Mindfulness practice, drawn from Buddhist meditation and set in clinical and secular frames, spreads through hospitals, schools, and workplaces in the West; Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction, founded at the University of Massachusetts in 1979, stands behind the movement, whose relation to its Buddhist root is debated within Buddhism itself.
Tagged: Buddhist Secular Buddhism
The Event
- Date
- 2000s (approximate)
- Era
- Modern; Standard periodization of Buddhist history
- Location
- Worcester; today Massachusetts, United States
- Traditions
- Buddhism
- Streams
- Secular Buddhism
- Key figures
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
How the Tradition Tells It
Whether secular mindfulness is Buddhism carried into clinics or Buddhism's technique separated from its teaching is disputed inside the tradition itself: some teachers present it as a skillful doorway, and others, including traditional monastics, hold that mindfulness without ethics and renunciation is not the Buddha's path.
Primary Sources
- Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living (1990)
Secondary Sources
- Lopez, The Story of Buddhism: A Concise Guide to Its History and Teachings (HarperOne, 2001)
- Keown, Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2013)
Provenance: HIST-0439; confidence 0.85; accessed 2026-10-27.
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