How a philosophy of meditation can explore the deep connections between mindfulness and contemplative wisdom
March 14, 2022 DOI: 10.4324/9781003127253-15 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Citations | 7 |
| Key points | Argues that reformulating mindfulness as a feature schema, rather than a training-oriented feature list, clarifies the distinction between meditation and contemplation and explains how mindfulness practice yields insight and self-regulation. Proposes that these explanatory links extend to the development of wisdom, and that this account calls for integrating modern academic philosophy with ancient philosophy as the love of wisdom. |
Abstract
This chapter builds on earlier work of reformulating the mindfulness construct by transforming the standard feature list for mindfulness into a feature schema. It does this by replacing a language for training mindfulness with a language for explaining mindfulness. This reformulation affords an important distinction between meditation and contemplation as well as generating an explanation of how such mindfulness practices can afford insight and enhanced self-regulation. These explanatory connections are then integrated and extended into an explanation of how mindfulness can contribute to the development of wisdom. This, in turn, requires a reconsideration of the nature of philosophy and a disclosure of the need to integrate the modern academic approach to philosophy with ancient philosophy understood as the love of wisdom.