goal, as feminism and other peaceful alternatives propose, then division need not
be the method. Much like geographical boundaries then, epistemological ones
can be seen as arbitrarily imposed by the human mind for the sake of certain
goals and biases. Where are the Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia that I once
visited and where are all the people who have touched my life glancingly or
deeply? Do they touch it still? I am haunted by the question.
Adopting this epistemological perspective, the distinction between inner and
outer experience also becomes illusory or constructed by human perceptual
apparatus. I do not mean this statement to equate imagination with construction;
neither can I separate these two activities of the mind. Schrödinger, more than
fifty years ago(1958), asserted, “Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have been broken down as a result of recent
experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.” Yet this long
accepted principle of contemporary physics and Eastern thought has yet to be
fully taken up by Western psychology.
Western science is overdue for a reunion with its long separated sibling, Eastern
philosophy and practice. In my opinion, Buddhism is perhaps the most
impressive system of psychology to have been introduced in all human history. It
is a fully developed philosophy of the mind and has been for me a significant
source of constructivist thought and practice. Feminist and constructivist thinkers
have been using mindfulness for decades prior to the cognitive-behavioral
practitioners who have successfully introduced it to large numbers of Western
psychotherapists (psychologists (Borysenko, 1987; Kabat-Zinn, 2006).
However, the practice of mindfulness should not and need not be reduced to a
therapeutic technique or be equated with a brief or even lengthy period of sitting
on a pillow. I myself have sat on various pillows in various ashrams since 1974,
but I am more interested in considering the time off the pillow, the rest of the
time. Mindfulness can be learned, but not accomplished, in an ashram or in
therapy sessions because it is a practice that must become a habit of mind, body
and soul. For this combination of mind/body/spirit, the English language has no
satisfying word.
