless of whether what is written or said reflects a “correct” understanding. My approach will be somewhat like that of an anthropologist studying the system of meaning shared by members of a community.

Cultural analysis can be applied to any collectivity that shares common practices, beliefs, values and points of reference, such as the mindfulness community. This doesn’t mean that every member of the group feels and thinks the same way – only that one can find patterns within the mosaic of their discursive acts.

Cultural analysis may also involve looking at outside influences that contribute to a belief system or ideology. For instance, the mindfulness movement stems in part from ancient Eastern traditions, but it has also borrowed and expanded upon themes present in contemporary Western societies (e.g. cognitivism, self-esteem, positive psychology, New Age movements).

Regarding mindfulness as a discursive and cultural object is not to say mindfulness is without positive qualities: mindfulness practice has much to recommend it.

So, what is mindfulness? To me, it is part community of people, part skill-building practice, part religion, and part ideology. (These “parts” will be elaborated later, often in considerable detail.)   Some practitioners may object to my descriptors and say that, more than anything, mindfulness is a “way of being”, one that involves a non-judgmental state of “present-centered awareness” (Bishop et al. 2004:232).  But here I’m assuming an etic position as an outside observer, not as a committed adherent.   I am less concerned about what mindfulness “really” is than in how it is talked about and what it speaks to as a form of discourse.  As with any discursive community, the mindfulness movement is diverse and doesn’t speak in one voice. A single definition of mindfulness assumes its advocates and (and detractors) agree not only on the words within the definitional box but on those words’ references and allusions.

Still, to the extent that mindfulness is a discussable thing, albeit a thing with shifting and fuzzy boundaries, it would be useful to have a rough idea of what type of thing mindfulness is. So here goes:

Mindfulness is a more or less cohesive set of propositions about what is and what           matters, along with various practices associated with those propositions.