Abstract
The introduction of mindfulness in the West was carried out through theories and research methods based on the effects that mindfulness practices produce in the brain (information processing and neurobiological activity). Nevertheless, these approaches elude any reference to the core feature of mindfulness, that is, its subjective and intersubjective conscious nature. With the aim of providing a viable scientific proposal to fill this gap, we present the enactive approach as a naturally well-suited explanatory framework to study mindfulness in its full experiential richness, both in its physical and phenomenological attributes. This chapter is organized as follows. First, we argue that the scientific approach to mindfulness has not explained its phenomenological nature, and consider how mainstream cognitive science understands attention and awareness in non-experiential functional terms. In the following section, we dwell with more detail on the meaning and nature of mindfulness and argue for its essentially phenomenological nature. Furthermore, we contend that it comprises not only a subjective dimension but also a relational intersubjective domain. Finally, we present the enactive approach and the neurophenomenological method as a scientific framework to investigate mindfulness as an experiential relational phenomenon constituted by both physical and phenomenological attributes.
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Notes
- 1.
Hereafter, we will use the terms “phenomenological,” “experiential,” “conscious,” “aware,” and related words interchangeably. Notwithstanding, below we will identify two significantly divergent senses of “consciousness”/“awareness,” a phenomenological conception and a non-phenomenological functional conception.
- 2.
The definition of attention as a process of information selection comes from Broadbent’s seminal work, in which attention is understood as a bottleneck or filter in the brain’s information processing (Broadbent 1958).
- 3.
“Another English term for sati (mindfulness) is ‘bare attention’”(Gunaratana 2002, p. 140).
- 4.
Hereafter, the terms “consciousness” and “awareness” will be used in their phenomenological sense.
- 5.
A cognitive ontological discussion would see the introspective self-report as a “subpersonal cognitive process.” For an in-depth analysis, see Martínez-Pernía (2020).
- 6.
The Abhidharma is one of the earliest traditions within Buddhism. It aims to analyze the ultimate components of conscious experience and of the world presented in such experience (Dreyfus and Thompson 2007).
- 7.
That is, as “right mindfulness” (samma sati). The eightfold path in turn is the fourth and final among the “noble truths” in the teachings of the Buddha. It is the way that leads to the cessation of suffering.
- 8.
The teaching of the “establishment of mindfulness” is included in the Pali Canon, which is the oldest written collection of Buddha’s teachings (Bodhi 2011).
- 9.
- 10.
Nowadays, there are other methodological proposals that integrate third- and first-person data, such as affective neuro-physio-phenomenology (Colombetti 2013) and cardiophenomenology (Depraz and Desmidt 2018). As a consequence of the limited space in this chapter, however, we will focus on Varela’s neurophenomenological program (1996)
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Martínez-Pernía, D., Cea, I., Kaltwasser, A. (2021). Recovering the Phenomenological and Intersubjective Nature of Mindfulness Through the Enactive Approach. In: Aristegui, R., Garcia Campayo, J., Barriga, P. (eds) Relational Mindfulness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57733-9_4
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