プロジェクト代表者：
DEROCHE Marc-Henri（京都大学大学院総合生存学館 准教授）

連携研究員・共同研究員：
・上床 輝久（京都大学医学部附属病院 精神科神経科 助教）
・井本 由紀（慶応大学理工学部外国語・総合教育教室 専任講師）
・楠本 亮太郎（京都大学大学院総合生存学館 博士課程（5年生））
・KUYKEN Willem（University of Oxford, Department of Psychiatry/ Oxford Mindfulness Research Centre・Professor/ Director）

プロジェクト紹介

The present research project aims at reviving Asian wisdom by focusing on the ancient Buddhist notion of “mindfulness” (Pāli: sati, Chinese: 念) or “mindful wisdom” (sati-sampajañña, 正念正知), and by envisioning its contemporary applications into higher education. Through an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration mainly between Kyoto and Oxford Universities, we intend to articulate a Kyoto-Oxford, East-West paradigm of mindful wisdom for higher education. 

The title of our collaborative research article in progress refers to this quotation of Williams James, Principles of Psychology (1890), Chapter XI. “Attention”: “[…] the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not. An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. But it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about.”

We argue that mindfulness-based training, through its deep connection with metacognition, and as the monitoring function of both memory and attention, can be constructed as the central pillar for learning, and as the thread for the development of wisdom. It could thus well form the education par excellence.

The contemporary “mindful movement” actually started as a cultural revival in 19^th century South-East Asia (especially from Myanmar), through the rediscovery of the Sutta of the Way of Establishing Mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta; 『念處經』 ). During the 20^th century, and with the confluence of Zen 禅 and Tibetan lineages, these techniques have been transmitted to the West, researched scientifically and incorporated into medicine, with the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program by Jon Kabat-Zinn, or into psychology, with Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) by Mark Williams (Founding Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre) and colleagues. The present research project focuses specifically on the extension of MBCT for healthy (non-clinical) populations: “Mindfulness for Life” (MBCT-L), and on its potential applications into higher education. 

A fundamental problem of our times was well perceived by TS Elliot (Choruses from the Rock), and has been further exacerbated in the so-called information age. He wrote: “Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” Our main question then becomes: In higher education, how can we find the way back from information to knowledge, from knowledge to wisdom, and ultimately from living (mindlessly) to Life (experienced in its fullness)?

Our team is composed by researchers who are specialized in Buddhist studies, philosophy of education, anthropology of education, clinical psychology (especially cognitive-behavioral therapy), and psychiatry. The methods will consist mainly in reviewing evidence-based studies, and in developing an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural discussion in order to integrate our different perspectives and to construct together a model of mindfulness training as constituting the education par excellence. Our thesis is that the latter could be articulated in three steps, as the wisdom born from listening (selected information), the wisdom born from reflection (organized knowledge), and the wisdom born from practice (embodied wisdom). Mindfulness or mindful wisdom forms precisely the thread of this process, through keeping vital information present in mind, formulating adequate re-present-ation, and cultivating a presence of mind, refining direct experience in the present moment. “Mindfulness for Life” could be then seen as encapsulating the training of the core skills of this process, to be further integrated to the various activities of learning/teaching/researching in higher education, adapted sensitively to each cultural context, backed with evidence-based science, and with proper medical care of the various vulnerabilities of this population in terms of mental health.

Cross-cultural perspectives serve also to clarify how mindfulness has evolved on its way from the East to the West; what can be gained now from the West to the East; and what integrative mindful wisdom model can now be forged collaboratively, and more specifically, by rediscovering the traditional Japanese culture, aesthetics, and arts of “carefulness” (nen-iri 念入り). We intend to show that such a mindful education will be decisive in order to tackle the most pressing challenges in contemporary and future human society: the information overload that is characteristic of the digital age; the renewed need for reflective and non-biased judgment; distractibility, difficulties in learning and concentration (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, etc.); rampant psychological distress such as anxiety, depression, and suicide; the vital need to recreate social and emotional bonding in the post-corona era; and most importantly, the necessity to rearticulate a vision for a harmonious future civilization based on our common humanness, and on its compassionate cultivation, precisely through the skilled application of mindfulness, or rather, as we may say, of “heartfulness.”