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Mindfulness Is Not a Way of Being in the World
- Philosophy East and West
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 72, Number 4, October 2022
- pp. 884-902
- 10.1353/pew.2022.0087
- Article
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Abstract:
This is a phenomenological study of mindfulness, a term commonly used to translate the Pāli term sati, and the practice that can lead to its establishment. It first attempts to account for mindfulness as a way of being-in-the-world. It then uses this description as a contrast to present an alternative and more satisfactory account. According to the alternative account, the practice of cultivating mindfulness is the practice of switching one's mode of being from being-in-the-world to 'nature-naturing'. From a different perspective, this is the practice of tuning-out of our projects (the kind of possibility that is constitutive of being-in-the-world) and tuning-in to 'thingly possibilities' (the kind of possibility that is constitutive of nature-naturing). Mindfulness, the potential fruit of this practice, is the feeling of being tuned-in to naturenaturing and thingly possibilities. The study concludes with a description of how mindfulness gives rise to wisdom, the understanding of things as they are.