From Mental Health Crisis to Existential Human Suffering: The Role of Self-Transcendence in Contemporary Mindfulness
Religions – August 25, 2022
Source: DOAJ
Summary
Modern mindfulness practices often miss a crucial element: self-transcendence. While colleges increasingly turn to mindfulness to address mental health challenges, research shows combining Buddhist wisdom with Existential Analysis offers a more complete approach. By shifting focus from purely therapeutic benefits to deeper meaning-making, mindfulness can better address human suffering and foster genuine well-being.
Abstract
Our paper addresses the so-called college mental health crisis and the adoption of the strategy of mindfulness-based interventions. We offer a critique of their underlying medical–therapeutic paradigm by engaging the notion of self-transcendence in Viktor Frankl’s Existential Analysis and Buddhism in dialogue. We argue that the current mindfulness movement has decontextualized and appropriated mindfulness from its Buddhist foundations in favor of a model that offers objectively verifiable biophysical and mental benefits. Self-transcendence, whether from the perspective of Buddhism or Frankl’s work, offers what we feel is an existentially viable path forward for college students, in lieu of the current paradigm promoted by those advocating use of these mindfulness-based interventions. We conclude by considering Existential and Buddhist notions of self-transcendence in dialogue, suggesting they offer an educational practice worthy of implementation.