正念是什么——从正念内涵研究发展角度的思考

"正念是什么"是正念研究中的基本问题,也是长期困扰研究者的难题,造成此困境的重要原因是正念跨越了佛学与心理学两种语境。在正念内涵研究历程中,研究者们先后试图以"去神秘化"、"去语境化"及"整合化"来解决跨语境所造成的问题。本研究认为:正念为多维概念,其内涵的复杂性决定了研究者对正念的认识并非静态的判断,而是逐步成熟的过程;应深入整合佛学与心理学语境,以发展的视角看待正念。

What is mindfulness: A reflection on the concept development of mindfulness

As the essential question in mindfulness research, “What is mindfulness” is a conundrum that has plagued researchers for decades. In much degree, the dilemma is created by the trans-contextual characteristic of mindfulness, since mindfulness is a concept spanning between Buddhism and psychology. Mindfulness meditation, originated from “satipatthana” in Buddhism, is the essence of Buddhist practice, the core of mindfulness-based intervention, and also a state that could be experienced in daily life by anyone. Researchers’ attempts in understanding the concept construction of mindfulness are manifested in “demystifying”, “de-contextualizing”, and “integrating” processes successively. Since Kabat-Zinn introduced mindfulness into psychological field from Buddhist context using “American language” in 1979, mindfulness has won more and more attention from scholars owing to its remarkable efficacy and extensive applicability. Without remoulding the connotation of mindfulness, Kabat-Zinn skillfully integrated the elements of Buddhism into commonsensical language, converting mindfulness into universal psychological interventions from religious meditation. This is referred to as “demystifying stage”, in which researchers focused on work of “what is mindfulness in commonsensical way”. Even though Kabat-Zinn clarified repeatedly that what he had done was not ‘de-contextualization’, the mainstream of mindfulness research gradually transmuted to that trend in the process of psychologicalization. Researchers attempted to abstract mindfulness from the Buddhist context that it originated from, and discarded the possible influence caused by its religious significance. According to the degree of recognition of theoretical research, the stage of“de-contextualization” could be further divided into “positivism approach” and “psychometrics and theoretical modeling approach”. Researchers of positivism approach mainly concentrated on the efficacy of mindfulness in the stage of de-contextualization, and inspected the effect of mindfulness-base intervention for different groups or different diseases, and took symptomatic scale, behaviors or physiological indices as indicators. In this stage, the interpretation of mindfulness embodied as the tendency of simplification and utility. The exploration during this period could be summarized as “simply speaking what is mindfulness”, and the quick answer was “attention”. Although attention, as the existing and relatively mature term in psychological realm, provided a starting point in mastering mindfulness, its intrinsic meaning stripped off the rich connotation of mindfulness. The problem caused by “essentialism” soon emerged from practice, and the researchers realized that mindfulness was more than “bare attention”. Around 2001, driven by demand of quantitative researches, researchers expanded their study of mindfulness to “specifically speaking what is mindfulness”, and started to concern the specific elements and structure of mindfulness. In this stage, numbers of scale were developed, as well as structural models. Attitude as one factor of mindfulness became consensus among researchers, and they deemed that mindfulness was a multi-dimensional concept constituted by at least two elements, attention and attitude. Another expansion was achieved in 2006, which enriched the connotation of mindfulness with a third factor “intention”, embodied as “consciously” or “on purpose”. In recent years, western societies are showing more and more acceptance of Buddhism, and their comprehension of Buddhism are becoming more and more objective. The acceptance of Buddhism has promoted the application of mindfulness, and the researches of mindfulness are highlighted. A growing number of definitions of mindfulness were proposed, however they did not bring a clearer comprehension of the connotation of mindfulness. On the contrary, profuse definitions resulted in a dilemma of mindfulness researches, as there was no criterion due to de-contextualization, making in-depth study struggling. Pondering under such situation, more scholars came to realize the importance of Buddhism context and came up with the claim that “science and Buddhism shall join forces”. This is the “Integrating context approach”, in which the focus is “completely speaking what is mindfulness”. “Ethics”was introduced in as one of the factors of mindfulness in this stage, which referred to the principle of “non-harming” and embodied as norms and requirements. With sorting out the historical perspective of 40-year, the research process of mindfulness is reviewed in this study, so as to explore possible answers to “what is mindfulness”, not only chronologically, but also systematically. In this study it is proposed that mindfulness is a multi-dimensional concept with elements of attention, attitude, intention and ethics. The complexity of mindfulness dictates that what existing in diverse perspectives are not fixed judgments, but dynamic evolving process of ideas, which goes through the path from “de-context” to context regression. A full-scale comprehension could only be achieved by in-depth integration of Buddhism and psychology from a developmental standpoint.