A Catholic Guide to Mindfulness by Brinkmann Susan

Author:Brinkmann, Susan [Brinkmann, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation
Published: 2017-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Mindfulness and Christian Prayer

Several years ago, a distraught wife and mother sent an email to this writer about her husband who had taken up a twice-daily practice of mindfulness and body scan meditation for stress. One day, he decided to skip family prayer to practice mindfulness meditation instead. When she confronted him about it, saying that prayer is more restful, he disagreed and said this was not his experience, and to leave him alone.

This story is the perfect example of why St. John Paul II issued such a strong warning to Christians who want to embrace practices such as mindfulness — even for purely therapeutic purposes — which originate in the religious traditions of the Far East.

As chapter four outlined, the differences between Buddhism and Christianity are so substantial that they simply cannot be discounted when considering the adoption of even bits and pieces of eastern religious practices. And there is a perfectly logical reason for this.

The dharma created by the Buddha is a belief system with practices peculiar to his worldview, and these in turn shape the mind and the heart of the Buddhist just as Christ’s Gospel teachings shape the mind and the heart of the Christian. The attitude of mind and heart that went into the formulation of the practices unique to these philosophies of life is inherent in their practices and there is always the potential of influencing the practitioner either toward or away from a particular worldview. This could be either overtly, through the encouragement of the instructor, or more subtly such as teaching the Christian to find rest not in the Spirit, but in an empty void or a strictly controlled awareness.

The above story of a man who started out practicing mindfulness to ease stress and resulted in giving up Christian prayer is just one example of how true this point has proven to be. This is not an isolated example but one that represents a common outcome among those who dabble in non-Christian eastern spiritual practices.

In other practices, such as yoga, which are also touted as being “nonspiritual” and “just exercise,” studies have found that 62 percent of students and 85 percent of teachers changed their primary reason for practicing from exercise to some other reason. Even more compelling are the reasons they cite:

“[F]or both, the top changed primary reason was spirituality. Findings suggest that most initiate yoga practice for exercise and stress relief, but for many, spirituality becomes their primary reason for maintaining the practice.” 11 8

This phenomenon is only enhanced by yet another factor peculiar to Christian audiences in the West.

For the Christian, the word meditation means to pray. We meditate because we seek “to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking.” 119

But in the non-Christian East, meditation is a purely mental exercise, a way to manage thoughts and/or to induce an altered state of consciousness where one can achieve personal enlightenment and self-discovery.

Although these differences

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