Mindfulness

The book full attention is an excellent theoretical and practical study on mindfulness based on the Buddhist tradition, which is where the practice of full attention really comes.
This manual, Based on the Buddhist tradition of Dokushô Villalba, Authentic contemporary Zen teacher, The essence of the experience of the awakening of the Buddha presents us: full attention (mindfulness). Using contemporary language, It proposes us to discover and cultivate it following a method adapted to our daily lives.
The book full attention is part of an educational ecosystem that makes its comprehensive training method accessible to all, Well, it satisfies three essential needs:
• Present a secular spirituality, humanist and universal, adequate for everyone. In the depths of its multiple expressions, The spiritual awakening is one and its foundation is the state of full attention, open and compassionate.
• Cultivate harmony, Relieves stress and modern emotional distraction.
• It helps us to reconnect with nature and to be able to live the non -violence that respects "the other", to the environment and ourselves.
We invite you to discover the basis of our methodology in the book full attention, written by our founder, Master Dokushô Villalba.
Book full attention

You can find it in paper and digital format on the Kairos publishing website and on the main online sales platforms.
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Amazon
Book house

Also available in audiobook format.
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Book review: Mindfulness | Dokusho Villal

THE LAST BOOK FULL ATTENTION, of the teacher Zen Dokushô Villalba is, above all, A clarifying lesson on a subject -the practice of full care or mindfulness- that drags some confusion in the West. It is also a timely book, precisely because it stands in a firm and simple rock, deep and honest, in front of the current of hundreds of opportunistic books that have been published on this subject in recent years. Although its author could have opted for a more aggressive tone when denouncing distortions, implicit deformations or simplifications in certain western approaches to full care, one has the impression that the book, beyond the wisdom that reflects its content, It is written from the heart, In a conciliatory tone, compassionate and with pedagogical eagerness. Dokushô Villalba is not raising his voice or "planting face" or facing those who, consciously, They have misrepresented the deep sense of the practice of full attention. Has simply looked around, has taken note of the situation, And he has decided to share his understanding -which arises from the union between erudition and vital experience- What is truly the practice of full attention.

In just four decades since its pioneer implementation in clinical contexts, de la mano de john kabat-zinn, The expansion of mindfulness around the western world has turned its practice into a more market object, therefore subject to the laws of supply and demand. The growing demand for this "product" in health fields, of physical-sports activity, Business, educational, of spiritual or leisure development, has favored his "macdonaldization", that is to say, Your presentation as a product that is visually attractive, Not too demanding either in effort or requirements for consumers, which promises immediate benefits and at a price available to the majority. Surely Kabat-Zinn himself is the one who could least imagine or wish that the market ended up phagocyping the mindfulness in the way it seems to have occurred. And while this American doctor made it clear from the beginning, back in the seventies of the twentieth century, that the practice of full attention has its roots in the Buddhist tradition, It is evident that, Throughout the expansion process, References to these roots have been losing weight, And sometimes they have been completely omitted.

This "forgetfulness" is not only because doctors, psychologists and therapists of all kinds that apply, They prescribe or defend the use of full attention in the West are not Buddhists themselves, nor to ignore the Buddhist sources of this practice, but mainly to that logic of global expansion by virtue of which the practice must be detached from any element that identifies it as linked or belonging to a group or community, either religious, ethnic, national, political or any other class. To put it with the metaphor of the "macdonaldization": If we want the entire planet to eat hamburgers, No one knows or have an interest in knowing that their origin is in a hot sandwich made with the leftovers of the roast pig the previous day -the Sundays- that the workers of the port of Hamburg took in the 18th century, It is not going to be that potential consumers are lost due to certain mental associations that make that information.

For many people, The word "Buddhism" activates a semantic field where concepts such as the East appear, Asia, exotic religious belief, sect, People with strange clothes or ancestral rituals. That is to say, "Buddhism" is associated with an ethnic-religious context (historic, cultural, folk) determined. Hence it seems reasonable to disconnect the mindfulness of Buddhism, If what is intended is to universalize your practice. The problem is that in that separation the links of full attention have also been broken with another context, which is not specific to any ethnicity or religious cult, How is the ethical and cognitive context. And this second decontextualization has resulted in the practice of full attention in the West, The so -called mindfulness, It has become a mere technique, Like so many others, To ensure momentary relief to some of our painful symptoms. Why, While full attention is not understood and practiced within a vital project, accompanied by other congruent actions with her and of a certain general approach of life (The ethical context), And as long as they do not understand and practice from a detailed and deep vision of the function of the mind (The cognitive context), It will only be a refined gymnastics that makes our fit in this world more bearable, And not a practice that helps us grow as human beings and transform it. The great success of Dokushô Villalba with this book lies in showing us the difference between a well -being technique and a tool to arouse.

Within that semantic field that many people activate when talking about Buddhism, Also live, But on a more hidden plane, The idea that it is not something "ours", but something alien to the historical-cultural identity of the West, An identity built around a rational scientific vision of the universe lying on a tissue of Judeo -Christian beliefs, an identity that, Let's not forget, It was the land on which capitalism and market economy grew as we know it. And more things, Well also fed) the body/mind separation -the Greek inheritance soma/psyche that was later cultivated in Christianity -, b) The subject/object ontological separation and C) the cult of individualism.

In the light of this last reflection, I believe that the presentation that Dokushô Villalba makes of the practice of full attention can be understood as the questioning of a dominant scheme inserted in the deepest of us, "Children of the West". In any case, The book is not a call to the "subversion" of that scheme, but a loving invitation to wake up spiritually, that is to say, to develop our ability to be aware of everything and at all times, Well, only full consciousness -and its great sentry, attention- You can free us from that dominant scheme that causes so much suffering in our lives.

So that this invitation is appropriate, The author begins with a series of conceptual clarifications. Conventional attention, The one we have been born since we are born because it is part of our biology, It is not the same as full attention, That one in Pali language called sati. The first looks out, providing a necessary service for survival. The second look in, looking for answers to the deepest questions that a human being can formulate: What/who am I? What and how my mind works? What is reality? Why is it so? Where do I go or where do I want to go? Why does it happen to me, Why do I feel what I feel, Why do I think what I think? But these questions do not remain in an intellectual limbo, but they lead to a practical interest: How can I free myself from any existential discomfort?

Buddha Shakyamuni was only interested in the latter, And not philosophies or theories that could not be checked in the first person. El buddha shakyamuni, not Buddhist, He formulated a hypothesis, that is to say, an empirically verifiable answer for that last question. Any human being can experientially test that hypothesis, and get your own conclusions. The master's degree of Dokushô Villalba in this book is that it has managed to explain with scientific arguments -of cognitive psychology to be more precise- Some of the things on which Buddha Shakyamuni cemented his hypothesis, in particular what is related to "ignorance", Ultimate source of all discomfort or vital dissatisfaction (dukkha, in pali). The author tells us about "cognitive error" caused by attention defects, And describe with simple language some aspects of information processing in our brain. He tells us about things that Buddha couldn't know, as the role of bulb-raquídea formation in the neuronal traffic of information. But it also tells us about the indispensable coordination that must exist between full attention and other "adjuvant" practices: the branches in the so -called noble octuple path of the Buddhist tradition. This path is, in fact, The hypothesis made by the Buddha, And it is not necessary -not much less!- Be a Buddhist to test the correction of the hypothesis. Only in the context of a global life project (A path) We can practice correct full attention.

The teacher Dokushô, moved by that pedagogical desire above, He has not hesitated to alter the structure of the meditative process described in Satipatthana Sutta, Buddha's speech on the foundations of full care. And so, The four traditional supports indicated in the speech have become five: body-respiration / sensations / Emotional states / Mental constructions / entire field of consciousness. Progressively, In a well -argued sequence of steps and phases, described with clarity and detail, The author exposes a complete training program in full care. One of the conductive threads of this sequence has to do with the interesting distinction between "experience field" and "field of conscience". As the teacher Dokushô points out, We experience much more than we are aware. Match both extensions, make both fields coextensive, becomes a north to which to direct our practice, Obviously not the sense of reducing the field of experience, but in increasing the field of consciousness, To be able to cover everything we experience.

This progressive increase in consciousness, based on the systematic practice of full attention, will pay off without looking for them. Little by little, We will abandon those antinatural separations named above in which our western civilization has its roots. The practice of full attention, inspired by ethical and cognitive principles such as those of Buddhism, It will help us gradually eliminate the separation mind/body, Not as an idea or concept, but in an experiential way. It will also help us realize inseparability between us as "subjects" and any "object", Well, we will feel that one and the other interpenet. And of course, It will help us dissolve the separation we maintain between subjects.

This last achievement is, After all, The most important if we think from a transpersonal or global humanitarian perspective. The only truly valuable fruit of any increase in wisdom -and simply intended as elimination of cognitive errors- It is its consequent increase in love and compassion towards others and towards ourselves. Dokushô Villalba takes us to that conviction, Without forcing the way, No technical excesses in your language, In a book also full of practical exercises that convert reading into a training itself, and with basic information about the different modalities (Online and face -to -face) To pursue a full attention practice program based on the Buddhist tradition.

A book, In short, clarifier and useful for anyone who aspires to live a more conscious life, full, Free and happy, But also more committed to helping others in that same path.

By Rafael Pulido Moyano

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Rafael Pulido Moyano (Córdoba, 1967) He is a doctor in pedagogy from the University of Granada. From 1996 He is a professor at the University of Almería, institution that in the year 2000 He awarded an award in recognition of the quality of his teaching and where he has held various positions (Director of the Department of Education, Director of International Relations and Vice Chancellor for Teachers and Academic Planning). He has been a visiting professor in academic centers such as Stanford University (California), The University of London, The University of San Carlos de Guatemala and the Catholic University of Guayaquil. Throughout his professional career he has been part of different research groups, framed in areas such as anthropology, Linguistics the didactic. In 2018, Together with other UAL teachers, founded the Interdisciplinary Research Group "Science, Consciousness and development ", which is currently carrying out a teaching innovation project on the use of meditation in university classrooms.

This article has been published in No. 4 From the magazine of the Ibero -American Transpersonal Association (WE HAD).