Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: It is an axiomatic in secular mindfulness that to become present is to direct attention away from thinking to physical sensation. While this can be a useful strategy to manage depressive rumination, as an automatic default position, it risks demonising our fundamental human capacity to purposefully think about the causes of suffering and how to reduce it. Many approaches within Mahayana Buddhism in particular explicitly use reflection on key ideas as necessary pre-requisites to meditation, and in these traditions, thinking is fundamental to our ability to move beyond limiting notions of ourselves and others into a more liberating vision.
Author: Robert Marx
Institution: Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4401795619