Mindfulness For Just About Everything (Part 1)

This is a timely and invaluable talk from Paramabandhu. Drawing on many years of experience as a consultant psychiatrist and Dharma teacher, he invites us to consider the lessons Buddhist techniques around meditation and mindfulness training can bring to the field of mental health – especially to problems with depression and addiction. The talk evokes the Buddha in the Satipatthana Sutta to explore the four traditional foundations of mindfulness and discuss their potential use in therapeutic contexts. It is a kindly and empowering expression of practical hope, whose message applies to us all as we struggle to overcome whatever it is that holds us back from greater freedom in our lives.

Part 2 of this podcast will feature a question-and-answer session based on the material

Talk given at the San Francisco Buddhist Center, 2006

Contents:

01 Contemporary interest in mindfulness; brief therapeutic history of meditation since the 1960s; the Buddha as behavioural therapist – the obese king, Kisa Gotami and her baby

02 John Kabat-Zinn and mindfulness-based stress reduction; other therapies based around mindfulness

03 Mindfulness in Buddhist tradition; the Satipatthana Sutta; sati and sampajanya; analogies for mindfulness; the four foundations of mindfulness – an analysis of technique in practice

04 Four aspects of mindfulness in therapeutic context; i clocking what’s going on – being on automatic pilot

05 ii Sitting with your experience; Rumi’s poem ‘The Guest House’; the kindly aspect of awareness; body awareness and mental proliferation

06 iii Perspective; cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy – the implicit and the explicit; not taking our thoughts so seriously; iv choice – mindfulness of purpose

07 Taking awareness deeper; freedom; Kotita’s ‘Song of Realization’

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