The Difficulty of Defining Mindfulness: Current Thought and Critical Issues

In the last decade, a surge of interest has been directed towards the empirical investigation of the concept and applications
of mindfulness. If one considers the increasing evidence about the clinical benefits and the psychological and neurobiological
correlates of current mindfulness based interventions (MBIs), it is surprising that significantly lower effort has been directed
towards the achievement of a consensus about an unequivocal operationalization of mindfulness within modern Western psychology.
Accordingly, the present review aims to summarize traditional and current perspectives about mindfulness, to discuss the extent
to which modern definitions of mindfulness differ from more traditional definitions and, more specifically, the limitations
of current questionnaires that are thought to measure mindfulness levels, and to provide suggestions for future research on
this topic. In sum, according to authors well versed in the original Buddhist literature, from which several MBIs are overtly
or implicitly derived, modern attempts to operationalize mindfulness have consistently failed to provide an unequivocal definition
of mindfulness, which takes into account the complexity of the original definitions of mindfulness. Although the concept of
mindfulness remains elusive and difficult to capture by means of modern self-report questionnaires, however, several alternatives
exist that could shed light on closely related constructs, which could deepen our understanding of mindfulness and that could
lead to the development of new, not yet considered, categories of psychological effects associated with mindfulness training.