What is it about?
This chapter is about my encounter with Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen master who founded the Plum Village Monastery. After listening to his inspiring talk, I joined the monastery's regular group practice. I became more aware of my thoughts and emotions daily and slowly transformed how I related to myself, my family, and my students. I also describe my experiences introducing mindfulness to my students and conducting research with other scholars in my classroom. Quite often, laypeople regard mindfulness as sustained attention or calmness. However, mindfulness has a different meaning in the Buddhist context. Mindfulness is the quality of the mind that notices the changes in the body and mind with a stable and impartial attitude in real-time. This quality of the mind is conducive to a deeper understanding and acceptance of the impermanent, suffering, and non-self nature of all phenomena. This quality can be nurtured among children in schools or at home. The research finding from my classroom research project implicated potential positive effect of mindfulness practice on children's social-emotional development.
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Why is it important?
Mindfulness, the ability to become self-aware and to regulate one's emotions, is crucial for the mental health of our youth in this rapidly changing world. This chapter gives educators and parents a glimpse into mindfulness's true transformative potential and how it can help improve the quality of people's daily life experiences. To experience the wonderful benefits of mindfulness, we don't need to hide in a cave or become a monastic. Everyone can learn it including young children. Over the past decade, I worked with fellow teachers to introduce mindfulness practice to many children, teachers and parents. We collected feedback from participants through focus group interviews and lesson observations from other experts. The research findings showed the positive effect of mindfulness meditation on children's social and emotional intelligence. We saw how mindfulness transformed the classroom learning atmosphere as well as family relationships. This autobiography aims to inspire parents and educators to become aware of the importance of mindfulness and social-emotional well-being in learning.
Perspectives
In this autobiography, I describe and interpret the roadblocks that I, as a lay practitioner, a teacher, a parent, and a researcher, have experienced and how the Buddhist masters have guided me to overcome difficulties through the insights of mindfulness practice. It includes the narratives of several Dhamma teachers’ life stories, Dhamma discussions, and the meditation phenomena that I and other practitioners experienced. It also describes the practices I introduced to students, teachers, and parents who want to experience a healthier and more conscious way of living. These practices have been implemented and evaluated in several communities over a decade of research, which implicated consistent positive effects on developing emotional intelligence. If you have the courage to look within, I invite you to join this exciting journey of self-inquiry. I hope this book will inspire more teachers, parents, and laypeople to cultivate mindfulness daily and share the practice with their communities.
Yau Yan Wong
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: What Is Mindfulness?, November 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004718371_002.
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