Buddhism, Ethics, and Mindfulness

A well-known critique of implementing mindfulness applications in secular Western settings revolves around ethical concerns regarding the detachment of the practice from its traditional ethical Buddhist roots (Forbes, 2017; Garfield, 2017; Hyland, 2016; Mccaw, 2020; Purser, 2015). Some even go further, asserting that the Western definition of mindfulness, characterized by present-oriented and non-judgmental awareness, has little connection to the traditional Buddhist practice and “does not provide an adequate basis for a theoretical analysis of mindfulness” (Dreyfus, 2011 p. 41).

In the Buddhist traditions, mindfulness is always addressed within a broader scope relating to many aspects of human life. Liberating the mind according to the Buddhist Noble Eightfold path rests on three pillars, wisdom (paññā—including right view and right intention), morality (sīla—including right speech, right action, and right livelihood), and concentration (samādhi—including right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration). These three pillars of the path are interdependent and support each other. The word “right” attached to the description of the aspects of the path (sammā in Pali) is commonly translated as “right,” but in a broader view, it can be thought of as “balanced, proper, and thorough” (Rhys Davids & Stede, 1993). Thus, practicing right mindfulness (sammā sati) requires also adherence to Buddhist ethics of right speech, right action, and right livelihood. One may simply say that mindfulness practice, which does not include an ethical reference point, cannot be considered “right” mindfulness since it, alone, cannot lead to the proper understanding and liberation of the mind from suffering. Indeed, in the collection sayings of the Buddha (Dhammapada; Easwaran, 1986), it was stated: “Abandoning what is evil, developing what is good, purifying the mind – that is the teaching of the Buddhas” (verse 183).

Moreover, there is an additional concern regarding the secular applications of mindfulness, questioning whether the practice of mindfulness can be completely divorced from other aspects of mind cultivation. In the Buddhist traditions, mindfulness is intertwined with the cultivation of other mental practices including fostering compassion, employing methods to address mental defilements, and achieving states of deeper unification (samādhi). Mindfulness is never a stand-alone practice. There is no clear agreement within the various Buddhist traditions regarding the specific order of cultivating mindfulness and these other mental practices. Examples of this complexity can be found in the different views presented in Buddhagsa and Shantideva’s canonical texts regarding the order and place of the brahmavihāra’, namely, loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and mental balance in the practice of meditation, or in modern critiques of the traditional understandings of Jhana states in connection to mindfulness and to awakening (Arbel, 2017). However, there is a clear agreement that mindfulness without cultivation of other forms of practice and a solid base of ethics is not enough to free the mind from suffering.

Other Ethical Concerns

While we are aware that the concerns regarding the traditional roots of mindfulness raise some major issues, we would like to exemplify how other ethical concerns lead us in the implementation of MBIs in educational settings. We see Western secular MBIs as relatively young endeavors in which defining ethics is an important and ongoing process.

We will use the term ethics here in its everyday, simple form—as a field of questions regarding “what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong” (Burr, 1911). In this article and in our practice of implementing MBIs, we approach the ethical issues from the ethics of care perspective (Gilligan, 1982; Noddings, 1984) that views moral behavior as the core value of caring relationship, that is, “a state of being in relation, characterized by receptivity, relatedness and engrossment” (Noddings, 2002, p. 11). This ethical approach seems to contrast with other ethical theories that highlight principled reasoning (Kantian deontology) or anticipated benefits to society (Utilitarianism) in their moral decisions.

Here are some of the ethical concerns we find important as a background to our decision-making regarding both the subject matter of our MBIs in the educational field and the research that accompanies them. In the next sections, we will give examples of how these concerns inform our work of implementing mindfulness within educational settings. This is by no means a finite list of ethical concerns. Our understanding is that many of these points relate to each other and create, in a sense, a “field” of meanings that can be of help to organizations or individuals implementing MBIs in a complex world. Generally, these concerns fall into three categories:

  1. 1.

    Does the MBI provide primarily individual self-improvement skills to teachers and students, or does it also promote ethical values?

  2. 2.

    What is the educational socio-cultural agenda promoted by the MBI?

  3. 3.

    And finally, how do we implement MBIs in a culturally sensitive manner respecting the ethics of different societies and different populations?

Self-improvement or Ethical Values?

Starting with the first concern regarding the teleological (oriented toward specific goals or purposes) aspects of MBIs in the educational arena, most mindfulness-based programs tend to focus on cultivating educators’ and students’ self-awareness, attentional skills, and self-regulation in order to improve their mental health functioning, professional and academic performance, and general well-being. Indeed, recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses of MBIs for educators demonstrate the focus on individual indicators such as reductions in anxiety, stress, and burnout levels as well as enhanced teacher performance, self-efficacy, self-compassion, and social-emotional competence (Hwang et al., 2017; Klingbeil & Renshaw, 2018; Lomas et al., 2017; Weare, 2016). Only a small number of MBIs focused on strengthening interpersonal mindfulness and compassion toward others (Flook et al., 2013; Harris et al., 2016; Jennings et al., 2013). Likewise, systematic reviews and meta-analyses of students’ MBIs showed positive effects on stress, anxiety, well-being, attention, positive and negative emotions, emotion regulation, academic performance, and student behavior (Emerson et al., 2020; Felver et al., 2016; McKeering & Hwang, 2019; Meiklejohn et al., 2012; Waters et al., 2015; Weare, 2016; Zenner et al., 2014). As with teachers, only a few MBIs for students focused on cultivating empathy, sharing, trustworthiness, helpfulness, perspective-taking, and pro-social orientation which are more in line with the Buddhist ethics of kindness and peer relationships (Flook et al., 2015; Schonert-Reichl et al., 2015).

The Call to Care-Israel (C2C-I) MBIs

The three MBIs that we will present in this article are Call to Care-Israel for school students (C2C-IS), Call to Care-Israel for schoolteachers (C2C-IT), and Call to Care-Israel for kindergarten students (C2C-IK). These programs are based on a program developed by experts from the Mind and Life Institute (Dodson-Lavelle et al., 2015). The program borrows concepts and practices from two sources: the Innate Compassion Training (ICT; Makransky, 2007) and the Enhancing Resiliency Among Students Experiencing Stress and Promoting Pro-Social Behavior (ESPS; Berger et al., 2016). The three C2C-I programs presented here are simultaneously designed to address both students’ and teachers’ individualistic needs and the needs of others in their educational settings and in their communities. More specifically, the programs are geared to cultivate personal awareness, self-regulation, emotional well-being, and professional/academic performance as well as to promote perspective-taking, develop empathy, and help those in need in school and the community. Thus, they address the first ethical concern directly. Namely, MBIs in the educational field can be directed toward cultivating ethical values. We will now describe the underpinning rationale for developing these MBIs, the main topics, and the core skills employed, and then, we will outline the structure of each program and the outcomes based on studies.

Acknowledging the Buddhist ethical concerns regarding mindfulness and other contemplative practices which were presented in the introduction, we placed the concept of caring at the center of our MBI interventions. Caring can be described as containing both an attentional-mindfulness aspect (being aware of our own or another’s state in an open and balanced way) and a motivational-compassionate aspect including emotional, cognitive, and motivational processes. Thus, all our mindfulness-based programs are divided into four units: acquiring mindfulness, receiving care from others, developing self-care, and extending care for others. Mindfulness is embedded in the three caring modalities which are understood to empower the others.

In the acquiring mindfulness unit, the sessions focus on introducing teachers and students with the concept of mindfulness not only as an attentional skill but also as a way of life. The core practices include vagal breathing, breathing meditation, body scan, mindful walking, mindful eating, becoming mindful to the five senses, and interpersonal mindfulness.

In the receiving care unit, the sessions focus on understanding the universal need for care and helping the students and teachers to develop awareness of their needs and to articulate these needs to others who may support them. In addition, both students and teachers explore mental barriers to receiving care and ways to dismantle them. The core practices and skills developed in this modality include developing awareness to feelings and leaning to communicate them in an effective manner and re-experiencing moments of interconnection, warmth, and inner safety. Students and teachers are also taught to dismantle obstacles to receiving this care by challenging misconceptions, such as “Receiving care from others is a sign of weakness,” “I do not need care from others,” or “Others need care much more than me.”

The self-care unit sessions focus on helping students and teachers to acknowledge their strengths and to cultivate self-acceptance to their weaknesses and limitations. They are then taught contemplative and behavioral self-compassion strategies and ways to overcome potential fears for self-compassion. Additionally, they are provided with self-soothing techniques to help them deal with stressful experiences. We also foster cognitive flexibility and openness to experience by introducing participants to the concepts of fixed and growth mindsets (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Core practices and skills in this unit include mindfulness and contemplation with a focus on compassionate care figures, re-experiencing comforting situations, soothing strategies such as vagal breathing, somatic pendulation, and safe place imagery. Additionally, stress-management skills are provided such as stress inoculation and self-affirmation.

Finally, and perhaps more importantly from an ethical point of view, the sessions in the extending care unit aim to direct care toward others including classmates, students in the school, educational staff, and people in their community. They are also taught to accept and even show compassion toward students and staff members that they do not know or even dislike. Additionally, the participants develop awareness to our natural tendency for stereotyping and prejudicial attitudes, and to expand empathy and care across in-group/out-group boundaries. Furthermore, participants are taught to acknowledge the bystander effect (i.e., the inhibiting influence of the presence of others on a person’s willingness to help someone in need) and taking active steps to prevent its consequences. Finally, participants are required to organize an age-appropriate activity aimed at caring for their communities such as helping elderlies in the community, providing for the needy, or cleaning the community. The core practices and skills in this unit include developing a compassionate mindset, perspective-taking, and empathy skills as well as practicing loving kindness meditation, moment of self-compassion, and the compassionate self-meditation.

Outcome Studies of C2C-I Programs

The C2C-IS includes 24 sessions for the three modes. Each session lasts 45 min and includes psychoeducational materials, contemplative practices, social-emotional skills, group activities, and homework assignments. Students are given mindfulness diaries in which they are encouraged to document their feelings and thoughts in school, at home, and in the community, as well as their experiences with the contemplative practices and the social-emotional skills.

In two studies conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of C2C-IS among elementary students, we found significant improvements in personal indicators such as anxiety, perceived stress, somatization, attention, well-being, visual perception, and motor accuracy, but we also obtained positive changes in more interpersonal factors such as relationships with peers, classroom atmosphere, and pro-social behavior (Tarrasch & Berger, 2022; Tarrasch et al., 2017). More importantly, we found significant reductions in stereotyping and prejudicial attitudes of Israeli-Jewish elementary school students toward the Israeli-Palestinian out-group, together with increased readiness to engage in social contact with them (Berger et al., 2018) as well as increased willingness to volunteer helping other children in need (Tarrasch & Berger, 2022).

The C2C-IT is framed as a professional teacher program geared to foster a “community of care” within the educational staff and in the classroom. Each session of the three modalities of care lasts an hour and a half and includes psychoeducational materials, contemplative practices, social-emotional skills, and group activities. Teachers are encouraged to support each other between the sessions by organizing a support group within the school and by using a “buddy system” (i.e., couples that maintain contact outside of school hours). A study conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the C2C-IT showed that the participants in the program improved in both intrapersonal faculties of mindfulness, perceived stress, rumination, reflection, and self-compassion and in caring for their students and being more empathic toward them. Additionally, anecdotal reports from school administration indicated that there were significant improvements in teacher peer relationships, the relationship between teachers and administration, and the relationships between parents and teachers (Tarrasch et al., 2020).

The C2C-IK is a program for kindergarten kids aged 4–6 that spans for 12 weeks that are divided into the three modalities of caring. Two daily activities are conducted: 20-min whole-group sessions and 30-min small-group activities with 4–6 children. The first month focuses on mindfulness and receiving care and includes teaching the children vagal breathing, response inhibition, and attentional skills as well as identifying their feelings and learning how to express them appropriately. In the second month, the focus shifts to self-care, and children are taught to appreciate their strengths and accept their weakness as well as to develop self-compassion. Finally, in the last month, they learn to be aware of the needs of others, basic empathy skills, accepting others who are different from them, and contributing for their community.

In a study that evaluated the C2C-IK (Berger et al., 2024), we found that kindergarten children, aged 4–6, improved their executive functions, emotional functioning, and social skills, but additionally, they performed more pro-social activities (sharing toys, helping peers, and even comforting children who were upset). Furthermore, we demonstrated that children who participated in the program exhibited altruistic behavior, e.g., they were willing to give up a desired reward to someone who did not get it, and participated in helping elderly people in a home for the aged.

Although our current paper emphasizes the impacts of the C2C-I programs, we aim to conduct a future comparison with other commonly used MBIs and assess their effects on pro-social behavior.

In sum, we have demonstrated that MBIs can be designed to not only improve students and teachers’ personal needs such as attentional skills, emotion regulation, social skills, psychosocial well-being, and professional and academic performance but also cultivate awareness and sensitivity to the needs of others in the educational settings and the community, as well as develop a pro-social orientation. This approach seems to be in line with the ethical norms in which these practices were originally developed. This begs the question as to why so many MBIs have chosen to ignore the ethical aspects of the Buddhist practices. We will try to address the question in the next section.

The Socio-political Aspect Critiques Regarding MBIs

The second ethical concern is related to one of the most poignant critiques directed against the current MBIs, and is their marketization and commodification, often labeled the “McDonaldization” process (Hyland, 2015, 2016; Ritzer, 2000). The central argument is that the divorce of the educational MBIs from their spiritual and ethical origins in Buddhist traditions turned them to just another fashionable self-help technique that fails to produce a lasting individual or social transformation. Furthermore, there are some scholars who pointed out that without the Buddhist ethical compass, mindfulness has become a form of psychological training that promotes neoliberal ideology. For instance, the use of MBIs by corporate workplaces has been criticized as an instrumental device to increase productivity and place the responsibility of their employees’ well-being solely on them rather than on the conditions which the company should provide (Forbes, 2019). Similarly, in the educational arena, high levels of stress and burnout among teachers (Agyapong et al., 2022; García-Carmona et al., 2019; Naama & Lavy, 2022) and demands for quality and effectiveness placed by governmental neoliberal policies (Akiba et al., 2007; Darling-Hammond, 2000) often push educational institutions to seek techniques such as MBIs to enhance the academic performance and well-being of their staff (Reveley, 2015). According to Forbes (2016), the widespread tendency to promote school-based mindfulness programs strengthens the myth that social and institutional change occurs just by individuals who practice mindfulness rather than by examining the underpinning individualistic neoliberal market value and goal policies.

While being aware of these ethical and social criticisms, we attempted to address them when designing the three C2C-I MBIs as well as in the way they were promoted and applied within the different educational settings.

First, as mentioned above, all C2C-I programs focus not only on cultivating teachers’ and students’ attentional skills, emotional well-being, and professional/academic performance but also on developing empathy and caring toward others in school and in the community. For example, in the C2C-IT program, there is a session that deals with stress and burnout where the emphasis is on structural system issues such as heavy workload, lack of quality work conditions, and demands regarding teaching quality based solely on students’ grades. While the C2C-IT program provides the teachers with mindfulness-based stress reduction strategies, it also suggests that these working conditions are often unreasonable and encourage them to raise these issues with the school administration and the Ministry of Education. Another example is the focus in all C2C-I programs on perspective-taking, empathy training, and extending compassion not only in theory but also in practice. Consequently, experienced teachers in the program support younger teachers (i.e., a buddy system), older students assist younger students and intervene when they are being bullied (i.e. active bystandership), and kindergarten children help peers who have social difficulties and individuals with special needs (i.e., the community project). Finally, almost all the contemplative practices taught in the C2C-I programs adhere to the philosophy of broadening the usual limitations of the attitudes of care (based on the Buddhist practices of the cultivations of the brahmavihārā) as we encourage teachers and students to develop those attitudes not only to those who they like or love but also toward those who they do not know or even those who they dislike. This approach is also in line with the Buddhist sila (virtue) of right livelihood and the cultivation of right view, right effort, and right mindfulness (Bodhi, 2009, p. 938).

Second, when schools and kindergartens’ administration request to implement the C2C-I programs, there is always an indication that the goal of the program is not only to improve the functioning and well-being of the teachers and students but also to create a “caring environment” where compassion is extended toward others in school and in the community. The program is presented to include active parental involvement via lectures, school meeting, and workbooks that the students complete with their parents. This is done to extend the caring circle in the community.

Culturally Sensitive Implementation of the MBIs

Given the fact that Israel is a multicultural and multireligious society, we believe that there is a need to implement MBIs in a culturally sensitive manner to respect the ethics of the different populations with whom one is working. We will describe an example of addressing these issues in applying C2C-IT with Muslim teachers.

Following Bernal and colleagues’ conceptual model of cultural adaptation (Bernal et al., 1995), an attempt was made to adapt the C2C-IT program along some of the dimensions identified by these researchers, namely, language, people, metaphors, content, concepts, and methods. First, consultation sessions were conducted with the Muslim co-leader of the C2C-IT and a religious leader in the community where the main concepts of the program were presented and feedback was sought regarding adaptations to the local Islamic culture. The main issues identified by these informants were the need to provide the teachers with bridging concepts and practices relevant to Islamic tradition, the utilization of Quran’s (the Holy Book for Muslims) citations, metaphors, and traditional Islamic folk stories, and finally, the use of Arabic language along with Hebrew. To introduce the teachers to the concept of mindfulness, we equated that practice with the Islamic required prayer (salah). During this prayer, the devout Muslim is encouraged to achieve a state of khushū, which means focusing on God with humility and presence of mind. Furthermore, since Muslims are obliged to pray five times a day, we recommended the teachers to use this daily routine as part of their mindfulness practice. To avoid mind wandering, we recommended the practice of dhikr (i.e., a form of devotional practice in which the worshiper is absorbed in the rhythmic repetition of the name of God or his attributes) which fits well with their religious values. Finally, since cultivating compassion toward self and others is a central part of the C2C-IT program and one of the most important tenets of both Buddhism and Islam, we encouraged the teachers to adopt this practice by reminding them that Allah’s own names are Rahman and Rahim (compassionate and Merciful), and that all Muslims begin everything by reciting Bi Ism-i- Allah al-Rahman al-Rahim (i.e., in the name of Allah who is compassionate and merciful).

In sum, while initially the Arab teachers expressed the concern that the C2C-IT and contemplative Buddhist practices will conflict with their religious ethics, adapting the program to their culture and religious beliefs proved to be extremely important as they were very cooperative. In fact, a study regarding the effectiveness of the program found a significant increase in the teachers’ level of empathy, self-compassion, teacher efficacy, and work engagement, as well as a reduced risk of burnout (manuscript is in preparation).

Ethical Concerns in MBI Research

Finally, it is important to address some ethical concerns regarding research on MBIs. While there has been an exponential surge in studies demonstrating the effectiveness of MBIs in self-improvement, there is a noticeable gap in research measuring concepts like kindness and compassion toward others. To tackle this issue, we tend to use blind observers to monitor students’ pro-social behaviors during natural play or use specially designed tasks to evaluate students’ altruistic tendencies. For instance, in one of the C2C-IS studies, we asked the students to volunteer part of their time of pleasurable afterschool activities and help performing an annoying task that would benefit children in need (for more information, see Tarrasch & Berger, 2022). Another issue is the overemphasis on quantitative studies rather than qualitative studies that attempt to explore the phenomenological experiences of both teachers and students. Furthermore, since the nature of mindfulness seems to lend itself to a more reflective self-inquiry which is not easily quantifiable, it is possible that most quantitative studies fail to tap the full benefits of the mindfulness process (Grossman & Van Dam, 2011). Additionally, the enthusiastic reliance on neuroscience research as a proof for the efficacy of MBIs often obscures the social and cultural motivation of those who promote neoliberal ideology (Forbes, 2017). Lastly, the methodological push for protocolizing MBIs as part of the research design has the potential to impend participants who need more individual attention. While this issue relates to all educational and psychotherapeutic strategies, the nature of mindfulness lends itself to a more reflective process where the ethical question that researchers should consider is whether the goal of standardization of the intervention worth the risk of not providing the best setting for specific individuals (we acknowledge the funding implications associated with individual-based interventions and recognize the challenges of securing funding for such interventions in disadvantaged populations).

Conclusions

In this article, we discussed some of the major ethical challenges and concerns in the implementation of MBIs in the educational field. We gave examples of how these concerns can inform decisions in creating and researching MBIs (see Table 1 for a summary of key ethical issues and suggestions).

Table 1 Summary of key ethical issues and suggestions
Full size table

However, as outlined above, a substantial body of research demonstrates the efficacy of MBIs in enhancing both teachers’ and students’ attention span, emotional resilience, and general well-being. Therefore, it would be unwise to ignore these facts and over-criticize MBIs for not explicitly attending to the social values promoted by Buddhist ethics. Instead, we propose building bridges between Western and Buddhist perspectives by emphasizing self-improvement and compassion and pro-sociality, as demonstrated by our work and others. We echo Kabat-Zinn’s suggestion that mindfulness practice should include emphasis on “generosity, trustworthiness, kindness, empathy, compassion, gratitude, joy in the good fortune of others, inclusiveness, acceptance and equanimity” (Kabat-Zinn, 2005, p. 103).

Furthermore, we believe it is crucial to influence governments and educational intuitions to adopt more inclusive programs. This can be achieved by highlighting the long-term advantages, not only for the recipients of the program, but for society at large. We also strongly support Forbes’ call for integral mindfulness education that “encourage students to value exploration, reflection, and creativity as part of an alternative meaning of success in education rather than one based on competition and measured in narrow standardized outcomes” (Forbes, 2016, p. 16).

Finally, we hope that researchers will conduct more phenomenological qualitative studies to explore the impact of MBIs. This exploration should utilize not only self-filled standardized questionnaires but also more naturalistic observational tools that tap into compassion toward others and pro-social behaviors. As a young field, we believe and hope that ethical concerns will keep being discussed and that questions and programs explored by further research in the field of MBIs in education will be guided by a broad moral compass.