The Buddha's Gift to the World

“Mindfulness meditation has attained great renown in recent decades as a panacea for nearly every human ill. Martina Draszczyk’s The Buddha’s Gift to the World is one of precious few books on the practice to contextualize it within premodern Asian Buddhist history and culture—and the only one to pay serious attention to Indian Mahāyāna and Tibetan approaches to the topic. The book is the fruit of Dr. Draszczyk’s many years of study, practice, and teaching of mindfulness, as well as her immersion in Indic and Tibetan psychological and contemplative literature; she draws here on everything from Pali suttas to Sanskrit Abhidharma schemes to Tibetan mahāmudrā manuals, excerpting and analyzing a range of texts with consummate skill. Indeed, The Buddha’s Gift is itself is a wonderful gift to both scholars of Buddhism and practitioners of mindfulness—and immediately takes its place as the most reliable guide to the sources and styles of this ancient, yet somehow timeless, meditative technique.” —Roger Jackson, author of Rebirth “The Buddha’s Gift to the World offers a groundbreaking and long-awaited contribution to the deeper understanding of the ‘taste of freedom’ expressed throughout the wisdom of both the Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions. Inspiration grows as similarities and differences between texts are explored and applied to living one’s life with awareness and compassion. This book unifies and expands the texture of these liberative teachings. Throughout the book, the author’s wise and confident presence is felt as she guides the reader with a gentle hand, like a friend inspiring insight and stability. Martina Draszczyk encourages the mindfulness practitioner to investigate the practice of mindfulness from original dharma (dhamma) sources, allowing the discourses to inspire us. Her years of scholarship and real-life application of ancient texts are infused with her love of meditation and the openhearted wish to share pathways to freedom with others. Her training as a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher and teacher-trainer gives her unique expertise to balance the secular offerings of mindfulness with the sacred ground of liberative teachings in both the Theravāda and Mahāyāna traditions. This book offers a treasure trove of wisdom gems that incline toward greater freedom.” —Florence Meleo-Meyer, MS, MA, LMFT, former director of Oasis Institute for MBSR Professional Education and Training “As the title of Martina Draszczyk’s book says, mindfulness was The Buddha’s Gift to the World, and I’d say her book is a wonderful gift to the world today. Providing a long-overdue and much-needed overview of classical Buddhist sources from both the Theravāda and the Mahāyāna traditions, she shows what mindfulness means in its original context and how it developed later. It comes as no surprise that much of the original context and training of mindfulness is omitted or substantially altered in modern approaches to it, especially in its commercialized forms. What cannot be said clearly enough, as Draszczyk does, is that not only the methods but also the effects of contemporary approaches to mindfulness often differ greatly from its Buddhist practices. This is not to say that ‘secular’ mindfulness in its many forms cannot be beneficial, but it seems crucial to provide access to original sources and a clear account of the differences between the characteristics, applications, and effects of Buddhist mindfulness versus those of contemporary approaches to it. Draszczyk has done a fine job clearly orienting us in that way.” —Karl Brunnhölzl, MD, author of The Heart Attack Sutra and translator of Luminous Heart “An accessible yet encyclopedic source of skillfully described and elaborated wisdom teachings from several classical lineages within Buddhism and how they might relate to and inform the movement of mindfulness practices and the cultivation of embodied wakefulness and compassion into the mainstream world. This clear, beautifully structured, and well-referenced book will be useful to practitioners and scholars alike, putting their own practice and understanding of Dharma into a broader historical as well as contemporary context at this critical moment in time.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), author of Meditation Is Not What You Think and Mindfulness for All “This is a wise and brilliant offering of the teachings of mindfulness from the Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna traditions along with a review of modern mindfulness-based approaches with their similarities and distinctions. All these teachings converge at the lessening of greed, hatred, and ignorance, which brings greater contentment, love, and understanding or wisdom. This book is a great contribution to all Dhamma (Dharma) practitioners as well as students of modern mindfulness with its scholarship and heart.” —Bob Stahl, PhD, coauthor of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook “This important intervention by Martina Draszczyk greatly enhances our understanding of ‘mindfulness’ in scriptural Buddhist sources with this masterful introduction to and translation of key texts from Indic and Tibetan Mahāyāna traditions. A must-read for anyone who wishes to engage sincerely with the profound and nuanced phenomenon of mindfulness, especially in its Mahāyāna Buddhist contexts.” —Lara Braitstein, PhD, editor of Boundless Wisdom: A Mahamudra Practice Manual