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creativity and healing. To that end, it is obvi-
    ous that engaging in periodic mindfulness meditation retreats led by highly
    developed and competent teachers is essential for all those who would bring
    the practice of mindfulness into their work, whether it is on the clinical side,
    the research side, or both. There is simply no substitute for using one’s own
    body, mind, and life as the ultimate laboratory for investigating and refining
    mindfulness. This perspective is implicit or explicitly emphasized by many
    of the contributors.
    The dharma as it is described in this volume, and in the huge literature on
    the subject, ancient and contemporary, emphasizes that it is a living, evolving
    understanding, not a fixed dogma relegated to a museum honoring a cultur-
    ally constrained past. As the Dalai Lama has stated on many occasions, the
    framework of the dharma welcomes being put to empirical test, and would
    need to change if it is found to be inadequate in some fundamental way
    according to well-accepted criteria of scientific investigation and epistemol-
    ogy. Now, as the glaciers of science and contemplative practices melt into
    each other (due to another kind of global warming) and move ever-faster
    in tandem to carve out new understandings of the most fundamental ques-
    tions of what makes us human, the nature of mind and consciousness, and
    the sources of empathy, compassion, and kindness within us, this kind of
    open empiricism is more important than ever. While the dharma, in its most
    universal articulation, cannot and should not dictate how things should be
    explored, it is important, if not critical, for clinicians and researchers to know
    what they are dealing with from first-person experience before being able to
    authentically test the utility, efficacy, and potential of training in mindfulness
    and its sisters, loving-kindness and compassion, in the secular coordinate sys-
    tem of healing and knowing within psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy,
    and medicine.
    Fruitful areas for future dialogue and investigation, all eloquently addressed
    or pointed to in this volume, include: (1) whether mindfulness is best char-
    acterized as a state, a trait, or a way of being in relationship to any state or
    trait, or put otherwise, a way of seeing/knowing/being that is continually
    deepening and changing; (2) differentiating between thinking and aware-
    ness; and refining the clinical utility of both without confusing them; (3)
    elucidating the various dimensions of the experience of “self” and its neural
    correlates, as per the work of Farb et al. [14] and the skillful understanding and clinical utility of the experience and embodiment of anata (not self); (4)
    investigation of possible biological pathways via which mindfulness might
    exert the various effects that are now being elucidated; (5) the need for
    much more creative control groups to differentiate between mindfulness-
    specific and general enthusiasm/attention-based outcomes; (6) how we con-
    tinue to remind ourselves that the deepest insights relevant to both clinical
    applications and also study design and interesting research questions may
    come out of our own direct experience of mindfulness practice as clini-
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    Foreword
    cians and researchers; (7) on-going conversations about skillful ways to avoid
    reifying mindfulness into a concept or a “thing” as it becomes increasingly
    well known; (8) developing well-considered and appropriate standards for
    training and assessing mindfulness instructors, recognizing that the particu-
    lar background, first-person experience with formal mindfulness meditation
    practice, and attendant skill sets required to teach mindfulness-based inter-
    ventions are not readily amenable to the customary manualized approach to
    delivery of psychological interventions; (9) effective ways to train clinically
    based mindfulness instructors in the practice itself and in specific curricula
    for specific