Mindfulness

The roots of mindfulness practice are common to both Eastern and Western spiritual contemplative traditions. It is at once a spiritual, meditative, reflective, psychological, and applied way of intentional living and communicating. As defined in Communicating Across Cultures by Stella Ting-Toomey, as an Eastern Buddhist spiritual practice, mindfulness means attending to one’s own internal [Page 621]assumptions, arising emotions, intentions, cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors. Mindful reflexivity requires us to tune in to our own cultural and personal habitual assumptions in scanning a communication scene. It also means “emptying our mind-set” and de-cluttering the internal noises so that we can listen with an in-the-moment pure heart. According to the writings of Buddhist philosophers such as Thich Nhat Hanh and Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness means tracking an unfolding communication ...