The psychological processes underlying mindfulness: exploring the link between Buddhism and modern contextual behavioral psychology

The purpose of this chapter is to describe recent developments in behavior therapy and to link these developments to the topic of mindfulness. The particular focus is on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, said as one word, not initials; Hayes et al. 1999; Hayes 2002) and the contextual behavioral theory that underlies it. These perspectives belong to the present volume, not so much because they draw their technology or theory from Buddhism as because there seems to be notable similarities between these approaches drawn from Western psychological science and major Buddhist principles (Hayes 2002). As such the emphasis will be on our area of expertise, psychological theory and technology, not Buddhist scholarship per se. We will orient the reader to what seems to us to be interesting and rather surprising areas of overlap between these two traditions, but we recognize that more sophisticated analyses would be possible from a Buddhist perspective. Hopefully, in this chapter we will provide enough information for readers to make additional connections of that kind.