Sangharakshita inverviewed on mindfulness

an interview with Dorine Esser in Holland

The interview was first published in Dutch in the Dutch Buddhist magazine ‘Vorm en Leegte’, part of an issue of the magazine devoted to mindfulness.

Please note that some of what Sangharakshita says has been translated from English to Dutch and back again - bear this in mind when reading it!

It is available (in Dutch) on the Features section of FWBO News here.


WANTING TO CHANGE IS AN INDIVIDUAL THING.

Urgyen Sangharakshita is one of the elders of Western Buddhism. He recently visited Amsterdam, where Dorine Esser, a Mitra from the FWBO’s Ghent centre, interviewed him.

Sangharakshita came back to England in 1967 – after he had lived for twenty years in India as a Buddhist monk – and founded there the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO). The Western Buddhist Order is dedicated to establishing Buddhism in the West, unaffiliated to Eastern cultural tradition.

Sangharakshita is in Amsterdam for a short visit. I am on my way to the interview, curious about his insights into mindfulness and his motives for founding an Order. He is old, but his mind is clear and he radiates enormous loving kindness. With other Buddhist teachers like Joseph Goldstein and Stephen Batchelor, I felt the same radiant, mindful warmth.
This alone makes it an inspiring encounter.

What is for you the meaning of mindfulness?

Sangharakshita: The word has many connotations. English Buddhists, some of them anyway, see mindfulness as a translation of at least two original Sanskrit terms, sati and appramada. In the more broad sense it means awareness of what happens in your own mind and in the world around you. (sati) And on a higher level it also points to an awareness of the consequences of what you do. (appramada)

When I teach mindfulness, I discuss it in four different states or levels (based on the Satipatthana sutra) First there is mindfulness or awareness of our own body. We are conscious of our movements: sitting, standing, moving or talking, all our different body postures. But we are especially mindful of our breathing.

The mindfulness of breathing, (see anapanasati) leads to a specific concentration training. This exercise can lead to deeper states of consciousness. Then there is also mindfulness of feelings. We look at how we feel, in the sense of pleasurable, non pleasurable or neutral, and we have awareness of our emotions, for example whether we are angry or in the realm of loving kindness. After that comes mindfulness of thoughts. What are we thinking of? Very often we are stuck in some train of thought, which we let race on because we are not fully mindful of it.

So in the mindfulness training we try to be conscious of what kind of thoughts play through our mind. Finally we try to be mindful of the dharma, for example of the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path.

In short, being conscious of the possibility of becoming enlightened yourself.

The training of mindfulness is essential to the teaching of the Buddha.


After all those years of practice are you able to stop the stream of your thoughts?

Sangharakshita: I have experienced that it is possible. But as you suggest, you need many years of practice first.

Why would we want to stop this train? What is the benefit of it? Where does it bring us?

Sangharakshita: (laughs heartily) It is very good to understand your own mind and to see what happens in it. But if you practise Buddhism and want to grow in it, it is essential that you first learn to understand yourself. Only then can you learn to change your mind in order to make contact with a different kind of consciousness. After you have observed yourself in that way for some months or years, you probably notice that you will keep repeating one or more of these thought trains. You start to know your habitual thinking. When you bump into it, it says something fundamental about yourself. You probably also encounter fantasies about yourself. Things that are not true. As soon as, through observation, you can put your finger on it you will get more insight into the things you can work on in order to change.

Are we not good enough as we are?

Sangharakshita: (laughs again) It is more a matter of not being content with who you are or how you function. If you experience that, you might want to change. In Buddhist terms being dissatisfied is called dukkha.
As soon as we experience this dissatisfaction we feel the urge to try something else. People who don’t want to change are just satisfied with how things are or maybe they are not aware that there is more than this.

Would it not be good for everybody to change?

Sangharakshita: Wanting to change is an individual matter. Some people keep doing the same things, even if it leads them straight to the abyss.
I do think that in the end it will bring a better result for us all, if more people decide to change in a way which the Buddhist teachings find necessary.

I spoke to a professor of comparative philosophy who said that all of us take part in a cosmic transformation process.

Sangharakshita: I do think that as well. In some of my talks and publications I speak about it in terms of a higher and lower evolution. We all know the evolution theory in a broad sense. Humans are the product of a biological process. But there also exists another evolution, the one of the consciousness. This one goes much further than what we call the biological evolution. My impression is that the general evolution process brought us to our existence as homo sapiens. This is as it were a collective evolution of men as a species. If we want to transcend it, an evolution at the individual level of consciousness must exist. In fact there are different levels of consciousness in individual people. Spiritual development for me comes together with spiritual life in a Buddhist sense.

You could see the Buddha as a forerunner of that higher spiritual evolution. The final result of that evolution we call enlightenment. But that is something which will not happen automatically and collectively. We have to work on it ourselves.

Is that why you founded a Buddhist Order?

Sangharakshita: The main reason for it was my desire to give expression to the teaching of the Buddha (dharma). I had been teaching the dharma in India, where I lived for many years. So when I came back to England I just continued with it as a meditation teacher. I particularly taught two meditation techniques: the mindfulness of breathing and the development of loving kindness (metta bhavana). Apart from that I also gave public talks. People started to come to them and slowly but surely a group formed.

Because of that I had to think about the need for an organisational structure. I did not think that a foundation was a good idea. People pay a fee to become a member without committing themselves one way or the other, while I thought that commitment to the Buddhist path was very important. That is why an order seemed the best thing to do. The basis for membership of that order is the wish to really commit yourself to the path of that higher spiritual evolution. It is expressed in Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha (the community of Buddhists). At first it was a very small movement, but nowadays there are some 1500 order members worldwide, and probably three times as many mitras (friends). It developed step by step. I just got on with teaching and was more concerned with what had to be done the next day than with the idea of growth. What happens next depends on the individual order members.

Let us return to mindfulness. After Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced MBSR it has become a popular term. MBRS attracts people who experience dukkha but are not attracted by Buddhism. What do you think about it?

Sangharakshita: I think it is a pity, but it is their choice. When people have experienced that being mindful is worthwhile, there might be more benefit waiting for them when they encounter Buddhism. The mindfulness training stems from the Buddha, it is as simple as that. In itself it is a fascinating fact. In India there are many religions and traditions, in this time and at the time of the Buddha, but he was the only one who noted the usefulness and importance of mindfulness, of training in awareness.

Of course you experience more benefit from it when you practise it as part of a spiritual path, as a means for the attainment of enlightenment.

Does mindfulness training make sense when it is not practised in the context of Buddhism.

Sangharakshita: Yes, it does, but it loses a large part of its value.

It is still useful and practical, but in that way it is less valuable then it could be. Mindfulness can be an entrance to the dharma. As well as that, being mindful makes us more soft, more mild. But it would be better if it brings people still further. Or like in an English proverb: The good is the enemy of the best. Something may be good in a limited way and you may remain just satisfied with that, but that will prevent you from making use of something that is even better. It can happen that people who have encountered mindfulness training, only years later remember that it has something to do with Buddhism. It mostly happens after the experience of a great loss or grief. The intention to seriously explore the connection with Buddhism often arises then.

Do you see any disadvantage in the hype around mindfulness?

Sangharakshita: For sure there is a dangerous side to teaching mindfulness out of the context of Buddhism. You see, it only gives one part of the dharma, which makes it one-sided and too technical. This can lead to a serious alienation from your feelings. I have seen that happen.

We humans have the tendency to exploit a technique infinitely. I think that it is dangerous to apply whatever traditional Buddhist meditation method only as a technique. Whether it is the singing of mantras or the examination of your mind through the practice of mindfulness. There must also be space for emotions and devotion.

Therefore I always teach mindfulness together with the practice of loving kindness. It now seems that people are presented with mindfulness training as Buddhism by a teacher who has made mindfulness training his or her profession. Of course that is very misleading, because the dharma is much more than that and meditation teaching is not a profession.

How can we ensure that Buddhism remains authentic?

Sangharakshita: What I find most important is to try and verify what the Buddha really said and taught. In the aeons since he died much has been added that in fact has little to do with what the Buddha originally taught. Therefore it is essential to read and study the old Pali texts. These are the texts which are the nearest to the historical Buddha, even when we know that every word that it contains was not uttered literally by Him. The best way to check if a teaching is authentic is to hold it against the light of these texts. But it is as important to verify if the teaching you receive is really helpful to you and does not go against reason.

Have you become happier through the Dharma?

Sangharakshita: (hearty laugh) By nature I am reasonably happy and I don’t think that you will become happier by chasing it. Happiness is essentially a by-product. If you do something in which you really believe you will become happier automatically. For me it is the Dharma. I have committed my whole life to it. I can indeed say that, apart from the problems I experienced, I have led a happy life. But practising the dharma with the only purpose to make yourself happy, will not work.

You commit yourself to the Dharma, because you believe that it is just the best thing that a person can do.

[ends]

Mindfulness for Everything

by Vishvapani
Picture an FWBO meditation class and you imagine a room full of people sitting quietly on cushions in front of a Buddha image. But an increasingly common variation is a room of people lying down, relaxing deeply as the leader guides them in taking their attention through the body.

The body scan is a distinctive element in the six, eight or ten week courses that are proliferating in FWBO centres as they engage with the world of Mindfulness-Based Therapy (MBT). The faculty of mindfulness—broadly defined as non-judgmental present-moment awareness—has always been a key element of the Buddhist path; and in recent years psychologists and healthcare professionals have been recognizing its value for people experiencing conditions ranging from stress and depression to addiction, chronic pain and ill health. A natural crossover exists between this growing medical interest in mindfulness and the skills that FWBO meditators and teachers have developed in their years of practice. So how are people from the FWBO engaging with MBTs, and what issues are emerging as they do so?

Mindfulness-Based Therapies
Although the world of Mindfulness-Based Therapy is fairly new, it is already rather complicated, at least on the surface. Prepare to be bombarded by acronyms. There is Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR); Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT); Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP); Mindfulness-Based Pain Management (MBPM); and more. As the names suggest, these therapies apply mindfulness to various conditions; others, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) use mindfulness in conjunction with other forms of treatment.

The alphabet soup was first stirred in 1979 when Jon Kabat-Zinn wondered if the mindfulness meditation he practiced at the Insight Meditation Society could help the patients he was seeing at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre. These were people for whom the doctors could do no more. Despite extensive medical treatment they still suffered chronic pain or illness, or one of the many kinds of dis-ease that we call ‘stress’. He developed an eight-week course that engaged them in regular and fairly intensive practice of body scans, mindfulness of breathing meditation, hatha yoga and other exercises aimed at developing awareness. He called his approach Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

The effect of MBSR courses was carefully monitored and results were remarkable. People reported lower levels of stress, and even a reduction in their symptoms. Above all, they felt hopeful and empowered because mindfulness enabled them to affect their experience for the better. What’s more, follow-up studies showed that years after taking the course many participants continued to use the techniques they had learned.

Medical authorities and funders were impressed, and they were delighted by the course’s cost-effectiveness. While conventional treatments involve expensive drugs or lengthy one-to-one therapy, MBSR can be taught to groups of up to thirty people at a time, and it uses the cost-free resources of the participants’ own minds. If this sounds mercenary, it is important to note that for Kabat-Zinn, himself, MBSR’s effectiveness springs from its spiritual depth. As he writes in his best-selling 1991 book Full Catastrophe Living, ‘What we really offer people is a sense that there is a way of looking at problems that can make life more joyful and rich … and also a sense of being somehow in control.’

Kabat-Zinn’s activities developed into the Center for Mindfulness, and their influence spread. One example is described in the book, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression by three cognitive psychologists, two of whom are British. Their work with people suffering from depression showed them that, while drugs could help alleviate depression, seventy percent relapsed if they ceased taking the drugs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) could also help, with more lasting results, but there is a UK-wide shortage of qualified therapists. In any case depression, once experienced, is highly likely to recur - a new episode starts when someone starts to ruminate on thoughts of unworthiness or frustration, and this produces depressed moods, which in turn produce further negative thoughts. The result is a descending spiral that creates a strongly depressed state of mind. But if the person can notice that these thoughts are starting to recur before they have gained in strength, they can choose not to pursue them.
The psychologists concluded that their patients needed a technique that would help them to be aware of their thoughts; and their search for such a therapy led them to Kabat-Zinn, meditation and mindfulness. Some years on, MBCT has been approved by the UK’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for treatment to prevent relapse into depression - which is known to affect around twenty percent of the population of developed countries at some point in their lives. Masters degrees in MBCT are taught at the Centre for Mindfulness Research And Practice in Bangor, and another course is being developed in Oxford.

Mindfulness has also been used to treat addiction, eating disorders, anxiety and numerous other conditions. Breathworks is a home-grown approach, developed by Vidyamala, a member of the Western Buddhist Order, which I will describe below.

How Mindfulness-Based Therapy Works
Most Buddhists are familiar with techniques for developing mindfulness, such as the mindfulness of breathing meditation practice, but how can they help with conditions such as chronic pain or depression? In an excellent talk entitled Mindfulness for Just About Everything (available online from Free Buddhist Audio), Paramabandhu, who is both a consultant psychiatrist and the Chair of the London Buddhist Centre, identifies four main therapeutic uses of mindfulness.
Firstly, he says, mindfulness enables people to notice what is happening in their experience, especially when they are engaging in compulsive patterns of thought such as escapist fantasy, rumination and fixation which can prompt destructive or addictive behaviour. Secondly, mindfulness offers a way for people to stay with experience including whatever may be difficult, rather than pushing it away. This produces a change in perspective on those thoughts or experiences, enabling people to see that their thoughts are just thoughts, not facts or reality, and they need not be driven by them. Finally, the new perspective allows choice. Rather than being driven by compulsive reactions to experience, mindfulness creates the mental space that enables people to respond differently.

The practices taught on mindfulness-based courses support people’s efforts to move away from depressive thoughts, accept physical pain, or respond to challenges with creativity rather than stress. Learning to pay attention to the breath helps in learning to notice thoughts and feelings, and in meditation brings calm, in which state it is easier to notice experience and stay with it. MBTs also emphasise grounding awareness in a sense of the body and the breath, and this is naturally healing in itself.

Mindfulness-Based Therapies in the FWBO
The two main FWBO MBT projects are Breathing Space at the London Buddhist Centre (LBC), and Breathworks, which is based at the Manchester Buddhist Centre but trains people from many different places. The two projects engage with the MBT field in rather different ways.

Breathing Space
Paramabandhu first ran an MBCT Meditation for Depression course at the London Buddhist Centre in 2004, drawing on his experience as both a meditation teacher and a consultant psychiatrist. The first course quickly booked up, so he put on a second—and the same thing happened. His Health Service work is with drug and alcohol addiction, and in 2005 he started to offer a six-week course, which he adapted from MBCT called Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP).

Members of the LBC sangha responded enthusiastically to Paramabandhu’s initiative, in part because it was helping people who otherwise would not attend the Buddhist centre, and Paramabandhu supervised experienced meditation teachers as they trained to run the courses themselves. The courses enabled the centre to make new contacts with the local community, and Tower Hamlets Council has given almost £10,000 to fund free places for local residents. By mid-2007 over 300 people had attended MBT courses at the LBC.

As activities developed, they acquired a name—‘Breathing Space’—and Maitreyabandhu became the Director while Paramabandhu guided the teaching aspect. As the number of courses grew they decided that they needed a large dedicated space for these activities, which wasn’t dominated by a Buddha figure. They decided to convert the LBC’s basement—currently a warren of offices and storerooms—into a large, therapy room and activity space with a reception area and disabled access. They launched an appeal, including £150,000 to be raised from the LBC sangha to refurbish the existing ground floor facilities. In summer 2007 a government-backed investment agency awarded the project a £25,000 grant and £260,000 loan for the basement conversion. This is enough to ensure that Breathing Space can go ahead; but there is a long way to go before the team realise their vision of teaching mindfulness courses to thousands of people and dramatically expanding the scope of the LBC’s activities.

Breathworks
While Breathing Space uses a version of MBSR and MBCT, Breathworks’ approach has grown out of the experience of Vidyamala, an Order member with severe chronic pain. Chronic pain affects around fifteen percent of the population, and it confronts them with a raw version of the existential dilemma about which Buddhism speaks so much. The challenge is to respond constructively to suffering, rather than trying to escape it or reacting angrily. Having learned, through years of struggle, to engage mindfully with her own condition, in 2002 Vidyamala started to share her experience with other chronic pain sufferers by running courses in her room.

A year later Vidyamala teamed up with Sona and Ratnaguna, (whose working name is Gary Hennessey), both of whom are experienced practitioners, to form Breathworks, a not-for-profit company dedicated to making this work more widely available. They ran courses at the Manchester Buddhist Centre and elsewhere, and quickly attracted attention from both health professionals and other Buddhists. Since then Breathworks activities have ballooned. The team often run courses for health professionals and make presentations at conferences.
They have devised a training course that takes place over two weeks, and four such training weeks will be held at Taraloka Retreat Centre in 2008. They have also led training retreats in New Zealand. Twelve people have qualified as Breathworks trainers, and Breathworks courses are being run in Brazil, New Zealand, Ireland and Germany, as well as Cardiff, and Manchester in the UK. In London, Prasannavira runs Breathworks activities through his company, Body of Health, which works with Breathing Space. The Breathworks team anticipate that by the end of 2008 there will be 30 qualified Breathworks trainers. While most of those training are FWBO Buddhists, some are Buddhists from other traditions and some are non-Buddhist health professionals.

The intention of the Breathworks team is to create a ‘Breathworks community’, that includes many trainers around the world who will meet for retreats, sharing of experience and further training. While the work’s initial focus was on people suffering chronic pain, in 2005 Ratnaguna and Sona started the ‘Living Well’ course that adapted Breathworks techniques for others. In 2007 the course was extensively revised by Ratnaguna in the light of MBSR and its offshoots, and a new version called ‘Living Well: Mindfulness for Stress’ was piloted in Manchester, Cardiff and Auckland, NZ.

The demand for what Breathworks offers is seen in the success of their guided meditation CDs, which have sold 12,000 since they were launched in 2004, despite being self-published. Vidyamala is currently writing a book about her approach to pain management (I am her editor), which will be published by in September 2008 by Piatkus, the UK publishers of Full Catastrophe Living. Breathworks is increasing known within the worlds of pain management and mindfulness, and several research projects into its techniques are currently being conducted.
The Breathworks programme differs from MBSR and MBCT in several interesting ways. The Pain Management module includes elements drawn from other pain management courses, such as training in ‘pacing’ oneself through the day. The suggestion that participants might decide to actively change their behaviour gives a subtly different message from the MBSR emphasis on noticing without judging or changing. The biggest difference, however, is that, in addition to the body scan and the mindfulness of breathing, all Breathworks courses include a ‘kindly awareness’ practice. This is an adaptation of the metta bhavana (loving kindness) meditation practice, which is taught at FWBO centres alongside the mindfulness of breathing. The kindly awareness practice starts with reflection on one’s own suffering and uses it as a key to develop empathy with others. Vidyamala sees this other-regarding dimension as an important adjunct to mindfulness for people seeking a more creative response to difficult experience.

Other Projects

Mindfulness Works

Kulananda, a senior member of the Western Buddhist Order who co-authored Mindfulness and Money, took the MA in Mindfulness-Based Approaches at Bangor. After graduating he was invited to teach a Buddhist psychology module on the MA programme. He also set up a company, Mindfulness Works, that offers mindfulness courses to companies, business coaches and senior executives as well as in healthcare settings. He works under his civil name: Michael Chaskalson.

Mindfulness Works activities have developed successfully and Kulananda has led courses in the NHS, at business schools, and for corporate clients—including several large professional service firms. As the Mindfulness Works website points out, over half a million people in the UK say that stress, depression or anxiety was caused or made worse by their work, and employers increasingly realise that this affects their businesses. There is clearly a demand for mindfulness in the corporate sector.

Other FWBO Centres
Karunadaka, the Chair of the Dublin Meditation Centre and Viryasara (Dr Kate Healey), who is a GP, run a successful programme of mindfulness courses at venues in Dublin under the name Blue Sky Mindfulness Meditation Dublin.

The Cambridge Buddhist Centre runs MBSR courses led by Kulananda and Ruchiraketu, who is currently taking the Bangor MA. They have also sometimes worked with John Teasdale, one of the founders of MBCT. Another Bangor student, Taravajra runs MBCT courses at the Evolution Arts and Natural Health Centre in Brighton. In fact MBT courses are popping up on centre programmes around the movement—the North London Buddhist Centre recently ran MBT courses focusing on stress, depression, and chronic pain, all more or less concurrently, with a good take-up for each.

Issues and Prospects
The growing interest in MBTs in mainstream healthcare and psychology creates opportunities for FWBO centres and individuals, but also brings some risks. Depression, stress, anxiety and chronic pain affect large sections of the population, many whom attending would never think of attending a Buddhist centre or a meditation class. We are probably only at the start of the influence of mindfulness on healthcare and on society at large. In time, if research evidence mounts and health budgets adapt to include mindfulness, there may well be formal health service support for these therapies, whether they are taught by Buddhists or health professionals. Jon Kabat-Zinn reportedly described his work as ‘stealth Buddhism’, introducing Buddhist attitudes, experiences and values into the mainstream of society and potentially affecting many millions of people.

Teachers of MBT courses report that participants are often more motivated than those attending other classes at Buddhist centres because they have a real difficulty in their lives for which they need help. The courses are more intensive than other meditation courses, and people often experience benefits to match. I know from my own experience as a teacher that MBT course can be very rewarding.

MBT courses can also help centres and individuals financially. Buddhist centres are usually empty during the day, and at least some MBT courses can take place then. Because MBTs are bracketed with other healthcare offerings the amount that people expect to pay is higher than for other events, especially where they are paid for by health authorities or employers. This is particularly true in the corporate sector. However, MBT is a new area and there are few recognised ways of reaching the people who might benefit. For example, although Breathworks is highly respected by pain specialists, they do not yet get many referrals and currently hospitals cannot buy in Breathworks trainers.

A danger for Buddhists and Buddhist centres in engaging with MBT is that it will subtly alter the flavour of their teaching work. Mindfulness Based Therapy is an emerging profession, and offering meditation professionally is very different from the ‘mutual generosity’ (dana) basis of traditional Buddhist teaching. Buddhist centres that are under considerable financial pressure need to take care that they do not neglect their mainstream activities for the sake of MBTs.
The medical origins of MBSR and MBCT potentially skew the understanding of mindfulness away from how it is seen in the Buddhist tradition. In Buddhist teachings mindfulness is always seen as an aspect of a path that includes other faculties and practices. But in MBTs mindfulness is often spoken of in isolation, or in conjunction with non-Buddhist techniques such as CBT. The resulting view of mindfulness in MBCT, for example, strikes me as very clear but rather narrow. I think it would be unfortunate if views of mindfulness among FWBO Buddhists were strongly influenced by this approach, unless it is thoroughly reviewed in the light of Buddhist teachings. Breathworks’ inclusion of ‘balanced effort’, kindly awareness and its plans for a community of practitioners is an interesting response to the narrowing of views of mindfulness among ‘mindfulness professionals’.

The two main FWBO MBT projects—Breathing Space and Breathworks—have developed in isolation from one another, and there has been little interaction between them. It would be good to see more dialogue between these and other FWBO MBT projects. Potentially, perhaps in conjunction with other Buddhists, they could help to bring a distinctively Buddhist understanding of mindfulness to the MBT world.

Training
There is no commonly recognised MBT accreditation, but three training options are currently available for anyone in the UK wanting to deliver MBTs. Readers may wish to add comments about the provision in other countries.

Breathing Space offers on-the-job training in MBCT/MBSR to would-be teachers in London.
Breathworks offers a straightforward practice-based training course. This is ideal for working with people experiencing chronic pain, and the new Living Well with Stress course opens up the much wider field of stress management as well. Graduates can also benefit from the Breathworks community.

Bangor University’s MA/MSc in Mindfulness-Based Approaches, which includes a substantial academic component, has attracted a number of Order members. The course’s four modules and a dissertation can be completed in three years, and students are awarded a certificate and then a diploma en route. The qualification in MBCT, with its strong evidence-base, is likely to impress the health service and employers.

Finding Out More
Books
Full Catastrophe Living: How to Cope with Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Piatkus (UK); Delta (US)
Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse by Zindel V. Segal, J. Mark G. Williams, and John D. Teasdale; Guildford.

Talks and Articles
Mindfulness for Just About Everything (talk by Paramabandhu, Free Buddhist Audio) www.freebuddhistaudio.com/talks/details?num=OM778
Embodying Engagement (article by Vishvapani on Jon Kabat Zinn & Bernie Glassman): vishvapaniswriting.blogspot.com/2007/01/embodying-engagement-observations-of.html
Mindfulness as Cognitive Training: a Contribution from Early Buddhist Thought by Michael Chaskalson MA dissertation available on Univ. of Wales, Bangor website

FWBO Mindfulness-Based Therapy Projects
Breathworks (Manchester) www.breathworks-mindfulness.co.uk/
Cardiff Breathworks www.cardiffyogastudio.co.uk/breathworks.htm
Body of Health (East London) www.bodyofhealth.org/
Mindfulness Works www.mbsr.co.uk/
Blue Sky (Dublin) http://bluesky.ie/
Breathing Space (London) www.lbc.org.uk/breathingspacehome.htm
Cambridge www.cambridgebuddhistcentre.com/stress_reduction/about.php
Evolution Arts, Brighton www.evolutionarts.co.uk/mbct.html

Other Mindfulness-Based Therapy Projects
Massachusetts Center For Mindfulness www.umassmed.edu/cfm/index.aspx
Bangor Centre for Mindfulness Research & Practice www.bangor.ac.uk/mindfulness/
Oxford Mindfulness Centre www.so-wide.org/mindfulness.php